The Soviet military unit and tanks also approached them for help from the entrance to the village.

Torrential rain could not delay their constant advancement with the aim of surrounding the Snezhnitsa and taking the Germans off guard in this village. The early misty dawn helped the partisans accomplish their plans, as well as the troops defeat the fascists in this still-sounding sleepy village.

It was four in the morning. The guerrillas emerged from the wall of torrential rain and forest on its outskirts over the wet tall rain weeded in the rain in complete darkness.

They were led by the traitor Seraphim Kozhuba Timothy. He knew the best way to his village, as well as Fyodor Artyukhov.

At the head of the detachment was the commander of the partisan detachment Razhnov Victor and political instructor Vasyukov Fedor. Vsevolod Artyukhov with his son Pavel were among the attackers.

Dragged out incendiary boxes and shells. Vsevolod Artyukhov himself and his son Pavel carried equipment on their horses in the first horse-drawn teams of the partisans. Vasyukov Fyodor, political commissar of the detachment, was here with him on a nearby cart.

A huge army of forest avengers focused on the very edge of the forest in the torrential morning rain pouring from the sky.

- Spread out in rows! - commanded the detachment commander Victor Razhnov quietly along the ranks - We go to the gardens quietly without sound! Get grenades and incendiary bottles! And remember there are old people and children! Remember them and beat the enemy for them! - he pulled a revolver from his holster and raised it above his head and they went to the village of Snezhnitsa, dropping machine guns from their shoulders and rifles with machine guns in several rows, bending down slightly in the wet weeds from the rain.

The guerrillas semicircle covered Snezhnitsa from the right edge from edge to edge. Nearby, the Soviet army was literally approaching them right along the road to the entrance to the village. Soldiers were walking there, and the tanks, loaded to the very tower by the infantry, were rattling along tracks of tracks. They, also covered by torrential rain, swiftly attacked the village captured by the Germans. Only the left flank of the village was open. So it was planned in advance to shove the Germans just in the swampy forest swamp. Directly with their, if necessary, technique.

The release of the Snack from the Nazi invaders was imminent.

“This is ours, Varenka,” said Savely Semin, in a low voice, to his wife, in a low voice. “We are already among our own. He pointed to the partisans who stood in front of them. And they quickly, almost running on the wet grass, and on the damp ground, approached the armed people walking by a chain to the village. They slipped through their ranks, joining the guerrillas who besieged their native village from behind. Having pressed his children to her, Barbara with Pelageya and several partisans, was left far behind soon from the partisans who were advancing on Snizhnitsa. And her Savely with his group of scouts rushed with everyone, engaging in battle for his native village with Barbara. Standing in the pouring rain and covered with a tarpaulin camouflage military cape, they were witnesses of the morning battle for Snezhnitsa. Standing in the wet from a shower of water pouring from the heavens on the edge of a pine and birch forest.

***

The pimple turned right into the nearest alley and ran around the back gardens to get around some armed German posts and go to the commandant's office. He was the first to see the advance of the partisans. Pimple raised his hands, frightened by confusion, seeing a chain of armed men sneaking up from the forest in the still darkness of an early morning. He right there

rushed back, falling into the sodden road clay. From fright, he screamed like shreds - Russians! Russians are coming!

At that time, the first Russian tank appeared on the road to Sneznitsa, and its first shells fell on the village.That broke into the village with the first platoon of Soviet infantry in camouflage suits on the armor of the first thirty-four.

The T-134/85 rushed along the road to the first farmhouse, dropping Russian soldiers off of it, firing on caponiers with enemy armored vehicles.

His first projectiles from an 85-millimeter long-barreled cannon hit the ground outside the kitchen gardens and immediately covered their first victims. The BMP Lynx caught fire and one of the T-IV tanks. Shells hit the caponiers, hitting their targets exactly from above. New explosions began to be heard from hits from mortars installed by partisans on the right side of the village. Shotguns and cannons and shells hit the embankments with other German infantry armored vehicles standing under a tarp and masking nets. There was also the enemy's mototechnics, which flared up from hitting mines and partisan shells. Then the second T-134/85 tank with soldiers on its armor flew into the village and also fired at the enemy, setting fire to a couple more German tanks. There was a big bang. This detonation occurred almost simultaneously at the ammunition of both machines and pieces of iron flew from them in all directions.

Both the villagers themselves and the Germans themselves scrambled out of the houses. Who in what. With rifles and machine guns. They ran under the fire of explosions of mines and shells.

The Germans rushed to the cars, but neither here nor there. Dirt has done its job along with the rain. Not a single car and not a motorcycle survived yet escaped from a durable mud viscous trap.

The Germans tried to shove at least their motorcycles through muddy mud and in the rain, and the partisans and Soviet infantry burst into the village died under machine gun fire. Immediately, they were pushed aside into the left side of the Snezhnitsa in the dark, under shells and mines, retreating to the forest swamp.

From the house jumped himself Colonel Gunter Kogel. He jumped out together with the SS major tanker Siegfried Walter and his adjutant Yergen Waltraub. Both armed with their wallets, they fled, shouting at their panicked subordinates and trying to gather them together and regroup, but all in vain.

Kogel only succeeded in organizing several German soldiers around him and trying to counterattack the Russians in the village itself. He put on an iron infantry helmet on his head, and, running between the burning houses of the baths and barns, fired from the advancing Russian soldiers and partisans, also retreating to the overgrown high weeds swamp.

Here, Pryshch and Dryk himself soon appeared. Both of them were simultaneously here and next to Gunter Kogel. Dryka before the attack only, only entered in the dark, wet from a shower, like a frog in the village. And Pimple, winding up from the partisans, ran into them a little later in the interval of the first shells. Surrounded by German

the soldiers, together with Kogel, found themselves in high weeds and, bending down, ran, leaving everyone in the swamp itself. There where Dryk led them.

Kogel missed at the moment of the battle with his colleague Major SS Siegfried Walter. And under the pouring rain, in the light of the village houses burning with a bright flame, he rushed to his subordinate tankmen. Trying to somehow influence the course of fatal events for him, he tried to save at least something from his tank unit remaining in the village. As commander of a tank corps, reaching the tank. He, along with his tank crews, quickly climbed into his Tiger, buried in the loose, garden soil.

Siegfried Walter did not even notice that he was a victim of the environment and the most natural elements.

He started the tank, but could not get out of the mud trap. His “Tiger” drowned almost to the very tower in a caponier soaked with rain. All that remained was to turn around the armored turret of the tank and try to shoot back from his enemy who had attacked in the rain on an early morning.

This is his tank was buried in the garden Simka Pelagina and her mother. Siegfried Walter himself spent the night in the house of Kogel. And now he was shooting back from the Russians who had rained on this nightmarish for Fritz rainy night.From that of its firmly stuck in clay garden mud and covered with nettle and potato tops "Tiger". And Simka Pelagina and her mother

hid at this moment in the almost empty cellar of the basement of their poor old house. They quickly and frightened jumped there and sat ... Read more →