Memories of a Veteran

WE ARE FROM THE FUND

(From the memories of a veteran)

After a short training of prisoners in the reserve regiment, a penalty was formed

"The battalion named after LP Beria" and, according to a request received from General K. Ro-kosovsky, at the appointed time the newly appeared soldiers were put into the cars of thermo-lanterns (truck) and sent to their destination. Penalty Mikhailov II With

Speech recollects: On the way, our military echelon sometimes made stops for

Solving economic problems. At the stations, the quick-headed chiefs of the NKVD,

Rule, at the door of the teploshek always put up posts, and station duty,

Choking with fear, shouted into the microphone: "Citizens ..., citizens are passengers,

Urgently release the premises of the station, the first platform arrives train with penalty boxes. Citizens ... citizens, take care of yourself and your things. Urgent release of

When you arrive at the station, while the train is parked,

Was allowed to go to the station, which, as a rule, was always surrounded by checks-

Hundred, so at exactly the time indicated, all the prisoners returned to the location of their platoon. The way from Barnaul to the station. In the Kursk region, the echelon

For eleven days. At the destination, the cons were recounted and handed over to the front command with a receipt. Time workers did not lose time in vain. They busily dispatched cartridges, grenades, mines, Molotov cocktails and ammunition to PTR-ammunition, according to the application of the commander of Shevchuk, and then they invited everyone to dinner. The newly appeared soldiers liked the rich front-line soup with American stew, the wheat was also abundantly flavored with mulberries, compote was cooked from a dried plum, and everyone tried to take more white bread. About such royal treat zeks did not even dream. After dinner, the mood of the penalty army, under the glowing rays of the July sun, improved significantly and the staff of the battalion rested until evening, and in the evening, under the cover of darkness, the soldiers were led into dugouts and broken front trenches, and ordered to be entrenched. I dug a trench for a thick pear, on the edge of an anonymous garden, disguised it with lilac branches, and in a hollowed out niche I installed

Anti-tank rifle, on the bottom of the trench folded anti-tank ammunition, communication

Ki pomegranate, Molotov cocktails, PTR ammunition cartridges, mines installed in front of the trench. At that moment the first number of the combat crew arrived from the commander of the company and announced that the battle with the German tanks should begin our combat calculation!

In the morning, SS men appeared from the side of the Ponyryov gardens and two columns

With a rapid sporting step began to move towards the trenches of the battalion. All of them

Were tall, slender, healthy, in deep steel helmets. They were getting closer to the positions of the penalty men who took up the defense.

I could already clearly see their faces: tanned, angry, alert and well-fed. By letting the Teutons almost right, the battalion opened the heavy machine-gun fire of the Germans, the Germans' union was immediately overturned, the good half of them perished in the first minutes of the battle, and the rest lay down and started crawling to the gardens, which the prisoners encouraged and they opened the target hunting for the Germans: There is adin - suddenly the young voice on the left ascertained; The fifth - already reported a thick bass on the right; Octo-oh-oh, someone shouted joyfully and with a sense of duty, on the left! "

Only about 15-20 Germans survived, who reached the saving gardens and were entrenched there. And at this time, yards, bypassing Art. Dunks, from the side of Vozy Station, the dense roar of tank engines was heard, which, as the "tigers" approached, intensified, and the earth suddenly trembled like a fever in a small frightened trembling ... As soon as I had had time to finish the vigorous Gypsyka of Ponyreevsky self-assembly, the battalion commander arrived from the battalion commander With the order: "At any cost to hold out until the approach of reserves!" And on the outskirts of the gardens already appeared two dozen German tanks and a chain of trucks to the refusal filled with soldiers. I began to count: forty-seven machines! At that moment, the tank armada, which numbered three hundred combat vehicles, bypassing Ponyri, entered the operative space (rye field) and rushed towards Maloarkhangelsk, where they were already waiting for the engineers and sapper brigade (ten thousand men), in which they served and The engineers of Moscow and Leningrad fought heroically with the enemy (they were protected by Stalin's orders). Now it became known that the Germans had cheated: the tanks were brought up by echelons to the crossing between the station. Vosy and Art. Dive, - unloaded, built a phalanx and thrown into the attack. To stop the enemy, the sons of Moscow and Leningrad with mines and grenades rushed under the tanks and stopped them. Approximately one and a half hours of battle killed all sappers and burned all the German tanks. And in Ponyryah more than thirty "tigers", crushing shells gardens and front gardens of collective farmers, went to the location of the penalty battalion. Behind them, crouching, was the infantry! Minaylov recalls: "Something was beating in my stomach, and my palms became wet, somehow spontaneously I tore off a branch of bitter wormwood, chewed it and swallowed it."

