Encirclement of 1941. The Vyazemsky “cauldron” is a little-known page in the history of the war
My friend Alexey Kislitsyn, a representative of the international association of public search movements, has long and successfully worked in the German archives in Germany with documents relating to the Second World War.
I always look forward to hearing from him with great interest. Each news is another previously unknown, but now discovered and documented page from the military history of our city.
These are unique documents that we did not know about before. I hope they will shed light on some historical points and will serve as a reason for further research on this topic.
Some historians are still arguing how many of our soldiers and officers died in the Vyazemsky cauldron in October 1941? How many were captured?
It was a big shock for me to study a previously classified document from the German Army Headquarters dated October 15, 1941. This is the “Final report on the position of the enemy surrounded near Vyazma.” I have never read documents about the war from the perspective of the opposing side. I was offended by the very thought that in documents someone could call not the fascists, but our soldiers and officers, enemies.
However, I read this seventy-five year old German archival document and discovered amazing details and facts:
“In the 12-day breakthrough and encircling battle west of Vyazma, the 4th Army with its subordinate 4th Tank Group in close cooperation with the 9th Army and 3rd Tank Group, actively supported by aviation, during the battle and reconnaissance of the Red Army forces completely destroyed a mass of Soviet troops of the Western, Central (Reserve) fronts consisting of: the 16th, 19th, 20th, 24th and 43rd armies, as well as the 32nd, 33rd, 49th reserve armies .
In total, 45 rifle divisions, 2 tank divisions, 3 tank brigades, 2 cavalry divisions, as well as many army ground formations were destroyed.
Most of the divisions were forced to surrender to the 4th Army as a result of active attacking actions by the 9th Army:
332,474 prisoners of war
310 tanks
1,653 guns, as well as many anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns, grenade launchers, machine guns, vehicles and other equipment were captured as trophies or destroyed.
The destruction of the enemy forces imprisoned in the cauldron near Vyazma is over. All forces were destroyed with the exception of small “burrs” that made their way through the ring to the east. The total mass of captured equipment is not yet calculable and is collected from battlefields and forests.
Enemy losses are estimated at a total of 500,000 - 600,000 people killed, captured and wounded. Many units fought to the last man...
In addition, 53 loaded trains, 7 locomotives, 1 armored train, 2 warehouses with supplies, 1 warehouse with 6 thousand aerial bombs and 3 warehouses with food were captured
The numbers are not final and will be updated once the cleanup is completed.”
In this dry and German-pedantic document, I was surprised by the exact number of Soviet prisoners of war - 332,474 people. And our losses - dead, prisoners, wounded - amounted to 500,000 - 600,000 people.
And, of course, I paid special attention to the phrase: “Many units fought to the last man...”. Honor and praise to our valiant Defenders of the Fatherland.
* * *
Once again I draw attention to the fact that in this case Lukin already deserved to be shot in front of the army. Both for the actual refusal to attempt to break out of encirclement, for the disintegration of military discipline and the unauthorized dissolution of units, and for failure to comply with the order of Headquarters on leading a breakthrough from encirclement by four armies, order No. 270 of August 16, 1941, etc. I personally am very It is difficult to understand one thing - is it really possible that among the entire command staff there was not a single more or less decent person to immediately shoot Lukin and his entire camarilla as real traitors and traitors to the Motherland?! Where were the Special Department, the military prosecutor, and the military tribunal looking?! After all, the lives of a whole million people entrusted to them, and especially the fate of the capital, were at stake!
