April, 1942- Germany's vicious blitzkrieg continues to push deep into Soviet territory.
In the north, the German armies are pushing forward with the ultimate goal being the sacking
of Moscow, seat of Soviet power.
In the south, a German offensive pushes for strategically important oil fields.
If the Germans reach Moscow, the Soviet will to fight could crumble, and the nation lost.
If the Germans reach the southern oil fields, no amount of willpower will be enough to stop
a German offensive when the oil has dried up.
The Soviet Union is in dire straits indeed.
American shipments of food, clothing, equipment, and ammunition are keeping the Red Army on
its feet.
In fact, most Red Army soldiers hitch a ride to the front on American-built trucks.
Every week thousands of tons of American aid arrives in the Soviet ports still able to
receive the ships- but the one thing America can't provide for the Soviet Union is soldiers
with the will to win.
Luckily for the Soviets, mother Russia has at least one aviator who doesn't know the
meaning of the word 'quit'.
High above the front line, now only a couple hundred kilometers from Moscow, Soviet aviator
Aleksey Maresyev scans the skies for enemy aircraft.
He's a relatively young pilot, having been flying combat missions for only a few months-
but already Maresyev has distinguished himself with three enemy aircraft downed in as many
months.
The Soviet air force is up against the legendary Luftwaffe, combat veterans from the skies
over western Europe- many of them veterans of the failed battle of Britain.
The campaign to subdue Britain from the sky and prepare it for an invasion may have failed,
but the German air force has cut its teeth on British Spitfires, and now many of its
most veteran aces prowl the skies over the Soviet homeland.
Maresyev flies a Yakovlev Yak-1, a comparatively primitive aircraft versus the German Messerschmitt
109.
The German Messerschmitt features a liquid cooled engine and all-metal construction,
second only to the Japanese Zero in performance at the start of the second World War.
The Soviets have been fighting a losing war with shrinking resources, and are short on
everything but men- the Yak-1 represents this reality.
With metal being a precious resource, the Yak-1 features wooden plywood wings.
A lack of standardized equipment and scarcity of resources means that each aircraft is built
with incredibly loose tolerances- after coming off the assembly line a Yak-1 could have landing
gear of different lengths, the wings set at unequal angles.
Final adjustments have to be made right before delivery to the front lines.
The shoddy construction leads to many accidents, and yet also makes the Yak-1 extremely light
and maneuverable.
Skilled Soviet pilots like Maresyev learn to use this to their advantage against the
superior armed and armored Messerschmitts they face.
Today, Maresyev and his squadron find themselves against a flight of German fighters escorting
light bombers.
Immediately the Soviets leap to the attack, but the Messerschmitts are built tough and
can take a pounding.
To make matters worse, the Yak-1 features less, and lighter machine guns- the Soviet
philosophy being that they prefer accuracy from their pilots and maneuverability over
brute strength.
Maresyev's Yak-1 is outgunned by the German fighters, and soon he finds himself in a fiery
dive to the frozen woods below.
Coaxing what little control is left in his aircraft, he manages to bring the nose up
just enough to avoid pancaking into the ground below, and the Yak-1 crashes through the tall
trees.
Maresyev is violently thrown out of his cockpit, losing consciousness instantly.
As he comes to, a dull pain shoots up his legs.
He's surprised to be alive, but with the Soviet winter still not relinquishing its hold on
the land to spring, he won't be alive for much longer if he doesn't move fast.
To make matters worse, he's crash landed behind enemy lines, and no doubt a German patrol
will eventually come looking for a survivor after having seen the dramatic crash.
Maresyev attempts to stand up and immediately regrets it- his legs refuse to cooperate.
Dragging them out of the thick snow, he realizes he's shattered both of them in the crash.
The severe winter cold has thankfully numbed them, or else the pain would surely be enough
to black him out again.
Things don't look good for his legs, if he doesn't get help soon he doubts he'll be able
to keep them.
Luckily, his arms are relatively uninjured, and with incredible effort, Maresyev begins
to crawl forward.
He thinks about the last thing he saw before crashing, building a mental picture of the
landscape below his aircraft as he plots a direction of travel back to friendly lines.
The mental exercise helps keep his mind off the incredible pain.
From what he can remember of the landscape he's now crawling through, he needs to travel
Northeast to reach friendly lines.
The bad news is he can't walk, and is going to have to crawl every agonizing inch of the
way back to safety.
Maresyev has only a few emergency rations.
