Russia (bbabo.net), - - Comrade lieutenant colonel, we have an emergency, a radiologist of the Dushanbe District Hospital of the USSR Border Troops, who appeared before the chief, was pale. Fear in the eyes.

Vorobyov got up from the table:

- What?

- Remember, a week ago, a soldier was brought from across the river with a wound in the abdominal cavity and swelling in the area of ​​​​the right pectoral muscle?

- I remember. The edema did not go away, despite all the measures taken.

- Yes sir! And it won't work, comrade lieutenant colonel. Because a combat grenade was stuck between the ribs and the right pectoral muscle, - then the radiologist choked with excitement.

But, having gathered himself, he reported a clearly pre-prepared text:

- Unexploded ordnance VOG-17 from the easel grenade launcher "Flame". Caliber 30 mm, length without sleeve approximately 115 mm.

The head of the hospital, Yuri Alekseevich Vorobyov, flopped back into his chair. How to believe what you hear, if no one before him believed even X-rays?

Anamnesis

Private Vitaly Grabovenko served in Afghanistan as an assistant grenade launcher, his task was to monitor the readiness for firing of ammunition. And this is the AGS-17 grenade launcher or, as it was called, "Flame". And a grenade - a miniature cylinder the size of a hunting cartridge, which, when burst, hit everything and everyone within a radius of seven meters.

The "spirits" did not have such a formidable weapon, Yuri Vorobyov, the head of the hospital, knew this for sure. Because at first I did not believe my colleague. Been trying to figure it out...

The soldier Grabovenko himself spoke about the wound indistinctly. After completing the operation in a distant gorge, the border guards followed to the base, shelling began in the dark. It was not possible to establish where they shot from, who shot, what they shot from. Colleagues in the BTEer have not a scratch. And Vitaly suddenly felt a blow, a pain in his stomach. When he pulled off his tunic, he saw a lacerated wound. “Guys,” he said to the guys, “I think a grenade flew into me.” But they laughed at him: “Yes, it’s a fragment, don’t panic! We’ll take you to the hospital in the morning, they’ll sort it out.”

By morning, he developed swelling in his right forearm. Far away from the wound. Well, what kind of grenade is really there? Vitaly himself abandoned this delusional thought.

The next day he was evacuated to Dushanbe.

Diagnosis

The soldier was examined in detail at the hospital. The wound was sutured. No serious abnormalities were found in the body. I was a little embarrassed by the x-ray, where a dark spot was visible at the very edge, but the radiologist reassured me: it was the handle from the apparatus that got into the frame.

The soldier began to be treated: dressings, droppers, injections. Between procedures, he walked around the hospital garden and breathed deeply. That's just the swelling did not subside and the pain did not let go in the right forearm. A week later, the attending physician again sent Vitaly for an x-ray, asking his colleagues to more thoroughly enlighten the wounded. It was then that a cylinder with a diameter of three centimeters and a length of almost twelve was discovered in the picture. The density is clearly metallic.

The doctor, having studied the picture, thought: what kind of piece of iron? It doesn't look like a shard. For the bullet too. Like a piece of pipe. It is clear that the swelling and pain from it. So you have to take it out. They began to prepare the soldier for the operation.

And it's good that we stopped in time.

Because the doctor showed an x-ray to two officers who were also in the hospital for treatment: "Look, what miracles happen. A piece of pipe flew into a soldier."

Those, peering, barked in one voice: "This, brother, is not a pipe! This is the most unexploded grenade from AGS-17!!!".

That's when everything turned upside down.

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Consultations

The command of the border district contacted Moscow, they got everyone on their feet - the medical department of the border troops, the hospital of the Ministry of Defense named after Burdenko. How to be? Whose experience to use? It is clear that at any moment a grenade can explode, and with surgical intervention, this risk will increase many times over.

Military doctors responded:

“Nothing like this happened in our practice. There was one episode during the Great Patriotic War, but there an unexploded mine with its plumage outward hit a soldier, it was quite easily removed and neutralized. So you yourself decide what to do there.”

They began to think.

The sappers called for consultations delivered their verdict: the fuse of the grenade is deformed, it is absolutely impossible to touch it, and if you touch it, then only in the transverse direction.

After that, at the local factory "Textilmash" they ordered a special surgical instrument according to Vorobyov's drawings - a grip with which a grenade can be clamped like pincers, with an elliptical-shaped casing on the handle, like a sports rapier.

The effect of the casing, however, was more moral, in the event of an explosion, it did not save in any way.

Plan

The sappers delivered protective suits to the hospital, which, by the way, are completely secret: a helmet with impenetrable glass, vestments made of metal plates, leg protection. It was not clear how to protect the hands, because you would not do a delicate surgical operation in lead gloves. As a result, they agreed on the usual rubber ones.They also prepared a special container lined with sandbags inside - it was necessary to carefully put the seized grenade into it.

And the soldier Grabovenko, with the greatest care, was transferred to a separate ward, strictly punished not to leave the bed. All the doctors and nurses who examined him, put on drips, gave him medicine, were required to enter the ward only in bulletproof vests and helmets.

As for the operation plan, there were few options. First, safe: cut the grenade along with part of the muscle mass. But the soldier will forever remain disabled. And the second: through the incision, get to the grenade, take it with a clamp and carefully remove it from the body.

We settled on it.

Five days later, everything was ready for the operation.

It remained to decide on the main thing: who will enter the operating room?

