Heroic deeds in war. Heroes of the Great Patriotic War: the history of famous deeds

We have collected for you the best stories about the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. First-person stories, not invented, living memories of front-line soldiers and witnesses of the war.

A story about the war from the book of the priest Alexander Dyachenko "Overcoming"

I was not always old and weak, I lived in a Belarusian village, I had a family, a very good husband. But the Germans came, my husband, like other men, went to the partisans, he was their commander. We women supported our men in any way we could. The Germans became aware of this. They arrived at the village early in the morning. They drove everyone out of their houses and, like cattle, drove to the station in a neighboring town. The wagons were already waiting for us there. People were stuffed into carts so that we could only stand. We drove with stops for two days, we were not given water or food. When we were finally unloaded from the wagons, some of us were no longer able to move. Then the guards began to drop them to the ground and finish them off with rifle butts. And then they showed us the direction to the gate and said: "Run." As soon as we ran half the distance, the dogs were released. The strongest ones ran to the gate. Then the dogs were driven away, all who remained were lined up in a column and led through the gate, on which it was written in German: "To each his own." Since then, boy, I can't look at the tall chimneys.

She bared her arm and showed me a tattoo of a row of numbers on the inside of the arm, closer to the elbow. I knew it was a tattoo, my dad had a tank inked on his chest because he was a tanker, but why inject numbers?

I remember that she also talked about how our tankers liberated them and how lucky she was to live to this day. About the camp itself and what happened in it, she did not tell me anything, probably, she felt sorry for my childish head.

I learned about Auschwitz only later. I learned and understood why my neighbor could not look at the pipes of our boiler room.

My father also ended up in the occupied territory during the war. They got it from the Germans, oh, how they got it. And when ours drove the Germans, those, realizing that the grown-up boys were tomorrow's soldiers, decided to shoot them. They gathered everyone and took them to the log, and then our plane saw a crowd of people and gave a queue nearby. The Germans are on the ground, and the boys are in all directions. My dad was lucky, he ran away, shot through his hand, but he ran away. Not everyone was lucky then.

My father entered Germany as a tanker. Them tank brigade distinguished herself near Berlin on the Seelow Heights. I saw pictures of these guys. Youth, and the whole chest in orders, several people -. Many, like my dad, were drafted into the army from the occupied lands, and many had something to avenge on the Germans. Therefore, perhaps, they fought so desperately bravely.

They marched across Europe, liberated the prisoners of concentration camps and beat the enemy, finishing off mercilessly. “We rushed into Germany itself, we dreamed of how we would smear it with the tracks of our tank tracks. We had a special part, even the uniform was black. We still laughed, no matter how they confused us with the SS men.

Immediately after the end of the war, my father's brigade was stationed in one of the small German towns. Or rather, in the ruins that were left of him. They themselves somehow settled in the basements of buildings, but there was no room for a dining room. And the commander of the brigade, a young colonel, ordered to knock down tables from shields and set up a temporary dining room right on the square of the town.

“And here is our first peaceful dinner. Field kitchens, cooks, everything is as usual, but the soldiers are not sitting on the ground or on the tank, but, as expected, at the tables. They had just begun to dine, and suddenly German children began to crawl out of all these ruins, cellars, cracks like cockroaches. Someone is standing, and someone is already unable to stand from hunger. They stand and look at us like dogs. And I don’t know how it happened, but I took the bread with my shot hand and put it in my pocket, I look quietly, and all our guys, without raising their eyes from each other, do the same.

And then they fed the German children, gave away everything that could somehow be hidden from dinner, the very children of yesterday, who quite recently, without flinching, were raped, burned, shot by the fathers of these German children on our land they captured.

The brigade commander, Hero of the Soviet Union, a Jew by nationality, whose parents, like all other Jews of a small Belarusian town, were buried alive by the punishers, had every right, both moral and military, to drive away the German "geeks" from their tankers with volleys. They ate his soldiers, lowered their combat effectiveness, many of these children were also sick and could spread the infection among the personnel.

But the colonel, instead of firing, ordered an increase in the rate of consumption of products. And German children, on the orders of a Jew, were fed along with his soldiers.

Do you think what kind of phenomenon is this - Russian Soldier? Where does such mercy come from? Why didn't they take revenge? It seems that it is beyond any strength to find out that all your relatives were buried alive, perhaps by the fathers of these same children, to see concentration camps with many bodies of tortured people. And instead of "breaking away" on the children and wives of the enemy, they, on the contrary, saved them, fed them, treated them.

Several years have passed since the events described, and my dad, having finished military school in the fifties, he again served in Germany, but already as an officer. Once, on the street of one city, a young German called him. He ran up to my father, grabbed his hand and asked:

Don't you recognize me? Yes, of course, now it’s hard to recognize in me that hungry ragged boy. But I remember you, how you then fed us among the ruins. Believe us, we will never forget this.

This is how we made friends in the West, by force of arms and the all-conquering power of Christian love.

Alive. We will endure. We will win.

THE TRUTH ABOUT WAR

It should be noted that the speech of V. M. Molotov on the first day of the war did not make a convincing impression on everyone, and the final phrase aroused irony among some soldiers. When we, doctors, asked them how things were at the front, and we lived only for this, we often heard the answer: “We are draping. Victory is ours… that is, the Germans!”

I can't say that JV Stalin's speech had a positive effect on everyone, although the majority felt warm from him. But in the darkness of a long line for water in the basement of the house where the Yakovlevs lived, I once heard: “Here! Brothers, sisters became! I forgot how I was put in jail for being late. The rat squeaked when the tail was pressed! The people remained silent. I have heard similar statements many times.

