The Great Patriotic War was a time of severe trials for all the people of our long-suffering country. Courage and perseverance, patience and endurance, mercy and self-sacrifice - these noble and high qualities were fully manifested in those terrible years when death from an enemy bullet or from hunger was literally on the heels of every Soviet person. Faith in victory, faith in the Motherland, and sometimes in a miracle, often saved the defenders of the country from inevitable death. And it is precisely with the unusual, mysterious phenomena that a large number of front-line legends and traditions accumulated by soldiers and officers over four long war years are associated
Stepan Timofeevich Kos-tylev, a resident of Siberia, who walked the fiery roads of war from Moscow to Konigsberg, became a witness to the rather strange and inexplicable events from the point of view of materialistic consciousness at the very beginning of his combat path.
Twenty-three-year-old Stepan Kosty-lion, as deputy commander of the 12th battalion for political affairs of the 72nd Guards Siberian Division, was sent from Novosibirsk to the Western Front in September 1941. The situation, he said, was catastrophic in those autumn months of the first year of the war. The Nazis irresistibly rushed to Moscow, occupying more and more new areas of the European part of the Soviet Union. Arriving at the beginning of October near Vyazma, Kostylev soon found himself in the so-called "Vyazemsky pot", when more than two and a half million Soviet soldiers and officers were surrounded four hundred and a half kilometers from the capital. Few of the fighters who survived those terrible days remember them as a real nightmare, hell in reality, when in just a week of fighting on our side about a million people were killed. Only a few succeeded, having escaped death and captivity,retreat to Moscow with battles and, regrouping, with renewed strength to engage in battle with a strong and merciless enemy.
On October 6, 1941, the battalion in which Kostylev served took up defensive positions seventy kilometers west of Yelnya. The main task of the Western Front under the command of Colonel-General I. S. Konev, which included the 72nd Guards Siberian Division, was to prevent the enemy from breaking through in the most important Moscow direction and thereby gain time to form a new combat-ready reserve. The task was complicated by the fact that in this direction the enemy had an advantage in manpower by more than 2 times, in artillery by 7 times, in tanks by 8.5 times.
Replenishment
Carrying out active offensive actions and breaking the resistance of the Soviet troops, the enemy broke through the defenses, crossed the Dnieper and on October 7, 1941, tank groups reached the city of Vyazma. It was on this day that Kostylev's battalion had to repel the continuous attacks of German tank divisions for twelve hours. By the end of the day, more than sixty percent of the battalion's personnel were incapacitated, and the news that a small replenishment of five people had arrived in the unit did not overly please the command. According to the documents, five young guys escaped from the encirclement from near Andriapol, where their entire rifle regiment died. They were brothers, born somewhere near Stalingrad, the oldest of whom was twenty-six, and the youngest was not even nineteen.
In the evening of the same day, the young soldiers refused a modest soldier's dinner and, instead of going to bed, began to clean the issued weapons and strengthen the pillboxes.
Early the next morning, German attack aircraft began ironing out the Soviet positions. Due to the lack of air defense systems, Kostylev's battalion only fought back weakly with all types of small arms at their disposal. Armed with Mo-sin's rifles, the brothers who had arrived in the evening also began to repel the attacks of the fascist aviation. And soon after the start of the battle, the first Junker was shot down by one of the brothers. Less than ten minutes later, the second plane, which was flying almost over the very heads of the soldiers, stalled, began to smoke and crashed behind the Soviet positions. The most surprising thing was that soon one of the brothers managed to knock out a heavy German bomber, which was marching high in a squadron to Moscow. The Messerschmitt, enveloped in black smoke, went into a tailspin and fell in a suburb of Vyazma.
Invincible fighters
By the end of the half-hour raid, the enemy aircraft were missing six attack aircraft and one long-range bomber. The battalion commander barely had time to give the order to present the brothers for a reward, when fascist tanks appeared at the edge of the forest, accompanied by machine gunners. Heavy enemy artillery spoke up. With each shot, the shells fell more and more accurately on the positions of the defenders. From behind the parapet, Kostylev watched out of the corner of his eye as the brothers fired accurately and coolly at the approaching enemy. Bullets exploded next to them fountains of earth, one of them tore off the youngest brother's helmet, but not a muscle wavered on his pale face. Suddenly a growing whistle made the soldiers in the trench duck, and in the next second an artillery shell hit the place from which the brothers were firing. A pillar of earth shot up into the skysmoke and fire. Sprinkled with clay, Kostylev managed to see pieces of bodies, scraps of overcoats flying in different directions …
When Stepan Timofeevich woke up, the first thing he heard were the sounds of a fierce battle going on. He got up, dusted himself off and, looking around, opened his mouth in amazement. At the place where the fascist shell had landed, a huge crater gaped, around it lay the mutilated bodies of the soldiers of his battalion, but the five brothers, who, according to all the laws of war, had to die, continued the battle as if nothing had happened - alive and unharmed. As soon as their greatcoats were scorched in some places
and were cut by fragments of an exploding shell. Four light German machine-gun tanks burned out in front of their positions, and the entire space in front of the trench was littered with the corpses of enemy machine gunners …
Unable to withstand the fierce resistance of the Soviet soldiers, this enemy attack was choked up. Taking advantage of a short respite, the battalion commander gathered junior commanders in his dilapidated dugout. Having discussed the situation with his subordinates, he made a decision: the battalion must retreat. But in order to enable him to withdraw with minimal losses, it was necessary to leave the cover group, which, at the cost of its life, would save the rest of the battalion's fighters.
When Kostylev announced the commander's order to the soldiers and asked who volunteered to stay to cover the unit's retreat, the five brothers took a step forward. Stepan Timofeevich collected the documents from the guys, thanked them for their courage and shook their hands goodbye. At that moment Kostylev was surprised that the brothers' palms were cold, like those of the dead.
With the first dusk, the remnants of the battalion moved southeast. They had already moved ten and a half kilometers from the front line when they heard the sounds of a flaring battle behind their backs. Machine-gun bursts and explosions did not subside practically until late at night in the west …
Only by noon the next day, the battalion moved to the positions of the 12th Cavalry Brigade of the Reserve Front under the command of Marshal of the Soviet Union SM. Budyonny, covering the Roslavl direction. The officer of the special department of the front interviewed the battalion commander, found out the reasons for the withdrawal, and then inquired about the personalities of those soldiers who remained to cover the retreat. When Kostylev presented the brothers' documents to the Chekist, he turned pale and was speechless for several minutes. Finally, recovering from the shock and taking the commander's word to remain silent, the officer of the special department said that he had a chance to fight with these brothers near Vinnitsa. There, during the retreat of our troops, they - all five - died.
He knew this for sure, since he personally took part in the hasty burial of the bodies of those killed in that battle, and later filled the funeral for the brothers' parents. Finally, he said that in his short military biography, this is not the first time when the dead fought along with the living with the enemy.
Sergey KOZHUSHKO
Secrets of the XX century.