So the question arises: is it not this genuine, extremely unsightly truth about the true origin of the tragedy of the Vyazemsky “cauldron” that Lukin had in mind, who had become considerably emboldened after the murder of Stalin, who, in the euphoria of victory and due to Lukin’s disability - his leg was amputated in captivity - simply took pity above him and didn’t put him against the wall?! Is this why Lukin so famously shifted all the blame onto Konev and Budyonny?! After all, the best way to hide your betrayal is to blame others for the tragedy! No one argues that they were to blame, but they were to blame for the clumsy leadership of the hostilities. But for what happened in the encirclement, Lukin had to personally answer for this and only at the execution wall. After all, only near Vyazma 37 divisions, 9 tank brigades, 31 artillery regiments of the High Command reserve and field departments of four armies were destroyed! The Germans, with only 28 divisions, surrounded 37 of our divisions, 9 tank brigades, 31 artillery regiments of the High Command reserve and field departments of four armies! And a few days later the Teutons left only 14 divisions and our 37 divisions, 9 tank brigades, 31 artillery regiments of the High Command reserve and field departments of four armies surrendered without a murmur, like sheep, without being defeated! Moreover. Can anyone intelligibly explain what Stalin and Headquarters have to do with it, if the decision expressed in Lukin’s order was not even communicated to Headquarters, if Lukin did not find it necessary to respond to the latest requests from Headquarters?!
Maybe stop blaming everything on Stalin and Headquarters with manic fanaticism?! Maybe it’s time to finally ask at least something from our “valiant” wartime generals and marshals?! How long can you denigrate the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, the Headquarters and the General Staff, led by the wisest ace Marshal Shaposhnikov, and make them guilty for any reason, and most often, for no reason?!
Notes:
Halford J. MacKinder. The Round World and the Winning of the Peace. Foreign Affairs, July 1943.
For more details on this issue, see the excellent book, superbly argued with declassified documents from the SVR, GRU, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Stalin Foundation, the Comintern and other previously completely unknown documentary materials Yuri Tikhonov"Stalin's Afghan War. The Battle for Central Asia." M., 2008.
Lopukhovsky L. Vyazma disaster of 1941. M., 2007, p. 557.
Mukhin Yu. I. If it weren't for the generals. Problems of the military class. M... 2006. pp. 198–204.
bag for vacuum packaging.
“Vyazma! Vyazma! Who will forget her? I served in our Red Army for dozens of years, I was in battles, I saw the sights!.. but what everyone had to experience near Vyazma was the first time. Day and night our divisions beat the enemy. And how they beat me to death. The wounded refused to leave the battle. More and more fighters took the place of the fallen. Everything around was on fire... Then our soldiers blocked the road to Moscow with their breasts.”
Marshal of the Soviet Union I. S. Konev
Two points of view
October 7-12 this year marks the 65th anniversary of the tragedy of our army and the Moscow militia near Vyazma.
However, disputes still do not subside about what happened west of Vyazma in early October 1941. The Red Army troops surrounded in the Vyazma cauldron delayed the Wehrmacht for two weeks and thereby saved Moscow, or will the tragedy that took place near Vyazma forever remain in history as a fact of military shame for the “invincible and legendary”?
Yuri Alexandrov, participant in the Battle of Vyazma, architectural historian:
— On October 2, 1941, the German command began implementing a plan to capture Moscow. It began with the battle for Vyazma. Two tank columns of Army Group "Center", having broken through the defense line east of the Bug and east of Smolensk, united in the Vyazma area, closing a huge "cauldron". Five Soviet armies fell into it, about 500 thousand prisoners were captured, and up to a million Soviet soldiers and officers died. During the last battle on the Bogoroditsky field, the commander of the troops was seriously wounded and captured Lieutenant General M. F. Lukin.
But one of the biggest defeats of the Red Army became its strategic victory. From memory Marshal Zhukov, as a result of the active actions of the units surrounded near Vyazma, it was possible to gain time, build a defense around Moscow and bring up fresh reserve troops from Siberia.
Ivan Syomushkin, participant in the battle of Vyazma, builder:
“I am deeply convinced that the Vyazemsky cauldron in the fall of 1941 is a military tragedy that has no precedent in history. Miscalculations by the command and the general situation at the front led to the fact that Vyazma became a city of military shame. According to data published in the press, in the Vyazma area 37 divisions, 9 tank brigades, 31 artillery regiments of the RGK and 4 field army commands were surrounded (within a short period of time, a million-strong group of Red Army troops ceased to exist). Soviet troops lost about 6 thousand guns and over 1200 tanks. However, since we have always liked to distort unpleasant facts and gloss over reality, I am sure that there were significantly more losses...