Two other factors contributed to the rise of patriotism. Firstly, these are the atrocities of the Nazis on our territory. Newspaper reports that in Katyn near Smolensk the Germans shot tens of thousands of Poles captured by us, and not us during the retreat, as the Germans assured, were perceived without malice. Everything could be. “We couldn’t leave them to the Germans,” some argued. But the population could not forgive the murder of our people.

In February 1942, my senior operating nurse A.P. Pavlova received a letter from the liberated banks of Seliger, which told how, after the explosion of hand fans in the German headquarters hut, they hanged almost all the men, including Pavlova's brother. They hung him on a birch near his native hut, and he hung for almost two months in front of his wife and three children. The mood of this news in the entire hospital became formidable for the Germans: Pavlova was loved by both the staff and the wounded soldiers ... I made sure that the original letter was read in all the wards, and Pavlova's face, yellowed from tears, was in the dressing room before everyone's eyes ...

The second thing that made everyone happy was reconciliation with the church. Orthodox Church showed true patriotism in her preparations for the war, and he was appreciated. Government awards rained down on the patriarch and the clergy. With these funds, air squadrons and tank divisions with the names "Alexander Nevsky" and "Dmitry Donskoy" were created. They showed a film where a priest with the chairman of the district executive committee, a partisan, destroys atrocious fascists. The film ended with the old bell ringer climbing the bell tower and sounding the alarm, before that he crossed himself widely. It sounded directly: “Autumn yourself with the sign of the cross, Russian people!” The wounded spectators and the staff had tears in their eyes when the lights were turned on.

On the contrary, the huge sums of money contributed by the chairman of the collective farm, it seems, Ferapont Golovaty, evoked malicious smiles. “Look how he stole from hungry collective farmers,” said the wounded peasants.

The activities of the fifth column, that is, internal enemies, also caused enormous indignation among the population. I myself saw how many of them there were: German planes were signaled from the windows even with multi-colored rockets. In November 1941, in the hospital of the Neurosurgical Institute, they signaled from the window in Morse code. The doctor on duty, Malm, who was completely drunk and declassed, said that the alarm came from the window of the operating room where my wife was on duty. The head of the hospital, Bondarchuk, said at a five-minute morning meeting that he vouched for Kudrin, and two days later they took the signalmen, and Malm himself disappeared forever.

My violin teacher Yu. A. Aleksandrov, a communist, although a secretly religious, consumptive person, worked as a fire chief of the Red Army House on the corner of Liteiny and Kirovskaya. He was chasing a rocket launcher, obviously an employee of the House of the Red Army, but he could not see him in the dark and did not catch up, but he threw the rocket launcher at Aleksandrov's feet.

Life at the institute gradually improved. The central heating began to work better, the electric light became almost constant, there was water in the plumbing. We went to the movies. Films such as "Two Soldiers", "Once upon a time there was a girl" and others were watched with an undisguised feeling.

At "Two Fighters" the nurse was able to get tickets to the cinema "October" for a session later than we expected. When we arrived at the next screening, we learned that a shell hit the courtyard of this cinema, where visitors from the previous screening were let out, and many were killed and wounded.

The summer of 1942 passed through the hearts of the townsfolk very sadly. The encirclement and defeat of our troops near Kharkov, which greatly increased the number of our prisoners in Germany, brought great despondency to everyone. The new offensive of the Germans to the Volga, to Stalingrad, was very hard for everyone to experience. The mortality of the population, especially increased in the spring months, despite some improvement in nutrition, as a result of dystrophy, as well as the death of people from air bombs and artillery shelling, was felt by everyone.

In mid-May, my wife and her ration cards were stolen from my wife, which is why we were again very hungry. And it was necessary to prepare for the winter.

We not only cultivated and planted kitchen gardens in Rybatsky and Murzinka, but received a fair amount of land in the garden near the Winter Palace, which was given to our hospital. It was excellent land. Other Leningraders cultivated other gardens, squares, the Field of Mars. We planted even a dozen or two potato eyes with an adjacent piece of husk, as well as cabbage, rutabaga, carrots, onion seedlings, and especially a lot of turnips. Planted wherever there was a piece of land.

The wife, fearing a lack of protein food, collected slugs from vegetables and pickled them in two large jars. However, they were not useful, and in the spring of 1943 they were thrown away.

The coming winter of 1942/43 was mild. The traffic didn't stop anymore wooden houses on the outskirts of Leningrad, including the houses in Murzinka, they were demolished for fuel and stocked up for the winter. The rooms had electric lights. Soon, scientists were given special letter rations. As a candidate of sciences, I was given a letter ration of group B. It included 2 kg of sugar, 2 kg of cereals, 2 kg of meat, 2 kg of flour, 0.5 kg of butter and 10 packs of Belomorkanal cigarettes every month. It was luxurious and it saved us.

My fainting has stopped. I even easily kept watch with my wife all night, guarding the garden at the Winter Palace in turn, three times during the summer. However, despite the guards, every single head of cabbage was stolen.

Art was of great importance. We began to read more, to go to the cinema more often, to watch film programs in the hospital, to go to amateur concerts and to the artists who came to visit us. Once my wife and I were at a concert of D. Oistrakh and L. Oborin who arrived in Leningrad. When D. Oistrakh played and L. Oborin accompanied, it was cold in the hall. Suddenly a voice said softly, “Air raid, air raid! Those who wish can go down to the bomb shelter!” In the crowded hall, no one moved, Oistrakh smiled gratefully and understandingly at us all with his eyes alone and continued to play, not for a moment stumbling. Although the explosions pushed at my feet and I could hear their sounds and the yelping of anti-aircraft guns, the music absorbed everything. Since then, these two musicians have become my biggest favorites and fighting friends without knowing each other.

By the autumn of 1942, Leningrad was very empty, which also facilitated its supply. By the time the blockade began, up to 7 million cards were being issued in a city overflowing with refugees. In the spring of 1942, only 900 thousand of them were issued.

