The book is dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the birth of the great Belarusian writer, participant of the Great Patriotic War Vasil Bykov (1924-2003). After graduating from an infantry school with the rank of junior lieutenant, Bykov fought from the fall of 1943 until the victorious May 1945; wounded three times, he wore a splinter in his right hand for the rest of his days. In all the writer's works there is one unchanging hero, and this is by no means the author himself, whose invisible presence is somehow tangible every time. This hero is true. And Bykov remained faithful to this hero in the darkest years, when he was banned and persecuted "from Moscow to the very outskirts."