Eyewitnesses testify
Viktor Rozov, gun crew member. Subsequently, a famous playwright, screenwriter: “Forever Alive”, “The Cranes Are Flying”, etc.:
- ...Armament - antediluvian guns of the last century, 76-mm cannons of the last century, all horse-drawn. We are, one might say, naked, and they are made of iron. Iron moved towards us. How they fired at us - motorcycles, tanks! And we have a 76 mm gun...
Red Army soldier Sofin, machine gunner. After the war he worked as a leading designer of mining equipment:
— Tanks came out of the village... It seems that here we experienced real fear, because we practically had nothing to fight the tanks with, except, of course, bottles with flammable liquid. Unlike KS (a spontaneously combustible mixture that appeared later), they were ignited using two finger-thick matches pressed to the bottle with rubber rings. Before throwing, you had to run matches along the sulfur grater, and then throw the bottle into the tank. However, fortunately for us, the tanks suddenly stopped, unable to cross the small river with steep banks that separated us.
Alexandra Ryumina, medical instructor. After the war she worked at the Trekhgornaya Manufactory:
- ...This place - Korobets - is well known. This is the largest mass grave of the 8th Division. They dug the grave at night so that the Germans would not suspect anything (there was an order not to bury it, but to burn it and send the ashes to Germany for fertilizer). Our fighters were buried by schoolchildren and adult village residents. Throughout October, the bodies of dead soldiers were transported on wooden troughs. The Elnin residents, thanks to them, made a monument. 1400 people lie here.
Grigory Sitnik, militiaman:
“On the evening of October 4, the commissar of the artillery regiment (975th) called me and ordered me to lead the group, including the headquarters battery, and take me 15 km to the rear, where our division was supposed to gather at new lines. The specified rear group also included personnel serving four 120-mm mechanized howitzers. These howitzers arrived to us on the march. They were factory lubricated and without a single shell for them! Our group drove 15 km to the rear in vehicles, and there a representative of the division headquarters gave instructions to move to the northeast another 40 km. In the new place in the early morning of October 5, there was no longer any representative of the division or regiment. We were left to our own devices. The village we entered seemed to be extinct. The population hid, army warehouses were open and unguarded. Everything indicated a very hasty withdrawal of those units that were in the village earlier. After consulting with the head of the regiment's rear services, I decided that the group should move to Vyazma, where we would try to find a division or our group would be attached to another active unit. It was also decided to move only in the evening, night and morning hours of the day. When leaving the indicated village, our vehicles were fired upon by enemy mortar fire. We responded with rifle fire directly from moving vehicles. We left under fire. It was hard to see how people, military equipment, tanks, and artillery were rolling back to the east in a continuous stream, which was interrupted only by enemy bombing. There was no sense of control. The parts and connections are mixed up."
In his memoirs, Sitnik cites an almost anecdotal incident. Near Yukhnov he met a general (whom he later recognized as Zhukov). Sitnik approached him with a question about where to find the 8th Infantry Division. To which he replied: “Young man, we don’t know where the armies are, but you’re talking about the division.
Boris Runin, militiaman. Writer:
— Many soldiers ended their lives in German captivity. The task of the Germans was to destroy the manpower of the USSR in general and prisoners of war in particular. Unbearable conditions were created for the existence of prisoners. On the way to the camp they were not fed anything. They ate cabbage leaves, roots, and ears of rye from unharvested roadside fields that they found along the way. They drank water from road puddles. Stopping at wells or asking peasants for a drink was strictly prohibited. So, for five days - from October 9 to October 13, 1941 - they drove a column of prisoners to the Dorogobuzh camp. The column was accompanied by a vehicle on which four coaxial machine guns were installed. On the way, in one of the villages, under the stove of a burnt house, the prisoners saw half-burnt potatoes. About 200 people rushed after her. Four machine guns opened fire directly into the crowd. Several dozen prisoners died. Along the way, the prisoners rushed into the fields with undug potatoes, and machine gun fire immediately opened.