Many were evacuated, including part of the 2nd Medical Institute. All other universities left. But still, they believe that about two million people were able to leave Leningrad along the Road of Life. So about four million died (According to official figures, about 600 thousand people died in besieged Leningrad, according to others - about 1 million. - Ed.) figure much higher than the official one. Not all the dead ended up in the cemetery. The huge ditch between the Saratov colony and the forest leading to Koltushi and Vsevolozhskaya took in hundreds of thousands of the dead and was leveled to the ground. Now there is a suburban vegetable garden, and there are no traces left. But the rustling tops and cheerful voices of the harvesters are no less happiness for the dead than the mournful music of the Piskarevsky cemetery.

A little about children. Their fate was terrible. Almost nothing was given on children's cards. I remember two cases particularly vividly.

In the most severe part of the winter of 1941/42, I wandered from Bekhterevka to Pestel Street to my hospital. Swollen legs almost did not go, his head was spinning, each cautious step pursued one goal: to move forward and not fall at the same time. On Staronevsky I wanted to go to the bakery to buy two of our cards and warm up at least a little. The frost cut to the bone. I stood in line and noticed that a boy of seven or eight years old was standing near the counter. He leaned over and seemed to shrink. Suddenly he snatched a piece of bread from the woman who had just received it, fell down, huddled up in a bag with his back up, like a hedgehog, and began to greedily tear the bread with his teeth. The woman who lost her bread screamed wildly: probably, a hungry family was waiting impatiently at home. The line got mixed up. Many rushed to beat and trample the boy, who continued to eat, a padded jacket and a hat protected him. "Man! If only you could help,” someone called out to me, apparently because I was the only man in the bakery. I was shaken, my head was spinning. “You beasts, beasts,” I croaked and, staggering, went out into the cold. I couldn't save the child. A slight push was enough, and I would certainly have been taken by angry people for an accomplice, and I would have fallen.

Yes, I am a layman. I did not rush to save this boy. “Do not turn into a werewolf, a beast,” our beloved Olga Berggolts wrote these days. Wonderful woman! She helped many to endure the blockade and preserved in us the necessary humanity.

On behalf of them, I will send a telegram abroad:

“Alive. We will endure. We'll win."

But the unwillingness to share the fate of a beaten child forever remained a notch on my conscience ...

The second incident happened later. We have just received, but already for the second time, a letter ration, and together with my wife we ​​carried it along Liteiny, heading home. Snowdrifts were quite high in the second blockade winter. Almost opposite the house of N. A. Nekrasov, from where he admired the front entrance, clinging to the grate immersed in snow, was a child of four or five years old. He moved his legs with difficulty, huge eyes on his withered old face peered in horror at the world. His legs were tangled. Tamara pulled out a large, double, lump of sugar and handed it to him. At first he did not understand and shrank all over, and then suddenly grabbed this sugar with a jerk, pressed it to his chest and froze in fear that everything that had happened was either a dream or not true ... We went on. Well, what more could barely wandering inhabitants do?

BREAKTHROUGH THE BLOCCADE

All Leningraders spoke daily about breaking the blockade, about the upcoming victory, peaceful life and the restoration of the country, the second front, that is, about the active inclusion of the allies in the war. On the allies, however, little hope. “The plan has already been drawn, but there are no Roosevelts,” the Leningraders joked. They also recalled the Indian wisdom: "I have three friends: the first is my friend, the second is the friend of my friend and the third is the enemy of my enemy." Everyone believed that the third degree of friendship only unites us with our allies. (So, by the way, it turned out that the second front appeared only when it became clear that we could liberate the whole of Europe alone.)

Rarely did anyone talk about other outcomes. There were people who believed that Leningrad after the war should become a free city. But everyone immediately cut them off, remembering both “Window on Europe”, and “The Bronze Horseman”, and historical meaning for Russia exit to Baltic Sea. But they talked about breaking the blockade every day and everywhere: at work, on duty on the roofs, when they “fought off planes with shovels”, extinguishing lighters, for meager food, getting into a cold bed and during unwise self-service in those days. Waiting, hoping. Long and hard. They talked either about Fedyuninsky and his mustache, then about Kulik, then about Meretskov.

In the draft commissions, almost everyone was taken to the front. I was sent there from the hospital. I remember that I gave liberation only to a two-armed man, surprised by the wonderful prostheses that hid his defect. “Don't be afraid, take it with a stomach ulcer, tuberculous. After all, all of them will have to be at the front for no more than a week. If they don’t kill them, they will wound them, and they will end up in the hospital,” the military commissar of the Dzerzhinsky district told us.

Indeed, the war went on with great bloodshed. When trying to break through to communication with the mainland, piles of bodies remained under Krasny Bor, especially along the embankments. "Nevsky Piglet" and Sinyavinsky swamps did not leave the tongue. Leningraders fought furiously. Everyone knew that behind his back his own family was dying of hunger. But all attempts to break the blockade did not lead to success, only our hospitals were filled with crippled and dying.

With horror, we learned about the death of an entire army and the betrayal of Vlasov. This had to be believed. After all, when they read to us about Pavlov and other executed generals Western Front, no one believed that they were traitors and "enemies of the people", as we were convinced of this. They remembered that the same was said about Yakir, Tukhachevsky, Uborevich, even Blucher.

The summer campaign of 1942 began, as I wrote, extremely unsuccessfully and depressingly, but already in the fall they began to talk a lot about our stubbornness at Stalingrad. The fighting dragged on, winter approached, and in it we hoped for our Russian strength and Russian endurance. The good news about the counter-offensive at Stalingrad, the encirclement of Paulus with his 6th Army, and Manstein's failure to break through this encirclement gave Leningraders new hope on New Year's Eve 1943.

