The war of anti-aircraft gunner Yuri Vladimirov turned out to be short. Together with 250 thousand Red Army soldiers and commanders, he was captured near Kharkov in May 1942. Only a few of them managed to survive and talk about the details of the tragedy. The book by Yu. Vladimirov is an accurate and exciting story about the last pre-war years, training in the educational unit, and the labor front. The author’s amazing powers of observation allow us to present in detail the life and spirit of that time. We are accustomed to reading about a heroic, multi-day and arduous war. And the author is one of those who did not reach the front in the first days of the war and died in bombed trains, of hastily trained Red Army soldiers abandoned by the command and captured or killed in the first battle. They accounted for the lion's share of the Red Army's losses in the initial period of the war.