The battle near the Ukrainian village of Legedzino showed the full strength of the spirit of the Soviet soldier
In the history of the Great Patriotic War there were a lot of battles and battles, which for one reason or another, as they say, remained "behind the scenes" of the Great War. And although military historians did not disregard practically not a single battle, but even a local clash, nevertheless, a number of battles of the initial period of the Great Patriotic War have been studied very poorly, and this topic is still waiting for its researcher.
German sources mention such battles very sparingly, but from the Soviet side there is no one to mention them, since in the vast majority of cases there are simply no living witnesses left. However, the history of one of these "forgotten" battles that took place on July 30, 1941 near the Ukrainian village of Legedzino, fortunately, has reached our days, and the feat of Soviet soldiers will never be forgotten.
Generally speaking, it is not entirely correct to call what happened at Legedzino a battle: rather, it was an ordinary battle, one of the thousands that took place every day in July 1941, tragic for our country, if not for one "but". The battle at Legedzino has no analogues in the history of wars. Even by the standards of the terrible and tragic 1941, this battle went beyond all conceivable limits and clearly showed the Germans what kind of enemy they faced in the person of the Russian soldier. To be more precise, in that battle the Germans were opposed not even by units of the Red Army, but by the border troops of the NKVD - the very ones that only the lazy had not defamed over the past quarter of a century.
At the same time, many historians of a liberal color do not want to see the obvious facts point-blank: the border guards not only were the first to take the blow of the aggressor, but in the summer of 1941 they performed completely unusual functions, fighting the Wehrmacht. Moreover, they fought valiantly and sometimes no worse than the regular units of the Red Army. Nevertheless, they were en masse recorded as executioners and called "Stalin's guardsmen" - only on the grounds that they belonged to the department of L. P. Beria.
After the tragic battles for the 6th and 12th armies of the Southwestern Front near Uman, which resulted in another "cauldron", the remnants of the encircled 20 divisions tried to break through to the east. Some have succeeded, some have not. But this does not mean at all that the surrounded units of the Red Army were "whipping boys" for the Germans. And although liberal historians paint the picture of the summer offensive of the Wehrmacht as a continuous "drape" of the Red Army, millions of prisoners and bread and salt for Hitler's "liberators" in Ukraine, this is not true.
One of these historians, Mark Solonin, generally presented the confrontation between the Wehrmacht and the Red Army as a battle between the colonialists and the natives. Say, against the background of the French campaign, where Hitler's troops suffered, in his opinion, tangible losses, in the summer of 1941 there was not a war in the USSR, but almost a pleasure walk: “The ratio of losses of 1 to 12 is possible only in the case when white colonialists, who sailed to Africa with cannons and rifles, attack the aborigines defending themselves with spears and hoes "(M. Solonin." June 23: Day M "). This is the description Solonin gave to our grandfathers, who won the most terrible war in the history of mankind, comparing them with the aborigines armed with hoes.
One can argue about the ratio of losses for a long time, but everyone knows how the Germans counted their killed soldiers. They still have dozens of divisions "missing", especially those that were destroyed in the 1944 summer offensive. But let's leave such calculations on the conscience of liberal historians and better turn to the facts, which, as you know, are stubborn things. And at the same time, let's see how the Nazis' easy walk”through the land of Ukraine at the end of July 1941 actually looked like.
On July 30, near the Ukrainian village of Legedzino, an attempt was made to stop the advancing Wehrmacht units by the combined battalion of the border troops of the separate Kolomyia commandant's office under the command of Major Rodion Filippov with a company from the Lvov school of border dog breeding attached to him. Major Filippov had less than 500 border guards and about 150 service dogs at his disposal. The battalion did not have heavy weapons, and in general, by definition, it simply should not have fought in an open field with a regular army, especially superior in number and quality. But this was the last reserve, and Major Filippov had no choice but to send his soldiers and dogs into a suicidal attack. Moreover, in a fierce battle, which grew into hand-to-hand combat, the border guards managed to stop the opposing Wehrmacht infantry regiment. Many German soldiers were torn to pieces by dogs, many died in hand-to-hand combat, and only the appearance of German tanks on the battlefield saved the regiment from a shameful flight. Of course, the border guards were powerless against tanks.
Monument to Heroes Border Guards and Service Dogs
No one from Filippov's battalion survived. All five hundred soldiers died, as did 150 dogs. Rather, only one of the dogs survived: the residents of Legedzino left the wounded shepherd dog, even though after the occupation of the village the Germans shot all the dogs, including even those sitting on a chain. Apparently, they got hard in that battle if they took out their anger on innocent animals.
