Dear friends, welcome to the channel the Eastern Front.
Today we will dive into the memories of the legendary sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko and
talk about the defense of Sevastopol from the Germans invaders.
We will learn about how difficult it was to restrain the onslaught of the enemy during
the first assault on Sevastopol.
At the beginning of December 1941, the Germans behaved rather carelessly on the front lines.
They walked in their positions to their full height.
Probably, they thought that the Russians did not have snipers and, therefore, the neutral
zone 150-200 meters wide is an insurmountable obstacle for well-aimed bullets.
We stopped this almost immediately, killing twelve people within two days: 10 soldiers
and 2 officers.
The answer was a crazy mortar attack.
The Nazis fired an hour or two, from light 50mm mortars, which they had in each infantry
platoon.
From one "fox hole" we immediately moved to another, equipped in the forest, and from
there we watched as mines burst at our former shelter among the trees, flaring up in small
orange balls and scattering dozens of small fragments around.
I called this enemy action "a concert of German classical music."
But it happened that I went to the enemy rear alone.
This could be done only in one and very small section of the no-man's land, where the forest
turned into an impenetrable thicket.
The old huntsman showed me a barely noticeable path there, closed by tall bushes of wild
rose and hornbeam.
The trail led to a dirt road that ran about half a kilometer from the front line of the
Germans.
As it turned out later, the soldiers of the 132nd Infantry Division of the Wehrmacht were
very fond of this road.
It is connected to the command posts of two regiments.
I chose the position for shooting around the bend of the road, the sides of which were
overgrown with rose hips.
I made a shallow trench under the bushes, laid out the parapet of stones, covered it
with turf.
The ground here was loose, so the work did not take much time.
In addition, I applied a technique known from the time I studied at the Sniper School: I
buried a flask half filled with water, and inserted a rubber tube into its neck with
one end, and put the other end to my ear.
After all, the sounds of steps, movement of equipment, trenching works are well transmitted
through the ground.
To recognize such sounds, more precisely, an shooter should, forget about everything
around him and concentrate his attention to the highest degree, which requires a lot of
energy.
It is necessary to dissolve in its space, to become silent, motionless, as if a tree-like
creature.
For me, a native city inhabitant, it was not easy to achieve such a state.
It took a frenzied effort of will...
I heard the noise of a motorcycle engine through the tube long before the motorcyclist himself
appeared on the road, took out a "heavy" bullet from the inner pocket of the quilted jacket
and put it into the rifle.
A soldier in a black leather jacket stopped by a rose hip bush to feast on its crimson
fruits.
Rose hips are generally best harvested in late autumn, dried and consumed in the form
of tea.
Perhaps german soldier did not know about this.
He got carried away, picking the frozen berries in his palm and trying to bite through them.
The shot sounded loud in the silence of the early and cold winter morning, but the road
at that moment was empty, and nothing threatened me.
I quickly pulled his documents out of my jacket, removed from the shoulder of the dead man
a field bag, puffy with papers, which was hanging on a long belt.
I also got a MP-40 submachine gun and two magazines with bullets.
No other things, except for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, were found with the motorcyclist.
His motorcycle, was parked by the side of the road.
Enemy equipment must be disabled.
I had to shoot the engine.
I didn’t dare to shoot at the tank, because the fire would have drawn the enemy’s attention
to the road, and I still had to get out of here somehow.
Hitting the target is only half the battle for a lone sniper.
The second half, no less important, is to safely return to the positions of your military
unit.
However, the calm did not last long.
The plans of the commander of the 11th Army of the Wehrmacht, Colonel-General Erich von
Manstein, was to meet the new year, 1942, in Sevastopol.
But these plans were not destined to come true.
The invaders were completing preparations for the second assault on Sevastopol.
By the way, on my channel I have a video about an accident that occurred during the defense
of Sevastopol.
Where the mortar crew shot down the German plane.
Link will be in the right corner of the screen.
Behind the ridges of the Mekenziev mountains, overgrown with forests, three German infantry
divisions were lined up in battle formations: the 22nd, 24th and 132nd.
They were preparing to strike at the joint between the third and fourth sectors of the
Sevastopol defense, that is in order to break through to the northern side of the largest
bay of the Main Naval Base of the Black Sea Fleet.
If the fascists come to its shores, then the city, completely surrounded by land, will
no longer be able to resist.
The supply by sea - and this route was now the only one - of marching replenishment,
ammunition, weapons, food would then cease.
Hurricane artillery and mortar fire on the positions of the defenders of the city of
germans opened at 6 a.m. 10 minutes on 17 December, 1941.
The whistle of shells and mines deafened and seemed intolerable.
We, hiding in our deep earthen shelters, awaited the end of shelling.
The artillery attack lasted about twenty minutes.
Then the enemy infantry went on the offensive along the entire front.
Junkers and Heinkels appeared in the sky.
They bombed not only the city, but also the forward line of the Soviet troops.
