"The front line passed near Kryukovo in late November of 1941: a settlement and a railway station. The Red Army and the Wehrmacht pushed against it like two boxers. One, more vicious and more experienced, was still attacking, but his blows lacked the crushing strength they had at the start of the bout. The other, forced to keep his guard up, was barely standing. He missed hits, spat blood, fell down. But every time he got up again and kept fighting.
One of Panfilov's men, regiment commander Bauryzhan Momysh-Uly, was looking for a place to stand for his men, the last line of defense. He couldn't find it. Then the senior lieutenant pulled out his knife. "I carefully cut the map in half and gave one half to Sulima. "Here," I said. "Burn it. We won't need to study terrain east of Kryukovo."" Moscow lay to the east, and Momysh-Uly hid it beyond the "end of the world", not just from the Germans, but from himself.
The 8th Guards Panfilov Rifle Division (formerly 316th) was a part of the 16th Army of the Western Front. The army commander, Lieutenant-General Rokossovskiy, had the idea to form a defense along the banks of the Istra river and the Istra water reservoir, a so called "limit of the front". The commander allowed his men to take a few steps back…"
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