—— From the Soviet Information Bureau... ——187We were into the second day. For a while it was quiet everywhere;
the firing had fallen silent on both sides. But we were sure that the
Germans would not abandon their attempt to break through to
Leningrad so easily. And in the meantime, taking advantage of the
lull, the handful of troops remaining from the company strove to
put their defences in order and got ready to repel enemy attacks.
Ammunition was brought up from the rear, new foxholes were
dug; these had been so effective in saving troops from the bombing
and shelling. Only a direct hit on a foxhole could bury a soldier
alive, but the chances of this were almost nil.
Three more times over these twentyfour hours, hordes of
Nazis charged our trenches, but each time they were forced to
retreat with heavy losses. Enraged by battle, our dirty, hungry and
wornout troops threw grenade after grenade after the retreating
Germans. Towards the end of the day the remnants of our
company, supported by their neighbours, were the first to break
through on the heels of the enemy into their trenches beyond the
railway embankment. Only one enemy firing point, situated on
a small hill, failed to fall into our hands. It sprayed the counter
attacking battalion with machinegun bullets. The advance on our
front threatened to come to a halt.
It was then that regimental commissar Colonel Tomlyonov
appeared in our trenches. He had recently joined the regiment
in place of our Ivan Ilyich Agashin, who had been recalled to the
HQ of the Leningrad Front border forces. We still did not know
Commissar Tomlyonov very well, but we liked the way he came
to the trenches before the battle and simply said: ‘Follow me,
lads! Communists forward!’ And he crawled across the wet grass,
drawing the rest after him.
It was not their second, but probably about their tenth wind that
our troops got up again for a counterattack. And it came off! We
occupied the enemy trenches. The machine gun which had been
hindering our advance was knocked out – someone contrived to
use his helmet to cover the slit of the gunport which was belching
out the torrent of lead. A grenade tossed straight after into the