Secrets of June 22: the forgotten heroes of the forgotten fights. Chapter XII

When the traitors, betrayers and simply foreign authors, carrying out someone's order, throw mud and belittle the feat of the 41st year, the normal person make cheekbones from rage. What can they know about heroism? Their destiny is to sit in the smoked closet near the keyboard splashed with sweaty hands and to stare in the dim monitor. Though actually there were the feats in 1941before which the well-known fight of three hundred Spartans or the outstanding act Gay- Mutsy Stsevola grew dim.

300 Spartans headed by the tsar Leonid, together with few allies, accepted battle against many thousands army of the Persian tsar Xerxes and completely were lost, but didn't recede. Gay Mutsy Stsevola had to, having made the way in camp of Etruscans who besieged Rome, to kill the tsar Porsenna, but was grabbed. He was threatened with cruel tortures, but Stsevola himself lowered the right hand in fire and didn't make a sound while the hand smouldered to show the courage of defenders of the city.

These feats entered into the world history as examples of great heroism. But here is the question: why the people of the former USSR were refused the right to have the heroes on the fields of information war? Why their graves in the countries of Baltic, Georgia and Western Ukraine are endlessly reburied and taken away from the human eyes? Because if to deprive the people of real heroes of the past, the people cease to be the people … And then in Ukraine Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevich appear instead of real heroes Pavel Rybalko and Sidor Kovpak, in Kazakhstan pull out from the deserved traitor Mustafa Shokay and in Baltic “forest brothers” become the heroes. So the people die and disappear.

But here is the real example of heroism:

The BT Soviet tank with hull No. 12 was found later, a quarter of the century after the war, in a dense forest near Vyazma. Hatches were battened down, the hole gaped in a board. When the machine was opened, the remains of the younger lieutenant-tankman were found on a place of the mechanic-driver. He had a revolver with one cartridge and a tablet, and the map, the photo of the girlfriend and unshipped letters in a tablet.

Here is the text of one of them:

October 25, 1941.

Hi, my Varya!
No, we won't meet with you.
Yesterday at noon we smashed one more Hitlerite column. The fascist shell punched the lateral armour and became torn inside. While I took away the machine in the wood, Vasily has died. My wound is cruel.
I buried Vasily Orlov in a birchwood. It was light in it. Vasily died, without having managed to tell me a word, passed nothing to the beautiful Zoya and the white-haired Mashenka similar to a dandelion in down.
So I left alone from three tankmen.
I drove in the wood. Night passed tormently, a lot of blood was lost. Now the pain, burning all breast, settled down for some reason and it is silent in soul.
It is very pity that we made not all. But we made everything that could. Our companions will drive the enemy who shouldn't go on our fields and the woods. I would never live the life so, if not you, Varya. You helped me always: on Khalkhin-Gol and here.
Probably, after all, who loves that is kinder to people. Thank you, my darling! The person grows old, and the sky forever young as your eyes in which only to look and to admire. They never will grow old, won't fade.
The time will pass, people will heal the wounds, will construct the new cities, will grow up new gardens. The other life will come, will sing other songs. But never forget the song about us, about three tankmen.
You will have the beautiful children, you will love.
And I am happy that I leave you with great love to you.
Your Ivan Kolosov

The junior lieutenant Ivan Sidorovich Kolosov was at war first months of war on this machine— the personnel tankman who has begun the fighting way still from Khalkhin-Gol.
The crew is the commander Ivan Kolosov, mechanic Pavel Rudov and the loader Vasily Orlov — as well as possible resembled the characters of a song popular in pre-war time about three tankmen:

Three tankmen, three cheerful friends — the crew of the fighting machine...

The fights with Hitlerites were cruel. The enemy paid for each kilometer of the Soviet earth in hundred corpses of the soldiers and officers, tens destroyed tanks, guns, machine guns. But the ranks of our fighters thawed too. At the beginning of October, 1941 on approaches to Vyazma our eight tanks stood at once. The tank of Ivan Kolosov received the damage. Pavel Rudov was lost, Kolosov was contused. But the enemy was stopped.

With approach of darkness it was succeeded to start the motor, and the tank with number 12 disappeared in the wood. We collected the shells from the putted out of action tanks, prepared for new fight. In the morning we got to know that the fascists, having rounded this sector of the front, nevertheless promoted to the east.
What to do? To be at war alone? Or to throw the putted out of action machine and to make the way to ours? The commander consulted with loader and decided to take of the tank everything that is possible and to be at war here, already in the back, up to the last shell, to a last straw of fuel.

On October 12 the tank with number 12 escaped from an ambush, unexpectedly flew on an enemy column at a full speed and swept it. That day it was destroyed about one hundred of Hitlerites.

Then we moved with fights to the east. On the road the tankmen attacked more than once the columns and transports of the enemy and once crushed “Opel captain” in which any fascist administration went.

October 24 came – the day of the last fight. Ivan Kolosov told to the bride about it. He had a habit regularly to write the letter to Varya Zhuravleva who lived in Ivanovka village, near Smolensk. Lived before the war...

In deaf and remote from settlements pine forest-heath in 25 years after the end of war came across the rusted tank covered by dense paws of a fir-tree and half gone to earth. Three dents on front armour, a fragmentary hole on one side, noticeable number 12. The hatch is battened densely down. When the tank was opened, saw the remains of the person at levers — it was Ivan Sidorovich Kolosov, with a revolver with one cartridge and a tablet in which there were the map, the photo of darling and some letters to her...

This story on pages of the Pravda newspaper was told by E.Maksimov on February 23, 1971. Varvara Petrovna Zhuravlyova was found and handed over her the letters written by Ivan Sidorovich Kolosov in October, 1941.

Certainly, mentioned personality at the very beginning of article right will start crying out that these tankmen were afraid of People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs. It is very possible that they will say that this example of great love for the country was composed. But the truth is stronger than lie all the same, even the well paid. You can sleep peacefully, the heroes...