For disclosure - shooting. Soviet saboteurs in China and Korea
We can not give the name of the person we will tell about today. He asked for it himself. We confine ourselves to the name - Basil. More than half a century ago, the battalion commander summoned him and pointed to a lined piece of paper lying on the table.
- About where I was and what I did, never tell anyone. For the disclosure of military secrets - execution, relatives will be repressed. Sign that warned.
This subscription foreman gave several times, but usually the commanders called the period of nondisclosure - 25 years, and this time the battalion commander did not speak about the term. Therefore, it was necessary to keep that secret forever.
The frontline signaller still does not know whether he can talk about what the Soviet army was doing at the end of the 40s in China and Korea. But told ...
VOLUNTEERS WITH HUNGERS
October 20 1943, Vasily received a summons to the army, which was overwhelmingly pleased. Of course, they can kill at the front, but at least they feed there. He had not eaten a year since that day, as three thousand 16-year-old guys from Mordovia were loaded into the train and sent to Transbaikalia. The law was then - to recruit young people in factory schools without fail. Whether you like it or not, the Motherland orders!
They were warned at the military registration and enlistment office: they would not feed them on the way, so take food for a month from home. And what will you take when the war is in its second year? Crackers, perhaps.
Basil gnawed at them for a whole month until the train arrived in Ulan-Ude, the capital of the Buryat-Mongolian ASSR. On the shores of Lake Baikal, in the taiga near the station Mysovaya, “labor reserves”, the school FZO-4 was waiting for a shipbuilding plant evacuated from Kerch.
***
The plank plank beds in the barrack are covered only with an old mattress full of packed straw. But even he seems softer than a feather bed, when exactly at six in the morning the old master announces the rise for breakfast. I want to eat terribly, but nobody hurries to the dining room. Is it worth running for five spoons of empty balanda and a piece of bread made from un-picked oats?
At seven to work - to do the boats and small, six by two, board self-propelled barges with the strange name "Kawasaki." At lunch, the same balanda and remnants of 600-gram bread rations. I worked for twelve hours and you can go to your skinny mattress. Feed will no longer be.
In fact, Baikal is close by, you can catch fish, but the coast is constantly patrolled by soldiers. Is the fish guarded? So there is plenty of it, enough for everyone. Well at least a good master caught. He can beg the network for the night. The main thing is to beg to work with fellow countrymen on the night shift. The norm was quickly fulfilled, a flat-bottomed boat (specially made for this business) was dragged to the shore, and behind omul.
Throwed once, then swam back. They gave the master a net and his share of the catch, while they themselves went into the taiga, made a fire and fried fish over the coals, planted them on the rods. Oh, beauty! ... It's a pity that not every day.
***
Dreamed of the front. And not because they really wanted to fight the enemy. No, I just really wanted to eat. They fled to the front, hiding in the corners of freight trains and military echelons. The whole school knew about the shoots, the fugitives from the whole world gathered crackers for a long journey. All returned back except two, and even that is unknown: they reached the front, or simply froze to death on long hauls.
And finally, in October of 1943, an order was issued to call 26 of the year. An echelon arrived at the plant with new 16-year-old workers who were not even entitled to a salary. Who pays for tuition?
KAZARMA - PARADISE
Recruits were brought to Nizhneudinsk, to the 25-nd separate school of snipers. The number of almost division - sixteen battalions. And they taught for real. From six in the morning until eleven in the evening classes: drill (as without her in the army), the study of sniper rifles, shooting. Or the commander will show the area on the map: go there and disguise. I'll check back in an hour. Though you dig in the snow, climb a tree, but cover all the traces so that you cannot be seen in three steps.
They drove to the seventh sweat, but this is nothing. And that all three months without days off is also nothing. Winding to the shoes did not give out, for the foot wrappers snow stuffed? We will endure, we will survive. The main thing - how to feed! Ten times better than in FZO. Even give butter. The three-story barracks has three beds for three, but the wadded mattresses are covered with white sheets. Paradise!
Vasiliy, the three-line sniper and SVT self-recharging feed, mastered. In the class of hand-to-hand fighting, he learned how to work with techniques, with a pin and bayonet, to blind the enemy with a handful of sand thrown into his eyes.
Three months later, the 150 man was taken away, and the marching company went to the Tin station. They outfitted snipers in all new. They were waiting to be sent to the front, and here the “buyer” from Chita arrived, recruiting cadets to the training radio battalion.
