On the afternoon of October 1, 1941, on the unnamed heights on the north side of Belyaevka. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info This is a small plateau less than 20 meters above the surrounding plains, and the ordinary ones do not have their own names. Since its appearance on the plain, it has not been inconspicuous at all, and the Ukrainian people living nearby do not even care about its existence, but now it has become the focus of defense in the defensive battle of Odessa.

The officers and men of the 25th Infantry Division of the Southwestern Front guarding here have been holding out for nearly a month, and the entire high ground is full of craters, and some of the ground has become empty soil, and you can find a few pieces of shrapnel by grabbing a handful of dirt! The high and low have changed hands several times, and as far as the eye can see, the scorched earth is scorched, and only a few stubborn grasses still stand on the shelled land; The trenches have been re-dug several times, because the Romanian artillery fire and bombardment have made the heights nearly a meter shorter!

Today, there was a rare calm on the battlefield in a week, the soldiers were eating late lunch, and the sky seemed to be infected by the atmosphere of the battlefield and turned gloomy, without a trace of the golden sunshine and cool autumn breeze that should be in autumn.

The young Red Army soldier was in a bit irritable, accustomed to the golden autumn when the sun was shining, and the sudden gloom made the hearts of the comrades sink for a while. And the old comrades were in a particularly good mood today, smoking the cigarettes brought by the comrades of the navy, and three or five gathered together to chat.

"I say, boys, hurry up and find yourself something to shelter from the rain, or you'll be waiting to freeze at night!" The sergeant majors had long since brought themselves captured Romanian coats and trench coats, much faster than the young ones.

Why?

It was going to rain on this day, and it didn't look small, and it didn't take a short time - the choice between being shot and being rained, the veterans of course liked the latter: once it rained, the Luo army's offensive would inevitably be hindered, and the pressure on the defensive line would be much less.

"Comrade Dmitry, is the rainy season on the coast coming so early?" The young soldier was asking a comrade warrant officer in his 30s.

Dmitry was sorting out the accessories for the Maxim machine gun he was responsible for, and he had just overhauled the precious heavy machine gun. "It's early, it's going to be more than half a month at the earliest." Saying that, he looked at the sky: "This rain will fall at night, it is estimated that it will be at least one day, good rain!" ”

"The bigger, the better, let the fascists taste the mud!" The young man's vicious words drew a burst of laughter: young people know little, and sometimes ignorance is happiness—everyone is nestled in the wilderness, and the taste of a day of autumn rain in this season will never be forgotten. Comrades who were familiar with the terrain of this area had more complicated thoughts: heavy rain would slow down the Romanians' offensive, the swampy areas in the southwest would become difficult for a short time, and the fascists would not be able to pass through the swamps for some time, but this would mean that their positions on the edge of the swamps would be subject to a stronger attack.

At the end of the meal, several trucks appeared in the rear, and at first glance they were not from the army: they were trucks organized by the Odessa city government to deliver supplies to the front-line troops, and the trucks and drivers were organized by various factories and enterprises in the city.

Most of the equipment in the car this time was rainproof equipment, mainly raincoats and tents, most of which were made by factories that produce umbrellas, and some of them were collected in a short period of time from the streets of Odessa.

"Send it to the Navy comrades first, they need it more than we do." The commander of the Red Army, stationed on the heights, said to the comrades who distributed it.

After nearly a month of fierce fighting, the 25th Infantry Division had already lost nearly half of its ranks, and its combat effectiveness was much worse than before. In order to hold the Belyaevka line, the Red Marine Unit of the Odessa Naval Base Organization has long been replenished here, and the Red Navy soldiers in sea soul shirts fight side by side with army soldiers.

Because of the fierce battle, to this day, the soldiers of the Red Navy still basically only wear two-layer sailor uniforms, and their ability to withstand the cold is not as good as that of the officers and men of the 25th Division wearing summer uniforms. The army infantry had at least one blanket each, and many of the sailors didn't have time to bring it - it was already a cold night!

If it rains, the most difficult thing will be the soldiers of the Red Navy, and the commander of the 25th Division first asked the comrades to give raincoats to the commanders and fighters of the Red Navy.

A raincoat is a good thing, it is rainproof and warm, and it is also windproof, and you can wrap yourself up and sleep at night. In this way, the defenders of the entire Odessa defense line will be able to fight the fascists in a combination of Red Navy sailors and army soldiers: whether you are from the Far East or Belarus, whether you are Russian or Kazakh, whether you are a regular army or a militia, all the defenders of Odessa are comrades who fight side by side, and brothers who share life and death!