The wounded suffered severely from thirst. It was possible to obtain, and even then with great difficulty, one or two tablespoons of water per day only for the seriously wounded. His parched lips were cracking and his tongues were swollen from thirst. There is no medical care, medicines and dressings are missing. For a ward with 160 wounded they are given two bandages a day. Dressings are not done for a month. When the bandage is removed, the wounds are filled with worms, which are removed by the handful. Frostbitten limbs looked like black stumps, meat and bones fell off in black pieces. Many limbs froze right there in the wards. There is no iodine for those undergoing surgery; it is replaced with glysol. The wounded rotted alive and died in terrible agony. Many begged to be shot and thus spared their suffering. The smell of rotting meat and the cadaverous stench of the uncleaned dead fill the chambers. Mortality in the camp from hunger, cold, disease and executions reached 3-4 percent per day. This means that within a month the entire prison population died out. Over two and a half autumn months - October, November and part of December - together with the civilian prisoners who made up the majority, 8,500 people died in the camp, that is, more than 100 people on average per day. During the winter months, between 400 and 600 people died daily. Every day 30-40 long drays were loaded with the corpses of the dead and frozen. In the piles of corpses stacked like firewood near the barracks, there were also living ones. Often in these stacks arms and legs moved, eyes opened, lips whispered: “I’m still alive.” The dying were buried with the dead...
“You did everything right, mom”
He called the tragedy that took place in October 1941 near Vyazma “Russian Calvary”, Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad.
Nowadays, the time has come to “gather stones.” In the village of Martyukhi, where the most fierce battles took place, on the initiative of local residents and with their private donations, a wooden church was built in the name of the Great Martyr Theodore Stratilates. In the temple, more than two thousand soldiers are constantly commemorated “for the faith, people and Fatherland killed in battle,” whose names were sent by their relatives from different parts of our Fatherland from Kaliningrad to Kamchatka.
Several years ago, a trench of our mortar crew was discovered seventy meters from the temple. 67 unused mines and 15 fuses were found next to the bodies of the dead mortarmen. In memory of the mortarmen, a six-meter worship cross was installed and consecrated. In total, six such worship crosses have been installed at the battle site today.
Who is doing this holy work? Who built the Orthodox church in Martyukhi? Who installs worship crosses? Meet: Hieromonk Father Daniil (Sychev) And nun Mother Angelina (Nesterova).
“I was born in 1944, so I know about the war and the events that unfolded in these places from my parents,” recalls Mother Angelina. — The Vazuzka river flows nearby. So my mother told me that in the spring of 1942, the Germans drove all the village residents every morning for a month to catch the corpses of Soviet soldiers. Although catching is not entirely true. The corpses of soldiers lay in layers. They removed the top, slightly thawed layer, dug a ditch, buried it, then the next layer... How many of them there were, these layers one on top of the other, is incomprehensible to the human mind.
- Mother Angelina, in your past life, so to speak, you were a doctor of biological sciences, director of the Latvian branch of the Institute of Cybernetics, and suddenly such a sharp turn in fate - a nun.
- Yes, it was such a sin. For many years I have been modeling genetic processes. Now, as a nun, I think it’s better for a person not to do this, but then I really liked my work. I devoted my entire conscious creative life to solving this problem. This is probably why it was very difficult to accept the fact that I had been doing harmful and dangerous things all my life. Previously, when they told me about this, I answered: if it weren’t for me, someone else would still be doing it. But now I understand: well, let someone else do it. Then it would be his sin.
— In what year did you return from Latvia to your homeland?
