The novella “Battalions Request Fire” is about the heroism and courage of fighters and commanders who were the first to cross the right bank of the Dnieper and wage a difficult, unequal battle with the fascists there.
As defined by Yu. Bondarev, heroism is overcoming oneself. And the writer places his hero in the toughest, most tragic circumstances, testing—examining—his moral strength, his human significance in an extraordinarily complex conflict depicted through the extreme situations of war, when, with every second glance at the face of death, everything sharpens—everything concentrates in the human soul.