For two and a half years the Great Patriotic War had been raging. At Stalingrad, the attacks of the Hitlerite armies were choked, the Red Army began to push the enemy westward. But the liberation of the territories occupied by the enemy was given with difficulty. The Nazis fought fiercely, as if realizing that they would be knocked out of the territory of the USSR and soon the entire Third Reich would come to an end.
On December 16, 1943, the 328th tank battalion, which was part of the 118th separate tank brigade of the Red Army, fought with the enemy for the village of Demeshkovo. This is the vicinity of the city of Nevel in the Pskov region. The Nazis held on to the village tightly. Of the 16 tanks of the battalion, six tanks burned down during the battle, three more tanks were knocked out, three tanks were out of order for technical reasons. Another tank, in which the platoon commander, 25-year-old Lieutenant Stepan Tkachenko, was missing. It was Lieutenant Tkachenko who led Soviet tanks into the attack on Demeshkovo on that ill-fated day.
While other tanks were fighting the Germans, the platoon commander in his car managed to break through practically to the enemy's defensive line in a roundabout way. And then the unexpected happened - thirty meters from the defensive line, the T-34 tank got bogged down in a snow-covered swamp. A rather interesting situation has developed. The tank shot through German positions well, so the enemy could not bring artillery pieces to destroy it. But, given the limited amount of ammunition, Soviet tank crews could not cause significant damage to enemy positions either.
What was left to do? It would seem that the way out of the difficult situation lay “on the surface” - to evacuate the tank and retreat to our own. But the crew could not abandon a serviceable car. Therefore, the tank commander, Lieutenant Tkachenko and the driver-mechanic Sergeant Mikhail Bezukladnikov, got out of the car and decided to look around to understand how to get out of the swamp. This was used by the enemy's arrows. Stepan Tkachenko was seriously wounded, and 33-year-old sergeant Mikhail Bezukladnikov was killed.
Literally under enemy fire, the tower gunner Senior Sergeant Alexander Kavlyugin climbed out of the tank, who dragged the wounded commander towards the positions of the Red Army. So Kavlyugin saved the life of Lieutenant Tkachenko. He was not allowed to return back - they put him in another tank, and the next day the 19-year-old senior sergeant Kavlyugin was in it alive and burned to death during the battle.
In the stuck "thirty-four" there was only one crew member - gunner-radio operator Sergeant Viktor Chernyshenko, who was only 18 years old. Despite his age, Vitya Chernyshenko already managed to receive the Order of the Red Star in early December 1943.
Viktor Semenovich Chernyshenko was eighteen years old only one and a half months earlier. He was born on October 25, 1925 in the village of Aleksandrovka, which now belongs to the Krasnolimansky district of the Donetsk region, into a peasant family. In 1943, Victor was called up for military service in the Red Army and sent to a training tank regiment stationed in Ulyanovsk. There the guy received the specialty of a gunner-radio operator of the T-34 tank, after which in the same October 1943 he was sent to the 118th separate tank brigade of the 2nd Baltic Front.
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Already on December 7, 1943, Viktor Chernyshenko distinguished himself in the battle for the liberation of the village of Zamoschitsa, Pskov region, where he destroyed one gun, two machine guns, three mortars and up to 40 enemy soldiers and officers as part of the crew. The commander of the 328th Tank Battalion, Captain Pyotr Gazmurovich Dzhimiev, presented Chernyshenko to the Order of the Red Star.
In general, although the gunner-radio operator Viktor Chernyshenko was young, he was already fired upon and, most importantly, a brave and selfless fighter. Remaining in the tank, he prepared to defend the vehicle alone. The first day after the battle, he spent alone in the tank. Meanwhile, the battalion command decided to send some experienced driver mechanics to help Victor. The mechvod had to try to pull the tank out of the hollow. Senior sergeant Alexei Sokolov volunteered.
Alexei Ivanovich Sokolov, a native of the village of Petrovka (Asekeevsky district of the Orenburg region), was already 25 years old.
Now the phrase "already 25" sounds strange, but then, during the Great Patriotic War, he was considered an adult, "hardened" fighter. And it really was. Having managed to work as a turner at the Barrikady machine-building plant in Stalingrad, Alexei Sokolov was drafted into the army for the first time back in 1938. Then he received the specialty of a tank driver and took part in the Soviet-Finnish war.
When Germany attacked the Soviet Union, Alexei Sokolov was mobilized to the front. He fought near Tula, defended Stalingrad, was wounded three times. The command rightly considered Senior Sergeant Sokolov the best driver-mechanic of the 328th tank battalion.
Having made his way to the aid of Viktor Chernyshenko, Sokolov tried with all his might to free the tank from the swamp. But this turned out to be a useless task, while the Nazis continued to attack the lonely Soviet machine. Sokolov and Chernyshenko specially allowed the Nazis to come within close range, and then began to shoot them with a machine gun. Every day, the Germans attacked the tank several times, but the crew resisted so that the attacks drowned and the superior enemy forces retreated.
Since the ammunition in the tank was almost complete, this greatly facilitated the task of defending against enemy infantry. The situation with food was much worse. The tankers had only a few cans of stewed meat, a little crackers, sugar, a piece of bacon. Water seeped into the tank through the bottom. Swamp. They drank it, but what was the way out?
