From the left bank to the right
The former commander of the 62nd Army, Vasily Chuikov, recalled many years later:
“September 13, 1942 was the beginning of the period of the bloodiest, most stubborn battle, which went down in history as the “defense of Stalingrad,” which lasted until November 19, that is, until the Soviet troops launched a counteroffensive. This is a defensive battle for the troops defending Stalingrad..."
On the night of September 14-15, units and units of the 13th Guards Rifle Order of Lenin division of Major General Alexander Rodimtsev crossed the Volga, coming to the aid of the 62nd Army.
Major General, Hero of the Soviet Union A.I. Rodimtsev surrounded by his Siberian soldiers of the 13th Guards Division. Source: waralbum.ruLater, historians will call this night “critical.”
This is how Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Zhukov assessed those days and the role played by the 13th Guards in his book “Memories and Reflections”:
“September 13, 14, 15 were difficult, too difficult days for the people of Stalingrad. The enemy, regardless of anything, broke through the ruins of the city, step by step, closer and closer to the Volga. It seemed that people were about to give up.<…>
The turning point in these difficult and, as at times it seemed, the last hours was created by the 13th Guards Division of A.I. Rodimtsev. After crossing to Stalingrad, she immediately counterattacked the enemy. Her blow was completely unexpected for the enemy. On September 16, A.I. Rodimtsev’s division recaptured Mamayev Kurgan.”
Legendary Guards
The 13th Guards Rifle Division of the Order of Lenin, contrary to the erroneous opinion that exists, was not immediately formed from the airborne corps as a guards division. In 1941, on the basis of units of the 3rd Airborne Corps, the 87th Infantry Division (2 formations) was formed. The control of the 5th Airborne Brigade was deployed to the control of the division, the commander of which was Colonel Rodimtsev, Hero of the Soviet Union.
In December 1941, the 87th Rifle Division distinguished itself in battles in the Kursk-Kostornensky direction. By order of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of January 19, 1942, the 87th Infantry Division was transformed into the 13th Guards Infantry. The new banner of the division was awarded on February 9, 1942, and by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated March 27, 1942, the division was awarded the Order of Lenin. During the days of the Battle of Stalingrad, the 13th Guards was the only one of all rifle divisions awarded this high award during the Great Patriotic War.
Soldiers of the 13th Guards Rifle Division in Stalingrad during rest hours. December 1942 Source: http://aloban75.livejournal.com Its veteran, who marched from Stalingrad to Prague and was awarded four orders, Ivan Ivanovich Isakov, spoke about what the division was like:
“...Rodimtsev’s division, one might say, was a youth division. I, the battalion commander, was, for example, 21 years old. The company commanders are my peers. The oldest in the battalion headquarters is 28 years old."
His story is reminisced by the division commander’s daughter Natalya Aleksandrovna Matyukhina (Rodimtseva). General Rodimtsev himself was 37 during the days of the fighting in Stalingrad. Their youth spoke in everything. At exactly 12 at night on December 31, 1942, a command rushed through the wires to the position: “Everyone! Everyone!.. Fire at the enemy!!!” It was a front-line salute from the guards to the new year of 1943 - the year of great victories to come.
13th Guards Rifle Division in Stalingrad
In May 1945, the division reached Prague. It became the 13th Guards Rifle Poltava Division of the Order of Lenin, twice Red Banner Order of Suvorov and Kutuzov. This is official, but for everyone it remained the Guards Division of General Alexander Rodimtsev.
Second homeland - Stalingrad
The name of twice Hero of the Soviet Union, Colonel General Alexander Rodimtsev, is primarily associated with the Battle of Stalingrad. After all, Alexander Ilyich himself, according to his daughter Natalya Alexandrovna, when journalists asked him what Stalingrad became for him, answered:
“For me it is a second home. Going through it and surviving is like being born again. There I had to see something that had never happened before or later.”
One cannot but agree with the words of the front-line general. Although it is worth remembering that the 140 days that the 13th Guards Division was in Stalingrad were only an episode in its long military service.
General Rodimtsev at the end of the Great Patriotic War.
In 1936-1937, Rodimtsev - “Captain Pavlito” - fought in Spain. Before that, he commanded a cavalry squadron, and there he also had to command a division. For Spain he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
In 1939 he graduated from the Military Academy. M. V. Frunze. In 1940 he took part in the Soviet-Finnish war. Daughter Natalya Aleksandrovna says that he was very fond of machine gun work and could “write” his last name in a long line. Blindfolded, he could disassemble and assemble a Maxim heavy machine gun, one of the most complex small arms of that time.
In 1941 he graduated from the operations department of the Military Academy of Command and Navigation Staff of the Red Army Air Force. In May of the same year, he was appointed commander of the 5th Airborne Brigade, which participated in the defense of Kyiv.
The whole country knew his name
This is how daughter Natalya Alexandrovna recalls her father’s fame:
“...Father was summoned to Moscow. He was at home for three days. During the short days of this front-line leave, the parents visited the theater, and an episode happened to them that they often recalled.
Returning from the performance, cheerful and laughing, my mother, her friend Dusya Krivenko and my father entered the subway. Continuing to joke, they boarded the train; there were almost no people; and the woman sitting opposite reproachfully reproached them: “Rodimtsev is fighting there, in Stalingrad, and you are having fun here!..”
Father didn’t answer, but after leaving the carriage, the three of them laughed for a long, long time...”
At the entrance to the dugout (from left to right): commander of the 13th Guards Rifle Division, Major General A.I. Rodimtsev, chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel T.V. Velsky, regimental commissar L.K. Shchur. Stalingrad, 1943.
Komsomolskaya Pravda wrote:
“...Collective farmers of the Sorochinsky district contributed 339 thousand rubles for the construction of a tank named after their fellow countryman, Hero of the Soviet Union, Guard Major General A. I. Rodimtsev. Fundraising continues." This is also a rare case even for the Great Patriotic War...”
In April 1943, Rodimtsev was appointed commander of the 32nd Guards Rifle Corps. But he did not say goodbye to the 13th Guards Division he created. Until May 1945, it was part of the Guards Corps, commanded by Alexander Ilyich. Under his leadership, the fighters distinguished themselves in many battles, including the Battle of Kursk, the battles for the Dnieper, the Vistula-Oder, Berlin, and Prague operations.
Lieutenant General Rodimtsev was awarded the second Gold Star medal on June 2, 1945 for skillful leadership of troops during the crossing of the Oder River on January 25, 1945 in the Linden region (Poland), personal heroism and courage.
Monument at the front line of defense of the 13th Guards Division
And further. Alexander Ilyich Rodimtsev has a special merit. This is his contribution to the creation and development of the veteran movement. The general, with his whole life and his personal decency, made sure that many years later the soldiers of the 13th Guards Division, primarily Stalingrad veterans, gathered together.
"BATTLE OF STALINGRAD. ROOT FRACTURE"
Twice Born
Ilya RODIMTSEV, member of the Victory Commanders Memorial Fund, Candidate of Economic Sciences
My father, General Rodimtsev, was born in the village. Sharlyk, Orenburg region, in a poor peasant family. Having lost his father early, he worked as a farm laborer since childhood, but went to school many kilometers from home. He dreamed of becoming a “red horseman,” and when he was drafted into the Red Army, he rose to the rank of colonel general, becoming twice a Hero of the Soviet Union and one of the most famous military leaders of the Soviet Army.
There are so many interesting and exciting things in my father’s combat biography that sometimes it’s even hard to believe that all this happened to one person. But of all the trials that befell him, the 140 days and nights of the battle for Stalingrad occupy a special place.
He began his battle with fascism in 1936 in civil war-torn Spain, when he taught machine guns to fighters of the international brigades in the small Spanish town of Albacete, when, west of Madrid, in the first battle, Captain Pavlito, as he was called in Spain, together with the Spanish fighters fought off the furious attacks by fascist mercenaries.
Upon returning to Moscow, he was summoned twice to the Kremlin, where he received his first military awards - first, two Orders of the Red Banner, and the second time, the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union. My father recalled how the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR M.I. Kalinin, presenting him with the highest award of the Motherland, said with a smile: “We meet often, Comrade Rodimtsev!” Then there were the pre-war years, pressed to the limit by studying at the Academy. Frunze and at the Academy of Command and Navigation Staff of the Air Force, the creation of airborne troops, and participation in military operations on the western borders of the USSR....His first battle was near Kiev in August 1941. Then there was the Volga, burning from oil spilled on it, the ruins of Stalingrad, burned German tanks near Prokhorovka, fierce battles on the bridgeheads beyond the Dnieper, the Vistula and on the Oder. Meeting with the allies on the Elbe and liberated grateful Prague. But the more Rodimtsev recalled the events of the war years, the more clearly he understood that the most important battle in his life was the battle for Stalingrad!
