In North Ossetia, where fierce fighting took place during the war, search engines were able to return the name of one of the heroes of those battles. As always in such situations, when the identity of fighters is established, attention is paid to even the smallest details: personal belongings, records in archives, memories of eyewitnesses. This time chance helped. And now they are looking for the relatives of the fighter, whose feat was admired even by the enemy command.
Captain Dmitry Shevchenko was listed as missing. Until an incident restored historical justice: German search engines came to the North Ossetian village of Pavlodolskaya to raise their soldiers. On these maps that they had in their hands, the burial places of 160 Wehrmacht soldiers were marked. When they started digging, next to the Nazi officers’ row they discovered the grave of a Soviet captain. It was a rare case when a stranger was buried among their own.
“When he died, the Germans organized his burial. There was an honor guard there, the line was standing. The Germans buried a Soviet soldier who showed heroism. Those. they showed their soldiers how to fight,” says Sergei Shevchenko, a specialist at the reburial service in the South-Western region of Russia of the People’s Union of Germany for the care of war graves.
The captain fought to the last bullet. As part of the first battalion of the 9th Guards Brigade. At this moment she was stationed behind the Terek. And Shevchenko and another soldier remained in the village as a reconnaissance group. The Germans began their offensive. The comrade was killed almost immediately. The captain was left alone and held the defense until the last.
According to local residents, Dmitry Shevchenko fired back from the bell tower of a local church. Despite the fact that it has already been restored, shell marks are still visible on it.
The only living witness of those events is Polina Polyanskaya. In July 1942 she was only 11.
“We spent the night in church throughout the war. The bombing was like this - they bomb, they bomb, bombs explode all around. I saw it on the ceiling of the murdered man. Bricks, laid pipes, so twisted, and he lay like that,” says Polina Polyanskaya, a resident of the village of Pavlodolskaya.
The memories of this woman are a clue for Russian search engines, who are collecting information about the dead soldiers bit by bit.
“It’s very difficult to identify our guys, because... they had no identification tags, a rare case where there was a capsule in which a note could have been preserved. And mainly based on the inscriptions on the pots, on the spoons,” notes Roman Ikoev, a search officer for the North Ossetian regional public organization “Search Team Memorial-Avia”.
Everything that the search engines found on the Red Army soldier is now stored in the local museum: a cartridge, a pair of buttons, a star and a ramrod. It was truly impossible to return the fighter’s name based on such introductory information, if not for a single detail.
“Eyewitnesses indicated exactly what date the battle took place. Based on this data, they found the intelligence that came here and who was in the squad,” says Roman Ikoev.
Painstaking work in the archive and now the captain managed to get his name back. And he himself was buried and reburied in the village of Pavlodolskaya, next to the unmarked grave of his comrades.
In September of this year, Oryol school No. 7 was named after Nikolai Sirotinin. For a long time, his feat, the history of which is well known in the Mogilev region of Belarus, was not immortalized in his native land - few people knew about it at all. And he never became a Hero - officially: he was not given the title due to the fact that not a single photograph of the soldier had survived.
This simple Oryol guy in July 1941, near the Belarusian city of Krichev, single-handedly destroyed 11 enemy tanks, 7 armored vehicles and 57 enemy soldiers and officers. During the battle, the Germans were never able to figure out where the Russian battery was dug in. And when we reached Kolya’s position, he only had three shells left. They offered to surrender, but he answered them with fire from a carbine.
“AiF-Chernozemye” tells the story of Nikolai Sirotinin and provides evidence from eyewitnesses and historians.
Nikolay Sirotinin Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
Hard to believe
For the first time, the public learned about this rare case in the history of the Great Patriotic War only in 1957 - from Mikhail Fedorovich Melnikov, a local historian from the Belarusian city of Krichev, who began collecting details of Nikolai Sirotinin’s feat. Not everyone believed that a man could single-handedly stop a column of tanks, but the more information was obtained, the more authentic the evidence of the guy’s feat became.