- In 1992. A lot of things coincided here: my mother became seriously ill. Latvia announced its withdrawal from the USSR. Different times were beginning: it was necessary to define oneself, to understand one’s place in this time. Although spiritually, I think, nothing has changed, the material environment and the position of each person in this material environment have changed. I was offered a very lucrative contract: to go and work in Germany for 10 years. But... Apparently, there was Divine Providence. I returned to my homeland.
Here it is necessary to make a small digression: my father came from a family of hereditary carpenters, he came from the war disabled, without an arm, and until his death he lamented that there would be no one to continue the family’s work - to build houses. There were two girls in the family - me and my younger sister. “Eh, girls, what good are you,” the father grieved, “you won’t even build a house.” And so in 1989, in memory of my father, I decided to build a house in his native village, where by that time there was not a single living soul left. It was not clear to me why I would build it; I was still living in Latvia. And my mother said: why do you need a house in Martyukhi? He will stand alone in an open field. They will burn him... However, again, the Providence of the Lord is completely inscrutable. In 1992, when I came to live here, the house came in handy.
Naturally, there was no work here in my specialty, and one of my friends advised me to apply to the Vyazemsky Monastery. I was surprised: what would I do in a monastery, especially a monastery? It turned out there was a wonderful abbot there Abbot Arkady, who created a center for spiritual enlightenment. This center also found something for me. There, in the monastery, I met Father Daniel.
In 1995, the priests of the Vyazemsky Monastery were distributed among parishes, and I received a blessing from Father Arkady to help Father Daniil. And in 1996, Father Daniil and I began to build a temple. I turned to Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad: so, they say, and so, Vladyka, in memory of the tragic events of the Vyazma cauldron, we want to build a temple at our own expense on our own land, for which we ask for your blessing. Can you imagine, some secular woman, I was not yet tonsured, from a remote village asking for blessings for the construction of a temple?! But, apparently, there was God’s mercy, the bishop blessed.
It took four years to build the temple, literally with the whole world. We didn’t have millionaire sponsors; ordinary people donated money.
—Whose idea was it to install Orthodox crosses at the battle sites?
- Father Daniel. We don’t have funds for expensive, pompous monuments, so the priest came up with the idea of making six-meter Orthodox crosses. Our Father Daniel is not only a priest, he is also a wonderful artist. He makes these crosses himself.
— Mother Angelina, if possible, a few words about the family.
- I have one son. Lives in Latvia. He graduated from medical school with honors, but is engaged in private entrepreneurship and advertising, which is why I suffer a lot. True, a lot of things were built here with his money. And her husband died early, and she raised her son almost alone.
— And how did your son react to your decision to change your life so dramatically?
— At first I reacted very badly, I was categorically against it. And this year in August he came here and for the first time said: “You did everything right, mom.”
The war doesn't want to go away
Twenty years ago, on the initiative father of Alexander Klimenkov, then the secretary of the party committee of the Dnepropetrovsky state farm (AiF. Long-Liver will tell about the fate of this amazing man in one of the upcoming issues), the first Memory Field in the country was created on Vyazma land.
“In 1985, during the construction of a pig-breeding complex in the village of Kaidakovo, an excavator dug up the remains of four of our soldiers,” says Father Alexander. “We solemnly reburied them at the Eternal Flame. And then the remains of 29 more fighters were found, then 17, then another and another, and we realized that there were thousands, tens of thousands of unburied remains in this field. And there won’t be enough space at the Eternal Flame.
This is how the idea of creating a Memory Field was born. For this, at the field office of the regional committee they wanted to expel me from the party. We didn’t like to talk about defeats. In the Battle of Stalingrad, half as many of our soldiers died, but there was victory there. And here is defeat. So for many years the feat of the people who performed the miracle of sacrifice, without which there would have been neither the Moscow Battle nor the Battle of Stalingrad, was hushed up.
