On the shore on Bug River in Fronołów, Poland.

This photo is Best on black at Fluidr

See more at: www.visualmanuscripts.com or connect with me on Google+, Facebook or Twitter.

Tags:   backwater Bug river color fine art landscape photography Piotr Tyminski Poland river textured tree water Pentax Pentax Art Visualmanuscripts

© All Rights Reserved

A simplified version of the smallest Molotov Line pillbox for one heavy machine gun. Even these simple form of fortification could prove to be a pain for the attackers. Well hidden under the protective embankment they are quite difficult to spot even today. Here just the entrance to the pillbox is barely visible, the single loophole is on the opposite side.
Numerous pillboxes of this type screened the main defensive line in the south-eastern part of the Molotov Line but they were all abandoned by the Soviets and none took part in combat during the opening hours of the German advance into Soviet Union in 1941.

This photo is Best on black at Fluidr

Tags:   abandoned bunker derelict fortification history Linia Mołotowa military Molotov Line pentax pillbox shelter Soviet urban exploration urbex WW2 бункер заброшенные Oleszyce Podkarpackie Polska POL decay Art Poland Visualmanuscripts

© All Rights Reserved

A story of “The Norm”.

A pile of stones and some barbed wire, still remembering the summer of 1941.
Construction of hundreds of pillboxes of the Molotov Line required huge amounts of stone. It was crushed and mixed with fresh concrete. The best one was coming from the Caucasus Mountains – a long and expensive journey. So, inevitably, local stones were used on a massive scale. But they did not come by themselves.
Soviets, as mad and ruthless as they were, were also very precise and rigorous people. Not content with herding thousands of civilians into forced labor zones, they also came up with a set of precise rules, or “norms”, regulating who, how much, when and how was supposed to contribute to the overall effort of “defence works”.
It was carefully planned and calculated how many stones each local farmer had to bring to the building site. You've got a horse? Two? If two, then you need to bring more. It was that simple. No horse? You will dig foundation trenches then or, better even, endless anti-tank ditches. There were norms stipulating how many cubic meters of earth one needs to remove and what is the distance that removed portion needs to be moved away.

I always go around those remote, small villages asking about anti-tank ditches. As huge as they had been, they are hard to find today, most eaten up by forests and cultivated fields. But every piece of information is precious when drawing the maps of those forgotten strongpoints. I'm always very careful not to overuse the technical and military jargon – these are mostly simple people I talk to. But most often than not I found myself disappointed that they did not understand what I was asking about. It's a simple thing – an anti-tank ditch – even the name implies it, hey, it;s just a damn, deep ditch, that's all about it!
And then, to my horror, the answers started to pop out like a devil from the box. Of course they knew what an anti-tank ditch was! I was simply asking a wrong question... They had a different word for an anti-tank ditch. The one they remembered from their fathers and grandfathers, the one which which was so feared as it was hated, the one so horrible it stuck in the minds of simple folk for generations.

The called it “the norm”.

This photo is Best on black at Fluidr

Tags:   abandoned bunker derelict fortification history Linia Mołotowa military Molotov Line pentax pillbox shelter Soviet urban exploration urbex WW2 бункер заброшенные podlaskie Polska PL decay Art Poland Visualmanuscripts

© All Rights Reserved

Uśnik strongpoint, located 13 kilometers from the 1941 German-Soviet border, was one of the eight strongpoints screening the vital road and railroad hub in the city of Łomża from the south-west direction. It was perfectly protected from the front by the Ruż river, which flows parallel to the old border.
But there was no battle for Łomża in 1941. Germans took the city the very next day after crossing the border and the Soviets stampeded eastwards offering no resistance along this part of the Molotov Line.
Only five pillboxes were built in Uśnik but many more were on the drawing board, construction of some of them reached just the stage of initial earthmoving. The builders apparently suffered from the shortage of water – a lot of water is needed during such massive construction effort – and a huge concrete tank (looking almost like a swimming pool) was built on one of the hills. Water was distributed from there to the nearby construction sites.
Although they were not effectively used in combat all the pillboxes in the area are utterly destroyed, either by the Germans testing their resistance to the explosive charges, or by the Polish or Russian army engineers who could utilise the sites right after the war for disposing of unused or dud ammunition scattered across the fields.

Three-loophole heavy machine gun pillbox featured on the photo suffered a similar fate. Destroyed almost beyond recognition is a silent testimony to the power of explosives which had been used to end its life.

This photo is Best on black at Fluidr

Tags:   abandoned bunker derelict fortification history Linia Mołotowa military Molotov Line pentax pillbox shelter Soviet urban exploration urbex WW2 бункер заброшенные Śniadowo Podlaskie Poland POL Art Pentax Art landscape Visualmanuscripts

© All Rights Reserved

Texturized photograph of Narew River in Kępa Kikolska, Poland.

In springtime the river usually rises high, almost to the top of the small bluff which lines its southern shore. Butin summer it runs low and once you manage to plough your way through the thicket little sandy spots may be discovered where trees, ravaged by the swift current, still cling to life.

This photo is Best on black at Fluidr

See more at: www.visualmanuscripts.com or connect with me on Google+, Facebook or Twitter.

Tags:   water pentax atmosphere branches bush calm clouds creative dreamy foliage forest gold grass green landscape leaves light monochrome mood Narew painterly painting paintography Piotr Tyminski reeds reflection river rzeka shadow shrub silhouette sky texture tree Tyminski vintage waterside reeds Kikoły mazowieckie Polska Pentax Art Visualmanuscripts

© All Rights Reserved