Vasily studied Morse code for three more months, he learned to work on the radio. Reception, 120 characters per minute - excellent. This is if the plaintext. And if the radiogram is encrypted, then groups of five digits. You passed 20 groups in a minute and you can proudly wear the title of first class radio operator.
ON TURKEY?
9 August 1945, the cavalry group of General Pliyev crossed the border with Manchuria, to then pass without stopping almost 900 kilometers. The column, in which there were Mongolian horsemen, stretched from horizon to horizon. In the communications squadron, in the covered body of the lorry of the battalion radio station, Vasily did the same.
Daily per person for a mug of water. More than the foreman of the canister will not give a drop, water is needed for the radiator. And then there's the dry ration. To catch that quartermaster bastard that he invented: each soldier has a salted herring and a piece of sugar the size of a fist. The herring, of course, was immediately thrown away, and the sugar, casting a blue granite glitter, was chopped with an ax into small pieces, which were rolled in a dried mouth, silencing thirst. In the afternoon, the heat is greater than 50 degrees.
Then two days we crossed the mountain range of Greater Khingan. There is only a driver in the car, the rest are following on their own. No other way. In the eyes of Vasily, a Studebaker fell into the abyss and several tanks.
Reached the city of Jehe (kilometers in 120 from Beijing), Pliev sent envoys, the Japanese refused to surrender. Well there is no way. First, Katyushas zhahnuli, then the general built all: "Guys, let's go!"
That's about and smashed the Kwantung Army. The corps was brought back abroad, and soon Vasily received the medal "For Courage", although he did not seem to perform any special feats. Although, keeping in touch with fifty-degree heat is also a kind of feat.
The war with Japan was over, Pliev flew to Moscow, getting from the hands of Stalin the second star of the Hero. And after returning to the corps, rumors spread: let's go to Turkey, fight the Dardanelles, Turkey had Hitler's allies as well. Say, the Supreme General said so: "We will break up the Turks, and only then go home." Until January, 46 was waiting for the year, then the rumors somehow subsided by themselves.
GIVE PEKIN!
The 406 th Separate Red Banner Khingan Communications Regiment was based in Bain-Tumen, when civil war broke out against China in 1947. On the one hand, the troops of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, on the other - the revolutionary army of Mao Tse-tung. They drove each other across the country, with varying success.
At the end of 47, the revolutionary army firmly pressed two Chiang Kai-shek regiments. They had nowhere to go, so they retreated into Mongol territory. The border was marked only on the maps, and there was not a peg in the steppe itself, but the Soviet Union reacted to it instantly.
The 406 th communications regiment was urgently deployed to the Chinese border. Of course, telecom operators are not the most formidable force, but the fact of the matter is that it was supported by all army artillery. And so supported that the infantry did not have to do anything at all. Chiang Kai-shekists simply burned with Katyush fire.
After this operation, Vasily for the first time gave a non-disclosure subscription.
In order to have at least some idea of the situation on Chinese territory, our command constantly sent reconnaissance groups across the border. Vasily got into one of them. Task: covertly dive into 10-20 kilometers and find out whose troops are currently controlling the border area.
Dressed in a civilian, documents and awards handed over. Separate order: captive not to surrender, but if you already got, not a word about who and where. Keep quiet, even if you will torture. And it is better to pre-pack one cartridge for yourself. They are ripping off their captives alive.
Automatic, pistol in a holster, ammunition - how much you will carry. And necessarily landing Finn. Vasily owes her life to her. At that time, already returning home, the scouts stopped to rest in the bush between the hills. The Chinese crept completely silently, hoping to take the Russian soldiers alive. Saved only by the fact that someone had time to notice a strange silhouette flashed through the bushes.
Short fight - our six, there are twice as many. A pair of short bursts at close range, and melee. Vasily did not even have time to pull his “TT” out of its holster, as he received a butt in the shoulder. This is where the training received in the sniper school came in handy. Snatching a knife, he threw it into the body of the enemy, not even having time to think that for the first time in his life he was killing a man. There was no time to think - either you or you. Then he stabbed one more.
Two returned to part of the six people, the rest were left lying on Chinese soil in shallow graves, not marked with a cross or a sign. And Vasily once again gave a non-disclosure subscription.
In late August, the regiment 49 th again raised the alarm. Chiang Kai-shek's army either took Beijing, or was about to do it. In short, the "fraternal Chinese people" urgently needed help from the Red Army. And he got it.
