Dear friends, welcome to the channel the eastern front.
Nowadays there are a lot of talks about the German offensive during the winter of 1941.
Some people say that Germans were defeated by “General Frost” and if the weather
condition would be better in that case German will reach Moscow how they planned.
I think there is always truth somewhere in the middle.
I am sure that any success is always a complex of circumstances.
Love for motherland, weather, supply of army, brave soldiers and militia, Stalin's decision
to stay in Moscow etc.
Because if we devalue the meaning of efforts of ordinary soldiers it is disrespectful for
them.
And today we will dive into the memories of one of Moscow defenders.
An outstanding person Vladimir Nevzorov, for whom the war with the Nazis began 5 years
before the Great Patriotic War in distant and hot Spain.
And also from this story you will learn what the situation was during the German winter
offensive near Moscow and how the ordinary people stood to defend Moscow.
Having been seriously wounded in the skies over Madrid, the Spanish doctors believed
that I would not survive, but my military commander and friend Seryozha Chernykh insisted
on sending me home.
Our doctors did the impossible and all in a cast with multiple fractures, after three
months I was on the mend.
I was discharged and recognized as a disabled person of the 1st group.
I thought that the war was a thing of the past for me, but I was wrong.
1941 Moscow September.
Not yet six o'clock in the morning, and the city is plunged into darkness.
Moscow was Blacked out.
There is no light in any window.
The streets are deserted.
The black sky looms over the city, and the ghostly outlines of airborne balloons hanging
in the air are visible in it.
There are watching points on the roofs of houses.
There are posts on the ground at every corner.
Buses and trams move slowly through the streets.
The faces of people are terrible.
They look like the faces of the dead.
The city is filled with anxiety.
The fascist invaders approached the outskirts of Moscow.
A state of siege has been declared.
Government offices have been evacuated.
Even earlier, universities and theaters were evacuated.
In Moscow, the Supreme Command Headquarters controls everything.
Today, for the last time, I am on duty on the roof of our institute together with my
fellow students, and tomorrow - with the militia to the front - to defend Moscow.
Today I was at the city meeting.
Secretary of the Central Committee Shcherbakov said:
“A terrible danger looms over Moscow.
There is no longer a continuous line of defense around the city.
In a number of places in the trenches there is not a single living soldier.
I suggest everyone who is still capable of holding weapons in their hands to join the
people's militia tomorrow.
"
​​The next morning I told my friends about the meeting and about my decision.
Vakhtang Abashidze was the first to jump up from his chair: “You are a invalid, will
go to fight, and I am healthy, will I sit at my desk?!
No, I'm with you!
"
Then Tim Sokolenko intervened: “Guys, let's all together, the whole team will join the
militia!
We decided: we all leave for the militia.
After breakfast we went to the building of the Bauman regional party committee.
The crowd was already noisy there.
Most of them were elderly people, many of them wearing glasses, even turning gray.
They were the ones who worried more than anyone, proving that they were still able to hold
a weapon in their hands.
This was the third enrollment in the Moscow militia.
Two regiments have already fought.
We received weapons, cartridges, quilted jackets, bowlers, duffel bags and dry rations for five
days.
Next day at ten o'clock.
We handed over our travel tickets Moscow-Novorossiysk and evacuation certificates.
A column of the people's militia regiment of the Bauman and Kirovsky districts reached
Leningradsky Prospekt.
And during the day everything reminded of the war: white crosses on the glass windows,
guns in public gardens.
On one of the houses there was a huge poster depicting a woman holding in her hand a sheet
with the "Military Oath", and above her head the words: "The Motherland Calls."
Two hours later, the column left Moscow and turned left.
We understood: we were being led to Solnechnogorsk.
At the first halt, we got to know the platoon commander.
We were the youngest fighters.
Soon our Vakhtang Abashidze became the soul of the platoon.
Knowing that in air battles in Spain I was shot down and severely crippled, he often
turned to me: "Volodya, come on, give me your rifle, otherwise you will soon get tired."
And carried it until I took it away.
And Tima Sokolenko, our institute weightlifter, strong guy, good-natured, took care of Kostya
Sokolovich, a famous chess player in Moscow.
Without his glasses, he couldn't see anything at all.
Thin, long as a vine, he barely carried his load.
Military training at the institute was well organized.
We knew how to handle weapons: a rifle, a machine gun, and a grenade.
In the dark, the regiment entered the village of Yurlove.
The night passed calmly.
Somewhere far, far away, it thundered, as if a thunderstorm was going on there.
But we knew that it was guns thundering, which meant that people were dying.
The regiment, in the position of which we came, not that it thinned out in the battles
- it was almost exterminated and still continued to hold such lines that several regiments
were supposed to hold.
In their defense there were many completely empty trenches.
“Our Muscovites have come!
Now let's fight!
" - voices rang out.