I met New Year together with my wife, having returned by 11 o’clock to the closet where we lived at the hospital, from the bypass of the evacuation hospitals. There was a glass of diluted alcohol, two slices of bacon, a piece of bread 200 grams and hot tea with a piece of sugar! A whole feast!

Events were not long in coming. Almost all of the wounded were discharged: some were commissioned, some were sent to convalescent battalions, some were taken to the mainland. But we did not long wander around the empty hospital after the bustle of unloading it. A stream of fresh wounded went straight from their positions, dirty, often bandaged with an individual bag over their overcoat, bleeding. We were both a medical battalion, a field hospital, and a front-line hospital. Some began to sort, others - to operating tables for permanent operation. There was no time to eat, and there was no time for food.

It was not the first time that such streams came to us, but this one was too painful and tiring. All the time, the hardest combination of physical work with mental, moral human experiences with the clarity of the dry work of a surgeon was required.

On the third day, the men could no longer stand it. They were given 100 grams of diluted alcohol and sent to sleep for three hours, although the emergency room was littered with the wounded in need of urgent operations. Otherwise, they began to operate badly, half-asleep. Well done women! Not only did they endure the hardships of the blockade many times better than men, they died much less often from dystrophy, but they also worked without complaining of fatigue and clearly fulfilling their duties.

In our operating room, they went on three tables: behind each - a doctor and a nurse, on all three tables - another sister, replacing the operating room. Personnel operating and dressing nurses all assisted in operations. The habit of working for many nights in a row in Bekhterevka, the hospital. On October 25, she helped me out on the ambulance. I passed this test, I can proudly say, like women.

On the night of January 18, a wounded woman was brought to us. On this day, her husband was killed, and she was seriously wounded in the brain, in the left temporal lobe. A shard with fragments of bones penetrated into the depths, completely paralyzing her both right limbs and depriving her of the ability to speak, but while maintaining an understanding of someone else's speech. Female fighters came to us, but not often. I took her on my table, laid her on my right, paralyzed side, anesthetized the skin and very successfully removed the metal fragment and bone fragments that had penetrated into the brain. “My dear,” I said, finishing the operation and getting ready for the next one, “everything will be fine. I took out the shard, and speech will return to you, and the paralysis will completely disappear. You will make a full recovery!"

Suddenly, my wounded free hand from above began to beckon me to her. I knew that she would not soon begin to speak, and I thought that she would whisper something to me, although it seemed incredible. And suddenly, wounded with her healthy naked, but strong hand of a fighter, she grabbed my neck, pressed my face to her lips and kissed me hard. I couldn't take it. I did not sleep for the fourth day, almost did not eat, and only occasionally, holding a cigarette with a forceps, smoked. Everything went haywire in my head, and, like a man possessed, I ran out into the corridor in order to at least for one minute come to my senses. After all, there is a terrible injustice in the fact that women - the successors of the family and softening the morals of the beginning in humanity, are also killed. And at that moment, our loudspeaker spoke, announcing the breaking of the blockade and the connection of the Leningrad Front with the Volkhovsky.

It was a deep night, but what started here! I was standing bloodied after the operation, completely stunned by what I had experienced and heard, and sisters, nurses, soldiers ran towards me ... Some with a hand on an “airplane”, that is, on a splint that abducted a bent arm, some on crutches, some still bleeding through a recently applied bandage . And so began the endless kissing. Everyone kissed me, despite my frightening appearance from spilled blood. And I stood, missed 15 minutes of the precious time for operating on other wounded in need, enduring these countless hugs and kisses.

The story of the Great Patriotic War of a front-line soldier

1 year ago, on this day, a war began that divided the history of not only our country, but the whole world into before And after. Says a member of the Great Patriotic War Mark Pavlovich Ivanikhin, Chairman of the Council of Veterans of War, Labor, Armed Forces and Law Enforcement Agencies of the Eastern Administrative District.

— is the day when our life was broken in half. It was a good, bright Sunday, and suddenly war was declared, the first bombings. Everyone understood that they would have to endure a lot, 280 divisions went to our country. I have a military family, my father was a lieutenant colonel. A car immediately came for him, he took his “alarming” suitcase (this is a suitcase in which the most necessary things were always ready), and together we went to the school, I as a cadet, and my father as a teacher.

Everything changed immediately, it became clear to everyone that this war would be for a long time. Disturbing news plunged into another life, they said that the Germans were constantly moving forward. That day was clear and sunny, and in the evening mobilization had already begun.

These are my memories, boys of 18 years old. My father was 43 years old, he worked as a senior teacher at the first Moscow Artillery School named after Krasin, where I also studied. It was the first school that released officers who fought on the Katyusha into the war. I fought in the Katyusha throughout the war.

- Young inexperienced guys went under the bullets. Was it certain death?

“We still did a lot. Even at school, we all needed to pass the standard for the TRP badge (ready for work and defense). They trained almost like in the army: they had to run, crawl, swim, and they also taught how to bandage wounds, apply splints for fractures, and so on. Although we were a little ready to defend our Motherland.

I fought at the front from October 6, 1941 to April 1945. I took part in the battles for Stalingrad, and from Kursk Bulge through Ukraine and Poland reached Berlin.

War is a terrible ordeal. It is a constant death that is near you and threatens you. Shells are exploding at your feet, enemy tanks are coming at you, flocks of German aircraft are aiming at you from above, artillery is firing. It seems that the earth turns into a small place where you have nowhere to go.

I was a commander, I had 60 people under my command. All these people need to be held accountable. And, despite the planes and tanks that are looking for your death, you need to control yourself, and control the soldiers, sergeants and officers. This is difficult to do.