Today we can say with confidence that the 19-year-old boy Kolya Sirotinin really alone covered the retreat of the Soviet troops, not letting the enemy down for a second.
From book Gennady Mayorov"Artillery Square":
“On July 10, 1941, our artillery battery arrived in the village of Sokolnichi, which was located three kilometers from the city of Krichev. One of the guns was commanded by the young artilleryman Nikolai. He chose a firing position on the outskirts of the village. In one evening, the entire crew dug an artillery trench, and then two more spare ones, niches for shells and shelters for people. The battery commander and artilleryman Nikolai settled in the Grabskys’ house.”
“At that time I was working at the Krichev main post office,” she recalled Maria Grabskaya.-After finishing my shift, I came to my home, we had guests, including Nikolai Sirotinin, whom I met. Kolya told me that he was from the Oryol region and that his father was a railway worker. He and his comrades dug a trench, and when it was ready, everyone dispersed. Nikolai said that he was on duty and you could sleep peacefully: “If anything happens, I’ll knock for you.” Suddenly, early in the morning, he knocked so hard that the entire window was blown through. We caught up and hid in the trench. This is where the battle began. Next to our hut there was a collective farm where a cannon was installed. Nikolai did not leave his post until his last breath. German cars, armored personnel carriers, tanks were driving along the highway, which was 200-250 meters from the gun. He let them get very close, hiding behind a gun shield. And when the gun fell silent, we thought he had run away. And a little later, the Germans gathered all of us, the villagers, and asked: “Matka, whose son was killed?” They buried Nicholas themselves, wrapping him in a tent.”
On July 17, 1941, a German tank column was moving along the Moscow-Warsaw highway. Our units have already left Krichev and retreated across the Sozh River. The 409th Regiment of the 137th Infantry Division took up defensive positions near the highway with the task of covering the retreating troops. When the tanks approached the village of Sokolnichi, to the bridge over the swampy Dobrost River, a camouflaged artillery gun suddenly came to life near the bridge. The first shots set fire to the lead tank and the trailing armored vehicle. The column stopped. One tank tried to break through and crush the gun, but was shot at point-blank range. Cars could not turn off the highway because there was a swamp all around. Without stopping for a minute, the cannon fired accurately and frequently. A long line of tanks and armored personnel carriers burst into flames. Through the black smoke that enveloped the column, the vehicles fired at the Soviet gun at random. Taking the enemies by surprise, Nikolai could leave the position, since his main mission was completed and time was gained. But he continued to stand until the last, until he was killed.”
An example to follow
Near the bridge, tanks and armored personnel carriers were burning out, and corpses were lying. The wounded were loaded into ambulances. In a nearby birch forest, the Germans dug 57 graves for those killed in this duel with the Russian artilleryman. It seemed as if a squadron of Soviet attack aircraft was flying over the tank column. The Germans crowded around the broken cannon, everyone wanted to look into the face of this extraordinary soldier. The Nazis were just starting the war with Russia and did not yet know what a Soviet fighter was. In the presence of specially rounded up villagers, the occupiers buried the artilleryman with honors.
From the diary German Lieutenant Friedrich Henfeld:
“July 17, 1941. Sokolnichi near Krichev. In the evening, a Russian unknown soldier was buried. He alone, standing at the gun, shot at a column of tanks and infantry for a long time, and died. Everyone was amazed at his courage. It is not clear why he resisted so much; he was still doomed to death. The colonel in front of the grave said that if the Fuhrer’s soldiers were like that, they would have conquered the whole world. They fired three times in volleys from rifles. Still, he is Russian, is such admiration necessary?
A few months later, Friedrich Henfeld was killed near Tula. His diary ended up in the hands of military journalist Fyodor Selivanov. Having rewritten part of it, Selivanov handed over the diary to army headquarters and kept the extract.
