Lady Death by Unknown

Lady Death by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / World War II
ISBN: 9781784382711
Publisher: Greenhill Books
Published: 2018-02-27T00:00:00+00:00


11

On No-Name Height

The Sevastopol winter tends to be changeable. Two days earlier the sky had been covered with low clouds, snow was falling, the frost crackled, and it was -15°C. Today everything was different: the snow had melted, the sun was beaming and the air temperature was above zero. On the gentle slopes of the Crimean heights the grass was visible again, yellowy brown and withered, while juniper bushes, upward-striving cypresses and low cedars showed bright green against this backdrop.

Through binoculars I viewed the panorama of the Balaklava valley from a position by the gun port of a machine-gun emplacement not far from the village of Verkhny Chorgun.1 Visible far in the distance was the grey ribbon of the Sevastopol–Yalta highway and, closer to me, the narrow river Chornaya, which weaved its way through the hills, fields with parallel lines of grapevines, and the slopes of the beautiful Gasfort hill covered here and there with oak woods, as well as the white wall around the Italian cemetery, smashed by shells, and the roof of its chapel, reminiscent of a child’s toy building block with its low, straight walls.

During the second assault, the front line of the second defence sector had run through here with its trenches, reinforced-earth firing installations, mortar-firing facilities and deep trenches. Enemy attacks were heroically resisted by the troops and officers of the 7th Brigade of naval infantry and the 31st and 514th Rifle Regiments. The hill and the heights alongside changed hands several times. In the end the Germans squeezed our forces out and installed themselves there.

A group of Nazi snipers had occupied the height known on the map as ‘No-Name’. From a distance of 500 metres they began to target the dirt road between the villages of Kamara and Shuli, which passed along the rear of the second defence sector and played an important role in supplying our forces with provisions, arms and ammunition.

Their final act of impudence was to kill or heavily wound more than half the personnel of the 45mm-calibre anti-tank gun and the twenty-four horses which were harnessed to this ordnance to haul it along the roads. All attempts to crush the enemy with artillery and mortars came to nothing. The snipers would change their positions on the height and renew their firing.

It was no accident that I had ended up here, far from my own Chapayev Division. After we had carried out several successful expeditions into no man’s land and into the enemy rear, the commander of the coastal army came to the view that, since there was a bold and well-trained group of snipers in the 1st Battalion of the 54th Regiment, they could be used not only in the third defence sector, but also in other areas of the Sevastopol front. We began to go ‘on tour’ along the entire front line of defence, undertaking missions of special complexity. On this occasion we were entrusted with conducting an operation on ‘No-Name’ Height in the area of the Gasfort hill and the Italian cemetery.



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