Although more than 75 years have passed since the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, to this day in many parts of the world they honor the memory of heroes who fearlessly embarked on the struggle against fascism and saved the world from the Brown Plague. Among those whose feat will forever remain in the memory of peoples, defenders of the Brest Fortress occupy a special place, who were the first to take the blow of the enemy.
Along with adults, the citadel was still held by very young patriots. One of them was Petya Klypa, to whom this article is devoted.
Life before the war
The young hero of the defense of the Brest Fortress - Pyotr Sergeevich Klypa - was born in 1926 in Bryansk in the family of a working railway. His father passed away when the boy was still very tiny. Nikolay Klypa took care of his younger brother. At that time, he was already the commander of the musical platoon of the 333rd Infantry Regiment. At 11, Petya was enrolled in the same unit as a foster child. In 1939, the regiment participated in the Red Army campaign in Western Belarus, and then it was placed in the Brest Fortress.
Soldier childhood
Petya Klypa tried to resemble his brother in everything, so from a young age he dreamed of a military career. In addition, studying at school seemed to him a boring occupation, and he preferred rehearsals in a musical platoon and combat training to her. Like all the boys, Petya liked to hang around and watch the life of people in the fortress, so he knew every corner of it.
June 21, 1941
Although his brother, as he could, looked after Peter, his service did not allow him to keep the boy under proper control. On June 21, a young pupil of a musical platoon seriously violated. He fled from the fortress to the city to replace the adult musician of the orchestra, who was supposed to provide musical accompaniment to sports competitions.
His absence was noticed, and when he returned to the unit, an angry brother-commander punished Peter by ordering him to learn the trumpet from Bege's opera Carmen.
While other fighters watched a film show at the fortress club, Klypa was forced to work hard on music. After he met with another young fighter of the musical platoon - Kolya Novikov, who at that time was 12 years old. Friends agreed to secretly run away in the morning for fishing.
First day of war
On June 22, Petya Klypa woke up from the roar of the explosion. Around him in the dilapidated barracks lay the dead and wounded. He did not understand that he was shell-shocked and, although his head was breaking out from pain, he grabbed someone's rifle and prepared to take up the fight with his adult comrades.
Since the structures inside the fortress were at a considerable distance from each other, and the enemy attacked in several places, several centers of defense arose. As it became clear after the war, by the morning several units with a total of 6,000 troops left the citadel. The remaining soldiers (9,000 soldiers and officers) continued to fight, holding up significant enemy forces heading inland.
The beginning of the defense of the fortress
Children in the war (and in the fortress, besides Petya and Kolya Novikov, there were several more students from the music platoon and about two dozen sons and daughters of officers) - this is something that cannot be allowed. However, there was no way to organize their evacuation, and the older guys tried as much as they could to help adults. They entered places not accessible to other fighters, and carried out various commander orders.
During the defense of the Brest Fortress, Pyat Klypa repeatedly acted as a liaison between the disparate units of the garrison and observed the actions of the enemy.
Already on the second day after the start of the assault, children - the heroes of the war - Pyotr Klypa and Kolya Novikov - discovered an ammunition depot. They reported this to the commander. The defenders of the fortress enthusiastically accepted the news that the boys had found boxes of ammunition, since these ammunition allowed them to continue to resist the enemy until their arrival. Today we know that there was no place to wait for help from the defenders of Brest, but then the soldiers and commanders besieged in the citadel did not know about this yet, and thought they were the victims of a powerful and well-prepared sabotage operation.
Further exploits
The young hero was eager for battle, although adult fighters struggled to save the brave boy. He even went to bayonet attacks, armed with a pistol, from a warehouse found.
Where only Petr Klypa did not prove himself ?! The feat of the boy who delivered the medicine shocked all the defenders of the fortress. When the bandages ended in the improvised infirmary, he found medicines and dressings in the ruins of the medical unit and dragged them into the basement, where the wounded were hiding.