I can't forget the Majdanek concentration camp. We liberated this death camp, we saw emaciated people: skin and bones. And I especially remember the kids with cut hands, they took blood all the time. We saw bags of human scalps. We saw the chambers of torture and experiments. What to hide, it caused hatred for the enemy.

I still remember that we went into a recaptured village, saw a church, and the Germans set up a stable in it. I had soldiers from all the cities of the Soviet Union, even from Siberia, many of their fathers died in the war. And these guys said: “We will reach Germany, we will kill the Fritz families, and we will burn their houses.” And so we entered the first German city, the soldiers broke into the house of a German pilot, saw a Frau and four small children. Do you think someone touched them? None of the soldiers did anything bad to them. The Russian person is outgoing.

All the German cities that we passed remained intact, with the exception of Berlin, where there was strong resistance.

I have four orders. Order of Alexander Nevsky, which he received for Berlin; Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree, two Orders of the Patriotic War of the 2nd degree. Also a medal for military merit, a medal for the victory over Germany, for the defense of Moscow, for the defense of Stalingrad, for the liberation of Warsaw and for the capture of Berlin. These are the main medals, and there are about fifty of them in total. All of us who survived the war years want one thing - peace. And so that the people who won the victory were valuable.

Photo by Yulia Makoveychuk

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School in the partisan region.

T. Cat. , From the book "Children-Heroes",
Getting bogged down in a swampy swamp, falling and rising again, we went to our own - to the partisans. The Germans were raging in their native village.
And for a whole month the Germans bombed our camp. “The partisans have been destroyed,” they finally sent a report to their high command. But invisible hands again derailed trains, blew up weapons depots, destroyed German garrisons.
Summer was over, autumn was already trying on its motley, crimson outfit. It was hard for us to imagine September without school.
- Here are the letters I know! - eight-year-old Natasha Drozd once said and drew a round "O" on the sand with a stick and next to it - an uneven gate "P". Her friend drew some numbers. The girls played school, and neither one nor the other noticed how sadly and warmly the commander of the partisan detachment Kovalevsky was watching them. In the evening, at the council of commanders, he said:
- The children need a school ... - and added quietly: - You can’t deprive them of their childhood.
On the same night, Komsomol members Fedya Trutko and Sasha Vasilevsky went on a combat mission, with Pyotr Ilyich Ivanovsky with them. They returned a few days later. Pencils, pens, primers, problem books were taken out of pockets, from the bosom. Peace and home, great human concern wafted from these books here, among the swamps, where there was a mortal battle for life.
- It's easier to blow up the bridge than to get your books, - Pyotr Ilyich gleefully flashed his teeth and took out ... a pioneer bugle.
None of the partisans said a word about the risk they were exposed to. There could be an ambush in every house, but it never occurred to any of them to refuse the task, to return empty-handed. ,
Three classes were organized: first, second and third. School ... Stakes driven into the ground, intertwined with willows, a cleared area, instead of a board and chalk - sand and a stick, instead of desks - stumps, instead of a roof over your head - a disguise from German aircraft. In cloudy weather, mosquitoes overwhelmed us, sometimes snakes crawled in, but we paid no attention to anything.
How the children valued their school-glade, how they caught every word of the teacher! Textbooks accounted for one, two per class. In some subjects there were no books at all. Much was remembered from the words of the teacher, who sometimes came to the lesson directly from a combat mission, with a rifle in his hands, belted with cartridges.
The soldiers brought everything they could get for us from the enemy, but there was not enough paper. We carefully removed the birch bark from fallen trees and wrote on it with coals. There was no case that someone did not comply homework. Only those guys who were urgently sent to reconnaissance missed classes.
It turned out that we had only nine pioneers, the remaining twenty-eight guys had to be accepted as pioneers. From the parachute donated to the partisans, we sewed a banner, made a pioneer uniform. The partisans accepted the pioneers, the commander of the detachment himself tied the ties to the newly arrived. The headquarters of the pioneer squad was immediately elected.
Without stopping classes, we were building a new dugout school for the winter. A lot of moss was needed to insulate it. They pulled him out so that his fingers hurt, sometimes they tore off his nails, painfully cut his hands with grass, but no one complained. No one demanded excellent studies from us, but each of us made this demand on ourselves. And when the heavy news came that our beloved comrade Sasha Vasilevsky had been killed, all the pioneers of the squad took a solemn oath: to study even better.
At our request, the squad was given the name of a deceased friend. On the same night, in revenge for Sasha, the partisans blew up 14 German vehicles and derailed the train. The Germans threw 75 thousand punishers against the partisans. The blockade began again. Everyone who knew how to handle weapons went into battle. Families retreated into the depths of the marshes, and our pioneer team also retreated. Our clothes were frozen, we ate flour boiled in hot water once a day. But as we retreated, we seized all our textbooks. Classes continued at the new location. And we kept the oath given to Sasha Vasilevsky. During the spring examinations, all the pioneers answered without hesitation. Strict examiners - the commander of the detachment, the commissar, the teachers - were pleased with us.
As a reward, the best students were given the right to participate in shooting competitions. They fired from the squad leader's pistol. It was the highest honor for the guys.

Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Zina Portnova, Alexander Matrosov and other heroes

Submachine gunner of the 2nd Separate Battalion of the 91st Separate Siberian Volunteer Brigade named after Stalin.

Sasha Matrosov did not know his parents. He was brought up in an orphanage and a labor colony. When the war began, he was not even 20. Matrosov was drafted into the army in September 1942 and sent to an infantry school, and then to the front.

In February 1943, his battalion attacked the Nazi stronghold, but fell into a trap, falling under heavy fire, cutting off the path to the trenches. They fired from three bunkers. Two soon fell silent, but the third continued to shoot the Red Army soldiers who lay in the snow.

