Song of the earth
Elena Izotova, Grade 7 of the Moscow Economic School “Song of the Earth” Who said: “Everything burned to the ground, Do not throw a seed into the ground!” Who said that the Earth is dead? No, he hid for a while! (Vladimir Vysotsky) Last summer our family was visiting relatives in the city of Belgorod. My uncle, Kovalenko Nikolai Ivanovich, was a member of the famous tank battle near the village of Prokhorovka. He was very exciting about it.
The victory of our troops at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-1943 undermined Germany’s military might. And now, in the summer of 1943, they were preparing a powerful offensive near Kursk.
The front line here went unevenly, and near Kursk, where Soviet troops advanced far to the west, formed a large ledge of the territory, which was called the Kursk Bulge. It was this ridge that the Germans wanted to take in the encirclement and cut off. But the Red Army created an unusually strong defense on the Kursk Bulge.
Tens
The strength of this blow was so powerful that it seemed our defense of the knockout would be broken. The Germans advanced in some places at 1,035 km.
But at that moment the Germans attacked the fresh forces of the Steppe Regiment into the structure that NI Kovalenko included. On July 12, 1943, the largest tank battle in history began near the small village of Prokhorovka. It lasted all day.
In the battle of the forehead, 1200 armored vehicles collided in the forehead. The Germans for the first time massively applied their new tanks “Tiger” and “Panther”, which were considered impenetrable. All day engines rattled, explosions rattled, tanks exploded, the earth burned.
Nikolai Ivanovich told me that from the clouds of dust, soot and the smoke of burning
This battle so exhausted their strength, that they retreated to their former positions. Now the offensive Epigraph – passed the Red Army. On August 5 she finally freed Orel and Belgorod from the enemy. Thus ended the Battle of Kursk. For these days, under Kursk, armored troops of Germany were almost completely destroyed, and the myth of the Tigger’s impenetrability was dispelled.
Nikolai Ivanovich was seriously wounded and shell-shocked, almost half a year lay in the hospital, then fought until the end of the war, was once again wounded. But he will never forget this tank battle. And we will not forget how our simple soldiers fought, how our tankmen burned in the tanks, how our Earth was burning!
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