As soon as the Tigers entered the shelling sector, I did not feel anything and turned to the first number, called: "Ivan, Ivan ..., but Ivan, with his face buried in the ground, was lying silently next to the PTR-th, and the" tiger " Angrily rattling the engine, over-vigalsya on our trench. What was to be done? I hugged my dead friend and let him down to the bottom of the trench, perhaps there he is up to the present time, and when straightened up, he saw that the tiger, with his nose up and the belly up, was already climbing a lying mound on the front. What can you do? We had to defend ourselves! As taught - I aimed and shot at the wide bottom of the tank, I got ... The tank, wrapped in clubs of black smoke, caught fire, and then exploded. The joy was indescribable, but before I had time to overcome the overwhelming ecstasy, I saw that another "tiger", having substituted his black belly, climbed the sunny hillock. The belly of the tiger was rather wide and it was difficult to miss, therefore one more German crew remained forever in Ponyryov land ... The trenches of the penalty crews bristled with heavy fire, and on the right flank the padded extreme tank turned to the gardens and was not controlled by anybody, rested against a huge trunk Rakits, leaving without protection the soldiers of the Wehrmacht, who were thrown by the punks with grenades. Miraculously surviving five tanks stopped and began to fire at our positions from guns and machine guns. The shells fell heavily on our trenches, clods of earth fell on me from all sides.

In the fire everything roared, perished and crumbled; A variety of soldiers' voices were spiced with a selective mat, dying cries were heard: when dying, the young fine-nicks called their mother !!! My anti-tank rifle was broken, so I crossed

To the position of the dead machine-gunner, changed the tape and at that moment suddenly the damned "Schmeissers" suddenly started operating from the station. I clearly understood that there is no salvation and we are all dying! "All trembling, I unfolded the revolving" Maxim "and began to sow the bushes of the station lilac, where the Nazis were hiding. Feverishly inserting the last tape, completely deafened by the ruptures, suddenly noticed from the corner of my eye how, in 20 steps from me, a polzetank, and on the left flank the penalty kick with screams "We are from the penal battalion! Ura-ah ... Uh-ah-ah !, met with the Germans in a brutal melee. Almost next to me I saw a young prisoner. He was sitting in the trench, somehow unnatural, with his head thrown back, and a trickle of blood from his throat. My heart froze, breathing reflexively squeezed ... I grabbed a bunch of grenades and hurled the tiger under the exhaust, an explosion occurred, I was caught by a whirlwind and I fell into a pit, the walls of which were licking the tongues of red flame greedily. I woke up on the back of Major Volobuev (from Voronezh), when he ran to the station. The territory was completely covered with bodies: the Germans and cons were fighting even dying, and among the hundreds of dead were the seriously wounded. The whole space in front of the station was moving; Groans and cries for help were clearly audible and I lost consciousness again. The second time I woke up already in the basement of the station, found out that we were still in Dodgers. From the battalion of 800 (eight hundred) people, only 37 survived miraculously. With injury to the chest area - I felt helpless and completely unnecessary: I did not know what to say and what to do ... Toward evening, a freight train arrived, the wounded were loaded into wagons and sent to Solnechnogorsk, Moscow Region. After a long treatment, the doctors recognized me as an invalid of the first group and fired from the ranks of the Red Army. In Rylsk I graduated with honors from the agronomic department of agricultural engineering and worked in South Ossetia, on kolkhozes and sovkhozes in the Kursk region. However, in the Orel state farm, Kulikovsky failed to please the thievish red-headed director and was dismissed from the position of agronomist-vegetable grower, then for a long time he was persecuted by the police. I think that the sacrifices that the people suffered during the war were not in vain. The power of the malicious Communists ended, that pleases and helps to live, as for the Reds, they always tried to peel off the skin from the Russian people, believing that he had eight of them.

Valery Kokin

For communication only E-mail: cokin.valer@yandex.ru