We heard both joy and soldiers' gratitude for not being afraid and coming to their aid.
At night, from the trenches, we saw the war more clearly.
It appeared in the form of a rocket blizzard, the glitter of tracer bullets, ominous crimson-red
flashes on the horizon.
The fires were visible far to the right and to the left.
Not far away, across the river, machine-gun bursts sounded.
“These are the Germans, they drive away fear,” experienced soldiers told us.
In the morning Vakhtang and I went to the forest.
A trench led us to a tent.
“This is our sanitary platoon,” Vakhtang said.
“Let's go and take a look at our positions,” I said, and we set off to the corner of the
forest.
At the edge of the forest, hiding behind the trees, we got out of the forest and examined
our trenches.
From the forest to the trenches, crimson-red spots are visible everywhere, slightly covered
with snow.
“Apparently, the wounded were crawling,” Vakhtang said.
On the other side of the trenches, going down to the lowland to the flowing river, there
was an open meadow with many hillocks covered with snow.
We saw neither guns nor mortars.
After looking around, we returned to the trench.
The platoon leader scolded us for leaving without permission.
Soon we learned from the "oldies" that the hillocks in the meadow are the dead fascists.
There were attacks on a daily basis.
Retreating, the Germans did not take with them not only the killed, but also the wounded.
The commanders told us that the Germans were regrouping their forces in our sector of the
front.
We sat out for several days, getting used to the situation.
The commanders conducted combat training exercises.
Considering that we a militia and not regulary soldiers, they forbade, when the Germans attacked,
to jump out of the trenches and counterattack the Nazis.
"Your task," they said, "is not to let the enemy approach the trenches with fire, not
to panic, to help each other out."
The rumble of tank engines intensified among the Germans every day.
Everyone talked about the impending offensive.
And so it turned out.
In late October, early in the morning, a mortar and artillery fire fell on our positions.
The mines howled at us, and then exploded, showering us with clods of earth.
Several mines flew into a nearby trench.
The screams of the wounded were heard.
The orderlies came running and began to carry the soldiers into the forest.
A bitter, stinking spirit hung over our defenses.
It was scary.
When the howl of a mine approached, it seemed that it was flying at me.
But the shelling had not yet ended when the command was heard to take up their positions.
Shuddering at every next explosion, we barely lifted ourselves off the ground and stood
in our cells.
Prepared grenades, cartridges, rifles, bottles of fuel.
Looking out of the trench, I saw that crowds of German machine gunners were crossing the
river.
Scattered across the meadow on a wide front, the Germans marched at full height.
Our trenches were silent, and although the explosions of mines were still rumbling nearby,
and the earth was still falling on our heads, we stood and looked at the approaching fascists.
The artillery and mortar raid suddenly ended.
Only the groans of the wounded were heard.
But soon the Nazis, with drunken cries, rushed to our trenches.
They ran and shot from machine guns.
A command rang out, and the thunder of gunfire from the trenches echoed over the battlefield.
Driving away fear, we fired at people as at moving targets, only a few submachine gunners
ran to the distance of a grenade throw.
But they also fell under our fire.
It was a hard day.
We repelled attacks three times.
Only towards dusk did the remnants of the Germans go beyond the river, and the shooting
stopped.
The regimental kitchen brought lunch.
After lunch, we exchanged our impressions and experiences for a long time.
The next day, after the mortar shelling, the attack by the Germans began with the support
of tanks.
Our Timofey Sokolenko distinguished in this battle.
When the tank approached the trenches, Tim managed to successfully throw a bunch of grenades
under the tracks.
The tank turned around, and immediately Vakhtang and I threw bottles with a combustible mixture.
The tank caught fire, then started smoking.
We threw grenades at the jumped out tankers.
The other tanks turned back, and the submachine gunners ran with them.
In November, the attacks came at us in waves.
We will beat off one, another runs after it.
Regardless of the losses, the Germans went and went at us.
We also suffered heavy losses.
In one of the attacks, a German hand grenade flew into my cell.
I remember a flash of fire, and then darkness fell.
I woke up already in a Moscow hospital.
There I learned from the wounded of our regiment who arrived later that our division had become
a Guards division as part of the 16th Army, whose commander was Rokossovsky, that Timofey
Sokolenko distinguished himself in the offensive on December 6, for which he was awarded with
the order of the "Red Star".
After my recovery, I underwent retraining and continued to fight on the Western Front
as a sapper.
I finished the war in Stettin.
For participation in hostilities in the Great Patriotic War, I was awarded the Order of
the Red Star.
Vladimir was a caring husband, father, grandfather after the war.
Together with his wife he raised 5 daughters, helped raise 15 grandchildren.
4 great-grandchildren.
Dear Friends, that's all for today.
It Was Tim and the Eastern Front channel.
Don't hesitate to write your comments and opinions.
What do you think about the defenders of Moscow and that critical part of the war on eastern
front?