By order of the Headquarters, on the evening of September 11, 1942, the 13th Guards Rifle Division, commanded by Major General Rodimtsev, concentrated on the left bank of the Volga opposite the central part of Stalingrad. In less than a year of war, the division under his command won the title of Guards. It was created on the basis of the 5th Airborne Brigade, and this circumstance will play an important role in urban combat.
The situation in Stalingrad by this time was critical. The Nazis had already broken into the city; they were sure that there were only a few hours left before it was captured. Marshal of the Soviet Union G.K. Zhukov wrote about the events of those days: “September 13, 14, 15 were difficult, too difficult days for the Stalingraders... The turning point in these difficult and, as at times it seemed, the last hours was created by the 13th Guards Division A.I. Rodimtseva. Having crossed to Stalingrad, she immediately counterattacked the enemy... On September 16, the division of A.I. Rodimtseva recaptured Mamayev Kurgan.”
The very crossing of the division across the burning Volga under enemy fire went down in the history of the war.General Rodimtsev emphasized that this was not just a crossing, but a crossing of a wide water barrier under the influence of the enemy, and without air and artillery cover. There was not enough ammunition, weapons, there was no intelligence information, but there was no longer time to hesitate...
The Nazis did not expect such a strong blow at a time when they were already celebrating their victory. 1st battalion 42nd Guards. The regiment quickly recaptured the station from the enemy and captured several buildings in the city center. But the next morning, up to two enemy divisions began an offensive in the area of the station. Four times in one day the station changed hands, but remained with the guards. Recalling the battles in Stalingrad, my father especially emphasized that young soldiers and officers were often in the forefront. The commander of the leading battalion that threw the Germans off Mamayev Kurgan, Ivan Isakov, was only 20 years old! The company commanders are his peers; the oldest at the battalion headquarters was 28. In battles in the difficult conditions of urban ruins, where it was often difficult to understand where one was and where was a foe, the skills of paratroopers turned out to be in demand - the ability to fight surrounded, hand-to-hand, during the day and at night, good command of all types of weapons, including melee weapons, endurance and mutual assistance. It was these qualities of Rodimtsev’s guards that evened the odds when they had to fight with superior enemy forces and allowed them not only to survive in the hell of Stalingrad, but also to destroy the enemy.
A striking example of the courage, perseverance and combat training of the soldiers of the 13th Guards was the defense of Pavlov's House. For 58 days and nights, this immortal garrison of less than a platoon, in which soldiers of eight nationalities fought shoulder to shoulder, held Pavlov's House. On the personal map of Field Marshal Paulus, this house was marked as a fortress. It took the sixth German army, which he commanded, three days to take Paris; in 28 days the Germans conquered Poland, but in two months they failed to break the resistance of a handful of fighters - Rodimtsev's guards! In his memoirs, my father wrote: “The captured German intelligence officers believed that the house was being defended by a battalion. Our army first learned about this house, then the whole country and, finally, the whole world... The glory of the defenders of this house will not fade for centuries.” Defending him, the soldiers of the 13th Guards saved civilians who were hiding in the basement of the house. Among them was a young woman with a baby daughter. All of them were rescued and taken beyond the Volga. The girl's name was Zina. Zinaida Petrovna Andreeva still lives in Volgograd, she heads the regional organization “Children of Military Stalingrad”. Throughout the post-war years, she maintains contact with the defenders of Pavlov’s House. They met with General Rodimtsev many times in Volgograd and Moscow. The fighters called her Rodimtsev’s goddaughter.Division Commissioner Vavilov said about Rodimtsev: “Yes, he was fearless and brave, unusually calm in moments of mortal danger. But Alexander Ilyich possessed a character trait without which there cannot be a true military leader: he was mentally responsive, generous to his subordinates. In the division, General Rodimtsev not only knew many commanders and soldiers well. Another thing is important: he knew who was capable of what. He knew and boldly assigned the necessary task. The character of the commander became the character of the Thirteenth Guards.”
Marshal of the Soviet Union V.I. wrote very succinctly and sincerely about General Rodimtsev, after his death. Chuikov, who commanded the 62nd Army in Stalingrad: “Rodimtsev was ordinary, like everyone else, and a little extraordinary. Kind to friends, but irreconcilable to the enemies of his people. Ingenuous and savvy, you can’t fool him. Simple-minded, warm-hearted, flint, even strike fire. Complaisant and proud, if you offend in vain, he will not forgive. It was a folk nugget!”
General Rodimtsev himself, once answering a question from journalists about what Stalingrad was for him, replied: “It’s like being born a second time...”
The fame of the exploits of the soldiers of the 13th Guards Division, which the whole country learned about, played a cruel joke on General Rodimtsev. The Military Council of the 62nd Army nominated him for the Order of Suvorov. However, some high military officials could not calmly cope with his fame and canceled the performance. General Rodimtsev turned out to be almost the only commander of the formation who was not awarded for Stalingrad. But this misunderstanding was soon corrected, and he was awarded the Order of Kutuzov, II degree.
All the people with whom I had to talk about my father were sure that he received the second Hero Star for Stalingrad. But in fact, he was awarded this high award a second time in 1945 for his skillful leadership of troops during the crossing of the Oder and in a number of other operations at the final stage of the war.
From Stalingrad A.I. Rodimtsev and his guardsmen went only to the West, so that in May 45th they could meet the long-awaited Victory won at such a high price! From the ranks of the 13th Guards Division alone, 28 Heroes of the Soviet Union emerged, and almost all of them earned this award AFTER Stalingrad.
After the war, my father often came to Volgograd, met with fellow soldiers, city residents, and young people. It is difficult to find another city in our country in which literally at every step you encounter the memory of the heroes who defended it. It contains the streets of 13th Guards and Rodimtsev, memorial signs at battle sites and mass graves, an inscription on a stone wall near the Volga bank, which the defenders of Stalingrad left when leaving the city: “Here Rodimtsev’s guards stood to the death. By surviving, we defeated death.”
R Odimtsev Alexander Ilyich - Soviet military leader; military adviser to the Spanish Republican forces; commander of the 32nd Guards Rifle Corps of the 5th Guards Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front.
Born on February 23 (March 8), 1905 in the village of Sharlyk, now Sharlyk district, Orenburg region, into a poor peasant family. Russian. From early childhood he worked as a laborer; after his father’s death in 1921, he worked in a shoe shop.
In the Red Army since September 1927. Called up for military service in the convoy troops of the OGPU of the USSR, he served in the 28th rifle convoy battalion. Member of the CPSU(b)/CPSU since 1929. After completing his service in September 1929, he entered and in 1932 graduated from the United Military School named after the All-Russian Central Executive Committee in Moscow. From March 1931, he served in the 61st Cavalry Regiment of the 36th Cavalry Division of the Moscow Military District: cavalry platoon commander, regimental school platoon commander, squadron commander.
He participated in the Spanish Civil War (under the pseudonym "Captain Pavlito") as a military adviser to military units of the Republican Army from September 1936 to August 1937. An active participant in the defense of Madrid, the battles on the Jarama River, at Brueta, Teruel, near Guadalajara. He was distinguished by personal courage in battles.
Title of Hero of the Soviet Union, with presentation of the Order of Lenin, senior lieutenant Rodimtsev Alexander Ilyich awarded on October 22, 1937 for exemplary performance of a special task in the troops of Republican Spain. After the establishment of the special distinction, he was awarded the Gold Star medal No. 57.
After returning from Spain, Senior Lieutenant Rodimtsev was awarded the rank of major. From September 1937 to January 1938 - commander of the 61st Cavalry Regiment. In 1939 he graduated from the Military Academy of the Red Army named after M.V. Frunze. From May 1939 - deputy commander of the 36th Cavalry Division of the Belarusian Special Military District, participated in the liberation campaign in Western Belarus in September 1939. In January - March 1940, he participated in the Soviet-Finnish War.
In 1940, he was sent to the Airborne Forces and attended courses at the Military Academy of Command and Navigation Staff of the Red Army Air Force. Upon their completion in May 1941, he was appointed commander of the 5th Airborne Brigade in the Kiev Special Military District.
From the first day of the Great Patriotic War, Colonel A.I. Rodimtsev - in battle. His brigade withstood the enemy's onslaught in the first months of the war, and in August 1941 played an outstanding role in the successful counterattack near Kiev, when the enemy was driven back 15 kilometers from the capital of Ukraine and abandoned the plan to storm the city. In September 1941, the brigade found itself in the Kiev pocket and fought a defensive battle for three days on the line of the Sim River, covering the retreat of the armies. Almost a month later, severely thinned units of the brigade, led by their commander, broke out of the enemy ring.