Several Soviet divisions crossed the border, reached the Chinese capital by forced marches and surrounded the city. There was no order to fight. Vasily certainly did not know what was decided at the top, but on October 1 Mao Tse-tung declared Soviet power in China, and the Soviet troops left China. Now forever.
ON THE REASONS OF THE AMERICAN ARMY
After the victory over Japan, the territory of Korea was divided in two along the 38 parallel. To the north - the zone of influence of the Soviet troops, south - the US. The confrontation between the North and the South lasted five years and ended in a civil war. Officially, the Soviet troops did not participate in it, although the whole world knew that Russian pilots were fighting in the skies of Korea - the regiment of aces-fighters under the command of Kozhedub. About ground operations of the Soviet troops is still unknown almost nothing.
Shortly after the start of the war, Vasily and another signalman from the 406 regiment were summoned to the army headquarters and assigned to a special sabotage group, which had neither a number nor a name. She was commanded by a colonel, whose names Vasily did not know. There were 200 people in the group. Eight officers, the rest in rank not lower than sergeant. The saboteurs were based in the taiga, not far from the place where the borders of the USSR, China and Korea meet.
One day, the soldiers were ordered to change into civilian clothes, hand over documents and all personal belongings. Bags filled to the top with explosives and ammunition. Vasily from weapons only a pistol and a Finn, and behind its backstage the radio set of the Republic of Belarus is 26 kilograms, plus four spare batteries of two kilos each. Almost every compass.
Boarding, open hatch, leap into the dark, parachute canopy overhead. When everyone gathered after landing, the commander announced the task: to go through the rear of the American and South Korean troops through the entire peninsula, to the port of Pusan, blowing up bridges, disrupting communications and other communications.
In the afternoon we went east, hiding in a forest belt, in the evening the commander set the task for several small groups, they left at night, returned a few hours later and the group moved on. Several times Vasily heard a distant rumble, saw a distant glow of explosions. The day passed on 30-40 kilometers. Once a week, we camped in the forest to get some rest.
Every day he set up his walkie-talkie, first for reception, then for transmission. He doesn’t know what kind of information he aired. They were so well known from the radio group of five digits - encryption.
In order not to burden themselves with excess weight, they took nothing at all from the products. Fed at the expense of the local population. We went to some village and just took what was needed. Peasants, seeing weapons in the hands of aliens, preferred not to argue.
The Americans probably understood that a well-prepared commando group was operating in their rear areas, but for the time being everything was calm: no pursuit, no shelling. Only once did American bombers appear in the sky - “flying fortresses” and dropped several bombs with napalm nearby. This terrible sight Vasily will remember all his life: from the earth to the sky there is a solid wall of fire. The trees burned like matches — in a split second, even the ground burned. Whether the bombardment was accidental or whether the enemy is already on the trail of the squadron is unknown. But still scary.
One day, when nothing was left to the port of Pusan, and the explosives were almost completely spent, the scouts returned with unpleasant news: the group was surrounded on all sides by a dense ring of American troops. The colonel ordered Vasily several times to contact the headquarters, sent and received several encrypted radiograms. Having taken all-round defense, the detachment waited two days for an order.
Finally, the commander decided to break through with the battle. At night, having opened heavy fire from all trunks, it was possible to break through a narrow corridor. We rushed into it and came under cross fire of machine guns. Basil fled, barely seeing the silhouettes of his comrades in front of him, several times almost fell, stumbling over someone's motionless bodies. Her breath ran off on the run, the walkie-talkie hurt painfully on the shoulder blades. Palnuv a couple of times in the darkness of a pistol, Basil decided to save the remaining cartridges. Who knows what?
Seventy people left the encirclement. The rest, including all the officers of the detachment, were either killed or captured. Then the group was led in turn, guided by a compass, to the north. Finally they came to a railway station, plunged into the cars and ordered the driver to go to the Soviet border.
For this operation, none of the surviving participants was awarded.
***
After the start of Perestroika, when they began to talk openly about what was scary to think about before, Vasily Petrovich sent an inquiry to the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense just in case. So, just in case: find out whether the security classification has already been removed from the events in which he participated. In response, TsAMO stated: "The military unit No. ..., which you requested, did not take part in the hostilities."
- About where I was and what I did, never tell anyone. For the disclosure of military secrets - execution, relatives will be repressed. Sign that warned.