Seeing that the only chance to get out of the fire was to suppress the enemy's fire, Matrosov crawled to the bunker with a fellow soldier and threw two grenades in his direction. The gun was silent. The Red Army went on the attack, but the deadly weapon chirped again. Alexander's partner was killed, and Matrosov was left alone in front of the bunker. Something had to be done.

He didn't even have a few seconds to make a decision. Not wanting to let his comrades down, Alexander closed the embrasure of the bunker with his body. The attack was successful. And Matrosov posthumously received the title of Hero Soviet Union.

Military pilot, commander of the 2nd squadron of the 207th long-range bomber aviation regiment, captain.

He worked as a mechanic, then in 1932 he was called up for service in the Red Army. He got into the air regiment, where he became a pilot. Nicholas Gastello participated in three wars. A year before the Great Patriotic War, he received the rank of captain.

On June 26, 1941, the crew under the command of Captain Gastello took off to attack a German mechanized column. It was on the road between the Belarusian cities of Molodechno and Radoshkovichi. But the column was well guarded by enemy artillery. A fight ensued. Aircraft Gastello was hit by anti-aircraft guns. The shell damaged the fuel tank, the car caught fire. The pilot could eject, but he decided to execute military duty to end. Nikolai Gastello sent a burning car directly to the enemy column. It was the first fire ram in the Great Patriotic War.

The name of the brave pilot has become a household name. Until the end of the war, all the aces who decided to go for a ram were called Gastellites. According to official statistics, almost six hundred enemy rams were made during the entire war.

Brigadier scout of the 67th detachment of the 4th Leningrad partisan brigade.

Lena was 15 years old when the war began. He already worked at the factory, having finished the seven-year plan. When the Nazis captured his native Novgorod region, Lenya joined the partisans.

He was brave and determined, the command appreciated him. For several years spent in the partisan detachment, he participated in 27 operations. On his account, several destroyed bridges behind enemy lines, 78 destroyed Germans, 10 trains with ammunition.

It was he who, in the summer of 1942, near the village of Varnitsa, blew up a car in which the German Major General of the Engineering Troops Richard von Wirtz was located. Golikov managed to obtain important documents about the German offensive. The enemy attack was thwarted, and the young hero for this feat was presented to the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

In the winter of 1943, a significantly superior enemy detachment unexpectedly attacked partisans near the village of Ostraya Luka. Lenya Golikov died like a real hero - in battle.

(1926-1944)

Pioneer. Scout of the partisan detachment named after Voroshilov in the territory occupied by the Nazis.

Zina was born and went to school in Leningrad. However, the war found her on the territory of Belarus, where she came for the holidays.

In 1942, 16-year-old Zina joined the underground organization Young Avengers. It distributed anti-fascist leaflets in the occupied territories. Then, under cover, she got a job working in a canteen for German officers, where she committed several acts of sabotage and only miraculously was not captured by the enemy. Her courage surprised many experienced soldiers.

In 1943, Zina Portnova joined the partisans and continued to engage in sabotage behind enemy lines. Due to the efforts of defectors who surrendered Zina to the Nazis, she was captured. In the dungeons, she was interrogated and tortured. But Zina was silent, not betraying her. At one of these interrogations, she grabbed a pistol from the table and shot three Nazis. After that, she was shot in prison.

Underground anti-fascist organization operating in the area of ​​modern Luhansk region. There were over a hundred people. The youngest participant was 14 years old.

This youth underground organization was formed immediately after the occupation of the Lugansk region. It included both regular military personnel, who were cut off from the main units, and local youth. Among the most famous members People: Oleg Koshevoy, Ulyana Gromova, Lyubov Shevtsova, Vasily Levashov, Sergey Tyulenin and many other young people.

The "Young Guard" issued leaflets and committed sabotage against the Nazis. Once they managed to disable an entire tank repair shop, burn down the stock exchange, from where the Nazis drove people to forced labor in Germany. The members of the organization planned to stage an uprising, but were exposed because of the traitors. The Nazis caught, tortured and shot more than seventy people. Their feat is immortalized in one of the most famous military books by Alexander Fadeev and the film adaptation of the same name.

28 people from the personnel of the 4th company of the 2nd battalion of the 1075th rifle regiment.

In November 1941, a counteroffensive against Moscow began. The enemy did not stop at nothing, making a decisive forced march before the onset of a harsh winter.

At this time, the fighters under the command of Ivan Panfilov took up a position on the highway seven kilometers from Volokolamsk, a small town near Moscow. There they gave battle to the advancing tank units. The battle lasted four hours. During this time, they destroyed 18 armored vehicles, delaying the enemy's attack and frustrating his plans. All 28 people (or almost all, here the opinions of historians differ) died.

According to legend, the political instructor of the company, Vasily Klochkov, before the decisive stage of the battle, turned to the fighters with a phrase that became known throughout the country: "Russia is great, but there is nowhere to retreat - Moscow is behind!"

The Nazi counteroffensive ultimately failed. The battle for Moscow, which was taken away essential role during the war, was lost by the invaders.

As a child, the future hero suffered from rheumatism, and the doctors doubted that Maresyev would be able to fly. However, he stubbornly applied to the flight school until he was finally enrolled. Maresyev was drafted into the army in 1937.

He met the Great Patriotic War at the flight school, but soon got to the front. During a sortie, his plane was shot down, and Maresyev himself was able to eject. Eighteen days, seriously wounded in both legs, he got out of the encirclement. However, he still managed to overcome the front line and ended up in the hospital. But gangrene had already begun, and the doctors amputated both of his legs.

For many, this would mean the end of the service, but the pilot did not give up and returned to aviation. Until the end of the war, he flew with prostheses. Over the years, he made 86 sorties and shot down 11 enemy aircraft. And 7 - already after amputation. In 1944, Alexei Maresyev went to work as an inspector and lived to be 84 years old.