Luckily, the abundant snow will give him plenty of what he needs the most though: water.
It's a major risk to eat snow, but he has little choice- the frozen snow may drop his
core body temperature and bring him closer to hypothermia, but if he doesn't get water
into his body blood loss and dehydration will kill him before starvation or German soldiers
will.
The crawling is absolutely exhausting, the pain breathtaking.
Yet Maresyev refuses to quit, and in the first day alone crawls a few hundred meters.
It's painfully slow going, but he only has a few miles to go to get back to friendly
lines.
Maresyev realizes he has yet another huge problem though- he can't crawl to any of the
known Soviet positions, as he'll be spotted by the Germans long before he gets there.
Instead, he'll have to crawl through the forest to remain hidden, then once he believes he's
behind friendly lines, crawl out of the forest and towards where he hopes Red army positions
will be.
In essence, he's adding miles to his already difficult journey- but Maresyev has no other
choice.
It is officially do or die time, and Aleksey Maresyev has zero quit in him.
During the day, Maresyev digs himself into snowdrifts in order to stay hidden.
Snow is an incredibly good insulator, and he manages to keep warm despite the grip that
winter still has on the land.
Traveling at night, he stays out of sight of any Germans that stray too close.
Maresyev rations what little food he has, supplementing his meager diet with edible
roots and even tree bark.
He allows snow to melt in his mouth before swallowing the water so that he can keep his
core body temperature stable, and treats his wounds as best he can during his frequent
rests.
Surprisingly, he's in pretty good shape after a crash from ten thousand feet in the air-
other than his legs that is.
Even if he managed to receive immediate medical attention, it's doubtful he'd be able to keep
both legs.
With several days of crawling through the snow behind him, Maresyev is growing increasingly
confident that he'll end up losing both of his mangled legs.
Frostbite has set in on his feet, even as the cold helps numb the pain and keep infection
from setting in.
Yet the weather is slowly turning, and by the time Maresyev begins his nightly crawl
the snow is barely starting to refreeze after turning to slush during the daytime sun.
All the moisture is not just pushing Maresyev closer to hypothermia, but allowing infection
to set in on his devastated legs.
Aleksey Maresyev has now been crawling to safety for over two weeks.
His food has long since run out, and he continues to scavenge what he can, but the forest offers
little more than tough tree bark to chew on.
His legs are beyond saving now, Maresyev can smell the sickly sweet smell of rot setting
in.
He's put tourniquets on both his legs to prevent the infection from traveling to the rest of
his body through the blood stream, but there's no telling how successful such crude measures
are going to be.
Maresyev has already accomplished the impossible, surviving 18 days in the wilderness and crawling
with serious injuries several miles across a frozen forest.
But he's not ready to quit just yet- not as long as there's invading Germans destroying
his homeland and killing his people.
The will is strong, but the body is failing, and just as Maresyev fears he's going to lose
consciousness for the last time he's surprised to discover several civilians rushing towards
him.
They're residents of a nearby village, shocked and horrified to discover the downed Soviet
aviator.
Loading him up onto a wooden sled, the villagers rush him to a nearby Soviet military camp.
Maresyev has done it- he's survived 18 days behind enemy lines and crawled miles back
to safety.
After his incredible feat of endurance and survival, Aleksey Maresyev would receive much
needed medical care.
Unfortunately he would lose both legs to gangrene, but Maresyev would refuse to allow his injuries
to leave him out of the fight.
The Soviet Union's toughest fighter pilot still had plenty more Germans to kill.
As soon as he was fitted with prosthetics, Maresyev demanded he be returned back to his
old unit and allowed to fly again.
Doubtful of his abilities given his physical state, the Red Army would put Maresyev back
through ground and air training before at last approving him for flight duty.
On June, 1943, Maresyev was once again back in the cockpit of a Yak-1, earning an additional
7 kills by the end of the war and bringing his total count to 11 downed enemy fighters.
Aleksey Maresyev would go on to earn the Gold Star, highest military honor of the Soviet
Union, for his incredible feat of survival and battle prowess both.
With no more Germans to shoot down, Maresyev retired from the military one year after the
war, and would go on to live a relatively quiet and uneventful life- clearly having
packed an entire lifetime's worth of excitement and trouble into an 18 day freedom trek behind
enemy lines.
A book written of his exploits however would go on to become mandatory reading in many
Soviet schools, lasting to this day.
Now go watch this- the insanely crazy story of a tiny soldier, or click this other video
instead!