For two days a cannonade thundered on the Mekenziev mountains.
The fascists did not succeed to achieve a decisive advantage over the defenders of Sevastopol.
The Russians threw themselves into counterattacks and recaptured their firing lines occupied
by the Germans.
There was silence in the first battalion's sector on the morning of 19 December.
But suddenly the enemy began intensive shelling from large-caliber cannons and mortars.
This is a familiar thing, and we hid in our dugouts.
Then in 15 minutes appeared German equipment.
A self-propelled StuG III with a short, as if chopped off cannon, and an armored vehicle,
which continuously fired from a machine gun mounted behind an armored shield on the roof
of the cockpit.
Immediately behind the combat vehicles were about two battalions of riflemen and submachine
gunners.
Our anti-tank battery took aim at the self-propelled gun.
The infantry was to deal with the wheeled-tracked armored personnel carrier.
According to the plan of the battalion commander Dromin, during the general offensive of the
Germans on the positions of the first battalion, the sniper platoon fighters should have been
close to the machine gunners and together with them repulse enemy attacks, working on
officers and non-commissioned officers.
We successfully used the following tactics, firing not at the first line, but at the second,
and at the same time pointed to the enemies in the stomach.
A bullet in this part of the body is a fatal wound, but death does not occur immediately.
After firing several shots, we saw that the fascists, writhing in pain, falling to the
ground with screams and groans, were asking for help.
The soldiers of the first line began to look around and stop.
This caused confusion in the third line of soldiers as well.
I was allowed to occupy a pre-prepared hidden trench in the neutral zone in order to ambush
the attacking flank, suppress machine-gun nests and mortar crews.
At the moment, the machine-gun nest itself was approaching me at a speed of about 25
km per hour.
Squat and not very large in size, the armored vehicle, painted with brown and green spots,
turned its left side, continuously bombarding with bullets the space in front of the trenches
of the first battalion.
On her side I could clearly see a black and white cross and a side number "323", which
meant: 3rd armored personnel carrier of the 2nd platoon of the 3rd company.
The distance was shrinking.
The car drove up to the landmark - the low-cut trunk of a young elm tree.
I looked through the eyepiece of the PE telescopic sight on my rifle.
It was necessary to solve the ballistics task within a minute.
Firstly, the armored personnel carrier had rather high sides, and therefore, the heads
of the machine gunners, who so fearlessly worked at the "MG-34", were above the ground
at a distance of more than two meters.
My trench, deeply buried in the ground, had a parapet 20 centimeters high, and the "sniper"
lay on it.
There was a thirty-five degree angle between the line of sight and the horizon of the weapon,
called the "target elevation angle," and it was now positive.
Therefore, the sight must be set with a decrease.
Secondly, the armored vehicle was moving.
This meant that it was necessary to anticipate it, the barrel of the rifle must be moved
in the direction of movement of the target and in front of it, according to its speed.
It is easy to calculate the "lead" at a distance of 200 meters.
A bullet from the rifle will reach her in 0.25 seconds.
During this time, the German armored car will pass four meters.
I turned the side drum on the metal tube of the sight a few notches, then gently pressed
the trigger.
The rifle as usual pushed the butt against the shoulder.
Then the shooting from the machine gun on the roof of the armored vehicle ended.
The non-commissioned officer - the commander of the crew of the armored car - acted very
stupidly.
Surprised, he climbed from the cockpit into the back to see why the machine gun had gone
silent.
After all, the enemy fired only from the front, and the front of the car was protected by
armor plates about one and a half centimeters thick.
He did not have time to think about the sniper: my bullet pierced his temple.
But those who closely watched this attack from the command post of the German reconnaissance
battalion, of course, guessed.
Literally a minute later, German 81 mm mortars hit the groove where I was.
I had a spare, deeper and well-equipped shelter here.
Rolling over my left side three times, I almost got to him.
However, not a mine, but a heavy projectile suddenly tore the air, lifted up clods of
earth, branches, fragments of trees, fallen leaves.
As if a hot paw of a huge beast pushed me into my right shoulder, a sharp pain pierced
my right shoulder - and then darkness fell.
The bare branches of the trees, crippled by the shelling, turned black against the gray
winter sky.
Lieutenant Alexei Kitsenko was leaning towards me, dressed in an overcoat, in a helmet slightly
shifted to the back of his head, with a submachine gun thrown over his shoulder.
He was saying something, and I heard his words:
- Lucy, don't die!
.. Lucy, I beg you!
Lucy, please!
.. How the commander of the second company managed
to find me in this forest, I simply cannot imagine.
Soldiers followed him.
They took apart the pieces of the tree.
Alexei lifted me in his arms and carried me out of the grove to the trenches.
Dear friends, that's all for today.
It was one of the many cases when the life of Lyudmila Pavlichenko was in danger.
On my channel I also have a video about her unusual and crazy hunting on the old cemetry
near Odessa.
The link will be in the right corner of the screen.
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And see you on the channel the End of the War.