Resident of the village of Sokolnichi, Krichevsky district, Mogilev region, Olga Borisovna Verzhbitskaya she recalled that after the funeral the German chief told her (the woman knew German): “Take this document and write to your relatives. Let the mother know what a hero her son was and how he died.” But a young German officer standing at Sirotinin’s grave approached and snatched the piece of paper and medallion from her, saying something rude. The Germans fired a volley of rifles in honor of our soldier and put a cross on the grave, on which they hung his helmet, pierced by a bullet.
Today in the village of Sokolnichi there is no grave in which the Germans buried Nikolai. Three years after the war, Kolya’s remains were transferred to a mass grave, the field was plowed and sown, and the cannon was scrapped.
Didn't get a Hero
Mass grave in Krichev on Sirotinina Street. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
In 1960, Nikolai Sirotinin was posthumously awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree, which is kept in the Minsk Museum. He was also nominated for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, but never received it - the only photograph in which Kolya was captured was lost during the war. Without her, the title of hero was not given.
This is what I remembered about this Nikolai Sirotinin’s sister Taisiya Shestakova:“We had his only passport card. But during the evacuation in Mordovia, my mother gave it to me to enlarge it. And the master lost her! He brought completed orders to all our neighbors, but not to us. We were very sad. We learned about our brother’s feat in 1961, when Krichev local historians found Kolya’s grave. We went to Belarus with the whole family. The Krichevites worked hard to nominate Kolya for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. But in vain, since to complete the documents, a photograph of him, at least some kind, was definitely needed. But we don’t have it!”
Everyone who has heard about this story is very surprised by one important fact. In the Republic of Belarus everyone knows about the feat of the Oryol soldier. A monument was erected to him there, a street in the city of Krichev and a kindergarten school in Sokolnichi were named after him. In Orel, until recently, few people knew about the feat of their fellow countryman. The memory of him was preserved only by a small exhibition in the museum of school No. 17, where Kolya once studied, and a memorial plaque on the house where he lived and where he left for the army. At the initiative of representatives of the Oryol Union of Journalists, it was proposed to perpetuate the forgotten or almost unknown exploits of artillery heroes on one of the city streets. They also proposed a project for a memorial plaque on which the legendary story of Nikolai Sirotinin would be told, and in the future the square was to be replenished with new plaques with photographs and names of the heroes and a brief summary of their exploits. But the city authorities decided to change the idea and instead of the original project they installed a cannon in Artillery Square, assuring that after the opening a competition would be announced among designers for the second stage to organize the adjacent space and create new information elements. A year has passed since that moment, but only a cannon remains standing alone on the site of the Artillery Square.
It was real hell. The tanks caught fire one after another. The infantry hiding behind the armor lay down. The commanders are at a loss and cannot understand the source of the heavy fire. It seems like the whole battery is beating. Aimed fire. There are 59 tanks, dozens of machine gunners and motorcyclists in the German column. And all this power is powerless in the face of Russian fire. Where did this battery come from? Intelligence reported that the way was open. The Nazis did not yet know that there was only one soldier standing in their way, and that there was only one warrior in the field, if he was Russian.
Nikolai Vladimirovich Sirotinin was born in 1921 in the city of Orel. Before the war he worked at the Tekmash plant in Orel. On June 22, 1941, he was wounded during an air raid. The wound was slight, and a few days later he was sent to the front - to the Krichev area, to the 55th Infantry Regiment of the 6th Infantry Division as a gunner.
On the bank of the Dobrost River, which flows near the village of Sokolnichi, the battery where Nikolai Sirotinin served stood for about two weeks. During this time, the fighters managed to get to know the village residents, and Nikolai Sirotinin was remembered by them as a quiet, polite boy. “Nikolai was very polite, he always helped elderly women get water from wells and do other hard work,” recalled village resident Olga Verzhbitskaya.
On July 17, 1941, his rifle regiment was retreating. Senior Sergeant Sirotinin volunteered to cover the retreat.
