They say that one in the field is not a warrior. However, numerous facts of the actions of our soldiers during the Great Patriotic War demonstrate the opposite. One of those who refuted this expression was the commander of the machine-gun crew, Vyacheslav Ivanovich Chemodurov. In a fire fight with the enemy, which took place on October 12, 1943, near Propoisk, he alone managed to destroy 311 German soldiers.
In the fall of 1943, soldiers of the Soviet Army, which were part of the Central Front, later called the Belorussian Front, took up positions in the east of Belarus. The enemy was constantly replenishing the ranks and offering very tough resistance. Every village, every village had to be taken by force. The 858th Infantry Regiment under the command of Colonel Korobeinikov was occupied with the liberation of the city of Propoisk.
On a historic day for this story, October 12, the 858th regiment gradually asserted the positions of the Soviet Army on the western bank of the Sozh River, attacking the enemy stationed in the village of Rudnya. Rudnya was turned by the Germans into a real fortress with full-profile trenches, firing points, dugouts. Mines were laid on the tracks of the tanks, covered with a wire fence. The third rifle battalion, which entered the firing positions, was forced to retreat, pinned to the ground by fire from German machine guns. He returned to position after preparation. The 9th company, which included Chemodurov's machine-gun crew, managed to get to the enemy's trenches.
All this happened just one month after Chemodurov was able to destroy 15 Wehrmacht soldiers from a machine gun in a battle for the village of Berezovka, for which he received the Order of the Red Star. However, during the battle, he lost a partner and at the time of the described battle he was fighting alone.
The sergeant placed his machine gun on a high-rise. The enemy, who received help, tried to strike at the base of the wedge in order to then take the 9th company into the ring and destroy it. However, the enemy did not calculate that a Soviet machine gunner with his car would be on his way.
The Germans who went into the attack were met with machine-gun bursts of the Chemodurov machine gun. Soon, a real firestorm began in the direction of the 9th company, which, however, could not harm the Soviet soldiers who had taken refuge in the trenches. After completing the shelling of the positions of the Soviet Army, the Nazis rose and began a counterattack. The enemy was met with another barrage of machine-gun fire.
During the day of the battle, Chemodurov was able to fend off nineteen counterattacks. The machine gunner himself received two wounds. To evacuate the sergeant weakened from blood loss to the headquarters were able to evacuate only in the evening, when the shooting subsided. The calculation of losses showed that the damage inflicted on the enemy was 311 soldiers and officers.
This battle near the city of Propoisk entered the annals of the history of the war of 1941-1945. as a record for the number of destroyed enemy, and not for one machine gunner, but for the entire Soviet army.
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Vyacheslav Chemodurov survived. He was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. At the end of the war, he retrained as a tanker. Chemodurov lived to be 38 and died a natural death.
Anna Ponomareva