Soldier's tales are an invariable attribute of Russian folklore. It so happened that our army fought, as a rule, not "thanks", but "in spite of". Some frontline stories make us open our mouths, others scream "come on !?", but all of them, without exception, make us proud of our soldiers. Miraculous rescues, ingenuity and just luck are on our list.
With an ax to a tank
If the expression "field kitchen" only causes you to increase your appetite, then you are not familiar with the story of the Red Army soldier Ivan Sereda.
In August 1941, his unit was stationed near Daugavpils, and Ivan himself was preparing dinner for the soldiers. Hearing the characteristic clang of metal, he looked into the nearest grove and saw a German tank riding towards him. At that moment he had only an unloaded rifle and an ax with him, but the Russian soldiers are also strong in their ingenuity. Hiding behind a tree, Sereda waited for the tank with the Germans to notice the kitchen and stop, and so it happened.
The Wehrmacht soldiers climbed out of the formidable car, and at that moment the Soviet cook jumped out of his hiding place, brandishing an ax and a rifle. The frightened Germans jumped back into the tank, expecting, at least, the attack of the whole company, and Ivan did not dissuade them of this. He jumped on the car and began to hit the roof with the butt of an ax, when the taken aback Germans came to their senses and began to shoot at him with a machine gun, he simply bent his muzzle with several blows of the same ax. Feeling that the psychological advantage was on his side, Sereda began to shout orders to the non-existent reinforcements of the Red Army. This was the last straw: a minute later, the enemies surrendered and, at gunpoint, set off towards the Soviet soldiers.
Woke up the Russian bear
KV-1 tanks - the pride of the Soviet army in the first stages of the war - had the unpleasant property of stalling on arable land and other soft soils. One such KV was not lucky to get stuck during the retreat of 1941, and the crew, loyal to their work, did not dare to abandon the car.
An hour passed, and German tanks approached. Their guns could only scratch the armor of the "asleep" giant, and having unsuccessfully shot all the ammunition at him, the Germans decided to tow the "Klim Voroshilov" to their unit. The cables were fixed, and two Pz IIIs moved the KV with great difficulty.
The Soviet crew was not going to surrender, when suddenly the engine of the tank started grunting with displeasure. Without thinking twice, the towed vehicle itself became a tractor and easily pulled two German tanks towards the positions of the Red Army. The perplexed crew of the Panzerwaffe was forced to flee, but the vehicles themselves were successfully delivered by the KV-1 to the front line.
Correct bees
The battles near Smolensk at the beginning of the war claimed thousands of lives. But more surprising is the story of one of the soldiers about the "buzzing defenders".
Constant air raids on the city forced the Red Army to change its positions and retreat several times a day. One exhausted platoon found itself not far from the village. There, the battered soldiers were greeted with honey, since the apiaries had not yet been destroyed by air strikes.
Several hours passed, and enemy infantry entered the village. The enemy forces outnumbered the Red Army several times, and the latter retreated towards the forest. But they could no longer escape, there was no strength, and the harsh German speech was heard very close. Then one of the soldiers began to turn the hives over. Soon a whole buzzing ball of angry bees circled over the field, and as soon as the Germans got closer to them, a giant swarm found its prey. The enemy infantry screamed and rolled across the meadow, but could do nothing. So the bees reliably covered the retreat of the Russian platoon.
From the other world
At the beginning of the war, the fighter and bomber regiments were disunited and often the latter flew out on missions without air protection. So it was on the Leningrad front, where the legendary man Vladimir Murzaev served. During one of these deadly missions, a dozen Messerschmites landed on the tail of a group of Soviet IL-2s. It was a disastrous business: the wonderful IL was good for everyone, but it did not differ in speed, therefore, having lost a couple of aircraft, the flight commander ordered to leave the vehicles.
Murzaev jumped one of the last, already in the air he felt a blow to the head and lost consciousness, and when he woke up, he took the surrounding snowy landscape for paradise gardens. But he had to lose faith very quickly: in paradise there are certainly no burning fragments of fuselages. It turned out that he was only a kilometer from his airfield. Having limped to the officer's dugout, Vladimir reported on his return and threw a parachute onto the bench. The pale and frightened fellow soldiers looked at him: the parachute was sealed! It turns out that Murzaev was hit on the head with a part of the plane's skin, but did not open the parachute. The fall from 3500 meters was softened by snowdrifts and true soldier's luck.
Imperial cannons
In the winter of 1941, all the forces of the Red Army were thrown into the defense of Moscow from the enemy. There were no extra reserves at all. And they were required. For example, the sixteenth army, which was bled with losses in the Solnechnogorsk region.
This army was not yet led by a marshal, but already a desperate commander, Konstantin Rokossovsky. Feeling that the defense of Solnechnogorsk would fall without a dozen more guns, he turned to Zhukov with a request for help. Zhukov refused - all forces were involved. Then the indefatigable Lieutenant General Rokossovsky sent a request to Stalin himself. The expected, but no less sad, response followed immediately - there is no reserve. True, Iosif Vissarionovich mentioned that perhaps there are several dozen cannons preserved, which took part in the Russian-Turkish war. These guns were museum pieces assigned to the Dzerzhinsky Military Artillery Academy.
After several days of searching, an employee of this academy was found. An old professor, practically the same age as these guns, spoke about the place of conservation of howitzers in the Moscow region. Thus, the front received several dozen old cannons, which played an important role in the defense of the capital.
