Vanka the Platoon Leader. In Defiance of Death

In war, not only people are mortal, but combat units as well. So it was with Lieutenant Krupennikov’s rifle platoon: more than once it died a brave death — only to rise from the dead again, like the Russian soldier. In the summer of 1941 the platoon was cut down near Minsk, and in winter — near Naro-Fominsk; it bled out near Maloyaroslavets and froze to death in the burning Moscow snows — but it always returned to the ranks. It retreated from the very border under the crushing blows of the Wehrmacht, hurled itself with grenades beneath the tracks of German tanks, went missing in action and broke out of encirclements — but it never ran even once. It was precisely thanks to such platoons and their unknown commanders, whom at the front they called simply “Vanka the platoon leader,” that the Wehrmacht approached Moscow with less than half of its personnel in combat units, almost without tanks, without reserves, without strength for the final dash — and was stopped 30 kilometers from the Kremlin. It was these “Ivans” (the German nickname for our infantry) and their “Vankas the platoon leaders” who foiled Hitler’s blitzkrieg and won the war — in defiance of every death.

A new novel by the author of the bestsellers “Penal Troops against Hitler’s Special Forces” and “Blocking Detachment”! The “trench truth” of the Great Patriotic War from the lips of a simple lieutenant. Men like him are reluctant to recall their feats, do not wear medals, do not publish memoirs — real front-line soldiers carry scars not only on the body but on the soul, and have something like an allergy to ink and paper. For the hardest thing in the service of “Vanka the platoon leader” is not even rising to attack under hurricane fire, but after the battle crossing out from the roster of his own platoon the names of the fallen and writing notices of death...