On the heights you can see the town of Yaski, a few kilometres to the north-west, which has been occupied by the Romanian army, which is protruding beyond the fan-shaped defensive ring and is conducive to offensive rather than defensive, the Primordial Independence Army (after a month of fierce fighting, the Primorsky Front was reduced to an independent army for the sake of command flexibility. Abandoned plans to retake the town of Yaski now.

The Romanian frontier division in front of it set up its forward headquarters in Yaski, a ruined area, which is somewhat in line with the combat habits of the border division -- do not be confused by the Romanian name, in the traditional concept the combat effectiveness of the border division seems to be inferior to that of ordinary infantry divisions, but in the Romanian army, it is precisely the border division that has often been tested by border conflicts that has strong combat effectiveness, and can even be compared with the Romanian Guards Division in the northwest, and stronger than the 21st Infantry Division in the southwest.

There is a small village on the northeastern flank of the heights, and many officers and soldiers of the 25th Infantry Division do not know the name of that small village, because it is not introduced on the map at all, but there will be no mistakes in labeling, because it now has a special term - "Lyudmila Fortress"! Even the command of the army group used this name.

In the month of the fighting, the 25th Infantry Division has produced countless combat heroes, but only one Red Army soldier is known in the whole division, and even in the whole of Odessa, - Lyudmila Mikhailovna Pavlichenko! To this day, this beautiful female Red Army fighter has killed 147 fascists!

This is the girl who insisted on being in the infantry unit during the conscription, and her superb shooting skills and seemingly innate sniper talent allowed her to eliminate 3 targets on the first day of participating in the battle. During the training of recruits, Lyudmila again encountered the encounter with the conscription office: the officer comrades wanted her to go to the health center or logistics, that is, to the headquarters to do a paperwork (Kyiv National University students are not common, high-achieving students!). Many recruits from rural areas have not even finished the tenth grade, and even a very small number of comrades from remote areas can only read and write at the most basic level. This is not surprising, the Soviet Union was so big that the educational conditions in the remote areas could not be compared with the developed areas in the west, no matter how hard the central government spent, compared with the developed areas in the west, and many residential areas had only the most basic primary schools nearby, or even no school within a few hundred kilometers! ）。

Lyudmika refused, and the officers could not give such a beautiful female comrade a rigid and merciless order: if she could get a pass in the shooting training, she would go to the front-line troops, and the result, of course, was that Lyudmika got her wish, a Mosin-Nagant 1891/30 7.62 mm sniper rifle with P.E.4 sights.

The bombing left her without loved ones and everything she had kept in her home, including the certificates and awards she had received. In the recruit's first shooting training, she surprised the officers in charge by using a standard Mosin-Nagant rifle on a 100-meter target with five rounds to quickly hit a near-perfect fifty rings.

Changed to a 200-meter target, five bullets or fifty rings! The accuracy and speed of shooting are admired by many veterans who think they are top-notch marksmanship! The officer asked her if she had been trained in systematic professional shooting, and Lyudmika told them: "I am a Voroshinov shooter of the first rank. ”

Civilian sports for the whole people, a well-developed badge assessment system peculiar to the USSR: cadets of amateur shooting schools can take part in the examination of the "Voroshinov shooter", and this title is divided into two levels, and those who pass it receive a medal of the corresponding rank and honor. It is that the shooting technology of the "Voroshinov shooter of the second class" is equivalent to that of the first-class shooter in the army, and the rifles used by both are the same, which reserves a large number of reserve talents for snipers in the army.

Compared with the second class, the standard for obtaining a first-class shooter is much more difficult, and the number of people is not an order of magnitude, which can be completely compared with the top shooter in the army, and Lyudmika is the winner of the "Vorosinov shooter of the first class" badge. If she wore that glorious badge at the enlistment, the officers at the enlistment office would not embarrass her at all, because everyone understood what it meant.

The all-Soviet amateur shooting school not only teaches the trainees how to use weapons, but also organizes some militarized training, so the trainees who have been trained are equivalent to having undergone basic military professional education.

"Have you ever participated in a shooting competition?"

"Yes, Chief." Lyudmika does not like to show off, she only wants to eliminate the fascists.

"Have you ever won an award?" The commanders were even more curious: this was the first female "Voroshinov shooter of the first rank" they had seen.

"1st place in the shooting competition of the Kyiv region, all events."

What more needs to be said?! The commander gave her a sniper rifle and became a Red Army sniper equipped with an observer (note, as mentioned earlier, there were two types of snipers in the Soviet army, and generally only the "specialized" ones had observers to work with. ）。 (To be continued.) )