[3rd Trip] AT gun of sergant P.D. Azarov.
Hi everyone! I'm back and continue report about memorial area "The Kursk Salient" located at village Yakovlevo northward of city of Belgorod.
At this post we gonna see AT gun of famous sergant Azarov P.D. As I've posted above this man one of few soviet soldiers that got all 3 classes of Order of Glory (and of course other Orders). His first battle exprience were here - on height 254.5 at The Kursk Salient - fighting against nazi invaders as a gunner of AT gun, then he became a commander of AT gun and continued his fights till the end of war. In memoirs of Marshal Yakubovskiy I've read that his AT gun ZIS-3 were damaged (after only 2 enemy tanks knocked out) in this hard fights at 6-7 july 1943 and left here when soviet units were forced to fall back under high pressure of germans. But as this hill were recaptured at 17-20 july 1943 by soviet this gun were erected there as a symbol of valour and courage of soviet soldiers in fights on The Kursk Salient.
This story above slightly differs from what told on memorial plate on gun. But, stop talking, lets see
Here is gun from the back:
From the right:
From the front (sorry, foto out of focus
, damned nikon L10):
Look from the back of gun to the defence positions:
And finally the memorial plate:
Lets stop on this plate
It tells us that this gun (that actually stands there) is gun of Azarov's AT gun unit but it is brought there from the banks of river Dnepr in october 1943 where Azarov fought beating germans further. So we can suppose that actually this is not gun that were damaged there in 6-7 july 1943 as Marhsal Yakubovskiy tells us in his memoirs or it was no damaged at all
. I'm preferring version that damaged gun were utilized or even missed in action when hill was under germans in period of 8-17 july and replaced by new after hill was captured. But after the end of The Kursk Salient battle soviet authorities ordered to organized little (at that time of course) memorial there and choosed Azarov's AT gun unit and him as a example of good soviet fighter.
Interesting, is somewehere else such personal weapon (tank, AT gun etc.) memorials in Europe or elsewhere?
to be continued..