Since November 1941 - commander of the 87th Infantry Division. As part of the 40th Army, the division fought successful defensive and offensive battles in the Kursk direction and for successful military operations in January 1942, it was one of the first to receive the Guards banner, becoming the 13th Guards Rifle Division. In March 1942, the division was awarded the Order of Lenin. Then Rodimtsev's guardsmen, as part of the 38th and 28th armies, fought stubborn defensive battles in the Voronezh, Valuysk directions and in the big bend of the Don. In July 1942, units of the division were withdrawn for replenishment near Stalingrad. Guard Major General (05/21/1942).
At the beginning of September 1942, the commander and soldiers of the 13th Guards Order of Lenin Rifle Division (62nd Army of the Stalingrad Front) entered the main battle of their lives - they fought across the Volga under heavy enemy fire and drove the Germans out of the coastal neighborhoods of Stalingrad. On the night of September 16, 1942, Mamaev Kurgan was taken by storm. Ahead were months of unprecedented defense in the ruins of the city, dozens of enemy counterattacks every day, a constant lack of people and ammunition, and a resilience unprecedented in history. After the defeat of the German troops in Stalingrad, the division was transferred to the reserve of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command.
From May 1943 until the end of the war, Lieutenant General (from January 17, 1944) A.I. Rodimtsev - commander of the 32nd Guards Rifle Corps in the Moscow Military District, since July 1943 - in the 5th Guards Army. He fought on the Steppe, Voronezh, 2nd and 1st Ukrainian fronts. At the head of the corps he participated in the Battle of Kursk, in the battle for the Dnieper, in the Znamenskaya, Kirovograd, Lvov-Sandomierz, Vistula-Oder, Lower Silesia, Berlin, and Prague operations.
In the Vistula-Oder operation, units of the 32nd Guards Corps of the 5th Guards Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front, on the very first day of the offensive, broke through the enemy’s multi-echelon defenses, liberated the cities of Busko-Zdroj, Vozdislav, Pinchuv and launched a rapid offensive deep into Polish territory. On January 17, the corps distinguished itself during the liberation of the large city of Częstochowa, on January 20 they crossed the Polish-German border, and on January 21 they occupied the German city of Kreizburg. On the night of January 25, Rodimtsev’s guards crossed the Oder River on the move and in the coming days expanded the bridgehead, liberating the large cities of Brig and Olau. Throughout the entire operation, General Rodimtsev was in the advanced combat formations of the troops, skillfully commanded his units, flexibly maneuvered his forces and means, and set a personal example of courage and composure.
IN second medal "Gold Star" (No. 6049) commander of the 32nd Guards Rifle Corps of the Guard, Lieutenant General Rodimtsev Alexander Ilyich awarded by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated June 2, 1945 for skillful leadership of troops during the crossing of the Oder River on January 25, 1945 in the area of the village of Linden (Poland), personal heroism and courage.
After the war he continued to serve in the Soviet Army and continued to command the same corps until May 1946. Graduated from the Higher Academic Courses at the Higher Military Academy named after K.E. Voroshilov in 1947. Since March 1947 - commander of the 11th Guards Rifle Corps. Since February 1951 - assistant to the commander of the East Siberian Military District. From June 1953 to July 1956 - Chief Military Advisor to the Albanian People's Army and USSR Military Attaché in Albania. Since November 1956 - First Deputy Commander of the Northern Military District. Since May 1960 - commander of the 1st Army in Ukraine. Since March 1966 - military consultant in the Group of Inspectors General of the USSR Ministry of Defense.
He was elected as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR of the second convocation and as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the third convocation (1950-1954). He is the author of several books “Under the Skies of Spain”, “At the Last Frontier”, “The Guardsmen Fought to the Death”, “People of the Legendary Feat”, “Mashenka from the Mousetrap” and others.
The famous Soviet military leader died in the hero city of Moscow on April 13, 1977. He was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery (section 9).
Colonel General (05/09/1961). Awarded three Orders of Lenin (22.10.1937, 10.03.1965, ...), the Order of the October Revolution (7.03.1975), four Orders of the Red Banner (21.06.1937, 27.12.1941, ...), two Orders of Suvorov 2- 1st degree (08/27/1943, 02/22/1944), orders of Kutuzov 2nd degree (03/31/1943), Bohdan Khmelnitsky 1st degree (09/23/1944), two orders of the Red Star (03/31/1944, 11/3/1944), medals, as well as orders and medals of foreign countries.
Honorary citizen of Volgograd (1970).
Bronze bust of A.I. Rodimtsev was installed in his homeland in the village of Sharlyk, a monument and a memorial stele - in the city of Orenburg, a bust - in Kursk, a monument - in the village of Cheremisinovo, Kursk region. Memorial plaques were installed in the hero cities of Moscow and Volgograd, and in the city of Orenburg. Streets in the village of Sharlyk, the cities of Volgograd, Orenburg, Chernigov, Kyiv, and the village of Tomarovka in the Belgorod region are named after Rodimtsev. His name was given to school No. 2 in the village of Sharlyk, lyceum No. 3 in the city of Orenburg, school No. 53 in the city of Kursk, the Olympic reserve school in the hero city of Volgograd, and the supertrawler of the Sevryba association (hero city of Murmansk).
Biography updated by Anton Bocharov
ALEXANDER RODIMTSEV
IN The Great Patriotic War found Colonel Rodimtsev in a small town in Ukraine. He commanded an airborne brigade, mastering a new military specialty. After all, he started in the cavalry, and in Spain, he was a volunteer machine gunner. The airborne troops were very proud of their commander, Hero of the Soviet Union. Rodimtsev did not tell anyone about himself, but among the fighters subordinate to him there were legends about the captain of the Republican Army of Spain, who blocked the fascists’ path to the University campus in Madrid. The captain replaced the machine gunner at the post and forced the Nazis to roll back.
They said that Rodimtsev was one of those who made famous the small Spanish river Jarama, which became an impassable border for the enemy.
Yes, Rodimtsev was in Guadalajara, near Brunete and near Teruel. Red Army conscripts and infantrymen, who proudly wore the blue buttonholes of paratroopers, saw in their commander a model and an example. And the time has come for them, twenty years old, to prove that they are worthy of their commander.
Paratroopers under the command of Rodimtsev were sent to the defense of Kyiv and concentrated on the main street of Kyiv - Khreshchatyk. And when Hitler’s generals had already prepared a telegram that Kyiv had been captured by them, the Rodimtsevites struck a counter blow to the fascists. On 20 days of August forty-one, the airborne corps, which included Rodimtsev’s brigade, fought fierce battles, which now and then turned into hand-to-hand combat. Supported by artillerymen, the paratroopers advanced 800 meters per day. But they were moving to the west. We were heading west in August 1941! Those who participated in the Patriotic War will never forget this tragic month and will understand what it meant for that time to go west. The paratroopers marched 15 kilometers to the west with continuous battles to hold the defense in the Goloseevsky forest, this University town of Kyiv.
This was the baptism of fire of the soldiers commanded by Rodimtsev. The heroism of their commander was passed on to these young guys who had never fought before.
At the end of August, the brigade was withdrawn north of Kyiv in order to continue training in the airborne specialty. But at that time circumstances were rapidly changing; on September 1, Rodimtsev’s paratroopers found themselves in battle again. They stood on the Seim River and did not allow the Nazis to take a single step until they were completely surrounded. With coordinated actions, the corps broke through the strong ring and escaped the encirclement in three days of battles. The experience of fighting on the Seim River was added to the experience of fighting on the Harama River. At that time, the colonel, the brigade commander, did not know that he would have to fight on the Volga, but he was firmly convinced that he would cross the Vistula and Oder and see the Elbe. The appearance of General Ognev in the famous play "Front", which appeared in those days, reproduces many of the features inherent in Rodimtsev, in whose part Alexander Korneichuk visited more than once.
AND Rodimtsev’s name is widely known among our people, and his fame is usually associated with the battles for the Volga stronghold. But I dwelled in such detail on the initial period of the war because for the 13th Guards Division, courage was prepared by severe battles, was a continuation of the battles on Khreshchatyk and near Tim, and for its commander - and a continuation of the battles in the University City of Madrid and near Guadalajara.
And the 13th Guards Division under the command of Major General Alexander Rodimtsev, after the battles near Kharkov, was in reserve on the left bank of the Volga. The guards were worried: it was bitter for them to be in the rear when such heavy fighting was taking place on the outskirts of Stalingrad. But Rodimtsev himself was calm, or rather, did not show his excitement in any way. Wearing a Red Army tunic with general's buttonholes and a simple cap, from dawn until late at night he practiced street combat tactics with the fighters.
