Hero of the Soviet Union Grigory Alekseevich Petrenko
Grigory Alekseevich Petrenko - a rifleman of the 4th company of the 2nd battalion of the 1075th rifle regiment of the 316th rifle division of the 16th army of the Western Front, Red Army soldier.
He was born on November 22, 1909, in the village of Chernyshe, now in the Kanevsky district of the Cherkasy region of Ukraine, into a peasant family. He was Ukrainian. He graduated from primary school. He worked in a collective farm. From 1933, he lived and worked in the city of Solikamsk, now in the Perm region, then in the city of Przhevalsk, and in the village of Sazonovka in the Jeti-Oguz district of the Issyk-Kul region of Kyrgyzstan.
He joined the Red Army in July 1941. Since then, he was at the front.
As a rifleman of the 4th company of the 2nd battalion of the 1075th rifle regiment (316th rifle division, 16th army, Western Front), Red Army soldier P. participated in repelling numerous enemy attacks during a battle near the Dubosekovo railway station in the Volokolamsk district of the Moscow region on November 16, 1941, as part of a group of tank destroyers led by political instructor V.G. Klochkov and sergeant I.E. Dobrobabin.
The group, which entered history as the 28 Panfilov Heroes during the Battle of Moscow and the Great Patriotic War, destroyed eighteen enemy tanks. He fell heroically in this battle. He was buried in a mass grave near the village of Nelidovo in the Volokolamsk district of the Moscow region. By the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated July 21, 1942, for exemplary execution of combat missions from the command at the front in the fight against the German-fascist invaders and for the courage and heroism displayed, Red Army soldier Grigory Alekseevich Petrenko was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
He was awarded the Order of Lenin.
A museum dedicated to the Heroes has been opened in the Nelidovo village club. A memorial has been erected at the site of the feat of the 28 Panfilov Heroes. The name of Grigory Petrenko was given to a riverboat.
IN THE NAME OF THE MOTHERLAND
It was hot. The July noon seemed about to melt the sheer cliffs looming over the road. A column of trucks was slowly making its way through the Kurday Pass from Frunze to Almaty.
The war had been going on for two months, still so distant and unknown to these people, who just yesterday stood at their machines, built houses, and raised bread and children. The war had torn them from their peaceful lives and called them to arms.
— Do you think we’ll be back by winter? — Grigory Petrenko’s neighbor clapped him on the shoulder. — The roof of my house is still uncovered. Oh, I’ll catch it from the old folks if I don’t finish it before winter.
— Of course, we will! How could it be otherwise! — Grigory nodded affirmatively. — Look at how many of us there are. Once we gather from all over Russia. We just need to get to the front quickly!
Yes, they were eager for battle, not yet realizing how many sacrifices and sufferings this war would bring and how long the path to Victory would be. They did not know that many of them would not return....
And in the Talgar Valley, near Almaty, the sounds of training fire could already be heard. Ivan Vasilyevich Panfilov was lovingly and carefully assembling his rifle division. Companies, battalions, and regiments were being formed from people of strictly peaceful professions.
The intuition of a professional soldier told Ivan Vasilyevich that this new war would require from people not only courage and heroism but also high training and the ability to handle military equipment.
Without wasting a moment, the riflemen and artillerymen, sappers and signalmen were undergoing combat training. They built bridges and roads, learned to mine fields, dig trenches, and construct bunkers, learned to strike the enemy with rifles and machine guns, to destroy with bayonets and grenades. From civilians, they were transforming into soldiers.
Weeks, months, and years would pass, and each of them would remember fondly the Panfilov teaching — to fight not only with the heart but also with the mind.
But now they were thirsty for battle. The alarming reports from the Soviet Information Bureau echoed in their hearts with pain, filling them with anger and noble fury against the enemy.
On August 18, the long-awaited order to send them to the front was received. The combat biography of the 316th rifle division was beginning.
They were going to war, singing peaceful songs. They sang in a peaceful, homely way. They even danced when the train made short stops.
They stopped singing near Kuibyshev. From the front, trains with the wounded passed by them, platforms with mangled tanks and airplanes. These were the traces of a war they did not yet know, but which had already been going on for three months.
And the reckless dreams of a swift victory were replaced by grim reflections on a war where not only you shoot but also are shot at, where blood, death, defeats, and suffering would be close by.
Grigory Petrenko thought about this: what awaited him tomorrow when real fascists with their guns raised would appear ahead, not plywood targets like on the training ground, whose only goal was to see him dead.
In October, having taken defensive positions near Moscow, the 316th rifle division held back the onslaught of superior enemy forces in bloody battles.