The occupation authorities did not allow burying the killed border guards, and only by 1955 the remains of all the dead soldiers of Major Filippov were found and buried in a mass grave near the village school. 48 years later, in 2003, with the help of voluntary donations from Ukrainian veterans of the Great Patriotic War and with the help of Ukrainian dog handlers, a monument to the hero border guards and their four-legged pets was opened on the outskirts of the village of Legedzino, who honestly and to the end, at the cost of their own lives, fulfilled their military duty …
Unfortunately, in the bloody whirlwind of the summer of 1941, it was not possible to establish the names of all the border guards. Failed after. Many of them were buried unknown, and out of 500 people it was possible to establish the names of only two heroes. Half a thousand border guards deliberately went to their death, knowing for sure that their attack against a well-equipped cadre regiment of the Wehrmacht would be suicidal. But we must pay tribute to Major Filippov: before his death, he managed to see how Hitler's warriors, who conquered all of Europe, were torn apart and chased, like hares, shepherd dogs and destroyed in hand-to-hand combat by border guards. It was worth living and dying for this moment …
Liberal historians, actively rewriting the history of the Great War, have been trying for many years to tell us chilling tales about the bloody "exploits" of the NKVD. But at the same time, at least one of these "historians" remembered the feat of Major Filippov, who forever went down in the history of world wars as a man who stopped a Wehrmacht infantry regiment with the forces of only one battalion and service dogs!
Why did the now revered Alexander Solzhenitsyn, after whom the streets in Russian cities are named, did not mention Major Filippov in his multivolume works? For some reason, Alexander Isaevich liked not to remember the heroes more, but to describe the post-apocalyptic frozen barracks in Kolyma, which, according to him, “for sugrev,” heaped the corpses of unfortunate prisoners. It was for this cheap trash in the spirit of a low-budget Hollywood horror movie that a street in the center of Moscow was named after him. His name, and not the name of Major Filippov, who performed an unparalleled feat!
Spartan king Leonidas and his 300 fighters immortalized their name for centuries. Major Filippov, in the conditions of total retreat chaos, having 500 tired soldiers and 150 hungry dogs, went into immortality, not hoping for rewards and not hoping for anything at all. He just launched a suicidal attack on machine guns with dogs and three-rulers and … won! At a terrible price, but he won those hours or days, which later allowed him to defend Moscow, and the whole country. So why doesn't anyone write about him or make films about him ?! Where are the great historians of our time? Why didn't Svanidze and Mlechin say a word about the fight at Legedzino, why didn't Pivovarov take off the next journalistic investigation? An episode unworthy of their attention?..
It seems to us that they won't pay well for the hero-Major Filippov, so no one needs him. It is much more interesting to savor, for example, the Rzhev tragedy, kicking Stalin and Zhukov, and it is banal to ignore Major Filippov, and dozens of similar heroes. As if all of them had never existed …
But yes, God be with them, with liberal historians. It would be much more interesting to imagine the morale of the conquerors of Europe, who yesterday cheerfully marched across Paris, and under Legedzino sadly looked at the torn trousers on their butts and buried their comrades, whose victorious march ended in Ukraine. The Fuehrer promised them Russia - a colossus with feet of clay, poke and fall apart; and what did they get in the second month of the war?
But the Russians have not yet begun to fight, traditionally harnessing for a long time. Ahead were thousands of kilometers of territory, where every bush shoots; still ahead were Stalingrad and the Kursk Bulge, as well as the people, which cannot be defeated simply by definition. And all this could be understood already in Ukraine, when faced with the soldiers of Major Filippov. The Germans did not pay attention to this battle, considering it a completely insignificant clash, but in vain. For which many later paid.
Had Hitler's generals been a little smarter, like their Fuehrer, they would have been looking for ways out of the adventure with the Eastern Front in the summer of 1941. It is possible to enter Russia, but few people managed to get back on their own two feet, which was once again very clearly proved by Major Filippov and his fighters. It was then, in July 1941, long before Stalingrad and the Kursk Bulge, that the prospects of the Wehrmacht became hopeless.
Historians like Mark Solonin can speculate about the ratio of losses as long as they want, but the fact remains: after a successful summer offensive that ended on December 5 near Moscow with a knockout counterstrike of the Red Army, the Wehrmacht fled back. He ran so fast that Hitler was forced to revive his dragging army with detachments. And it could not be otherwise: after all, it would be naive to believe that it would be possible to defeat such people as Major Filippov and his soldiers. To kill - yes, but not to win. Therefore, the war ended with what it was supposed to end - the victorious May 1945. And the beginning of the Great Victory was laid in the summer of 1941, when Major Filippov, his border guards and dogs went into immortality …
