—— From the Soviet Information Bureau... ——179‘Has he got through, taken cover or is he dead?’ we wondered,
concerned about the telephone operator, who had still not returned
to the command post.
‘He didn’t get through!’ said radio operator Sergei Aksyonov
for the umpteenth time. ‘There’s no contact!’ he said, continuing to
crank the handle of the hopelessly silent telephone set.
At this moment the earth began to tremble and shake again –
the Germans had launched a new bombardment on our trenches.
Under the cover of the artillery fire, right behind the exploding
shells, the Nazis had again appeared in the gully. Bawling some
thing as they went, they were approaching quickly, blazing away
with machine guns loaded with explosive bullets. The noise all
around was unimaginable, but the efforts of the Nazis made no
impact on the experienced, battlehardened Red Army troops –
I saw how quickly our soldiers took up their positions.
Amidst the dust of the advance and the frenzied rattling of
their machine guns, the Germans paid no attention to my shots
at their back and did not even notice the dugout itself – the
company command post was behind them, being situated in the
railway embankment. They charged forward, still with the hope
of overcoming the Russian trenches which had been inaccessible
to them. Our command post and the three of us – myself, medical
orderly Knyazev and radiooperator Aksyonov – thus ended up
not only cut off from the company, but without any contact with
the platoons. Ammunition was nearly gone; the cartridges in my
possession and a few grenades – that was all we had at our disposal.
‘Yes, our arsenal’s not exactly overstocked, lads! But never mind,
we’ll stick it out! I’m sure they’ll come to our rescue. And not just
us, but the company in general!’ I tried to cheer up my comrades,
and also reassure myself. ‘But we’ll still hold the command post!’
I was not wrong; battalion commander Arkhipov sent out all
the battalion snipers to help us and reinforced the company with
a platoon of machine gunners, who were under the command of
Sergeant Karpov, both a sniper and a competent machine gunner.
The battalion commander concentrated almost all the firepower