Hand-to-hand combat of people and dogs

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In the Cherkasy region, there is a unique monument to 150 border dogs who "tore" the Nazi regiment in hand-to-hand combat. This battle of people and dogs, the only one in the history of world wars and conflicts, took place in the very center of Ukraine many years ago, and it was like this …

It was the third month of the war, more precisely, it had just begun, when at the end of July events took place that first changed the course of the Great Patriotic War, or the entire course of the "Eastern Company", as the war was called at Hitler's headquarters. Few know that by his own order, Kiev was supposed to fall by August 3, and on the 8th, Hitler himself was going to come to the "victory parade" in the capital of Ukraine, and not alone, but with the leader of Italy Mussolini and the dictator of Slovakia Tissot.

It was not possible to take Kiev in the "forehead", and an order was received to bypass it from the south. … So the terrible word "Green Brahma" appeared in the people's rumor, an area not indicated on any maps of the great battles of the Great War.

Only in our days has information become public, and "Green Brama" turned out to be one of the most tragic events of the Great Patriotic War. In these places, two armies (6th and 12th) of the Southwestern Front were surrounded, which is about 140,000 soldiers. And 11 thousand soldiers and officers emerged from the encirclement.

In a separate battalion, created on the basis of the border commandant's office, there were service dogs. They bravely endured all the hardships of the military campaign. The battalion commander, Major Lopatin, despite the disgusting conditions of detention and the complete lack of proper nutrition, did not dismiss the dogs - although the higher command advised to do this. On July 30, near the village of Legedzino, the border battalion took its last battle.

The forces were too unequal: against half a thousand border guards, a regiment of fascists. And at a critical moment, when the Germans launched another attack, Major Lopatin gave the order to send border guards and service dogs into hand-to-hand combat with the Nazis. This was the last reserve.

The sight was terrible: 150 trained, hungry shepherd dogs rose up against automatic fire. Eyewitnesses claim that the shepherd dogs dug into the fascist throats, even when they were mortally wounded. The Germans retreated, but tanks came to their aid. The bitten Germans, covered with lacerated wounds, screaming in horror, jumped on the armor of tanks and shot the heroic dogs.

All 500 soldiers were killed in this battle, no one surrendered. The surviving dogs lay down near their master and did not let anyone near. Some of them were shot by the Germans, and some died of hunger in the field. In a panic, the invaders shot all the large dogs in the village of Legedzino - even those that were tied to their booths. Only one shepherd left the battlefield and was able to crawl to the village.

The Germans gathered their dead in the battle, and then allowed the villagers to bury the Soviet border guards. Their bodies were buried together with the faithful four-legged, and the secret of the burial was hidden for many years.

The researcher of this memorable battle, Alexander Fuka, claims that the memory of the heroism of the border guards and their shepherd dogs among the local population was so great that, despite the presence of German policemen, all the boys in the village proudly wore the green caps of the fallen soldiers.

And the local residents, who buried the heroes, hiding from the Nazis, snatched the photographs of the dead from the officers' certificates and Red Army books, because it was mortally dangerous to keep the documents themselves. But, subsequently, most of the names of the heroes could not be established from photographs. And the planned meeting between Hitler and Mussolini took place on August 18, but not in Kiev, but in the same place, near Legedzino.

Only in 1955, the residents of Legedzino were able to collect the remains of almost all 500 border guards and transfer them to the village school, near which the mass grave is located. And on the outskirts of the village, where the world's only hand-to-hand fighting of people and dogs with the Nazis took place, on May 9, 2003, the only monument in the world to a man with a gun and his faithful was erected on voluntary donations from veterans of the Great Patriotic War, border troops and dog handlers of Ukraine a friend - a dog. There is no such monument anywhere else.