How wars start - who knows for sure? Probably the most supreme commanders, generals and admirals. And even the side that attacks first. These ones have a plan. And those who are attacked? For men who sleep and don’t know that tomorrow they have to become soldiers? What do the women think, next to whom their daughters and sons snore calmly? But what can children who live completely dependent on adults know and think? Well, of course, we played war and always defeated our enemies. We bravely rushed into children's attacks against boys like us, our neighbors on the street. But we couldn’t know anything at all about what would happen to us if they told us: the country was attacked by an enemy! Everything happened very quickly. My father volunteered in the very first weeks when mobilization began - what a strange and terrible word. And we were left with mommy, alone. And although I had grandparents, they did not live so close and our small room became - as, indeed, it was - our corner, refuge, our habitat, quite, nevertheless, lonely and homeless without a father. And everything that was with me, around me and for me became my mother. Mom helped me get dressed while I was too small, fed me, tied a scarf in the cold, raising the collar of my skinny coat before doing so, led me by the hand to school, and led me so much that I could, like a sleep-deprived horse, half sleep, still moving my legs. . Mom didn’t like to tell me edifying words; my grandmother did this when she was with us. Mom patiently, often silently, carried out her maternal duties, which I began to think about when I was very grown up, she simply continued with life, first of all, mine, and hers. Just everything. But it turned out that she saved me, did the same thing as my father in the war, only this rescue did not look like something extraordinary: my mother ran to me from her hospital to quickly feed me, and, maybe, first of all, to see that I am alive and well and waiting for her. My mother has been gone for a long time, and the terrible war has long ended. But for some reason I cannot forget even the smallest little things that made up our rear life during the war. Moreover, the older I get, the closer they get to me. It’s as if someone is saying, reminding me: don’t forget, don’t forget! Tell other, new people. So I’m trying, for the umpteenth time, to tell the children of new, and, unfortunately, often indifferent times, about other times, bitter, but also happy, when we were invincible. And when our mothers saved their sons. Remember what did not happen to you. Know the time when you didn’t yet live...Albert Likhanov