Sirotinin settled down on a hill in the thick rye near the collective farm stable that stood next to Anna Poklad’s house. From this position the highway, river, and bridge were clearly visible. When German tanks appeared at dawn, Nikolai blew up the lead vehicle and the one that trailed the column, creating a traffic jam. Thus, the task was completed, the tank column was delayed. Sirotinin could have gone to his own people, but he stayed - after all, he still had about 60 shells. According to one version, initially two people remained to cover the division's retreat - Sirotinin and the commander of his battery, who stood at the bridge and adjusted the fire. However, then he was wounded, and he went to his own, and Sirotinin was left to fight alone.
Two tanks tried to pull the lead tank off the bridge, but were also hit. The armored vehicle tried to cross the Dobrost River without using a bridge. But she got stuck in the swampy bank, where another shell found her. Nikolai shot and shot, knocking out tank after tank. The Germans had to shoot at random, since they could not determine his location. In 2.5 hours of battle, Nikolai Sirotinin repulsed all enemy attacks, destroying 11 tanks, 7 armored vehicles, 57 soldiers and officers.
When the Nazis finally reached Nikolai Sirotinin’s position, he only had three shells left. They offered to surrender. Nikolai responded by firing at them from a carbine.
Chief Lieutenant of the 4th Panzer Division Henfeld wrote in his diary: “July 17, 1941. Sokolnichi, near Krichev. In the evening, an unknown Russian soldier was buried. He stood alone at the cannon, shot at a column of tanks and infantry for a long time, and died. Everyone was surprised at his courage... Oberst (Colonel) said before the grave that if all the Fuhrer's soldiers fought like this Russian, they would conquer the whole world. They fired three times in volleys from rifles. After all, he is Russian, is such admiration necessary?
Olga Verzhbitskaya recalled:
“In the afternoon, the Germans gathered at the place where the cannon stood. They also forced us, the local residents, to come there. As someone who knows German, the chief German with orders ordered me to translate. He said that this is how a soldier should defend his homeland - the Vaterland ". Then from the pocket of our dead soldier's tunic they took out a medallion with a note about who and where. The main German told me: “Take it and write to your relatives. Let the mother know what a hero her son was and how he died." I was afraid to do it... Then a young German officer, standing in the grave and covering Sirotinin’s body with a Soviet raincoat, snatched a piece of paper and a medallion from me and said something rudely.”
For a long time after the funeral, the Nazis stood at the cannon and the grave in the middle of the collective farm field, not without admiration, counting the shots and hits.
This pencil portrait was made from memory only in the 1990s by one of Nikolai Sirotinin’s colleagues.
Sirotinin's family learned about his feat only in 1958 from a publication in Ogonyok.
In 1961, a monument was erected near the highway near the village: “Here at dawn on July 17, 1941, senior sergeant-artilleryman Nikolai Vladimirovich Sirotinin, who gave his life for the freedom and independence of our Motherland."
Monument at the mass grave where Nikolai Sirotinin is buried
After the war, Sirotinin was posthumously awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree. But they were never nominated for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. To complete the paperwork, we needed a photo of Kolya. She wasn't there. Here is what Nikolai Sirotinin’s sister Taisiya Shestakova recalls about this:
- We had his only passport card. But during the evacuation in Mordovia, my mother gave it to me to enlarge it. And the master lost her! He brought completed orders to all our neighbors, but not to us. We were very sad.Did you know that Kolya alone stopped a tank division? And why didn't he get a Hero?
We found out in 1961, when Krichev local historians found Kolya’s grave. We went to Belarus with the whole family. The Krichevites worked hard to nominate Kolya for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. But in vain: to complete the paperwork, you definitely needed a photograph of him, at least some kind. But we don’t have it! They never gave Kolya the Hero. In Belarus his feat is known. And it’s a shame that few people know about him in his native Orel. They didn’t even name a small alley after him.
However, there was a more compelling reason for the refusal - the immediate command must apply for the title of hero, which was not done.
A street in Krichev, a school-kindergarten and a pioneer detachment in Sokolnichi are named after Nikolai Sirotinin.
