The history of the Great Patriotic War is currently overgrown with a mass of myths and legends. Sometimes it is possible to distinguish truth from fiction only by securing documentary evidence. The battle that took place on July 30, 1941 near the village of Legedzino, Talnovsky district (Republic of Ukraine), has no official confirmation. This battle was not included in the reports of the Sovinformburo, for a number of reasons it does not appear in the combat logs of Soviet units, information about this battle is not stored on the shelves of archives. It was an ordinary battle, one of many thousands that thundered daily in the smell of gunpowder and blood in July of 1941. Only scant eyewitness accounts of the last battle of a detachment of border guards and their unusual "tailed company" with the Nazi invaders, and a monument to people and dogs standing on the ancient Uman land, confirm that this event has no analogues in the history of the Second World War, it was all the same.
When a person tamed a dog is not known for certain, some scientists believe that this happened during the last ice age no earlier than 15 thousand years ago, others push this date back by another 100 thousand years. However, whenever this happened, a person immediately understood the benefits of cooperation with a furry toothy beast, appreciating his subtle scent, strength, endurance, loyalty and selfless devotion bordering on self-sacrifice. In addition to the use of tamed dogs in various spheres of human life, in particular for hunting, as watchmen and a vehicle, the ancient military leaders immediately appreciated their fighting qualities. It is not surprising that military history knows many examples when the skillful use of dogs trained for battle had a decisive impact on the outcome of a battle, or on the specific result of a military operation. The first more or less reliable mentions of war dogs that took part in the war date back to 1333 BC. The fresco depicting the army of the Egyptian pharaoh during his next campaign of conquest in Syria depicts large sharp-eared dogs attacking enemy troops. Fighting dogs served in many ancient armies, it is known that they were widely used by the Sumerians, Assyrians, warriors of ancient India. In the 5th century BC, the Persians, by decree of King Cambyses, began to breed special breeds of dogs intended exclusively for combat. Speaking shoulder to shoulder with the invincible phalanxes of Alexander the Great, battle dogs took part in his Asian campaign, served as four-legged soldiers in the Roman legions and in the armies of medieval states. As the years passed, weapons and means of protection were improved, the scale and tactics of warfare became different. The direct participation of dogs in battles practically disappeared, but the man's faithful friends continued to be in the ranks, performing tasks of guarding, escorting, searching for mines, and also worked as messengers, orderlies, scouts and saboteurs.
In Russia, the first mentions of the introduction of service dogs into the staffing table of military units date back to the 19th century. After the October Revolution, in 1919, the now undeservedly forgotten scientist cynologist Vsevolod Yazykov, made a proposal to the Labor and Defense Council to organize schools for service dog breeding in the Red Army. Soon the dogs were already serving in the Red Army, as well as in various power structures of the young Soviet state. A few years later, service dog breeding clubs and sections of amateur dog breeders at OSOAVIAKHIM were organized throughout the country, who did a lot to equip border, guard and other military units with service dogs. In the pre-war years, the cult of working people actively developed in the USSR, especially representatives of heroic professions, including soldiers and commanders of the Red Army - defenders of the socialist Fatherland. The most valiant and romantic was the service of the border guards, and the type of the border guard, of course, was incomplete without his shaggy four-legged assistant. Films were shot about them, books were published, and the images of the famous border guard Karatsyupa and the border dog Dzhulbars became practically household names. Historians of the liberal color for the last quarter of a century, zealously defaming the NKVD of the USSR and its then leader L. P. Beria, for some reason, they completely forget that border guards were part of this department. In archival documents and in the memoirs of front-line soldiers, the border troops of the NKVD of the USSR always appear as the most persistent and reliable units, for which there were no impossible tasks, because the best of the best were selected to serve in the border troops, and their combat, physical and moral-political training in those times was considered a reference.