The days passed, which were mixed as one - the continuous attacks of the Nazis, the fierce defense of the tank. Viktor Chernyshenko recalled:
“Frankly, these battles under siege have merged in my memory into one endless battle. I can't even tell one day from another. The Nazis tried to approach us from different sides, in groups and alone, at different times of the day. We had to be on the alert all the time. We slept in fits and starts, one by one. I was tormented by hunger, the metal burned my hands. Only working at the gun and machine gun did they warm up a little. But the hunger was even worse. No matter how we stretched our miserable food supplies, it lasted only a few days. We were both very weak, especially Sokolov, who was seriously wounded …"
Senior Sergeant Sokolov actually practically lost his ability to move. The only thing he could do was supply Chernyshenko with shells and discs. But even in such a situation, Sokolov did not lose heart, was not going to whine or panic.
Later, Chernyshenko warmly recalled his comrade in the heroic defense of the tank:
“What an amazing person he was! He suffered greatly from a severe wound, but I have never heard a word of complaint. On the contrary, Sokolov tried to show that he felt good, encouraged me in every way. It is unlikely that I would have survived if it had not been for him …"
On the twelfth day of defense, the crew ran out of shells. Only grenades remained. Three times Viktor Chernyshenko threw grenades at the Nazis approaching the tank. The tankers decided to save the last grenade in order to use it when the Nazis can still approach the tank. The heroes were not going to surrender, therefore they chose for themselves this kind of defense. But they did not have to undermine together with the enemies surrounding the tank.
On December 30, Soviet troops nevertheless managed to break through the Nazi defenses with a decisive blow and occupy the village of Demeshkovo. Naturally, they immediately approached the ravine where the T-34 tank got stuck. Around the tank, the Red Army found a large number of corpses of German soldiers. Two frostbitten, emaciated and wounded tankers were removed from the tank. One of the tankers was simply unconscious, the second was still trying to say something, but then also "turned off".
The heroes were taken to the location of the medical battalion. But the next day, December 31, 1943, senior sergeant Alexei Ivanovich Sokolov died. Doctors named multiple injuries to the lower leg, thigh, neck, forearm and forced 12-day fasting as the cause of death. Alexei Sokolov was buried in a mass grave in the village of Turki-Perevoz, Nevelsky district, Pskov region.
Viktor Semenovich Chernyshenko was also in a critical condition, but he managed to survive. Front-line surgeons did their best to save 18-year-old Vitya his frostbitten legs. But it did not happen - gangrene did its dirty deed. First, Victor had his toes amputated, then half of his foot. Viktor was taken to the rear - to a military hospital, where he spent more than a year, recovering.
In the hospital, Victor received the news of the high award, which the Soviet state celebrated the feat of Chernyshenko and Sokolov. By the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated March 10, 1944, Sergeant Chernyshenko Viktor Semenovich was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Senior sergeant Alexei Ivanovich Sokolov was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously by the same decree.
The stingy lines "for the exemplary fulfillment of the combat missions of the command on the front of the struggle against the German fascist invaders and the courage and heroism shown at the same time" concealed an amazing feat that cost Senior Sergeant Sokolov his life, and Sergeant Chernyshenko remembered these terrible days, which dragged on as one day, until the end of my life.
In July 1945, after the end of the war, Sergeant Viktor Chernyshenko was demobilized from the ranks of the Red Army. He was not even twenty years old, and had to use prosthetic legs. But, as befits a real hero, Viktor Chernyshenko did not lose heart. He did not consider his life to be over, did not despair, did not become an alcoholic.
Victor entered the Sverdlovsk law school, after which he worked as a district judge, and from January 1949 to August 1950. served as an assistant prosecutor in the prosecutor's offices of the Sysertsky district and the Leninsky district of the city of Sverdlovsk. Then Viktor Chernyshenko went to work in the prosecutor's office of the Chelyabinsk region, where he worked until 1956. After graduating from the Sverdlovsk Law Institute, Viktor Semenovich worked as a people's judge, a member of the regional court, and was the chairman of one of the district courts.
Hero of the Soviet Union Viktor Semenovich Chernyshenko managed to live to a ripe old age. He retired and lived in the city of Chelyabinsk, where he died in 1997 at the age of 72.
In memory of the heroic deed of Soviet tankmen, an obelisk was erected near the village of Demeshkovo. One of the streets of Volgograd was named in honor of Alexei Sokolov, who died of wounds, in 1965. After all, the senior sergeant was a participant in the Battle of Stalingrad. In 1969, a memorial plaque in honor of Alexei Ivanovich was installed at the Barrikady plant, where he worked as a turner before the war. The name of senior sergeant Alexei Sokolov, forever enrolled in the lists of the military unit, bears the Lovetskaya secondary school, which is 7 kilometers from Demeshkovo. In 2009, the name of Alexei Sokolov was also given to the Lekarevskaya secondary school in the Asekeyevsky district of the Orenburg region.
Another dead crew member, Mikhail Nikolaevich Bezukladnikov, who died in battle on December 16, was buried in a mass grave near the village of Ust-Dolyssy. Alexander Mikhailovich Kavlyugin, who was burned alive in a tank, for obvious reasons has no grave. Unfortunately, the fate of the tank commander, Lieutenant Stepan Tkachenko, is unknown. After being wounded, he was taken to the hospital and then his tracks were lost.
More than 75 years have passed, but even now we do not cease to admire the courage of those Soviet soldiers, by modern standards, still very young people who fought for their land to the last, remained faithful to the oath and military duty.
Author: Ilya Polonsky