Photo: Obelisk at the site of Nikolai Sirotinin’s last battle on July 17, 1941. A real 76-millimeter gun was erected nearby on a pedestal - Sirotinin fired at enemies from a similar cannon
In July 1941, the Red Army retreated in battle. In the Krichev area (Mogilev region), Heinz Guderian's 4th Panzer Division was advancing deep into Soviet territory, and was opposed by the 6th Infantry Division.
On July 10, an artillery battery of a rifle division entered the village of Sokolnichi, located three kilometers from Krichev. One of the guns was commanded by 20-year-old senior sergeant Nikolai Sirotinin.
While waiting for the enemy to attack, the soldiers whiled away the time in the village. Sirotinin and his fighters settled in the house of Anastasia Grabskaya.
And one warrior in the field
The approaching cannonade coming from the direction of Mogilev, and the columns of refugees walking east along the Warsaw Highway, indicated that the enemy was approaching.
It is not entirely clear why senior sergeant Nikolai Sirotinin remained alone at his gun during the battle. According to one version, he volunteered to cover the retreat of his fellow soldiers across the Sozh River. But it is reliably known that he equipped a position for a cannon on the outskirts of the village so that the road across the bridge could be covered.
The 76-mm gun was well camouflaged in the tall rye. On July 17, a column of enemy equipment appeared at the 476th kilometer of the Warsaw Highway. Sirotinin opened fire. This is how this battle was described by employees of the archive of the USSR Ministry of Defense (T. Stepanchuk and N. Tereshchenko) in the Ogonyok magazine for 1958.
- In front is an armored personnel carrier, behind it are trucks filled with soldiers. A camouflaged cannon hit the column. An armored personnel carrier caught fire and several mangled trucks fell into ditches. Several armored personnel carriers and a tank crawled out of the forest. Nikolai knocked out a tank. Trying to get around the tank, two armored personnel carriers got stuck in a swamp... Nikolai himself brought ammunition, aimed, loaded and prudently sent shells into the thick of the enemies.
Finally, the Nazis discovered where the fire was coming from and brought all their power down on the lone gun. Nikolai died. When the Nazis saw that only one man was fighting, they were stunned. Shocked by the warrior's bravery, the Nazis buried the soldier.
Before lowering the body into the grave, Sirotinin was searched and found a medallion in his pocket, and in it a note with his name and place of residence written. This fact became known after archive staff went to the battlefield and conducted a survey of local residents. Local resident Olga Verzhbitskaya knew German and on the day of the battle, by order of the Germans, she translated what was written on a piece of paper inserted into the medallion. Thanks to her (and 17 years had passed since the battle at that time), we managed to find out the name of the hero.
Verzhbitskaya reported the soldier’s first and last name, and also that he lived in the city of Orel.
Let us note that employees of the Moscow archive arrived in the Belarusian village thanks to a letter addressed to them from local historian Mikhail Melnikov. He wrote that in the village he heard about the feat of an artilleryman who fought alone against the Nazis, which amazed the enemy.
Further investigation led historians to the city of Orel, where in 1958 they were able to meet the parents of Nikolai Sirotinin. This is how details from the boy’s short life became known.
He was drafted into the army on October 5, 1940 from the Tekmash plant, where he worked as a turner. He began his service in the 55th Infantry Regiment of the Belarusian city of Polotsk. Among the five children, Nikolai was the second oldest.
“Tender, hard-working, he helped babysit the younger ones,” mother Elena Korneevna said about him.
Thus, thanks to a local historian and caring employees of the Moscow archive, the USSR became aware of the heroic artilleryman’s feat. It was obvious that he delayed the advance of the enemy column and inflicted losses on him. But no specific information was known about the number of Nazis killed.
Later there were reports that 11 tanks, 6 armored personnel carriers and 57 enemy soldiers were destroyed. According to one version, some of them were destroyed with the help of artillery fired from across the river.
But be that as it may, Sirotinin’s feat is not measured by the number of tanks he destroyed. One, three or eleven... In this case it doesn't matter. The main thing is that the brave guy from Orel fought alone against the German armada, forcing the enemy to suffer losses and tremble with fear.