At the beginning of the war, the "green buttonholes" were the first to take the blow of the German fascist aggressors. In the summer of 1941, the German military machine seemed invincible, Minsk fell, most of the Soviet Baltic was left, heroic Odessa fought surrounded, Kiev was under the threat of capture. On all fronts of the great war, including on the Southwestern Front, border guards carried out the service to protect the rear, performed the functions of commandant companies at headquarters, and were also used as ordinary infantry units directly on the front line. In July, south of Kiev, German tank wedges managed to break through our defenses and completely encircle the 130,000-strong group of Soviet troops in the Uman region, which consisted of units of the 6th and 12th armies of the Southwestern Front, commanded by Generals Ponedelin and Muzychenko. For a long time, almost nothing was known about the fate of the Red Army men and commanders who ended up in the Uman cauldron. Only thanks to the publication in 1985 of the book "The Green Brama", which belonged to the pen of the famous Soviet songwriter Yevgeny Dolmatovsky, who was a direct participant in those events, did the general public become aware of some of the details of the tragedy.
Zelyonaya Brama is a wooded and hilly massif located on the right bank of the Sinyukha River, near the villages of Podvysokoe in the Novoarkhangelsk district of the Kirovograd region and Legedzino of the Talnovsky district of the Cherkasy region. In July 1941, in the village of Legedzino, there were two headquarters at once: the 8th Infantry Corps of Lieutenant General Snegov and the 16th Panzer Division of Colonel Mindru. The headquarters covered three companies of the separate Kolomyia border commandant's office, which was commanded by Major Filippov and his deputy, Major Lopatin. The exact number of border guards guarding the headquarters is unknown, but absolutely all researchers dealing with this topic agree that there could not be more than 500 of them. The payroll of the separate Kolomyia border commandant's office at the beginning of 1941 numbered 497 people, on June 22, 454 people were in the ranks. But do not forget that the border guards have been participating in battles for almost a month and, naturally, suffered losses, so there could hardly be more personnel in this military unit than at the beginning of the war. Also, according to available information, on July 28, 1941, the border guards had only one serviceable artillery gun with a limited number of shells in service. Directly in Legedzino, the Border Commandant's Office was reinforced with the Lviv Dog Breeding School under the command of Captain Kozlov, which, in addition to 25 personnel, included about 150 service dogs. Despite the extremely poor conditions for keeping the animals, the lack of proper food and the offers of the command to release the dogs, Major Filippov did not do this. The border guards, as the most organized and efficient unit, were ordered to create a defensive line on the outskirts of the village and cover the retreat of headquarters and rear units.
On the night of July 29-30, fighters in green caps took their places in the indicated positions. On this sector of the front, the Soviet troops were opposed by the 11th Panzer Division of the Wehrmacht and the elite of the elite of the German troops - the SS division "Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler". One of the main blows the Nazis expected to inflict on Legedzino, directly at the headquarters of Major General Snegov. For this purpose, the German command formed the Hermann Goering battle group, which consisted of two SS Leibstandart battalions, reinforced with thirty tanks, a motorcycle battalion and an artillery regiment of the 11th Panzer Division. Early in the morning of July 30, German units launched an offensive. As the researcher of the Legedzin battle, A. I. Fuki, several attempts of the Germans to take the village outright, were repulsed. Having deployed in battle formations and having processed the leading edge of the Soviet troops with artillery, the SS men brought tanks into battle, followed by the infantry. At the same time, about 40 motorcyclists took a detour in order to round the positions of the border guards and crush their defenses with a blow from the rear.