Children in war suffered from deprivation along with adults. It was especially difficult for kids and the wounded because of thirst. Although the Bug was nearby, the enemy stopped all attempts to deliver water to the defenders and civilians who took refuge in defensive structures that were still held by the Red Army soldiers with continuous fire. The desperate Petya Klypa, whose biography after the war is presented later, repeatedly made sorties and returned with a full flask. In addition, the boy found food in the ruins of empty buildings, and once he even reached the warehouse of Voentorg and got a roll of matter there. It was very necessary for women and children who, in the first minutes of the Nazi invasion of the USSR, were still sleeping and ran out of apartments in their underwear.
Breakthrough
When the commanders who led the defense of the Brest Fortress realized that the situation was hopeless, they ordered the women and children to surrender, as they hoped in this way to save their lives. The fighters began to persuade Petya and other young fighters to leave the fortress along with civilians, but the boy was indignant, since he considered himself a fighter of the Red Army.
In early July, it became clear that the cartridges would soon end, and the command decided to try to break through in the direction of the West Island and try to get to the outskirts of Brest.
It was not possible to complete the plan. A significant part of the soldiers died, but Petr Sergeevich Klypa, who at that time was not yet 12 years old, was among the few who managed to get to the outskirts of the city. However, he, along with several comrades, was captured by the Nazis and driven into a column of prisoners of war.
In a concentration camp
When the convoy crossed the Bug, a car drove up to it with German cameramen filming newsreels for demonstration in Berlin. They photographed the drowsy captive soldiers and suddenly noticed a boy in military uniform who threatened them with his fist. It turned out to be a cheerful Petya Klypa. Operators and escorts beat the child half to death, and the rest of the way to the concentration camp in the Polish city of Byala Podlaska, the prisoners carried him in their arms. On arrival, Petya Klypa met Kolya Novikov. There were other children there - war heroes from the Brest Fortress.
Escape and dispatch to Germany
The boys from the music platoon were going to continue the fight. Soon they managed to escape, in Brest, the guys found out that the front had already gone very far. Of all the pupils of the musical platoon, together with Petya, only Volodya Kazmin agreed to make his way to the front. They managed to walk only a couple of hundred kilometers, and in one of the Belarusian villages they were captured by police officers involved in sending Soviet youth to work in Germany.
So Pyotr Sergeevich Klypa got into the village of Hohenbach on the territory of Alsace, where he began to labore in the wealthy peasant family of Kocel Frederick, who was engaged in the production of wine.
After the arrival of the Americans
Petra, along with other adolescents stolen from the USSR, was released in 1945 by the Americans. They began to seize valuables and wine from the Germans. Klypa showed them where his master hid the wine, and then he found out and reported to the headquarters of the tank unit of the US Army the location of the German officer, who was hiding by Frederick. The Americans gave Peter a rifle and sent a group of soldiers to capture the Fritz. Then they began to give him instructions to find out where members of the NSDAP live in the district. As Peter himself later indicated during interrogation in the USSR, he did not receive remuneration for cooperation with his allies, but he was provided with food and cigarettes and even presented a watch. In addition, Klype was invited to move to the United States, but he refused, expressing a desire to return to his homeland.
Feat and crime of the hero of Brest
The zigzags of the fate of Peter Klypy can shock anyone. Little is known that the one who made many feats as a teenager, putting him on a par with many adult heroes of the Second World War, was convicted of a “criminal” article after the war.
Returning to Bryansk, Peter met Leva Stotik, a former classmate, and they became inseparable. It soon turned out that a childhood friend was a speculator. He bought lots of shoes in the capital and resold in his native Bryansk. Such actions were considered illegal and punishable by imprisonment. Pyotr Klypa loved risk and felt offended, since no one around him considered him a hero, and nobody knew anything about the feat of the defenders of the Brest Fortress.
He began to go "on flights" with Stotik and received part of the profits. Once Leva lost the cards, and they decided to return the amount by attacking a passerby who had a thick wallet. Leo launched a weapon, killed a stranger and took all his valuables from him. In 1949, investigators investigating this crime went to Klypa and arrested him as a bandit accomplice.
Punishment
The laws of the postwar period were severe. For participation in armed robbery and speculation, Peter Klypa was sentenced to 25 years in camps. Shame broke yesterday’s 26-year-old hero of the defense of the Brest Fortress. In the Magadan camp, Peter even made an attempt to commit suicide. In severe frost, when the prisoners left the construction site, he lay down on the ground, hoping to freeze to death. However, the guards discovered the absence of one of their charges, and thinking that he had escaped, they set off to look for him. Soon Peter was found and he was taken to the infirmary, where several frostbitten fingers were amputated.
