Nikolai Filippovich Serdyukov is an eighteen-year-old Hero of the Soviet Union who closed a German bunker.
Biography
Nikolai was born into a simple peasant family on 1924-19-12 in the village of Goncharovka (now it is the Volgograd region). Parents Philip Makarovich and Olympiada Andreevna raised seven more children in addition to Nikolai.
Nikolai received the education that was usual for the children of that time. After primary school, he moved to the school of factory training. At the age of sixteen, the young man became a member of the Komsomol organization, and began his career at the plant, worked as an electrician at the Stalingrad enterprise "Barrikady". This plant produced artillery pieces, for example, the F-22 USV divisional guns. The shells for such a weapon weighed about six kilograms, and the firing range was 13 kilometers. With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the plant's capacity was increased, and more than a hundred guns rolled off the assembly line per day. This was enough to man four artillery regiments in just one day.
Nikolai Serdyukov received a summons from the military registration and enlistment office in August 1942, when battles were already underway near Stalingrad. First, he was assigned to a training battalion, where he studied as a machine gunner.
Further distribution he was sent to the Don Front. From the first days of his military life, Nikolai Serdyukov was distinguished by particular courage. For example, he managed to take prisoner a mortar crew of the Germans, for which he was later presented with a government award.
Feat of self-sacrifice Nikolai Serdyukov
January 1943 was marked by the beginning of the implementation of Operation Ring in the Stalingrad area, the troops of the Don Front launched an offensive. Nikolai's 44th Guards Regiment was located west of Stalingrad - near Karpovka and Stary Rogachik.
For the guards, they set a combat mission - to push through the defenses of the German forces on the section of the railway. The Germans sat down thoroughly - they mined the approaches, installed a wire fence, and the space was clearly controlled by the arrows.
The artillery preparation of Soviet troops on January 13, 1943 in this area made it possible for the soldiers to launch an attack. But it was not possible to build on the success because of the oncoming machine gun fire. Three German bunkers worked, which did not allow us to advance further.
Three soldiers of the Soviet army, among whom was Nikolai, crawled towards the enemy. Ahead of Serdyukov, two fighters were moving, and they managed to throw grenades at two bunkers, but they themselves died.
The third bunker continued to work, and Nikolai had no funds left to destroy it - the machine gun was disabled, and he himself was wounded in the leg. Serdyukov decided to close the embrasure with his body. Such an unexpected act, which cost Serdyukov his life, gave a small gain in time for other Soviet soldiers who were able to capture the machine-gun crew of the Germans.
The feat of Nikolai allowed his fellow soldiers to carry out the order - they took possession of Stary Rogachik and approached the Karpovskaya station.
Co-workers buried Nikolai Serdyukov in the area of his death - in Stary Rogachik. According to the memoirs of his fellow soldiers, the battalion's political commander Klimenko personally wrote on Serdyukov's Komsomol ticket: "Nikolai Serdyukov, Komsomol organizer of the 4th company of the 2nd battalion, died a heroic death." In April 1943, Nikolai was posthumously nominated for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
In many historical documents about the act of Nikolai Serdyukov they write: "repeated the feat of A. Matrosov." However, the volunteers of the "Return Dignity" project (it is supported by the Russian Scientific and Educational Center and the "Holocaust" Foundation) remind that A. Matrosov accomplished his feat a little later - 1943-27-02. Nikolai Serdyukov died heroically on January 13 of the same year.
Memory of the Hero
The name of Nikolai Serdyukov can be found on the Mamayev Kurgan - his surname is engraved on one of the slabs. The place for displaying the heroic deed of N. Serdyukov was found in the installation "The Defeat of the German-Fascist Troops at Stalingrad", which is located in the "Battle of Stalingrad" panorama museum.
One of the technical schools in Volgograd and a school in the village of Novy Rogachik are named after N. Serdyukov. The management of the Barricades plant placed a memorial plaque in his honor. In two settlements (the village of Oktyabrsky and the Ukrainian city of Volodymyr-Volynsky), it was decided to name the streets after the hero.
The 75th anniversary of the Soviet military offensive in the Stalingrad direction was celebrated with the installation of a monument to Serdyukov in the Oktyabrsky district. Operation "Ring" cost the Germans huge losses - about 140 thousand killed, 91 thousand captured, a huge amount of lost equipment.
The losses of the Soviet Union have not yet been fully estimated, but they are colossal. For the Soviet military, the largest land battle in world history - the Battle of Stalingrad - ended here. Nikolai Filippovich Serdyukov also contributed to this victory.
“Feat of self-sacrifice”, similar to the heroic act of N. Serdyukov, during the Great Patriotic War was committed by more than 400 people.
