The String of Time: War Stories

In the spring of 1944, the commander of a reconnaissance platoon was tasked with escorting three strange officers to the front line. What was strange about them was their unnatural calm—even indifference to what was happening—though they were preparing for a clearly risky mission. And their faces looked somehow well-groomed and well-fed—nothing like “combat” faces. One of them, shortly before departure, took up a guitar and sang a song. The scout liked it so much that he wrote the lyrics down in his diary. Many years later, in peaceful life, he heard the same song again. It was a new hit, as people now would say, by Vladimir Vysotsky. In 1944, the great bard was only six years old—and he couldn’t have written that song back then. Which means those strange officers somehow got into 1944 from the future…