The situation in the Stalingrad area became very difficult starting from the twentieth of August 1942. But the hardest days came in mid-September. That's when the 13th Guards Division received orders to concentrate in the Krasnaya Sloboda area and move to the city center.
This crossing of the Guards Division has already gone down in history; a lot has been written about it. But again and again the memory of this crossing of the Volga makes my heart beat rapidly. The division was transported at the place that the Nazis chose for themselves; here they intended to enter the defeated city. The tip of our 13th Guards pierced right into the tip of the enemy’s main attack. The division went to where hundreds of enemy tanks and selected infantry divisions were already concentrated. On the other side of the river, as the memoirs of Marshals Eremenko and Chuikov testify, we had already sent our last forces into battle.
This one-of-a-kind crossing under heavy enemy fire could not be supported by our artillery fire - they would have hit our own. Fuel spilled from the bullet-riddled tanks of the oil storage facility into the Volga. The river was on fire, the fire was extinguished only by fascist shells exploding everywhere. Armored boats of the Volga Flotilla, barges, boats, longboats with guardsmen moved through this continuous fire.
If you have been to Volgograd, you know the beautiful embankment, with granite terraces going down to the river. This is where the 13th Guards Division was crossing. On a towing boat, called for some reason by the Japanese name "Kawasaki", he crossed the Volga and the headquarters of the division led by the general. The headquarters closed the crossing and crossed already during the day, that is, in conditions of tenfold danger.
Having lost many soldiers during the crossing of the Volga, the 13th Guards became one of the equal units defending the city. Next to it were other divisions and brigades, each of which, no less than the 13th Guards, deserves to be glorified in songs and legends.
I will not repeat the story of “Sergeant Pavlov’s house”. This feat of the soldiers of the 13th Guards is widely known. For two months a small garrison defended the ruins of the house, which became an impregnable fortress. I just want to remember that Sergeant Pavlov learned that he was a Hero only in the summer of 1945 in Germany, during the days of demobilization. After he was seriously wounded in “his home” and evacuated to a hospital, he returned to the front (to other units) several times to fight bravely, be wounded again, recover, and fight again. Once, during a quiet period, he saw a newsreel release of “Pavlov’s House,” but did not tell anyone that this was a house named after him.
One of the incredible feats of the 13th Guards that amazed the world is the battle for the city station. All those who fought died here, and while they were alive, the station was not surrendered.
I remember the inscription on the wall: “Rodimtsev’s guards stood here to the death.”
This was not written after the battles - it was written by the fighters who were bleeding, but continued to fight.
The dominant height of the city on the Volga - Mamayev Kurgan, on the top of which now stands a statue of the Mother Motherland and the Park of Eternal Glory is growing, was taken by storm by the division's guards. To clarify the role of the division in the defense of the hero city, I will only allow myself to once again remind the reader that by the time the division crossed the Volga, fascist machine gunners were already in charge on the bank, in the area of the central embankment. Then the guards managed to recapture several streets, occupy the station and a number of central blocks. The city center never fell to the enemy - it was recaptured and held in the hands of the guards of the 13th division.
“Rodimtsev will flounder in the Volga,” shouted the horns of German radio cars. And the general in a sheepskin coat and a soldier’s hat, blackened by smoke, walked to the command posts of the regiments and battalions. Let's face it, these were not long paths, but every meter threatened death. How many fascist attacks did the division repulse? It is perhaps impossible to count.
I remember that on the 25th anniversary of the October Revolution the division was summing up its results. Some figures remain in memory: 77 tanks were burned, more than 6 thousand enemy soldiers and officers were destroyed. Later, prisoners of Paulus's troops showed much more impressive figures. But the division’s success figures were always “underestimated.”
The general was in the city from the moment of the crossing until the victory. On January 26, he and a group of soldiers came out to the sounds of artillery cannonade coming from the west. At that time, only dozens of guardsmen remained in the battalions of the division, and they rushed after the general. I saw how Rodimtsev presented the banner to the soldiers of the N.T. division. Tavartkiladze, who broke into the city from the banks of the Don. It was a homemade banner; On a piece of red calico it was written in purple pencil: “From the Guards Order of Lenin of the 13th Rifle Division as a sign of the meeting on January 26.” I don’t know where this banner is now, but it seems to me that it is a historical relic of the Great Patriotic War. Its transfer into the hands of fighters who came from the west symbolized the dissection of the enemy group encircled in the Stalingrad area into two parts.
Z and during the battles in the Stalingrad area, Hero of the Soviet Union General Rodimtsev was awarded the Order of the Red Star. From here began the journey of the general and the formation he led to the west. The general was appointed commander of the corps, which included the 13th Guards. The combat route of the corps passed through the places where the airborne brigade fought, and later the 87th Rifle Division, which became the 13th Guards Division. The corps fought near Kharkov, liberated Poltava and Kremenchug, and crossed the Dnieper.
The starting point for this journey was the famous Prokhorovka, the battles on the Kursk Bulge. The battle of Prokhorovka went down in history as one of the most grandiose tank battles. Sometimes in stories about Prokhorovka the role of the infantry fades into the background. And this role was great and serious, because tanks alone would not have been able to cope with the hordes of the enemy who were trying to use the Kursk bridgehead for a decisive offensive planned by the enemy for the summer of 1943.
Tank formations of the Soviet Army entered this battle hand in hand with Rodimtsev’s infantrymen. And then fighting broke out again on Ukrainian soil. The liberation of the city and the railway junction of Znamenka was of great importance on this section of the front. The divisions of the corps were named Poltava and Kremenchug, and the commander was awarded the rank of lieutenant general.
Together with his troops, the general entered the small town where the airborne brigade was stationed before the war. Many rivers lay on his way through the territory of his homeland: Vorskla, Psel, Dnieper, Bug, Bug again - it is winding, - finally, the Dniester. And every time, going ashore, the general recalled the most difficult crossing in his life - the crossing of the Volga and the distant rivers Ebro and Jarama. But in war, memories are needed only for action. And in the field book of the corps commander, all this was written down dryly and matter-of-factly - crossing the rivers... Without artillery support... With artillery support... Under the influence of enemy aviation... With the immediate deployment of battle formations and the capture of a bridgehead on the right bank.. There is also such a record: crossing a water barrier - under the influence of attack and bombing aircraft up to 600 sorties per day...
L This year forty-four is memorable for the soldiers of the Guards Corps crossing the Vistula in the Sandomierz region. At the famous Sandomierz bridgehead, the Nazis threw four tank divisions, one mechanized, and two infantry, against Rodimtsev’s corps. But was it really possible to push into the Vistula those who could not be pushed into the Volga?
The corps strengthened itself on the Sandomierz bridgehead, from here it made a bold breakthrough and, breaking through the enemy’s heavily fortified positional defenses, pursued the enemy to the Oder and crossed the Oder on the move. There were many difficult days along the way. I did not see Rodimtsev in despondency. In a harsh moment, the word “shaitan” just burst out from somewhere in the Orenburg steppes.
M Rodimtsev met the immediate European winter of 1945 already on German territory. He prepared the troops for a decisive breakthrough, an offensive that ended on April 24, 1945 with access to the Elbe near the city of Torgau.
Under the walls of this mossy fortress, the guards met the Allied troops. The meeting went down in history. American soldiers, whose military path in the Second World War was much easier and shorter than ours, were amazed at the bearing, health and dashing appearance of the guardsmen who had just emerged from a fierce battle. It was a big holiday, a joyful meeting, and, it would seem, for Rodimtsev and his corps, who had traveled more than seven and a half thousand kilometers along the war roads, the war was already over. But no! The corps received an order to turn south; in a heavy battle, it took Dresden, senselessly destroyed by Allied bombing. But even here, May 7, the warrior, is not over yet for Rodimtsev.
The corps received a new order - to quickly rush south to liberate a number of cities in Czechoslovakia and help Prague, where the flames of a popular uprising had already flared up. The speed and power of this operation seem incredible now: after all, the troops of the corps took part in the most difficult battles in April - May 1945, each of which seemed to be the last and final one. But no sooner had one battle ended than the need arose to rush into a new, even more difficult battle.
IN The ceremonial volleys of the victorious salute were already thundering in Moscow, already in the building of the Engineering School in Karlshorst, German Field Marshal Keitel signed the act of complete surrender with a trembling hand, and the corps under the command of Rodimtsev was still fighting in the mountains of Czechoslovakia.
The guards burst into Terezin, where thousands of prisoners had already been rounded up for execution - Czechs, Russians, Magyars, residents of many European countries. If the guards had been half an hour, fifteen minutes late, it would have been all over.