His fate inspired the writer Boris Polevoy to write The Tale of a Real Man.

Deputy squadron commander of the 177th Air Defense Fighter Aviation Regiment.

Victor Talalikhin began to fight already in the Soviet-Finnish war. He shot down 4 enemy planes on a biplane. Then he served in the aviation school.

In August 1941, one of the first Soviet pilots made a ram, shooting down a German bomber in a night air battle. Moreover, the wounded pilot was able to get out of the cockpit and descend by parachute to the rear of his own.

Talalikhin then shot down five more German planes. Killed during another air battle near Podolsk in October 1941.

After 73 years, in 2014, search engines found Talalikhin's plane, which remained in the swamps near Moscow.

Artilleryman of the 3rd counter-battery artillery corps of the Leningrad Front.

Soldier Andrei Korzun was drafted into the army at the very beginning of World War II. He served on the Leningrad front, where there were fierce and bloody battles.

November 5, 1943, during the next battle, his battery came under fierce enemy fire. Korzun was seriously wounded. Despite the terrible pain, he saw that the powder charges were set on fire and the ammunition depot could fly into the air. Gathering the last of his strength, Andrey crawled to the blazing fire. But he could no longer take off his overcoat to cover the fire. Losing consciousness, he made a last effort and covered the fire with his body. The explosion was avoided at the cost of the life of a brave gunner.

Commander of the 3rd Leningrad Partisan Brigade.

A native of Petrograd, Alexander German, according to some sources, was a native of Germany. He served in the army from 1933. When the war began, he became a scout. He worked behind enemy lines, commanded a partisan detachment, which terrified the enemy soldiers. His brigade destroyed several thousand fascist soldiers and officers, derailed hundreds of trains and blew up hundreds of vehicles.

The Nazis staged a real hunt for Herman. In 1943 his partisan detachment was surrounded in the Pskov region. Making his way to his own, the brave commander died from an enemy bullet.

Commander of the 30th Separate Guards Tank Brigade of the Leningrad Front

Vladislav Khrustitsky was drafted into the Red Army back in the 1920s. In the late 30s he graduated from armored courses. Since the autumn of 1942, he commanded the 61st separate light tank brigade.

He distinguished himself during Operation Iskra, which marked the beginning of the defeat of the Germans on the Leningrad front.

He died in the battle near Volosovo. In 1944, the enemy retreated from Leningrad, but from time to time made attempts to counterattack. During one of these counterattacks, Khrustitsky's tank brigade fell into a trap.

Despite heavy fire, the commander ordered to continue the offensive. He turned on the radio to his crews with the words: "Stand to the death!" - and went forward first. Unfortunately, the brave tanker died in this battle. And yet the village of Volosovo was liberated from the enemy.

Commander of a partisan detachment and brigade.

Before the war he worked for railway. In October 1941, when the Germans were already standing near Moscow, he himself volunteered for a difficult operation, in which his railway experience was needed. Was thrown behind enemy lines. There he came up with the so-called "coal mines" (in fact, these are just mines disguised as coal). With the help of this simple but effective weapon, a hundred enemy trains were blown up in three months.

Zaslonov actively agitated the local population to go over to the side of the partisans. The Nazis, having learned this, dressed their soldiers in Soviet uniforms. Zaslonov mistook them for defectors and ordered them to be allowed into the partisan detachment. The path to the insidious enemy was open. A battle ensued, during which Zaslonov died. A reward was announced for living or dead Zaslonov, but the peasants hid his body, and the Germans did not get it.

During one of the operations, it was decided to undermine the enemy composition. But there was little ammunition in the detachment. The bomb was made from an ordinary grenade. The explosives were to be installed by Osipenko himself. He crawled to the railway bridge and, seeing the approach of the train, threw it in front of the train. There was no explosion. Then the partisan himself hit the grenade with a pole from the railway sign. It worked! A long train with food and tanks went downhill. The squad leader survived, but lost his sight completely.

For this feat, he was the first in the country to be awarded the medal "Partisan of the Patriotic War."

The peasant Matvey Kuzmin was born three years before the abolition of serfdom. And he died, becoming the oldest holder of the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

His story contains many references to the history of another famous peasant - Ivan Susanin. Matvey also had to lead the invaders through the forest and swamps. And, like the legendary hero, he decided to stop the enemy at the cost of his life. He sent his grandson ahead to warn a detachment of partisans who had stopped nearby. The Nazis were ambushed. A fight ensued. Matvey Kuzmin died at the hands of a German officer. But he did his job. He was in his 84th year.

Volokolamsk. There, an 18-year-old partisan fighter, along with adult men, performed dangerous tasks: she mined roads and destroyed communication centers.

During one of the sabotage operations, Kosmodemyanskaya was caught by the Germans. She was tortured, forcing her to betray her own. Zoya heroically endured all the trials without saying a word to the enemies. Seeing that it was impossible to get anything from the young partisan, they decided to hang her.

Kosmodemyanskaya steadfastly accepted the test. A moment before her death, she shouted to the assembled local residents: “Comrades, victory will be ours. German soldiers before it's too late, surrender!" The courage of the girl so shocked the peasants that they later retold this story to front-line correspondents. And after the publication in the Pravda newspaper, the whole country learned about the feat of Kosmodemyanskaya. She became the first woman to be awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War.

During the Great Patriotic War Soviet people showed unparalleled heroism and once again became an example of self-sacrifice in the name of Victory. The Red Army soldiers and partisans did not spare themselves in battle with the enemy. However, there were cases when victory was won not by strength and courage, but by cunning and ingenuity.

Winch against impregnable bunker

During the battle for Novorossiysk on the bridgehead " Small land” served and fought the marine Stepan Shchuka, a descendant of the Kerch fishermen who had been hunting in the Black Sea for generations.