This subscription foreman gave several times, but usually the commanders called the period of nondisclosure - 25 years, and this time the battalion commander did not speak about the term. Therefore, it was necessary to keep that secret forever.
The frontline signaller still does not know whether he can talk about what the Soviet army was doing at the end of the 40s in China and Korea. But told ...
VOLUNTEERS WITH HUNGERS
October 20 1943, Vasily received a summons to the army, which was overwhelmingly pleased. Of course, they can kill at the front, but at least they feed there. He had not eaten a year since that day, as three thousand 16-year-old guys from Mordovia were loaded into the train and sent to Transbaikalia. The law was then - to recruit young people in factory schools without fail. Whether you like it or not, the Motherland orders!
They were warned at the military registration and enlistment office: they would not feed them on the way, so take food for a month from home. And what will you take when the war is in its second year? Crackers, perhaps.
Basil gnawed at them for a whole month until the train arrived in Ulan-Ude, the capital of the Buryat-Mongolian ASSR. On the shores of Lake Baikal, in the taiga near the station Mysovaya, “labor reserves”, the school FZO-4 was waiting for a shipbuilding plant evacuated from Kerch.
***
The plank plank beds in the barrack are covered only with an old mattress full of packed straw. But even he seems softer than a feather bed, when exactly at six in the morning the old master announces the rise for breakfast. I want to eat terribly, but nobody hurries to the dining room. Is it worth running for five spoons of empty balanda and a piece of bread made from un-picked oats?
At seven to work - to do the boats and small, six by two, board self-propelled barges with the strange name "Kawasaki." At lunch, the same balanda and remnants of 600-gram bread rations. I worked for twelve hours and you can go to your skinny mattress. Feed will no longer be.
In fact, Baikal is close by, you can catch fish, but the coast is constantly patrolled by soldiers. Is the fish guarded? So there is plenty of it, enough for everyone. Well at least a good master caught. He can beg the network for the night. The main thing is to beg to work with fellow countrymen on the night shift. The norm was quickly fulfilled, a flat-bottomed boat (specially made for this business) was dragged to the shore, and behind omul.
Throwed once, then swam back. They gave the master a net and his share of the catch, while they themselves went into the taiga, made a fire and fried fish over the coals, planted them on the rods. Oh, beauty! ... It's a pity that not every day.
***
Dreamed of the front. And not because they really wanted to fight the enemy. No, I just really wanted to eat. They fled to the front, hiding in the corners of freight trains and military echelons. The whole school knew about the shoots, the fugitives from the whole world gathered crackers for a long journey. All returned back except two, and even that is unknown: they reached the front, or simply froze to death on long hauls.
And finally, in October of 1943, an order was issued to call 26 of the year. An echelon arrived at the plant with new 16-year-old workers who were not even entitled to a salary. Who pays for tuition?
KAZARMA - PARADISE
Recruits were brought to Nizhneudinsk, to the 25-nd separate school of snipers. The number of almost division - sixteen battalions. And they taught for real. From six in the morning until eleven in the evening classes: drill (as without her in the army), the study of sniper rifles, shooting. Or the commander will show the area on the map: go there and disguise. I'll check back in an hour. Though you dig in the snow, climb a tree, but cover all the traces so that you cannot be seen in three steps.
They drove to the seventh sweat, but this is nothing. And that all three months without days off is also nothing. Winding to the shoes did not give out, for the foot wrappers snow stuffed? We will endure, we will survive. The main thing - how to feed! Ten times better than in FZO. Even give butter. The three-story barracks has three beds for three, but the wadded mattresses are covered with white sheets. Paradise!
Vasiliy, the three-line sniper and SVT self-recharging feed, mastered. In the class of hand-to-hand fighting, he learned how to work with techniques, with a pin and bayonet, to blind the enemy with a handful of sand thrown into his eyes.
Three months later, the 150 man was taken away, and the marching company went to the Tin station. They outfitted snipers in all new. They were waiting to be sent to the front, and here the “buyer” from Chita arrived, recruiting cadets to the training radio battalion.
Vasily studied Morse code for three more months, he learned to work on the radio. Reception, 120 characters per minute - excellent. This is if the plaintext. And if the radiogram is encrypted, then groups of five digits. You passed 20 groups in a minute and you can proudly wear the title of first class radio operator.
ON TURKEY?
