How the pharmacy fought. Memories of a Great Patriotic War participant from Vitebsk

Despite her advanced age, 97 years old, Antonina Akimovna Kruganova is always in touch: she keeps her mobile phone handy just in case. There isn't a day that goes by without her knowing how her loved ones are doing, and they, in turn, do not neglect their beloved mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother.

Antonina Akimovna is respected and cherished. When she broke her hip, her children and grandchildren took turns at her bedside and, against the doctors' discouraging verdict, got their dear one back on her feet. More than ten years have passed, and she is still active and in the best of spirits. Her inexhaustible optimism and faith in the best were inherited from the war, and her loved ones help her to enjoy life. And at 97, Antonina Akimovna has optimism.

…On that fateful day, she was at work, at the pharmacy. The terrible news struck like a bolt from the blue: Molotov announced that war had begun.

All her colleagues scattered home in a panic, but Antonina stayed at her post. Soon, people began to come, asking for first aid supplies.

No one expected the war to escalate to such an extent.

Soon, Antonina Kruganova transferred to work in a hospital as the head of the pharmacy and moved with it throughout the war. Wounded and sick soldiers needed medications and bandages, which had to be obtained under shell explosions. Supply bases were located throughout the region, and reaching them was very difficult.

"Bombing is terrible and frightening. Every minute is a mortal danger. But we didn't think about it then, we fought," the woman recalls.

She herself suffered a concussion, but as soon as she recovered – her own doctors nursed her back to health – she returned to her duties. She knew that the lives of people directly depended on how the pharmacy operated: without a supply of medicines, it was impossible to provide full and timely assistance. Leaving the severely wounded and sick without medication was the most frightening thing.

After the liberation of Vitebsk, the hospital was located on the territory of the current infectious diseases hospital, in the so-called infectious barracks.

– When we entered, we were amazed. Not a soul, only beds and feathers from pillows on the floor. Where the staff and patients had gone was unknown. We started cleaning and setting up. Machines with wounded continued to arrive from the front. We all took in people, carried them ourselves. I remember one time a female soldier was admitted. Very beautiful. When the doctor examined her wound, he realized: gangrene had set in and the leg could not be saved. The girl was sent for amputation to another hospital, but I couldn't forget her for a long time.

Helping in the operating room, I saw all sorts of things. It was impossible to look at the suffering of young, strong people who had been crippled by the war. There were very, very many of them.

But then came the day when they announced: "The Germans have surrendered!" – Antonina Akimovna recalls with tears. The joyful news caught the head of the pharmacy during the daily five-minute meeting. And then it all started! The staff took hands, began to dance, and a bayan appeared from nowhere. It was a real celebration, a day of victory and fulfilled hopes, Antonina Akimovna admits.

The hospital operated for several more months: they continued to treat the wounded. Once, a handsome young man came to visit a relative, who fell in love at first sight with a beauty in a white coat, and soon became her devoted life companion.

When the former employees of the infectious disease hospital returned from evacuation, the chief physician Ruben Brahman, having heard about the professionalism and responsibility of Antonina Kruganova, offered her to stay and work. Her relatives tried to dissuade her: she would have to deal with infections, but the woman made her choice and did not regret it.

She loved her work and her team very much. She did not go home until a precise diagnosis was made for the patient and appropriate treatment was prescribed. Sometimes she was called in the middle of the night to dispense medications.

In the post-war period, acute infectious diseases raged, and hospital staff participated in the elimination of scarlet fever and diphtheria epidemics. Despite the general shortage of medicines in healthcare institutions, Antonina Akimovna's pharmacy had everything necessary.

Antonina Kruganova worked at the hospital for 41 years and was awarded the title of Honored Worker of Healthcare of the USSR. She always spoke with love about her colleagues. Her daughter Vera, when she entered medical university, dreamed of working in this very hospital.

Her grandson Lesha, now Alexey Pavlovich, followed in his grandmother's footsteps. He is currently the head of the pharmacy. Antonina Akimovna fondly recalls taking him to kindergarten when he was little. Passing by the pharmacy, Lesha suddenly said, "Grandma, I probably won't work like you – the salary is too small." But fate had it that over time he changed his attitude towards this profession and, like his grandmother, sincerely fell in love with it.

Antonina Akimovna eagerly awaits Victory Day. Her family knows how significant this holiday is to her. The seventieth one, it is always accompanied by memories and tears of joy, as if it were the first time. And the melody of that very bayan, which seemed to seal the end of the war, will once again sound in her memory.

Tatyana Serebryakova, "Vitebskiye Vesti"