According to the official version, a private of the 2nd separate rifle battalion of the 91st separate Siberian rifle volunteer brigade, Alexander Matrosov, died on the day of the Red Army, February 23, 1943, in a battle near the village of Chernushki near Velikiye Luki, covering the embrasure of the enemy bunker with his body and thereby opening the way for your advancing unit.
Doubts about the official version began immediately, and during the years of perestroika they began to express themselves in the press. The questions are raised not by the fact of the feat, and not even by its supposed motivation, but by its traditional description. So to speak, the technique of its implementation.
Covering the machine gun with your body is useless
There is no doubt that many Soviet soldiers during the war years accepted death like Alexander Matrosov, deliberately sacrificing their lives for the success of the battle. Sailors was not the first in this row, and, moreover, not the last. The kamikaze syndrome, which at the end of the war was most exploited by the Japanese military, manifests itself, albeit to varying degrees, in all armies of the world. And the Red Army, in which education in the spirit of contempt for death was brought to the highest degree of exaltation, was, of course, no exception. Even if Matrosov was shot on the way to the bunker, the very attack on the enemy's unsuppressed firing point is already a heroic act. This is not at all about this.
All experts writing about this case (and similar ones) agree on one thing. Even if it is possible to get close to the embrasure of the bunker, using the "dead space" in front of it, and rush directly to the embrasure because of the unevenness of the ground, the machine gun fire will throw the body away in a matter of seconds. The rate of fire of the German MG-34 machine gun is 1200 rounds per minute (20 per second). It is clear that it is impossible in principle to neutralize such a fire with any human body (especially a fragile youth). And this does not depend at all on whether the hero deliberately rushed to the embrasure or was shot before that and already unintentionally fell on it, being dead. The result will be the same - useless for the advancing unit.
What Sailors neutralized
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First you need to understand what a bunker is and how it works. The bunker is a wooden-earthen firing point. A field fortification, built by the hands of the soldiers themselves, without the use of any machine construction equipment, from scrap materials. This is how it differs from a pillbox - a long-term firing point - built using concrete blocks.
The bunker room, drowned in the ground, is strengthened with logs and sprinkled on top with a dense layer of earth. In front of the weapon there is a free space for firing. The earthen embankment above the bunker rises above the ground level no more than a meter. The bunker is thus a fortified position in a rifle trench. The bunker is usually connected by communication trenches with other bunkers and trenches.
Bunkers on the ground are positioned so that they together block the adjacent terrain with their fire. A single bunker is usually not able to do this because of the unevenness of the soil that is always and everywhere present. The bunker is guaranteed to be destroyed by the hit of a medium-caliber artillery shell, while the bunker is specially arranged in order to withstand artillery shelling.
Since the bunker is, in fact, a dugout with embrasures, then, as such, it has not only an entrance / exit (in the direction opposite to that from which the enemy is expected), but also ventilation holes. The latter are especially necessary during intensive firing from a machine gun, since powder gases can poison a closed room and everyone who is in it.
Demolitions against bunkers
Now about what happened on the day when Alexander Matrosov died, based on combat reports. The 91st Siberian Brigade went on the offensive on orders. In the sector of the 2nd battalion, a system of three bunkers, not previously discovered by reconnaissance, was found. The battalion lay in the snow under their fire. What to do next? If you ask for artillery support, it means disrupting the attack of the entire unit. Responsibility for this will lie with the battalion commander. And people in the Red Army are not accustomed to pity.
The battalion commander decided to send grenade throwers to destroy the bunkers. History is silent about whether they were volunteers, or they went on orders. Be that as it may, most of them worked well. Senior sergeant Sharipov stealthily crept up to one bunker and shot the Germans from a machine gun through the ventilation hole. Private Galimov managed to shoot the second bunker with an anti-tank rifle. Private Ogurtsov and Matrosov got the most distant and complex object. On the approaches to him Ogurtsov was seriously wounded. Then Matrosov undertook to complete the task alone.
Survivor Ogurtsov watched the actions of his partner. He, crawling to the bunker, tried to throw an anti-tank grenade into the ventilation hole. But this requires exceptional accuracy of the throw, which does not happen in exercises, and not what is under enemy fire. The throw did not reach the goal. But the explosion of a grenade stunned the German rifleman for a few seconds, and the battalion rose to attack. And then the enemy machine gun spoke again. Then Matrosov accomplished his feat.
Killed while trying to destroy the enemy
How exactly did it - there are different versions on this score. The most likely one is that he tried to get close to the air vent, but was shot. His body closed an outlet for the Germans, and they had to go outside and pull the corpse of Matrosov from the hole so as not to suffocate during the shooting. It probably took at least a minute. At this time, the bunker was neutralized, which allowed the battalion to rise to the attack and capture the bunker.
There can hardly be doubts that Matrosov acted rationally - much more rationally than the numerous “singers of death” who still extol blind self-sacrifice in this act, and not cold calculation, which is the highest quality of a fighter - calculation. He was going to destroy the Germans in the bunker through an outlet. But, unlike Sharipov, he was not lucky - he was shot himself. Affected by the fact that at the front Matrosov was only the third day.
And there can hardly be any doubts that Alexander Matrosov is a hero. Like millions of other soldiers of the Red Army. The only thing that leaves a feeling of injustice in this story is that the exploits of Matrosov's colleagues - Sharipov and Galimov - who did the same thing, but more skillfully and therefore survived, as well as the seriously wounded Ogurtsov, who went on the same job - were not properly noted …
And yes, it has long been established that Matrosov died not on the day of the Red Army, but on February 27, 1943. However, this does not diminish the feat.
Yaroslav Butakov