At that moment, the general was informed: in the crowd gathered for execution, a woman was giving birth. Rodimtsev ordered her to be immediately taken to the medical battalion of the 13th Guards Division, which had already approached Terezin. After the battle, Rodimtsev arrived at the medical battalion and learned that an exhausted prisoner from Hungary, weighing only about 40 kilograms, had given birth to a girl. This was an event that excited all the residents of Terezin. The news spread through the building: the girl and mother were alive, the child was named by the Russian name Valya.
Looking ahead many years, I will say that Valya Badash, a citizen of the Hungarian People's Republic, a teacher at the University of Budapest, and Colonel General Alexander Rodimtsev are honorary citizens of the city of Terezin in Czechoslovakia and met there to celebrate the next Victory Day.
But then their meeting in the medical battalion of the 13th Guards Division was one-minute. The troops rushed to Prague and within a few hours were already fighting for its liberation.
But even here the Great Patriotic War did not end for Alexander Rodimtsev and the corps under his command. It was necessary to rush to the aid of the burning city of Kladno.
L It was only on May 13 that the command was given to sheath the guns. The combat route of the airborne brigade, then the 87th Rifle Division, which became the 13th Guards Division, and, finally, the corps, which included the 13th, 95th and 97th Guards Divisions, amounted to seven and a half thousand kilometers. To these seven and a half in Czechoslovakia another five hundred were added.
There are feats that make a fighter a hero in a surprisingly short period of time: one day - crossing a river, one night - a burning tank, an instant, unprecedentedly bold attack. But there are feats that cannot be determined in a day, in a moment. The second “Golden Star” lit up on the chest of General Alexander Rodimtsev as a reflection of a thousand feats accomplished by the fighters of his formation, nurtured and led by him.
All these years the general was engaged in educating troops, educating soldiers. Nurtured by the army, who became a Komsomol member and communist in its ranks, he is considered in the military community to be a man of legendary personal courage. As a witness, I confirm: yes, for General Rodimtsev the concept of “fear” does not exist. But it was not recklessness, but calm, precise calculation that always guided him in a combat situation. By a lucky coincidence, not a single bullet, not a single shrapnel ever hit him. He emerged from the war as a young man, with a barely silver head and cheerful young eyes in heavy eyelids, as if swollen from four years of insomnia...
1919-1924
worked as a laborer on the farm of the “kulak”;
1924-1927
an apprentice shoemaker on the farm of a “kulak”;
15.09.1927
drafted into the ranks of the Red Army;
09.1927-09.1929
Red Army soldier of the 18th Rifle Convoy Battalion, Saratov;
09.1929-03.1932
cadet, department commander of the military school named after. All-Russian Central Executive Committee, from which he graduated with excellent marks, receiving the officer rank of “lieutenant”;
03.1932-03.1933
platoon commander of the regimental school of the 6th cavalry regiment of the Moscow Military District;
11.1936-09.1937
volunteered to fight in Spain on the side of the Republican troops, squadron commander;
09.1937-01.1938
commander of the 61st cavalry regiment of the Moscow Military District;
01.1938-05.1939
student of the Military Academy named after. Frunze, Moscow;
05.1939-10.1940
assistant division commander of the Belarusian Special Forces. IN;
05.1939-10.1940
assistant commander of the 36th cavalry division of the Belarusian Special Forces. IN;
10.1940-05.1941
student of the Military Academy of Cavalry and Navigation Staff of the Red Army Air Force;
05.1941-12.1941
commander of the 5th Airborne Brigade of the Odessa Military District, Southwestern Front;
12.1941-04.1943
commander of the 13th Guards Rifle Division (b/82 SD) of the South-Western, Don and Stalingrad fronts;
04.1943-03.1946
commander of the 13th Guards Rifle Corps, Steppe, 1st and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts and the Central Group of Forces;
03.1946-01.1947
at the disposal of ground forces personnel;
03.1947-02.1951
commander of the 11th Guards Rifle Corps of the Moscow Military District;
02.1951-06.1953
assistant to the commander of the district troops for the combat unit of the East Siberian Military District, Irkutsk;
06.1953-08.1956
chief military adviser and military attaché at the USSR mission in Albania;
11.1956-05.1960
First Deputy Commander of the Northern Military District;
05.1960-09.1966
commander and member of the Army Military Council, 1st Army of the Kyiv Military District;
1960-1977
military consultant to the Group of Inspectors General of the USSR Ministry of Defense;
22.10.1937
awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union
02.06.1945
A.I. Rodimtsev was awarded the 2nd Gold Star medal for the exemplary performance of the Command’s combat missions on the front against the German invaders, and was given the title of twice Hero of the Soviet Union. Alexander Ilyich Rodimtsev was awarded more than 40 orders and medals of the Soviet Union and other countries.
1949
a bronze bust was erected in his homeland.
April 17, 1977
buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy cemetery.
_____________________________
Childhood, pre-war years
In the harsh, spacious steppes of the Orenburg region, blown through by the prickly winds, there is a large village of Sharlyk - a regional center on the old highway from Orenburg to Kazan. On its central square there is a bronze bust - a statue of a man in general's shoulder straps, with two Gold Stars of the Hero of the Soviet Union. The face is detached, thoughtful, narrowed eyes seem to be peering somewhere into the distance - either into the horizon beyond the edge of the village, or into the space of past memorable days.
This is Alexander Ilyich Rodimtsev - a legendary man, whose name is inseparable from the history of the Great Patriotic War, from its perhaps most grandiose battle - Stalingrad. He became the first Hero of the Soviet Union - a native of the Orenburg region, and then the first twice Hero - a native of this steppe region. And although Rodimtsev’s unfading feat and high glory are the heritage of our entire people, our Fatherland, it is quite natural that, first of all, Alexander Ilyich is the eternal pride and love of his fellow countrymen - Sharly residents, all Orenburg residents.
Study, beginning of a career
And for Alexander Rodimtsev the time to part with his native land came in 1927. He was drafted into the Red Army. Alexander Ilyich later recalled:
“In the fall of 1927, I appeared before the draft board, very much afraid that I would be rejected. I deliberately stuck out my chest in front of the doctors, tensed my muscles, tried to walk heavily and waddle: what a strength, they say, the floors are shaking under me! But the physical labor, familiar to me from childhood, the heat and cold hardened me enough, and the doctors unanimously said: I’m good.
Spanish Civil War
However, soon duty dictated a rather long break in this family idyll. This happened shortly after the word “Spain” sounded like an alarm bell in newspaper reports and radio broadcasts.
By the mid-30s of the 20th century, the black shadow of fascism was already creeping across Europe. Mussolini ruled in Italy, Adolf Hitler ruled in Germany. Realizing the terrible danger posed by misanthropic fascist ideology and politics, the progressive forces of European countries rallied and united into Popular Fronts, with the main goal of preventing pro-fascist regimes from coming to power at home.
Homecoming
In the fall of 1937, Rodimtsev left Madrid and, after a short stop in Valencia, arrived in Paris. From here he went by train to his homeland. It turned out that he had the opportunity to travel from the French capital to Moscow in the same carriage with the Soviet pilots Gromov, Danilin and Yumashev, who had shortly before made a heroic non-stop flight from the USSR to the USA. When the State border was left behind and the train rolled across Soviet soil, the glorious trinity was honored at almost every station - they held flying rallies right on the platforms, made speeches, presented memorable gifts, and showered them with flowers. An outwardly inconspicuous man in a civilian suit, thin, tanned under the hot southern sun, watched the meeting with a smile. He was sincerely happy for the Soviet aviators and admired them. And then his thoughts returned to the Spanish land scorched by fire, to the comrades who remained there, then he thought about home, about family.
The Great Patriotic War
“A difficult situation has created in the Kiev direction. An order was received to transfer our corps near Kyiv, to the Brovary-Boryspil area. You and your paratroopers must go there on the night of July 11th.
Already while loading into cars at the Pervomaisk station, the brigade was subjected to a fierce raid by enemy aircraft. German planes bombed and strafed the trains carrying paratroopers almost the entire time they were en route to their destination. Station buildings, houses in towns and villages, grain fields, and steppe grasses were burning. The first killed and wounded appeared in the brigade units. The railway junctions were filled with refugees - mostly women, children, and old people.
Stalingrad
On July 12, 1942, the Stalingrad Front included the 62nd, 63rd, 64th armies, and the 21st, 28th, 38th, 51st, 57th separate armies from the headquarters reserve. But already on August 7, the South-Eastern Front was separated from the Stalingrad Front (commander - Eremenko), to which the 64th, 57th, 51st Armies, the 1st Guards Army, and a little later the 62nd Army were transferred.
