Happy Victory Day! – С Днем Победы!

My grandmother started crying on the phone:

“I don’t want you to ever know what it’s like to hear the shelling and know that it’s coming for you.”

War is banal and blind and savage and ultimately meaningless. But there is still something to smile about today, at least for me. If only because its survivors had children, and those children had children, and one of them was me, and another one was my beautiful baby brother. And there’s a reason why we’re here, and we’ll spend the rest of our lives finding out what that reason may be.

Here’s the chorus of the song we shared with our Allies (the text is not strictly the same, but the tune is identical, and the general gist of the song has been preserved in the Russian version):

“Comin’ In On A Wing And A Prayer
Comin’ In On A Wing And A Prayer
Though there’s one motor gone, we can still carry on,
Comin’ In On A Wing And A Prayer

What a show! What a fight!
Yes, we really hit our target for tonight!
How we sing as we limp thru the air
Look below, there’s our field over there

With our full crew aboard and our trust in the Lord
We’re Comin’ In On A Wing And A Prayer”

“Мы летим, ковыляя во мгле,
Мы ползем на последнем крыле.
Бак пробит, хвост горит и машина летит
На честном слове и на одном крыле…”

Ну, дела! Ночь была!
Их объекты разбомбили мы до тла.

Мы ушли, ковыляя во мгле,
мы к родной подлетаем земле.
Вся команда цела, и машина пришла
На честном слове и на одном крыле”

And here’s a video of Chizh & Co. doing a song that features both the English and the Russian words (the accents are awesome, I’ve decided – makes me wish I still had mine):

(I would have liked to include the live version of this one more, since it’s Chizh himself who sings the English part there as well, but alas, YouTube failed me on that count…

Nevertheless, bud’mo!)