October 7-12 marks the 65th anniversary of those distant events. But the war doesn’t want to go away. A few years ago, six boys, students of the Kaidakovskaya secondary school, found a shell from the Second World War and threw it into the fire. For fifty years the deadly metal lay in the ground, but did not lose its terrible destructive power. The explosion killed 6 children: Misha Semyonov, Oleg Novikov, Misha Melnikov, Seryozha Kudryavtsev, Dima and Denis Fomochkin. A monument was also erected to them on the Field of Memory. The war thus continues. And it will continue as long as its deadly legacy continues, maiming and killing people, especially children. I wrote a song in memory of these boys.
Here every evening in a terrible place
But he doesn’t want to go back.
Oh boys, oh boys!
How short the summer was.
All the horrors of the returning war
The early dawns were extinguished with an explosion.
How the damp fire didn’t want to burn.
The body of a rusty shell slid.
Six boys defying fate
They fell from shrapnel hail.
How I wanted to capture the war
For the long tail of her bony death.
So that it goes to me, not the boy,
But, apparently, death skillfully wags its tail.
Here every evening in a terrible place
The gray fog wears away the earth like tears.
The war unexpectedly returned to the house,
But he doesn’t want to go back.
One can assess differently the tragic circumstances that arose for our country and army at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. It is possible to rethink and interpret the reasons why so many of our soldiers died in the terrible chaos of the first months of the Nazi invasion in the Vyazemsky cauldron. But one thing is obvious: they died as heroes, showing sacrificial love for the Motherland.
Our information
After the end of the Battle of Smolensk and the battles for Kyiv, the Soviet command believed that if the Germans launched another major attack on Moscow, the main blow would be delivered along the Minsk-Moscow highway. Therefore, this direction, it seemed, was reliably covered by the forces of the Western and Reserve Fronts. Indeed, in the early autumn of 1941, the German command decided to carry out the last major operation to capture Moscow, called “Typhoon,” before the onset of the autumn thaw and winter cold.
Never during the entire Second World War had the German command concentrated such a powerful group of troops and equipment on one sector of the front.
On October 7, tank formations of the 3rd and 4th tank groups managed to connect and close pincers at Vyazma. The troops of the 16th, 19th, 20th, 24th, 32nd armies, the group of General I.V. Boldin, as well as part of the forces and rear services of the 30th, 33rd and 43rd armies were surrounded. During October 7-12, Soviet troops made repeated attempts to break the encirclement. Unfortunately, these attacks were not delivered simultaneously, but in several places northwest and southwest of Vyazma, which did not allow most units and formations to overcome the steel curtain and escape from encirclement.
All day on October 10, the troops of the 20th Army tried to break through the front of the encirclement; its units fought in the area of the villages of Volodarets, Panfilovo, Nesterovo, Vypolzovo, but unsuccessfully. Then the commander Lieutenant General F. A. Ershakov changes the direction of the main attack and decides to make a breakthrough in the direction of Krasny Kholm - Rozhnovo. The last attempt to get out of the encirclement turned out to be fatal for the soldiers of the 20th Army - the units were unable to break through, and about 5 divisions were killed in the battle. After this battle, the 20th Army ceased to exist as a combat-ready unit. General Ershakov was captured.
Units of the 24th Army were also unable to break through the encirclement, Army Commander K. I. Rakutin died.
The troops under the command of Lieutenant General M.F. Lukin, operating in the area north of Vyazma (19th and 32nd armies and the group of General Boldin), were preparing for a breakthrough in the direction of Bogoroditskoye. The breakthrough began on October 11 at 16.00. But, despite the fact that it was carried out, it was not possible to secure and strengthen the flanks. The Nazis very quickly closed the encirclement again. Only separate units of the 2nd and 91st rifle divisions managed to escape from the cauldron.
General Lukin, along with the group's headquarters, was captured.
A day of joy, congratulations and, of course, memories, with which the historian, Moscow expert Yuri Nikolaevich Alexandrov shared in an interview:
“I was drafted into the army in 1939, when the war began. By this time I was already at the university and, strictly speaking, I had no other goals than to return to this bench, which I left then. I thought that I would serve for two years and return. But this was naive, because on September 1 Germany attacked Poland. The Second World War began.