Thanks to his ingenuity, the soldiers managed to take the enemy pillbox (long-term firing point), which had previously seemed impregnable, without loss. It was a stone house with thick walls, the paths to which were blocked with barbed wire. Empty tin cans were hung on the “thorn”, rattling from every touch.

All attempts to take the bunker by force ended in failure - the assault groups suffered losses from machine-gun, mortar and artillery fire and were forced to retreat. Stepan, on the other hand, was able to get a winch with a cable, and at night, imperceptibly crept up to the wire fences, he attached this cable to them. And when he came back, he brought the mechanism into action.

When the Germans saw the creeping barrier, they first opened heavy fire, and then completely ran out of the house. Here they were taken prisoner. Later, they said that when they saw the creeping barrier, they were afraid that they were dealing with evil spirits and panicked. The fort was taken without loss.

Turtle saboteurs

Another case occurred on the same “Malaya Zemlya”. There were many turtles in that area. Once one of the fighters came up with the idea to tie a tin can to one of them and release the amphibian towards the German fortifications.

Hearing the strumming, the Germans thought that the Red Army soldiers were cutting barbed wire, on which empty tin cans were hung as a sound signal, and spent about two hours consuming ammunition, shooting a section where there was not a single soldier.

The next night, our fighters launched dozens of such amphibious "saboteurs" towards the enemy's positions. The roar of cans in the absence of a visible enemy did not give the Germans peace of mind, and for a long time they spent a huge amount of ammunition of all calibers, fighting off non-existent enemies.

Detonation of mines for several hundred kilometers

The name of Ilya Grigoryevich Starinov is inscribed as a separate line in the history of the Russian army. Having gone through the Civil, Spanish, Soviet-Finnish and Great Patriotic Wars, he immortalized himself as a unique partisan and saboteur. It was he who created simple, but extremely effective mines to undermine German trains. Under his leadership, hundreds of demolition men were trained, who turned the rear of the German army into a trap. But his most outstanding sabotage was the destruction of Lieutenant General Georg Braun, who commanded the 68th Wehrmacht Infantry Division.

When our troops, retreating, left Kharkov, the military and directly the first secretary of the Kiev regional committee of the CPSU (b) Nikita Khrushchev insisted that the house in which Nikita Sergeyevich lived was mined in the city on Dzerzhinsky Street. He knew that German officers from the command, when they stand up in the occupied cities, lodged with maximum comfort, and his house was the best suited for these purposes.

Ilya Starinov with a group of sappers planted a very powerful bomb in the boiler room of the Khrushchev mansion, which was activated by a radio signal. The fighters dug a 2-meter well right in the room and laid a mine with equipment there. So that the Germans would not find it, they "hid" in another corner of the boiler room, poorly disguised, another fake mine.

A couple of weeks later, when the Germans had already completely occupied Kharkov, the explosives were activated. The signal for the explosion was given as far as Voronezh, the distance to which was 330 kilometers. Only a funnel remained from the mansion, several German officers died, including the aforementioned Georg Braun.

The Russians are insolent and shoot with sheds

Many actions of the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War caused German troops surprise close to shock. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck is credited with the phrase: “Never fight the Russians. To your every stratagem they will respond with unpredictable stupidity.”

Multiple rocket launchers, which our soldiers affectionately nicknamed “Katyushas”, fired M-8 82 mm and M-13 132 mm shells. Later, more powerful modifications of these ammunition began to be used - 300 mm caliber rockets under the M-30 index.

Guides for such projectiles were not provided for on cars, and launchers were made for them, on which, in fact, only the angle of inclination was regulated. The shells were placed on the installations either in one row or in two, and directly in the factory shipping package, where there were 4 shells in a row. To launch, it was only necessary to connect the shells to a dynamo with a spinning handle, which initiated the ignition of the propellant charge.

Sometimes due to inattention, and sometimes simply due to negligence, without reading the instructions, our gunners forgot to take out the wooden stops for the shells from the packaging packs, and they flew away to the enemy positions right in the packages. The dimensions of the packages reached two meters, because of which there were rumors among the Germans that the completely insolent Russians were “shooting barns”.

With an ax to the tank

An equally incredible event took place in the summer of 1941 on the North-Western Front. When parts of the 8th Panzer Division of the Third Reich surrounded our troops, one of the German tanks drove to the edge of the forest, where its crew saw a smoking field kitchen. It smoked not because it was hit, but because firewood was burning in the stove, and soldier's porridge and soup were cooked in cauldrons. The Germans did not notice anyone nearby. Then their commander got out of the car to profit from provisions. But at that moment, a Red Army soldier appeared from under the ground and rushed at him with an ax in one hand and a rifle in the other.

The tanker quickly jumped back, closed the hatch and started firing at our soldier with a machine gun. But it was too late - the fighter was too close and was able to escape from the shelling. Climbing onto an enemy vehicle, he began to hit the machine gun with an ax until he bent its barrel. After that, the cook closed the observation slots with a rag and began to thrash with an ax already on the tower itself. He was alone, but he went to the trick - he began to shout to his comrades who were supposedly nearby to carry anti-tank grenades as soon as possible in order to undermine the tank if the Germans did not surrender.

In a matter of seconds, the hatch of the tank opened and outstretched hands stuck out. Pointing a rifle at the enemy, the Red Army soldier forced the crew members to tie each other up, after which he ran to stir the food that was being prepared, which could burn. The brother-soldiers who returned to the edge, who had successfully repelled the enemy’s attack by that time, found him just like that: he was peacefully stirring porridge, and four captured Germans were sitting next to him and their tank was not far away.

The soldiers were full, and the cook received a medal. The hero's name was Ivan Pavlovich Sereda. He went through the whole war and was awarded more than once.