Hitler set the task of capturing Stalingrad in OKW Directive No. 45 of July 23. The Germans needed the advancement of the right wing of Army Group B, the core of which was the 6th Army, to the Stalingrad region and the occupation of the lower Volga region in order to interrupt the connection between the south of the European part of the USSR and the center of the country. Ensure successful offensive operations of Army Group “A” in the Caucasian direction.
Promotion and return home
After the victorious completion of the Battle of Stalingrad, the 13th Guards Rifle Division was awarded the second military order - the Red Banner. The 62nd Army under the command of Vasily Ivanovich Chuikov, in which Rodimtsev’s soldiers passed with honor all the tests of the most difficult months of defense of the Volga stronghold, was transformed into the 8th Guards. But the 13th Guards Division now had to fight from the banks of the Volga to the west as part of the 5th Guards Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Alexei Semenovich Zhadov. This army, while still the 68th, also fought in Stalingrad and distinguished itself in its defense, for which it was awarded the title of guards.
And Alexander Ilyich himself had to part ways these days with the formation that had become dear to him, with the guardsmen of the 13th, whom the “fire battles” they had gone through together made Rodimtsev’s true brothers-in-arms. The division commander, whose name truly became legendary during the Battle of Stalingrad, was nominated for promotion, and he was soon to leave for Moscow for a new assignment. And the 13th Guards was taken over by a new commander - Major General Gleb Vladimirovich Baklanov.
Kursk Bulge
Rodimtsev took command of the corps when the troops of the 5th Guards Army were preparing for active combat operations in the Oryol-Kursk direction. Heroic Stalingrad, having survived, turned the war back. Now through these lands the Red Army is driving the German invaders to the west.
However, at first it was necessary not to attack, but to hold the defense.
Counterattack
Without giving any respite to the retreating enemy, units of the 32nd Guards Rifle Corps developed an offensive against Poltava, the city where at the beginning of the 18th century Russian soldiers under the command of Peter I defeated the Swedish army of Charles XII. In the very place where 230 years ago Russian troops crossed the Worksla to the battle site, Rodimtsev’s guards came out to the river. The Germans blew up the bridge, but the soldiers of the 32nd Rifle Corps, under enemy fire, using crossings established by sappers, on boats, rafts, and improvised means, successfully crossed Worksla and on September 22 broke into Poltava. For this victory, the divisions of the corps were given the honorary name “Poltava”. However, the joy of victory for Rodimtsev was overshadowed by a heavy loss: in the battles for the Ukrainian city, his comrade Dmitry Panikhin, commander of the 34th Guards Rifle Regiment, was mortally wounded. A few days later he died from his wounds.
The onslaught of the Red Army was now unstoppable. Every day, Soviet troops liberated dozens of settlements. How different it was from the Stalingrad autumn of 1942, when the division under the command of Rodimtsev fought for every city block, every floor. But it was precisely the successes in those battles that became the seed from which victories now grew on the soil of Ukraine...
After the Great Patriotic War
The war ended, but the service continued. From Czechoslovakia, Alexander Ilyich returned to Moscow to undergo retraining at the Military Academy named after. M. V. Frunze. At this time, the hard times of war made themselves felt. Although neither the bullet nor the shrapnel hit Rodimtsev, he caught a cold in his feet in Stalingrad.
Rodimtsev suffered frostbite at his Stalingrad command post - in a reinforced concrete pipe under an embankment. And after the war, the pain in his legs was so severe that at one time he walked on crutches.
Aleksandr Rodimcev Career: Hero
Birth: Russia, 8.3.1905
During the Great Patriotic War, A.I. Rodimtsev commanded the 13th Guards Order of Lenin Rifle Division, which was part of the 62nd Army, which heroically defended Stalingrad. Then he commanded the Guards Rifle Corps and reached the capital of Czechoslovakia, Prague. On June 2, 1945, A.I. Rodimtsev was awarded the second gold medal of the Hero of the Soviet Union. He was also awarded many orders and medals. He was elected as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR of the second convocation and as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the third convocation.
Alexander Ilyich Rodimtsev was born into a poor peasant family. Russian by nationality. Member of the CPSU since 1929. In the Soviet Army
since 1927. In 1932 he graduated from the Military School named after the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. Participated in the Spanish Civil War and in the liberation of Western Belarus.
The title of Hero of the Soviet Union was awarded to A.I. Rodimtsev on October 22, 1937 for exemplary performance of a special task. In 1939 he graduated from the Military Academy named after M.V. Frunze.
After the war, he graduated from the Higher Academic Courses at the Academy of the General Staff and commanded a formation. Currently, Colonel General A.I. Rodimtsev is in a responsible position in the ranks of the Soviet Army. He is the author of several books.
In the central square of the regional village of Sharlyk, which is widely spread across the vast Orenburg steppe, there is a bust of the Twice Hero. People of the older generation remember the one who is sculpted in bronze as a barefoot boy from the poor family of Ilya Rodimtsev, they remember him as a shoemaker's apprentice.
Long ago, in 1927, a rural boy, Alexander Rodimtsev, was called up for active service and left his native place. Since those distant times, Alexander did not have to return to his home for an extended period of time. He came home as a soldier on leave. Came as a cadet; told how he stood guard at the door of the Mausoleum. He came as a red commander. Even before the war, as a colonel, he came here, as simple as that. And only from the newspapers did the villagers learn that their fellow countryman had earned the high title of Hero.
And later, after the Great Patriotic War, he came as a general to the opening of his bronze bust of a twice Hero. And her relatives, more than half a village here, said that the bust seemed to be similar, but it was not easy to recognize the fair-haired and light-eyed Orenburg Cossack in the bronze.
Here they elected Alexander Ilyich Rodimtsev to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR; he comes here all the time when he has a few free days. And in Moscow, the general’s apartment is something like a permanent representative office of the village of Sharlyk. No matter what business the fellow countrymen go to the capital for, they have a close abode in Moscow.
But the Sharlyk Cossacks rarely find the owner himself in Moscow. He is in the service, in the army, living like a soldier.
The Great Patriotic War found Colonel Rodimtsev in a small town in Ukraine. He commanded an airborne brigade, mastering a new military profession. After all, he started in the cavalry, and in a distant country that fought for its freedom, he was a volunteer machine gunner. The airborne troops were very proud of their commander, Hero of the Soviet Union. Rodimtsev did not tell anyone about himself, but among the soldiers subordinate to him there were legends about the captain of the Republican Army of Spain, who blocked the fascists’ road to the University town in Madrid. The captain replaced the machine gunner at the post and forced the Nazis to roll back.
They said that Rodimtsev was the only one of those who made famous the small Spanish river Jarama, which became an impassable border for the enemy.
Yes, Rodimtsev was in Guadalajara, near Brunete and near Teruel. Red Army conscripts and infantrymen, who proudly wore the blue buttonholes of paratroopers, saw in their commander a standard and a model. And the time has come for them, twenty years old, to provide evidence that they are worthy of their commander.
The paratroopers were sent to defend Kyiv. The time has not yet come to use airborne units for their intended purpose. But in general, the direct direction of these fighters was a heroic act, and they committed it.
The Red Army soldiers under the command of Rodimtsev concentrated on the main street of Kyiv, Khreshchatyk. And when Hitler’s generals had already prepared a telegram that Kyiv had been captured by them, the Rodimtsevites dealt a counter shock to the fascists. On 20 days of August forty-one, the airborne skeleton, which included Rodimtsev’s brigade, fought fierce battles, which sometimes turned into hand-to-hand combat. Supported by artillerymen, the paratroopers advanced 800 meters per day. But they were moving to the west. We were heading west in August 1941! Those who participated in the Patriotic War will never forget that same tragic month and will understand what it meant for that time to set foot in the West. The paratroopers marched 15 kilometers to the west with continuous battles to hold the defense in the Goloseevsky forest, this University town of Kyiv.
Such was the baptism of fire of the servicemen commanded by Rodimtsev. The heroism of their commander was passed on to these young guys who had never fought before under any circumstances.
At the end of August, the brigade was withdrawn north of Kyiv in order to continue training in the airborne specialty. But at that time, circumstances were soon changing, and on September 1, Rodimtsev’s paratroopers once again found themselves in battle. They stood on the Seim River and did not allow the Nazis to cross the path a single step, while they were not one hundred percent surrounded. With coordinated actions, the skeleton broke through the strong ring and, in three days of battles, inflicting huge losses on the enemy, escaped the encirclement. The experience of fighting on the Harama River was supplemented by the experience of fighting on the Seim River. At that time, the colonel, the head of the brigade, did not know that he would have to fight on the Volga, but he was firmly convinced that he would cross the Vistula and Oder, and see the Elbe. The appearance of General Ognev in the famous play Front, which appeared in those days, reproduces a lot of the evil spirits inherent in Rodimtsev, in whose unit Alexander Korneychuk visited more than once.