Brigade

Not everyone is born to perform feats. There are many good people, few heroes.

Among the surgeons of the hospital, there was no one who would voluntarily want to risk their lives to save Private Grabovenko. You can understand these people. All families, children, all have something to lose. Of course, the institution is military. Of course, you can give an order. But...

Next, I will give the floor to the head of the hospital, military doctor Yuri Alekseevich Vorobyov:

- I was at my workplace almost around the clock. When I ran home, my wife anxiously asked: "What's going on? Why are you at work all the time?" Svetlana was seven months pregnant, I didn't tell her everything. I say: "A wounded man arrived with a foreign body inside. We are working out the upcoming operation." - "And who will operate"? - "Sveta, well, not the head of the hospital!"

In fact, I already knew that I would have to operate. And this was agreed with Moscow. The head of our medical department came out of vacation ahead of schedule and arrived in Dushanbe. Says "Are you ready"? “Ready,” I answer. "But keep in mind, it's a dangerous business, it can tear off your hands." "That's right," I say. "I understand that." "But don't worry, then we will transfer you to Moscow and give you an order."

All that remained was to find an assistant. They agreed to become a two-year lieutenant Alexander Dorokhin, a bachelor, no wife, no children. A guy from the Moscow region. He says: "I agree, if necessary." Well, if so, then the two of us had to lie down on the embrasure. Now fine.

Operated in the dressing room. We dressed in these heavy space suits - I, Dorokhin, the anesthesiologist Volodya Moiseikin. The operating nurse prepared the instruments, medicines, everything that might be needed, and then left. The anesthesiologist put an anesthesia drip and also left, went to the balcony and watched the rest through the bulletproof windshield from the Mi-24 combat helicopter.

We were left alone.

Operation

Actually, there were only three of them: the surgeon, his assistant and Private Vitaly Grabovenko with an unexploded grenade under his skin.

The case took place on August 15, 1986. There were no air conditioners in the hospital then. The temperature outside the window, in the room is above forty degrees Celsius. And they are in iron armor. Sweat fills the eyes.

Vorobyov made an incision in a place previously marked with iodine - just above the contours of the grenade. Dorokhin spread the edges of the wound with hooks. Now the most difficult and dangerous task was to remove the ammunition from the body and load it into a container. Load, according to the plan of the operation, along with the capture, the one that was made at Textilmash according to Vorobyov's drawings. It was safer that way.

“But then I went to a clear violation,” Vorobyov admits to me years later. - I felt sorry for losing this instrument - the only one of its kind. So I carefully removed the grenade, placed it on the sandbags, and kept the grip. Since then, it has been kept in our border museum.

The first phase of the operation went flawlessly. After that, the soldier was transferred to a regular operating room, where the usual team of surgeons and nurses completed what they started. And the sappers carried the stretcher with the container to the nearest quarry, where an explosion soon thundered.

Discharge

The head of the medical department, having received the report, said to Vorobyov: "Although we have dry law now, I order you to immediately pour a glass of vodka and drink it in one gulp." Another order came from the command - to award the Order of the Red Banner. Orders were also awarded to the assistant and the anesthesiologist. Nurses were awarded medals.

Vitaly Grabovenko spent about a month in a hospital bed, and after being discharged, he again asked to go to Afghanistan. But he was refused: enough, boy, to tempt fate. He returned home to Ukraine with the Order of the Red Star.

Of course, the reader will have a reasonable question: how did the ammunition from the Soviet Plamya grenade launcher end up in the body of a Soviet border guard soldier? The investigation found the following. During Mujahideen shelling, a bullet pierced the zinc in which the grenades were stored, hit straight into the primer, it detonated, the grenade flew out of the box, hit the machine gun horns in the soldier’s unloading and then, without exploding, passed along the edge of the costal arch under the muscles of the chest and stopped in collarbone area.It sounds, I agree, not very plausible, but there is no other official version.

But, as you know, in war this doesn't happen.

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FROM THE "RODINA" ARCHIVE

Forty years ago, at the beginning of 1982, units of the border troops of the USSR were introduced into the territory of Afghanistan. They were assigned a zone of responsibility up to a hundred kilometers deep along the entire Soviet-Afghan border. This was dictated by the fact that formations of radical Islamists began to regularly violate our borders, shell our settlements, and mine the territory.

The Soviet border guards, along with the soldiers of the 40th Army, did their duty in Afghanistan until mid-February 1989. They have many successful battles to their credit, and the main merit is that throughout the state border on the front with a length of over 2300 km was reliably covered from the south.

Before the beginning of the "zero" Yuri Alekseevich kept in touch with the rescued soldier. The last time they saw each other in Kiev in 2003, when both were invited to record a television program. And two weeks later, Vorobyov received a telegram from Vitaly's wife: he died tragically. Got hit by a car...

Vorobyov is still working in his specialty - he is a surgeon in a hospital where border guards are treated. Colonel, Honored Border Guard and Honored Doctor of the Russian Federation.

His assistant Alexander Ivanovich Dorokhin is now a professor, head of the Department of Traumatology and Orthopedics at CITO.

Text: Vladimir Snegirev

12

Dushanbe hospital surgeon lieutenant colonel Yuri Vorobyov and his patient Vitaly Grabovenko.

3

Capture with a protective cover and other tools for the operation.

4

After operation. Now you can smile.

5, 6

Exactly the same grenade in the hands of Vorobyov - "in memory of the feat ...".

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