9 August 1945, the cavalry group of General Pliyev crossed the border with Manchuria, to then pass without stopping almost 900 kilometers. The column, in which there were Mongolian horsemen, stretched from horizon to horizon. In the communications squadron, in the covered body of the lorry of the battalion radio station, Vasily did the same.
Daily per person for a mug of water. More than the foreman of the canister will not give a drop, water is needed for the radiator. And then there's the dry ration. To catch that quartermaster bastard that he invented: each soldier has a salted herring and a piece of sugar the size of a fist. The herring, of course, was immediately thrown away, and the sugar, casting a blue granite glitter, was chopped with an ax into small pieces, which were rolled in a dried mouth, silencing thirst. In the afternoon, the heat is greater than 50 degrees.
Then two days we crossed the mountain range of Greater Khingan. There is only a driver in the car, the rest are following on their own. No other way. In the eyes of Vasily, a Studebaker fell into the abyss and several tanks.
Reached the city of Jehe (kilometers in 120 from Beijing), Pliev sent envoys, the Japanese refused to surrender. Well there is no way. First, Katyushas zhahnuli, then the general built all: "Guys, let's go!"
That's about and smashed the Kwantung Army. The corps was brought back abroad, and soon Vasily received the medal "For Courage", although he did not seem to perform any special feats. Although, keeping in touch with fifty-degree heat is also a kind of feat.
The war with Japan was over, Pliev flew to Moscow, getting from the hands of Stalin the second star of the Hero. And after returning to the corps, rumors spread: let's go to Turkey, fight the Dardanelles, Turkey had Hitler's allies as well. Say, the Supreme General said so: "We will break up the Turks, and only then go home." Until January, 46 was waiting for the year, then the rumors somehow subsided by themselves.
GIVE PEKIN!
The 406 th Separate Red Banner Khingan Communications Regiment was based in Bain-Tumen, when civil war broke out against China in 1947. On the one hand, the troops of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, on the other - the revolutionary army of Mao Tse-tung. They drove each other across the country, with varying success.
At the end of 47, the revolutionary army firmly pressed two Chiang Kai-shek regiments. They had nowhere to go, so they retreated into Mongol territory. The border was marked only on the maps, and there was not a peg in the steppe itself, but the Soviet Union reacted to it instantly.
Nanjing's head of government, Chinese general Chiang Kai-shek (right), is sitting next to General Lung Yun, chairman of the government of Yunnan Province, in Nanjing, 27 Jun 1936 of the year.
If it were not for the units of the Red Army that surrounded Beijing, perhaps now the Chinese would have considered the national hero not Mao Tse-tung, but generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.
The 406 th communications regiment was urgently deployed to the Chinese border. Of course, telecom operators are not the most formidable force, but the fact of the matter is that it was supported by all army artillery. And so supported that the infantry did not have to do anything at all. Chiang Kai-shekists simply burned with Katyush fire.
After this operation, Vasily for the first time gave a non-disclosure subscription.
In order to have at least some idea of the situation on Chinese territory, our command constantly sent reconnaissance groups across the border. Vasily got into one of them. Task: covertly dive into 10-20 kilometers and find out whose troops are currently controlling the border area.
Dressed in a civilian, documents and awards handed over. Separate order: captive not to surrender, but if you already got, not a word about who and where. Keep quiet, even if you will torture. And it is better to pre-pack one cartridge for yourself. They are ripping off their captives alive.
Automatic, pistol in a holster, ammunition - how much you will carry. And necessarily landing Finn. Vasily owes her life to her. At that time, already returning home, the scouts stopped to rest in the bush between the hills. The Chinese crept completely silently, hoping to take the Russian soldiers alive. Saved only by the fact that someone had time to notice a strange silhouette flashed through the bushes.
Short fight - our six, there are twice as many. A pair of short bursts at close range, and melee. Vasily did not even have time to pull his “TT” out of its holster, as he received a butt in the shoulder. This is where the training received in the sniper school came in handy. Snatching a knife, he threw it into the body of the enemy, not even having time to think that for the first time in his life he was killing a man. There was no time to think - either you or you. Then he stabbed one more.
Two returned to part of the six people, the rest were left lying on Chinese soil in shallow graves, not marked with a cross or a sign. And Vasily once again gave a non-disclosure subscription.