He could have fled, taken refuge in a village, or chosen a different path, but he fought to the last drop of blood. The story of Nikolai Sirotinin’s feat was continued several years after the article in Ogonyok.
“After all, he is Russian, is such admiration necessary?”
An article entitled “This is not a legend” was published in Literary Gazette in January 1960. One of its authors was local historian Mikhail Melnikov. There it was reported that an eyewitness to the battle on July 17, 1941 was Chief Lieutenant Friedrich Henfeld. A diary with his entries was found after Henfeld's death in 1942. Entries from the chief lieutenant's diary were made by military journalist F. Selivanov in 1942. Here is a quote from Henfeld's diary:
July 17, 1941. Sokolnichi, near Krichev. In the evening, an unknown Russian soldier was buried. He stood alone at the cannon, shot at a column of tanks and infantry for a long time, and died. Everyone was surprised at his courage... Oberst (Colonel) said before the grave that if all the Fuhrer's soldiers fought like this Russian, they would conquer the whole world. They fired three times in volleys from rifles. After all, he is Russian, is such admiration necessary?
And here are the memories recorded in the 60s from the words of Verzhbitskaya:
- In the afternoon, the Germans gathered at the place where the cannon stood. They forced us, local residents, to come there too,” recalls Verzhbitskaya. - As someone who knows German, the chief German with orders ordered me to translate. He said that this is how a soldier should defend his homeland - the Fatherland. Then from the pocket of our dead soldier’s tunic they took out a medallion with a note about who and where. The main German told me: “Take it and write to your relatives. Let the mother know what a hero her son was and how he died.” I was afraid to do this... Then a young German officer, standing in the grave and covering Sirotinin’s body with a Soviet raincoat, snatched a piece of paper and a medallion from me and said something rudely. For a long time after the funeral, the Nazis stood at the cannon and the grave in the middle of the collective farm field, not without admiration, counting the shots and hits.
Later, a bowler hat was found at the battle site, on which was scratched: “Orphans...”.
In 1948, the remains of the hero were reburied in a mass grave. After the general public learned about Sirotinin’s feat, he was posthumously, in 1960, awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree. A year later, in 1961, an obelisk was erected at the site of the battle, the inscription on which reports the battle on July 17, 1941. A real 76-mm gun is mounted on a pedestal nearby. Sirotinin fired at enemies from a similar cannon.
Unfortunately, not a single photograph of Nikolai Sirotinin has survived. There is only a pencil drawing made by his colleague in the 1990s. But the main thing is that descendants will have the memory of a brave and fearless boy from Orel, who delayed a German column of equipment and died in an unequal battle.
Andrey Osmolovsky
One with a gun against a company of infantry and 59 tanks
!
In two and a half hours, 11 tanks, 6 armored vehicles, 57 soldiers and officers were destroyed.
From the memoirs of a German officer...
For a long time the Germans were unable to determine the location of the well-camouflaged gun; they believed that a whole battery was fighting them.
July 17, 1941. Sokolnichi, near Krichev. In the evening, an unknown Russian soldier was buried. He stood alone at the cannon, shot at a column of tanks and infantry for a long time, and died. Everyone was surprised at his courage... Oberst said before his grave that if all the Fuhrer’s soldiers fought like this Russian, they would conquer the whole world. They fired three times in volleys from rifles. After all, he is Russian, is such admiration necessary?
— From the diary of Chief Lieutenant of the 4th Panzer Division Friedrich Hoenfeld.
It was real hell. The tanks caught fire one after another. The infantry hiding behind the armor lay down. The commanders are at a loss and cannot understand the source of the heavy fire. It seems like the whole battery is beating. Aimed fire. There are 59 tanks, dozens of machine gunners and motorcyclists in the German column. And all this power is powerless in the face of Russian fire. Where did this battery come from? Intelligence reported that the way was open. The Nazis did not yet know that there was only one soldier standing in their way, and that there was only one warrior in the field, if he was Russian.