I arrived in the division commanded by Alexander Rodimtsev at the end of 1941. This division was created from the same airborne unit that fought in Kyiv and the Seimas. I had met the Hero of the Soviet Union Alexander Ilyich Rodimtsev before, but in the snowy fields of the Kursk region I saw him for the first time in a combat situation. Yes, we were already in the center of Russia, but the atmosphere in the division somehow happily did not correspond to the difficult situation that had developed at the front. The troops were preparing for the offensive. The division commander took me with him to the front line. We came to the soldiers, commanded by the young hero Oleg Kokushkin, who was awarded the Order of the Red Banner three times during the six months of the war. I heard Kokushkin and Rodimtsev talking to the soldiers lying on the slippery, icy snow.
Cold. How to keep warm, friend divisional commander?
Let’s move forward, take the town of Tim, warm up and celebrate the New Year, Rodimtsev answered somehow at home.
The fire is heavy in front, comrade commanders...
This means that it is necessary to overcome it as quickly as possible.
This offensive operation ended in success. Tim was taken.
The name of Rodimtsev is widely known among our people, and his fame is usually associated with the battles for the Volga stronghold. But I dwelled in such detail on the initial period of the war, because for the 13th Guards Division, courage was prepared by severe battles, was a continuation of the battles on Khreshchatyk and near Tim, and for its commander, a continuation of the battles in the University City of Madrid and near Guadalajara.
And the 13th Guards Division under the command of Major General Alexander Rodimtsev was in reserve on the left bank of the Volga after the battles near Kharkov. The guardsmen were worried: it was hard for them to be in the rear when such heavy fighting was taking place on the approaches to Stalingrad. But Rodimtsev himself was calm, or rather, did not show his excitement in any way. Wearing a Red Army tunic with general's buttonholes and a simple cap, from dawn until late at night he practiced street combat tactics with the fighters.
A distinctive quality of the general has always been a cheerful absence of worries, not the least bit feigned, very natural. Having already had 15 years of army service behind him by that time, having passed the path from a soldier to a general, having graduated from the Frunze Military Academy, a real military bone, the division commander did not lose some very sincere, almost homely tone in his conversation with the soldiers. He could, without jokes, without ingratiation, conduct a conversation with an ordinary soldier and an officer as equals, primarily in responsibility for the fate of the Motherland.
The situation in the Stalingrad area became very difficult starting from the twentieth of August 1942. But the hardest days came in mid-September. That's when the 13th Guards Division received orders to concentrate in the Krasnaya Sloboda area and cross to the middle of the city.
This crossing of the Guards Division has already gone down in history; much has been written about it. But again and again the past often makes my heart pound about this crossing of the Volga. The division was transported at the place that the Nazis chose for themselves; at this point they intended to enter the defeated town. The tip of our 13th Guards pierced right into the tip of the enemy’s main attack. The division went to where hundreds of enemy tanks and selected infantry divisions were already concentrated. On the other side of the river, as the memoirs of Marshals Eremenko and Chuikov testify, we had already put our last forces into the makhach.
This one-of-a-kind crossing under hurricane enemy fire could not be supported by our artillery fire and would have hit our own. Fuel spilled from the bullet-riddled tanks of the oil storage facility into the Volga. The river was on fire, the heat was extinguished only by fascist shells exploding everywhere.
Armored boats of the Volga flotilla, barges, boats, longboats with guardsmen moved through that same absolute flame.
If you have been to Volgograd in recent decades, you know the beautiful embankment, with granite terraces going down to the river. This is where the 13th Guards Division was crossing. On a towing boat, named for some reason by the Japanese name Kawasaki, he crossed the Volga and the headquarters of the division led by the general. The headquarters closed the crossing and crossed already during the day, that is, in conditions of tenfold danger.
Having lost countless soldiers during the crossing of the Volga, the 13th Guards became one of the equal units defending the city. Next to it were other divisions and brigades, each of which, no less than the 13th Guards, deserves to be glorified in songs and legends.
Rodimtsev’s guards immediately entered into a scuffle to defend the large town as part of the 62nd Army. I visited this division a few times during the defense of the Volga stronghold. Not being a military specialist, I still could not help but be carried away by the military science with which the division chief was constantly occupied. Returning from the vanguard, he, together with the headquarters officers, bent over the map, at the same time becoming teacher and student. In the continuous roar of artillery explosions and machine gun fire, which was the sound background of this battle from its beginning to the end, Rodimtsev, in his calm, homely voice, analyzed every moment of the battle, set tasks, weighed the pros and cons. This happened both in the adit, where there was not enough oxygen, and in the pipe, where the staff officers were flooded with water.
I have already spoken about the general’s calmness. I never saw him angry. But I saw him delighted. Rodimtsev spoke enthusiastically about the actions of other divisions, and about their commanders, and about the soldiers subordinate to him.
I will not reproduce the story of Sergeant Pavlov's house. This heroic deed of the soldiers of the 13th Guards is widely known. For two months a small grass garrison defended the ruins of the house, which became an impregnable fortress. I just want to remember that Sergeant Pavlov learned that he was a Hero only in the summer of 1945 in Germany, during the days of demobilization. After he was seriously wounded in his home and evacuated to the infirmary, he returned to the front (to other units) several times to fight bravely, be wounded again, recover and re-enter the fray. Once, during a period of calm, he saw a newsreel release of Pavlov’s House, but did not tell anyone that this was a dwelling named after him.
This fact characterizes one of the guardsmen of Rodimtsev’s division, perhaps no less dazzlingly than his heroic deed in the burning city on the Volga. This is how the general raised the guardsmen of his division, starting with himself.
Among the incredible heroic deeds of the 13th Guards that amazed the world, it is impossible not to include the scuffle at the city station. All those who fought died here and, while they were alive, the station was not surrendered.
I remember the inscription on the wall: Here Rodimtsev’s guards stood to the death.
This was not written after this battle, it was written by the fighters who were bleeding, but continued to fight.
The dominant height of the city on the Volga, Mamayev Kurgan, on the top of which currently stands a statue of the Mother Motherland and the Park of Eternal Glory is growing, was taken by storm by the division’s guards. In order to more accurately determine the image of the division in the defense of the hero city, I will only allow myself to once again refresh the reader’s memory that by the time the division crossed the Volga on the bank, in the area of the central embankment, fascist machine gunners were already in charge. Then the guards managed to recapture a few streets, occupy the station and the central blocks. The city center never fell to the enemy; it was recaptured and held in the hands of the guards of the 13th division.
Rodimtsev will flounder in the Volga, shouted the horns of German radio machines. And the general in a sheepskin coat and a soldier’s hat, blackened by smoke, walked to the command posts of the regiments and battalions. Let's face it, these were not long paths, but an arbitrary meter threatened death. How many fascist attacks did the division repulse? This probably cannot be counted.
I remember that on the 25th anniversary of the October Revolution the division was summing up its results. Some figures remain in memory: 77 tanks were burned, more than 6 thousand enemy soldiers and officers were destroyed. Later, prisoners of Paulus's troops showed much more impressive figures. But the division's success figures were underestimated all the way.
In those days, the Spanish Republicans gathered in London sent a telegram to Rodimtsev. It said: The glorious armor of Stalingrad by the people and the Red Army... is a symbol of the steadfastness of human freedom.
The general was in the city from the moment of the crossing until the victory. On January 26, he and a group of soldiers came out to the sounds of artillery cannonade coming from the west. At that time, only dozens of guardsmen remained in the division battalions, and they rushed after the general. I saw how Rodimtsev presented the banner to the soldiers of N. T. Tavartkiladze’s division, who broke through into the city from the banks of the Don. It was a homemade banner; on a piece of red calico it was written in purple pencil: From the Guards Order of Lenin of the 13th Rifle Division as a sign of the meeting on January 26. I don’t know where this banner is currently, but it seems to me that it is a historical relic of the Great Patriotic War. Its transfer into the hands of fighters who came from the west symbolized the dissection of the enemy group encircled in the Stalingrad area into two parts.
For the battles in the Stalingrad area, Hero of the Soviet Union General Rodimtsev was awarded the Order of the Red Star. From here began the road of the general and the formation he led to the west. The general was appointed commander of the corps, which included the 13th Guards. The corps' combat route passed through the places where the airborne brigade fought, and later the 87th Rifle Division, which became the 13th Guards Division. The corps fought near Kharkov, liberated Poltava and Kremenchug, and crossed the Dnieper.
The starting point for this journey was the famous Prokhorovka, the battles on the Kursk Bulge. The battle of Prokhorovka went down in history as one of the most grandiose tank battles. Sometimes in stories about Prokhorovka the image of the infantry is relegated to a second draft. And this image was great and serious, because tanks alone would not have been able to cope with the hordes of the enemy who were trying to use the Kursk bridgehead for the decisive offensive planned by the enemy for the summer of 1943.