I served in Mongolia until 1941. Then a colonel general, in my opinion, Gorodovikov, who in appearance resembled Budyonny, who was also on the Western Front at that time, came to us in Mongolia. And we were all reoriented to the West. I personally was very happy. By that time I was in the ranks of our brigade newspaper, and I ended up in the 8th motorized armored brigade. I tried to get into a tank unit under the influence of the Three Comrades. This was a famous film, and, of course, naive, I believed that my place was also in the tank.
We went west. When we were driving, I thought that it was closer to Moscow, and yet I had already served for a year. This is May 1941. When we approached Moscow, we did not get any closer, we drove along some side route, further south. And at that time I came across a newspaper in which Lozovsky reported from the Information Bureau that there was no transfer of troops from east to west.
For us this was complete nonsense, since we were traveling from east to west. Then, until 1941, I was in a military unit as a soldier; I did not want any promotion, because even the junior command staff served for three years, not two. And I was counting on two.
Recently I served in our brigade newspaper “For the Motherland”. There were three people there, I worked as an editor. This is how my entry into publishing began. So I have enormous experience in journalistic work.
Zhukov consults with commanders. (wikipedia.org)
How did my participation in the Vyazemsky “cauldron” turn out? The fact is that there was not one “cauldron”, there were two. We were thrown out of the carriages in Osh. The task was to protect Moscow, since we were, after all, a personnel unit. Moreover, I ended up in a unit that participated in Khalkhin Gol under the command of Zhukov, whom I met as an orderly. He came just to us, and I reported to him about our platoon.
After we were dropped off in Osh, we headed along the Minsk Highway. There were many episodes here. There were fights. The task was to straddle the highway in order to prevent the Germans from advancing towards Moscow. Here I took part in a very difficult attack, because the Germans fortified the approaches to the highway and had to drive them out. Moreover, this was the first attack. I don’t even know whether to talk about this or not. This is completely strange. I also took part in attacks later, but I just don’t remember this one. There was no such thing.
Why? First of all, because I didn’t know how to run, although I still imagined that it was better this way. I ran straight towards this machine gun...
No, I wasn't stupid. It was just my first fight. And I ran straight to this very machine gunner. And the machine gunner fired in a fan pattern. I was running in some kind of fire triangle. I didn’t feel any sense of fear then. I didn’t try to fall, I just ran straight - I had to take down this machine gunner.
In general, my place was, of course, there, on the Minsk highway. How I even got out of there, I don’t know. This is destiny. This is the case. Even we didn’t shoot while we were running. And the rye was high, it was difficult to run, I got confused in this rye, but still, when we ran closer, they started shooting, and I don’t know who, but we took down the machine gunner and were able to carry out the order - to ride this road. In addition, we captured two German officers who were driving brazenly, just like they were in their native Germany. I haven't seen anything like this. They had just arrived at the place where we had already erected a barrier on the highway and turned into the field. Then they raised their hands, and in their car we found very important documents: strategic maps and a number of others. I personally did not see or take their things. Then they came from the Special Department and put an end to these people.
Soviet soldiers captured near Vyazma. (wikipedia.org)
This was the first “cauldron” from which I came out, or rather swam out, since I had to get out to the other side of the Dnieper. This, apparently, was not far from Dorogobuzh, because when we arrived there in the evening (it was very late), the coast was almost empty. But it was clear that there was a meat grinder there. This immediately caught my eye. There was an order for everyone to get out on their own. I am a Volga resident myself, so for me water is my native element. I took off my boots, took my rifle and the rest of my uniform and swam across the Dnieper. It is narrow there, this is Solovyovskaya crossing.
