In a restaurant hang here and there on the walls
The signs "Three Bears", "Stabbed Champion"...
Lonely at his table sits the captain.
"Would you permit?" - I ask. "Sit down!

...Go ahead and smoke!" - "Excuse me, I don’t smoke ”Kazbek“..."
"Okay, then drink, let’s have some dishes!..
Yes, while they bring that... Drink, to whom am I talking!
To your health!" - "Certainly I will!"

"Well now now", said the captain drunkenly,
"You drink vodka beautifully, however.
Have you seen a machine gun or a tank up close?
Have you ever, like we say, gone on the attack?"

In ’43, south of Kursk, I was a platoon sergeant,
Behind my back - such a...
Lots of everything, brother, was behind my back,
So that you could live in peace!"

He cursed and drank, he asked about my father,
And he cried out, sick of the dinner:
"I gave up half my life for you, you scoundrel,
While you burn up your life, you Judas!

But a rifle for you. But to send you into battle?!
But you sit here with me and suck down vodka like a tick!.."
I sat, as if in a trench south of the Kursk salient -
There, where the capitain was a platoon sergeant.

He got more and more drunk, I kept up with him,
Only at the very end of the conversation
I insulted him - I said: "Captain,
You will never be a major!"