This book began thirty years ago, when the boy Kostya Somov, while fishing, heard from an old man a story about how they lived during the war. They didn't fight, they lived. In the movies they always shoot during war. In fact, combat does not take up that much time in a war. In his book, Konstantin Somov quotes the words of our fellow countryman, Biychan Hero of the Soviet Union Sergei Bakanov: “After the war, I calculated: I attacked, that is, really fought, for eighty-eight days, lay in hospitals, that is, idle - 315 days, in defense was 256 days, studied to become a commander at Stalingrad for 50 days. And before I got to the front, I hung around in Vladivostok - 350.” Although all this was also a war, it was different in each of these states. This is what the book is about. The book has 600 pages. Relatively little, but a whole encyclopedia has been published. But not cold and lifeless, as encyclopedias usually are, but touching and humane. I feel sorry for everyone - the Russians, the Germans, and the Romanians robbed by Commander Popescu, who are reeling from malnutrition. Konstantin Somov mentions hundreds of different people, and I want to know about each one - did he live to see the Victory? For example, I read about how soldiers of the 364th Division who were surrounded stole a stallion from Divisional Commander Philip Solovyov - the last surviving horse. The division commander did not look for those to blame, he only annoyed: “Do you think I don’t want to eat? It was a pity for the fool... I had to eat it”... I searched for a long time in various books, found out that Philip Solovyov survived after the encirclement and even later commanded the corps. Much of what Somov wrote, no one had written in such detail before him - for example, to whom, for what and how much money was paid during the war. It turns out that back in August 1941, by order of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, a monetary reward was introduced for pilots for each shot down German plane - a thousand rubles. (There is logic: after all, war is called work, and you have to pay for work). In most books written in recent years, the charge of love and compassion is simply not provided. The authors come up with a detective story and place a love, adventure or spy novel in a military setting. Perhaps they believe that the truth about the war is too bitter a pill and needs to be sweetened or somehow distract the reader’s attention. But most likely, it’s simpler: you don’t have to go through the archives, you don’t have to listen to old people. But we still need to find them - veterans. Instead, some authors are at war with others with their books: someone will write one book about the Great Patriotic War, and in response they will write ten. And as the years go by, there are fewer and fewer people who remember the war. Very soon we will have nothing left about the Great Patriotic War except the memory enclosed in book bindings. The war becomes distant, ceases to be scary, and if it’s not scary, then why not fight again? And what our future and the future of our children will be depends on what books about the war will be...