Well, and then - Vyazma. Then this terrible funnel sucked us in. The fact is that by this time we had already taken a different disposition, and it was necessary to get out of this second “cauldron”, the main one, because it was at that time that the Germans had an order, who hesitated for some time, because Hitler assumed that the main blow, as I know from German documents, should be delivered to the south, where there were minerals, and the generals of the Central Group believed that it was necessary to move towards Moscow, and this, supposedly, would decide the whole war. At this time, they even gave me a one-day leave so that I could go to Vyazma, because my mother was waiting for me there. And it was a date that is difficult to talk about without tears. We didn’t meet for a long time then, but that was later.
And we went with this advanced detachment for a breakthrough. I walked behind, in the rearguard. The commanders walked ahead with a compass and maps. They walked along a certain route. I brought up the rear of this column. And since I probably hadn’t slept at all for five or six days, I fell asleep while walking. And when I opened my eyes, it turned out that I was completely alone. Then I decided that I would go east. I was guided by the Big Dipper and the North Star.
Walked east. There are quite a lot of villages there. I was guided by the fact that there were “sounding” villages, where the sounds of a harmonica were heard (which means there were Germans there), and there were “silent” villages. So I sat down in one of the “silent” ones and entered.
There was a woman there with a child in her arms. When she saw me, she immediately said: “Climb onto the stove.” I tried to at least unwrap my foot wraps: my boot was pierced by a mine, frostbite was already beginning, I fell into a ditch. And as soon as I climbed onto the stove, the door opened and two policemen entered. They were in black uniforms, with white armbands and a fascist sign.
And they took me, pulled me out of this hut and dragged me further. There was a road nearby where there was a long line of prisoners. It was terrible to watch. They pushed me there too. A few days later we were taken away. We spent the night right in the snow. This is how I ended up in Roslavl, where there was a transit camp for Soviet prisoners of war and civilians Dulag-130. What I saw there defies description.
Captured Red Army soldiers. (wikipedia.org)
But still I fled from this camp. Then he ended up again with the Germans and was in Klintsy. He ran again...
And yet I managed to fight on the Soviet side. The fact is that I saw the beginning of the war and saw its end. I must say that I was also in the penal battalion. It's lucky because I didn't end up in the camp. After all, because you were in German captivity, what awaited you... in general, you found yourself completely outlawed.
I ended the war with the capture of Koenigsberg and was awarded the medal “For Courage.” This is the most expensive award that I had during the Patriotic War. After that I ended up in the hospital. From there we were taken again to Mongolia. That is, I returned to the same place where it all began. There I still took part in the war with Japan. It was already 1945.”
The Japanese name for Japan, Nihon (日本), consists of two parts - ni (日) and hon (本), both of which are Sinicisms. The first word (日) in modern Chinese is pronounced rì and, as in Japanese, means “sun” (represented in writing by its ideogram). The second word (本) in modern Chinese is pronounced bӗn. Its original meaning is "root", and the ideogram representing it is the ideogram of the tree mù (木) with a dash added at the bottom to indicate the root. From the meaning of “root” the meaning of “origin” developed, and it was in this sense that it entered the name of Japan Nihon (日本) – “origin of the sun” > “land of the rising sun” (modern Chinese rì bӗn). In ancient Chinese, the word bӗn (本) also had the meaning of “scroll, book.” In modern Chinese it is replaced in this sense by the word shū (書), but remains in it as a counting word for books. The Chinese word bӗn (本) was borrowed into Japanese both in the sense of "root, origin" and "scroll, book", and in the form hon (本) means book in modern Japanese. The same Chinese word bӗn (本) meaning “scroll, book” was also borrowed into the ancient Turkic language, where, after adding the Turkic suffix -ig, it acquired the form *küjnig. The Türks brought this word to Europe, where it from the language of the Danube Turkic-speaking Bulgars in the form knig entered the language of the Slavic-speaking Bulgarians and, through Church Slavonic, spread to other Slavic languages, including Russian.
Thus, the Russian word book and the Japanese word hon "book" have a common root of Chinese origin, and the same root is included as a second component in the Japanese name for Japan Nihon.
I hope everything is clear?)))
