They Fought for the Motherland by Mikhail Sholokhov. Short summary

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The main characters are 3 friends (Peter, Nicholas and Ivan) who served in the same regiment. They helped protect the crossing of Soviet troops across the Don and at the same time preserve the banner of their unit.

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The first years of the war were underway, and the Soviet troops were in constant retreat. After the battles for the settlement of Stary Ilmen in the regiment in which the main characters served, only 117 rank-and-file soldiers and commanders remained alive. They were retreating across the endless steppe, after which they stumbled upon a small farm where they began to talk to each other.

Nikolai had worked as an agronomist before the war and during a dialogue with Ivan, a former tractor driver and combine harvester, confessed to him that his wife had abandoned him, leaving him with 2 small children. As Ivan thought, things were not going so well for him on the personal front either — his wife, having read too many romantic novels, began to demand from her husband to show her his feelings and completely forgot about the need to run the household. Peter was a hereditary miner and a cheerful man.

Later, friends helped defend the crossing of the Don.