Grigory Petrenko had already looked death in the face more than once. He had seen the blood and death of his comrades. He stopped bowing to every stray bullet. He learned to sleep under bombardment and to sink into the ground during artillery fire.
At the end of October, the first German offensive on Moscow faltered. The German-fascist armies began to hastily pull back their rear and prepare for a new strike.
Even here, at the front, Ivan Vasilyevich Panfilov did not miss the opportunity to teach the soldiers to fight even better.
This short respite was also used for training. It was during these days that fearless tank destroyer squads began to form throughout the division. Political instructor Vasily Klochkov of the 4th company of the 1075th regiment was also training his soldiers. He taught them to let the tank come within grenade-throwing distance, taught them to find the strength within themselves to rise a second time and throw a bottle of incendiary mixture.
And they learned. They learned to cut off the infantry from the tanks, to easily identify the vulnerable spots of enemy vehicles. The infantrymen's faith in the battle motto grew: "The closer to the tank, the safer it is!"
On November 15, Hitler issued an order to begin the second offensive on Moscow, code-named "Typhoon".
In the area of the Dubosekovo railway station, at height "251.0", the 2nd platoon of the 4th company held the defense.
The day before, Panfilov had visited the platoon's position. After making a few remarks about the choice of positions, he advised them to replenish their ammunition supplies, and as a farewell, he added:
— Remember the order — hold this line, even if the entire German army comes at you, behind you is Moscow!
That same night, senior sergeant Mitin, along with two soldiers, went to the village of Nelidovo and brought back several boxes of grenades and bottles of incendiary mixture on sleds.
On November 16, the first wave of "Typhoon" struck the positions of the 316th rifle division.
The morning was cold. A piercing wind drove snow across the field. In the sky, the rumble of enemy planes grew louder, and a minute later, a bombing strike hit the trenches. Following it, artillery and mortars opened fire. It seemed that this fiery wave would leave nothing alive. But the attacking fascist stormtroopers were met with rifle and machine-gun fire from the Panfilov troops in the trenches.
Leaving about seventy corpses on the snow, the fascists retreated.
— Well done, heroes! — the soldiers heard the familiar voice of their political instructor. Klochkov jumped into the trench and, looking at the tanks that had emerged from the forest, calmly remarked: — Only twenty. Less than one for each of us.
The roar of engines, the clanking of tracks, the explosions of grenades, and the wailing of shells mixed into a common din.
The first tank was set on fire by Shemyakin. Grigory Petrenko, having disabled the track of a neighboring tank with a grenade, sent two bottles of incendiary mixture in its direction, and the tank burst into bright flames. Another was ignited by Sengirbaev.
Cutting off the enemy infantry from the tanks, Shepetkov fired from a machine gun. Ivan Shadrin knocked out two tanks. Tank destroyers Pyotr Yemtsev and Nikolai Bolotov set four tanks on fire.
And once again, Grigory Petrenko rose with a bundle of grenades, but a strong blow to the head knocked him down and threw him to the bottom of the trench...
Fourteen fires, belching black smoke, remained on the battlefield after the first attack. But Grigory Petrenko would not see this. He would not know how his comrades continued the fight to the last breath.
Against 50 tank guns — one anti-tank rifle. Against 50 heavy machine guns — one mounted machine gun. Against 100 submachine guns — one submachine gun and 23 rifles. Bundles of grenades, bottles with "KS" mixture.
Against 250 tankers sitting behind armor and 100 assault troops under the cover of tanks — 28 soldiers behind the snow-covered parapet of the trench.
A regiment of tanks — against a platoon of infantry. Against the elite forces of the 4th tank group of the Wehrmacht, which had in its record Poland, France, the Balkan countries — people who had put on military uniforms four months ago and taken up arms for the first time.
Soldiers of the Great Patriotic War. How many of them rose to attack and went into immortality! Their memory will live forever, as eternal is the fire on our land, as eternal is love and life itself. We bow our heads before their feat and ask ourselves each time: are we worthy of their memory, could we rise as they did, when the air is filled with deadly metal, when the ground burns beneath our feet? To rise and rush forward to the enemy's trenches, with a bundle of grenades under the tank, to the embrasure of a pillbox spewing machine-gun fire.
The earth knows how to heal war wounds. Craters from shells are overgrown with grass, the walls of trenches crumble, and cities rise from the ashes.
And monuments and obelisks with the names of heroes rise at the sites of past battles. The path to them does not overgrow. At their foot, there are always fresh flowers. We come here as to confession: are we worthy to continue the work from which the war tore them away. Here we hold ourselves accountable and take an oath of loyalty to the Motherland, that we will defend it as they did — to the last bullet, to the last breath.
V. CHERNYSHEV