In late August, the regiment 49 th again raised the alarm. Chiang Kai-shek's army either took Beijing, or was about to do it. In short, the "fraternal Chinese people" urgently needed help from the Red Army. And he got it.
Several Soviet divisions crossed the border, reached the Chinese capital by forced marches and surrounded the city. There was no order to fight. Vasily certainly did not know what was decided at the top, but on October 1 Mao Tse-tung declared Soviet power in China, and the Soviet troops left China. Now forever.
ON THE REASONS OF THE AMERICAN ARMY
After the victory over Japan, the territory of Korea was divided in two along the 38 parallel. To the north - the zone of influence of the Soviet troops, south - the US. The confrontation between the North and the South lasted five years and ended in a civil war. Officially, the Soviet troops did not participate in it, although the whole world knew that Russian pilots were fighting in the skies of Korea - the regiment of aces-fighters under the command of Kozhedub. About ground operations of the Soviet troops is still unknown almost nothing.
Shortly after the start of the war, Vasily and another signalman from the 406 regiment were summoned to the army headquarters and assigned to a special sabotage group, which had neither a number nor a name. She was commanded by a colonel, whose names Vasily did not know. There were 200 people in the group. Eight officers, the rest in rank not lower than sergeant. The saboteurs were based in the taiga, not far from the place where the borders of the USSR, China and Korea meet.
One day, the soldiers were ordered to change into civilian clothes, hand over documents and all personal belongings. Bags filled to the top with explosives and ammunition. Vasily from weapons only a pistol and a Finn, and behind its backstage the radio set of the Republic of Belarus is 26 kilograms, plus four spare batteries of two kilos each. Almost every compass.Boarding, open hatch, leap into the dark, parachute canopy overhead. When everyone gathered after landing, the commander announced the task: to go through the rear of the American and South Korean troops through the entire peninsula, to the port of Pusan, blowing up bridges, disrupting communications and other communications.
In the afternoon we went east, hiding in a forest belt, in the evening the commander set the task for several small groups, they left at night, returned a few hours later and the group moved on. Several times Vasily heard a distant rumble, saw a distant glow of explosions. The day passed on 30-40 kilometers. Once a week, we camped in the forest to get some rest.
Every day he set up his walkie-talkie, first for reception, then for transmission. He doesn’t know what kind of information he aired. They were so well known from the radio group of five digits - encryption.
In order not to burden themselves with excess weight, they took nothing at all from the products. Fed at the expense of the local population. We went to some village and just took what was needed. Peasants, seeing weapons in the hands of aliens, preferred not to argue.
The Americans probably understood that a well-prepared commando group was operating in their rear areas, but for the time being everything was calm: no pursuit, no shelling. Only once did American bombers appear in the sky - “flying fortresses” and dropped several bombs with napalm nearby. This terrible sight Vasily will remember all his life: from the earth to the sky there is a solid wall of fire. The trees burned like matches — in a split second, even the ground burned. Whether the bombardment was accidental or whether the enemy is already on the trail of the squadron is unknown. But still scary.
One day, when nothing was left to the port of Pusan, and the explosives were almost completely spent, the scouts returned with unpleasant news: the group was surrounded on all sides by a dense ring of American troops. The colonel ordered Vasily several times to contact the headquarters, sent and received several encrypted radiograms. Having taken all-round defense, the detachment waited two days for an order.
American soldiers are allies in 1945, enemies in 1950
Finally, the commander decided to break through with the battle. At night, having opened heavy fire from all trunks, it was possible to break through a narrow corridor. We rushed into it and came under cross fire of machine guns. Basil fled, barely seeing the silhouettes of his comrades in front of him, several times almost fell, stumbling over someone's motionless bodies. Her breath ran off on the run, the walkie-talkie hurt painfully on the shoulder blades. Palnuv a couple of times in the darkness of a pistol, Basil decided to save the remaining cartridges. Who knows what?
Seventy people left the encirclement. The rest, including all the officers of the detachment, were either killed or captured. Then the group was led in turn, guided by a compass, to the north. Finally they came to a railway station, plunged into the cars and ordered the driver to go to the Soviet border.
For this operation, none of the surviving participants was awarded.
***
After the start of Perestroika, when they began to talk openly about what was scary to think about before, Vasily Petrovich sent an inquiry to the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense just in case. So, just in case: find out whether the security classification has already been removed from the events in which he participated. In response, TsAMO stated: "The military unit No. ..., which you requested, did not take part in the hostilities."
Information