The tank formations of the Soviet Army entered this battle hand in hand with Rodimtsev’s infantrymen. And then fighting broke out again on Ukrainian soil.
The recapturing of the city and the Znamenka railway junction was of great importance in this sector of the front. The divisions of the corps were named Poltava and Kremenchug, and the commander was awarded the rank of lieutenant general.
Together with his troops, the general entered the small grass town where the airborne brigade was stationed before the war. Many rivers lay on his way through the territory of his homeland: Vorskla, Psel, Dnieper, Bug, again the Bug is winding, and in the end, the Dniester. And every time, going ashore, the general recalled the most difficult crossing in his life - the crossing of the Volga and the distant rivers Ebro and Jarama. But in war, memories are needed only for action. And in the field book of the corps commander, all this was written down in a dry and businesslike manner: crossing the rivers... Without artillery support... With artillery support... Under the influence of enemy aviation... With the immediate deployment of battle formations and the capture of a bridgehead on the right bank... There is also such a record: crossing a water barrier under the influence of attack and bombing aircraft up to 600 sorties per day...
The summer of forty-four is memorable for the soldiers of the Guards Corps crossing the Vistula in the Sandomierz region. At the famous Sandomierz bridgehead, the Nazis threw four tank divisions, one mechanized and two infantry, against Rodimtsev’s corps. But was it really allowed to push into the Vistula those who could not be pushed into the Volga?
The corps strengthened itself on the Sandomierz bridgehead, from there it made a brave breakthrough and, breaking through the enemy’s very fortified positional defenses, pursued the enemy to the Oder and crossed the Oder on the move. There were many difficult days along the way. I did not see Rodimtsev in despondency. In a serious moment, the word shaitan just burst out from somewhere in the Orenburg steppes.
Rodimtsev encountered the wet European winter of 1945 already on German territory. He prepared the troops for a decisive breakthrough, an offensive that ended on April 24, 1945 with access to the Elbe near the city of Torgau.
Under the walls of this mossy fortress, the guards met the Allied troops. The meeting went down in history. American soldiers, whose army route in the second important war was much easier and shorter than our route, were amazed at the bearing, health and dashing appearance of the guardsmen who had just emerged from a fierce battle. It was a healthy celebration, a joyful summit, and, it would seem, for Rodimtsev and his corps, who had traveled more than seven and a half thousand kilometers along the roads of war, the makhalovka had already ended. But no! The corps was ordered to turn south; in a heavy battle, it took Dresden, senselessly destroyed by Allied bombing. But even here on May 7, the makhalovka for Rodimtsev was not over yet.
The corps received a fresh command to rush south to rid the city system of Czechoslovakia and help Prague, where the fire of a popular uprising had already broken out. The speed and power of this operation seem incredible at the current time: because the troops of the corps participated in the most difficult battles in April May 1945, any of which seemed to be the last and final. But before the only fight had come to an end, the need arose to rush into a new, even more difficult battle.
In Moscow, the ceremonial volleys of the victorious salute were already thundering, already in the building of the Engineering School in Karlshorst, German Field Marshal Keitel signed the act of complete surrender with a trembling hand, and the skeleton under the command of Rodimtsev was still fighting in the mountains of Czechoslovakia.
The guards burst into Terezin, where thousands of prisoners had already been rounded up for execution by Czechs, Russians, Magyars, and inhabitants of many European countries. If the guards had been 30 minutes, fifteen minutes late, it would have been all over.
At that very moment the general was informed: in the crowd gathered for execution, a lady was giving birth. Rodimtsev ordered to immediately bring her to the medical battalion of the 13th Guards Division, which had already approached Terezin. After the battle, Rodimtsev arrived at the medical battalion and learned that an exhausted prisoner from Hungary, weighing only about 40 kilograms, had given birth to a girl. This was an event that excited all the inhabitants of Terezin. The news spread through the building: the girl and mother were alive, the child was named by the Russian name Valya.
Looking ahead at least more than a few years, I will say that Valya Badash, a citizen of the Hungarian People's Republic, a teacher at the University of Budapest, and Colonel General Alexander Rodimtsev are honorary citizens of the city of Terezin in Czechoslovakia and met there to celebrate the next Victory Day.
But then their summit in the medical battalion of the 13th Guards Division was one-minute. The troops rushed to Prague and within a few hours they were already fighting to recapture it.
But even here the Great Patriotic War did not end for Alexander Rodimtsev and the corps under his command. It was necessary to rush to support the burning city of Kladno.
The combat path of the airborne brigade, followed by the 87th Rifle Division, which became the 13th Guards Division, and, ultimately, the corps, which included the 13th, 95th and 97th Guards Divisions, amounted to seven and a half thousand kilometers. To these seven and a half in Czechoslovakia another five hundred were added.
The victories of the brigade, division, and then the corps were not only the personal success of their commander.
Whenever I visited Rodimtsev’s headquarters, I saw him surrounded by his faithful comrades, political workers and staff officers, heads of services and branches of the military. Accepting the conclusion, the chief consulted with them for a long time, and together with them he developed a project for the operation.
And it was not by chance that the political workers of the 13th Guards Division M.S. Shumilov, G.Ya. Marchenko, A.K. Shchur became generals in the fire of battle.
There are feats that make a fighter a hero in an amazingly short period of time: a single day crossing a river, a burning tank in the dark, an instantaneous, unprecedentedly daring assault sortie. But there are feats that cannot be determined in a day, in a moment. The second Golden Star lit up on the chest of General Alexander Rodimtsev as a reflection of thousands of heroic deeds committed by the soldiers of his formation, nurtured and led by him. Of course, the Motherland also took into account the personal courage of the hero general always and in everything.
All these years, the general was engaged in educating troops, educating fighters. Nurtured by the army, who became a Komsomol member and communist in its ranks, he is considered in the military community to be a man of legendary personal courage. As an eyewitness I confirm: yes, for General Rodimtsev the concept of fear does not exist. But it was not recklessness, but meek, precise calculation that always stood at the head of him in a combat situation. By a lucky coincidence, not a single bullet, not a single fragment, ever touched him. He emerged from the war as a young man, with a slightly silvered head and cheerful young eyes in heavy eyelids that seemed swollen from four years of insomnia. He currently continues to serve in our Armed Forces. The second rhombus, indicating his graduation from the Higher Military Academy, appeared on his uniform next to the many orders that his Motherland awarded him, the crosses and stars with which foreign states noted his valor.
When visiting my old comrade in arms, I always see piles of written paper and folders with manuscripts on his desk. When he has free time, the general writes down the small and great events of his combat life. These are not memoirs in the narrow sense of the word, but rather the stories of an experienced person. Many books by Alexander Rodimtsev have already reached the reader. This is the result of fifteen years of work, the book Under the Skies of Spain, these are stories for children Mashenka from the Mousetrap, documentary stories At the last frontier, People of a legendary feat, Yours, Fatherland, sons.
I am constantly surprised by the general's memory. When the 25th anniversary of the Stalingrad victory was celebrated on the banks of the Volga in 1968, more than a hundred former guardsmen of the 13th division came to the battlefields. The general called each of them by name when he met, and with each he had something to remember.
The celebrations in Volgograd have come to an end. We were about to leave the hotel for the station when there was a knock on the gate of the room. An elderly, slightly hunched man came in and introduced himself:
Guard private.
The general immediately recognized him as having met in the regiment commanded by I. A. Samchuk.
The former guardsman of the legendary division, it turns out, has been working on Mamayev Kurgan for the last four years, where he was once wounded and awarded. He currently took part in the creation of the monument on Mamaev, and it fell to his lot to carve the names of his comrades on granite in the Hall of Eternal Glory.
The guardsman took a large jar of jam from his string bag and handed it to the general with the words:
From our guards family.
His new book testifies to how well Rodimtsev knows each of his soldiers. The general writes about ordinary artilleryman Bykov, who distinguished himself in the battles near Kharkov, fought in Stalingrad and died on the Kursk Bulge. The first publications about the Hero of the Soviet Union Bykov evoked a response; a friend of the hero’s life, also a former 13th guardsman, was found and reported that the hero’s son was currently serving in the army. Rodimtsev went to the Kiev military district, found a soldier and the soldier’s son, and spoke to the unit with his memories of the father of a conscript soldier.
The book about Bykov is called Staying Alive.
And today, when visiting the troops, the general considers it his duty to call the servicemen, to train them in such a way that the inflexibility of the defenders of Madrid, Kyiv, Stalingrad, the heroes of the Sandomierz bridgehead and the liberation of Prague is transmitted to them.
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