The story of the shooting oak

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

In the Great Patriotic War, 3286 people were mobilized from the village of Rashevatskaya. Almost half of them did not return from the battlefields. There were three generals among the front-line raskhevatsev: Fyodor Evseevich Lunev, Semyon Ivanovich Potapov and Pyotr Ivanovich Kozyrev; nine colonels. In general, by the end of the war, 583 residents of the village had become officers.

Almost none of them was left without a military award. But many performed outstanding feats, although they did not receive well-deserved military awards.

Here is one of the episodes of the first days of the Great Patriotic War.

The years of the Great Patriotic War have forever gone down in history as the time of outstanding heroism of the soldiers of the Soviet army who defended their homeland from the Nazi invaders. At the same time, some cases, manifestations of the resilience of the soldiers of the Red Army, look completely incredible, but, nevertheless, they actually happened.

Despite significant losses in the early days of the war, the Red Army soldiers committed many heroic deeds, which became known many years later. These include the feat of the Cossack Grigory Kozhevnikov from the village of Rashevatskaya, Stavropol Territory.

One of these episodes was the story of the "shooting oak". The firing point The defense of the Brest Fortress has forever entered the history books. At the same time, on the territory of Belarus, there were many other places where the soldiers of the Red Army showed miracles of heroism, restraining the rapid advance of the enemy.

One of them was the feat of a hereditary Cossack, Grigory Kozhevnikov, who was drafted into the ranks of the Soviet army from the Stavropol Territory in 1940. Like other units of the Belorussian Front, which found themselves on the front line of defense, Kozhevnikov's company retreated under the blows of significantly superior German forces.

Imperceptibly, a fierce battle approached the edge of a forest located near the town of Pruzhany, Brest region. The company commander made a decision to stop the advance of the Germans at all costs until the arrival of reinforcements. The company was supposed to dig in at the edge of the forest and, using the natural relief, prevent the Germans from advancing deeper into it.

Suddenly, the company commander's gaze fell on a thick oak tree growing at the edge of the forest with a huge hollow inside an impressive trunk. Without thinking twice, he gave the order to Kozhevnikov, who played the role of a machine gunner, to climb into the hollow of a tree and fire from there. It sounds incredible, but the hollow turned out to be so roomy that the soldier easily settled down in it, exposing the muzzle of a machine gun outside.

As soon as Kozhevnikov took up his unusual combat position, the Germans went on the offensive. Within an hour, their infantry and aviation almost completely destroyed the company in which Kozhevnikov served. Nevertheless, the Nazis could not advance beyond the edge of the forest. The machine gun was scribbling from the hollow of an oak tree, without ceasing, since Kozhevnikov had a large supply of cartridges. The Germans suffered significant losses.

In addition to the soldiers, several junior German officers were killed. Not knowing what to do next, the Nazis lay down on the ground, hiding behind the ledges of ravines and rare trees. The fire stopped. But as soon as the German infantry rose to attack again, the machine gun began to scribble again. For more than three hours in a row, Kozhevnikov single-handedly held back the enemy's advance. During this time, the enraged Germans pulled up their artillery, hitting the unfortunate oak tree.

Only then was Kozhevnikov killed. More than 100 German soldiers and officers fell victim to it. Delighted with the courage of a simple Red Army soldier, the Germans carefully pulled the brave machine gunner out of the hollow and buried him with all military honors.

Perhaps this heroic feat would have remained forever unknown, but, fortunately, in Pruzhany there was a witness of that battle - a forester, who repeatedly told his fellow countrymen about it.

Perhaps this case would have remained one of the countless unknown exploits of Soviet soldiers, if not for the local forester. From a distance, he closely watched the battle and subsequently told about it to the residents of a nearby town.

When the pathfinder movement began in the second half of the last century, the forester told the schoolchildren about the battle he had preserved in his memory. In the summer of 1975, the pathfinders of the Pruzhany boarding school in Belarus, during excavations near an oak tree, discovered a soldier's medallion, from which they learned that the deceased soldier was a native of the village of Rashevatskaya. So at home they learned about the feat of their fellow countryman in the distant summer of 1941.

On the initiative of the pathfinders of Pruzhany, one of the streets of the city now bears the name of Grigory Kozhevnikov. In the museum of his native village, a medallion and a letter from pathfinders from the fraternal Republic of Belarus are carefully kept, and the street on which Grigory Kozhevnikov lived in Rashevatskaya is also named after him.