On the bank of the Dobrost River, which flows near the village of Sokolnichi, the battery where Nikolai Sirotinin served stood for about two weeks. During this time, the fighters managed to get to know the village residents, and Nikolai Sirotinin was remembered by them as a quiet, polite boy. “Nikolai was very polite, he always helped elderly women get water from wells and do other hard work,” recalled village resident Olga Verzhbitskaya.
On July 17, 1941, his rifle regiment was retreating. Senior Sergeant Sirotinin volunteered to cover the retreat.
Sirotinin settled down on a hill in the thick rye near the collective farm stable that stood next to Anna Poklad’s house. From this position the highway, river, and bridge were clearly visible. When German tanks appeared at dawn, Nikolai blew up the lead vehicle and the one that trailed the column, creating a traffic jam. Thus, the task was completed, the tank column was delayed. Sirotinin could have gone to his own people, but he stayed - after all, he still had about 60 shells. According to one version, initially two people remained to cover the division's retreat - Sirotinin and the commander of his battery, who stood at the bridge and adjusted the fire. However, then he was wounded, and he went to his own, and Sirotinin was left to fight alone.
Two tanks tried to pull the lead tank off the bridge, but were also hit. The armored vehicle tried to cross the Dobrost River without using a bridge. But she got stuck in the swampy bank, where another shell found her. Nikolai shot and shot, knocking out tank after tank. The Germans had to shoot at random, since they could not determine his location. In 2.5 hours of battle, Nikolai Sirotinin repulsed all enemy attacks, destroying 11 tanks, 7 armored vehicles, 57 soldiers and officers.
When the Nazis finally reached Nikolai Sirotinin’s position, he only had three shells left. They offered to surrender. Nikolai responded by firing at them from a carbine.
Chief Lieutenant of the 4th Panzer Division Henfeld wrote in his diary: “July 17, 1941. Sokolnichi, near Krichev. In the evening, an unknown Russian soldier was buried. He stood alone at the cannon, shot at a column of tanks and infantry for a long time, and died. Everyone was surprised at his courage... Oberst (Colonel) said before the grave that if all the Fuhrer's soldiers fought like this Russian, they would conquer the whole world. They fired three times in volleys from rifles. After all, he is Russian, is such admiration necessary?
Olga Verzhbitskaya recalled:
“In the afternoon, the Germans gathered at the place where the cannon stood. They also forced us, the local residents, to come there. As someone who knows German, the chief German with orders ordered me to translate. He said that this is how a soldier should defend his homeland - the Vaterland ". Then from the pocket of our dead soldier's tunic they took out a medallion with a note about who and where. The main German told me: “Take it and write to your relatives. Let the mother know what a hero her son was and how he died." I was afraid to do it... Then a young German officer, standing in the grave and covering Sirotinin’s body with a Soviet raincoat, snatched a piece of paper and a medallion from me and said something rudely.”
For a long time after the funeral, the Nazis stood at the cannon and the grave in the middle of the collective farm field, not without admiration, counting the shots and hits.
This pencil portrait was made from memory only in the 1990s by one of Nikolai Sirotinin’s colleagues.
Sirotinin's family learned about his feat only in 1958 from a publication in Ogonyok.
In 1961, a monument was erected near the highway near the village: “Here at dawn on July 17, 1941, senior artillery sergeant Nikolai Vladimirovich Sirotinin, who gave his life for the freedom and independence of our Motherland."
Monument at the mass grave where Nikolai Sirotinin is buried
After the war, Sirotinin was posthumously awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree. But they were never nominated for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. To complete the paperwork, we needed a photo of Kolya. She wasn't there. Here is what Nikolai Sirotinin’s sister Taisiya Shestakova recalls about this:
However, there was a more compelling reason for the refusal - the immediate command must apply for the title of hero, which was not done.
A street in Krichev, a kindergarten school and a pioneer detachment in Sokolnichi are named after Nikolai Sirotinin.