Correctly assessing the situation, Major Filippov ordered the company of Senior Lieutenant Erofeev to turn all forces, including the only weapon against tanks. Soon in front of the trenches of the border guards, seven German "panzers" blazed with a fiery flame, the enemy infantry was pushed to the ground by the dense fire of the second and third companies that entered the battle, and the motorcyclists who tried to bypass their positions hit a minefield set up ahead of time, and, having lost half of the vehicles, immediately turned back. The battle lasted fourteen hours, again and again the German artillery struck at the positions of the border guards, and the enemy infantry and tanks continuously attacked. The Soviet soldiers ran out of ammunition, the ranks of the defenders were melting before our eyes. In the sector of the third company, the Germans managed to break through the defenses, and dense crowds of enemy infantry rushed into the gap. The Germans moved along a wheat field, which came close to the grove, where the guides with the service dogs were stationed. Each border guard had several shepherd dogs, hungry, not fed and not watered all day. The trained dogs during the entire battle did not give themselves away either by movement or by voice: they did not bark, did not howl, although everything around was trembling from artillery cannonade, shots and explosions. It seemed that in a moment the Germans would crush a handful of bleeding fighters, rush into the village. … At this critical moment of the battle, Major Filippov brought in his only reserve: he gave the order to release dogs on the attacking fascists! And the "tailed company" rushed into battle: 150 angry, trained to physically detain frontier shepherd dogs, like the devil out of a snuffbox, jumped out of the thickets of wheat and pounced on the dumbfounded Nazis. The dogs literally tore to pieces the Germans screaming in horror, and even being mortally wounded, the dogs continued to bite into the enemy's body. The battle scene changed instantly. Panic broke out in the ranks of the Nazis, the bitten people rushed to flee. The surviving soldiers of Major Filippov took advantage of this, and rose to the attack. Lacking ammunition, the border guards imposed hand-to-hand combat on the Germans, acted with knives, bayonets and butts, bringing even more confusion and confusion into the enemy's camp. The soldiers of "Leibstandart" were saved from complete defeat by the approaching tanks. The Germans jumped on the armor in horror, but the border guards and the dogs got them there too. However, dog teeth and soldier's bayonets are bad weapons against Krupp armor, tank guns and machine guns - people and dogs were powerless against machines. As local residents later said, all the border guards were killed in that battle, not one turned back, not one surrendered. Most of the dogs were also killed: the Nazis carried out a kind of cleansing, arranging a real hunt for them. The rural Serki and Bobiks also fell under the hot hand, the Germans killed them too. Several surviving shepherd dogs hid in the nearby copses, and, huddled in a flock, wandered for a long time not far from the place where their owners laid their heads. They did not return to the people, they ran wild and periodically attacked the neglected Germans, never touching the local residents. Nobody knows how they distinguished themselves from strangers. According to old-timers, throughout the war, rural boys, delighted with the feat of the border guards, proudly wore the green caps of the dead, to which the occupation administration and local policemen did not react in any way. Apparently the enemies also paid tribute to the courage and heroism of Soviet soldiers and their loyal four-legged friends.
On the outskirts of Legedzino, where the world's only hand-to-hand fighting of people and dogs with the Nazis took place, on May 9, 2003, a monument to border guards and their dogs built with public money was opened, the inscription on which reads: “Stop and bow. Here, in July 1941, the soldiers of the separate Kolomyi border commandant's office rose up in the last attack on the enemy. 500 border guards and 150 of their service dogs died a heroic death in that battle. They remained forever faithful to the oath, to their native land. In some publications devoted to the Legedzin battle, doubts are expressed about the effectiveness and the very possibility of such an attack, motivating this by the fact that dogs are powerless against an armed man and the Germans could simply shoot them from afar, not allowing them to approach them. Apparently, this opinion was formed by the authors due to not very good films about the war, because of which in our country for a long time there has been an opinion about the universal equipping of German soldiers with MP-40 submachine guns. In fact, the German infantryman, as in the Wehrmacht, and in the Waffen-SS, was armed with a conventional Mauser carbine, model 1898. No one has ever tried to fight off with a non-automatic weapon at once from several small rapidly attacking targets jumping out of dense vegetation a meter away from you? Believe me, this lesson is thankless and absolutely unsuccessful. This could be confirmed by the SS men from Leibstandart, torn to shreds in a wheat field near the village of Legedzino on the penultimate day of July 41, on the day of valor, glory and eternal memory of the border guards and brave soldiers of Major Filippov's “tailed company”.