Book of Sergey Smirnov
Probably Peter would have spent most of his life in prison if it had not been for the Brest Fortress. The book by Sergei Smirnov revealed to the inhabitants of the USSR the truth about the events that took place in the first hours and days after the outbreak of war. From it, millions of people learned that Petya Klypa is a pioneer hero who performed many incredible feats.
When the Brest Fortress (book) was created, its author arrived in Bryansk and began to search for a young defender of the citadel. There he learned the tragic story of Peter and did everything to achieve a commutation of sentence.
On the loose
In 1956, after serving 7 years in prison camps, Pyotr Klypa returned to Bryansk and got a factory worker. Soon he got married, he had children.
Thanks to the book of S. Smirnov, he became a celebrity, and he was often invited to celebrations.
Despite a criminal record, Peter Klypa was even awarded the Order of the Patriotic War of the first degree.
The tests experienced during the years of military childhood, in German captivity and in the Magadan camp, could not but affect the health of the hero, and he died at the age of 57. So ended his life the one that for many residents of the USSR was known as the pioneer hero Petya Klypa.
Brest Fortress (film)
Peter Klypa became the prototype of the main character of the film directed by Alexander Kott “Brest Fortress”, shot in 2010.
The story in the film is on behalf of Sasha Akimov, who according to the script is a pupil of the musical platoon of the 333rd Infantry Regiment. His role was played by Alexei Kopashov, who was 14 years old at the time of filming, and he had already studied for 2 years in the Moscow cadet corps of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The acting work of the teenager received a lot of praise from both critics and viewers. Suffice it to say that he was even nominated for the Nika Award for the best debut of 2011. After the film, Alexei Kopashov gave up his career as a military or police officer and today is a student at VGIK.
The premiere of the painting "Brest Fortress" took place exactly 69 years after the events presented in the picture - June 22, 2010 - in Brest, on the territory of the Memorial complex, at the Terespol Gate. Upon completion of the filming of the picture, many props, including the main character’s pipe, the prototype of which was Peter Klypa, were transferred to the Museum of the Brest Fortress.
Young hero Petya Kotelnikov
By the way, one of the first films was watched by the only living defenders of the Brest Fortress remaining by that time. Pyotr Kotelnikov was born in 1929 and, like his namesake and childhood friend, was a pupil of the musical platoon, but of the other, the 44th regiment. On the very first day of the defense of the fortress, the boy was wounded in the head, but continued to help older comrades. In the evening of the same day he ended up in the barracks of the 333rd regiment, where Petya Klypa, Volodya Kazmin, Volodya Izmailov and Kolya Novikov were located, who were also pupils of the musical platoons of the Brest Fortress.
In an interview, Pyotr Kotelnikov told reporters how he crawled into the remote barracks, collected ammunition in a bag from a gas mask and brought it to firing soldiers. Together with his comrades, he repeatedly went to the shore of the Bug and brought water to the wounded and kids. This was a real salvation. The fact is that in the only well that the defenders managed to dig in the basement of the barracks, the water was mixed with gasoline and completely unsuitable for use.
It was from Peter Kotelnikov that information was received about how the children-heroes of Brest fled from the concentration camp. According to the veteran, they were very lucky. The fact is that on the tenth day of their stay in Poland they were driven to Brest. When the prisoners were taken out for a walk, the inhabitants of the city brought them food and clothing. Once, the head of the prison, having noticed among the servicemen several boys in civilian clothes, asked them how they got into the prison. The guys said that they had happened by accident when they were looking for relatives among the prisoners and wanted to give them bread. The officer did not want to mess with the teenagers and ordered them to be kicked out of the gate. Petya Kotelnikov waited for the arrival of Soviet troops, and after completing military service he became an officer and gave the Soviet army 30 years of his life.
Now you know who Peter Klypa is. War is not a childish affair. However, during the serious trials that fell on the lot of the Soviet people in the first half of the 1940s, even very still young boys and girls showed miracles of courage, bringing closer the long-awaited Victory.