On July 17, 1941, the German blitzkrieg — which had already brought much of Europe to its knees — advanced onto Soviet soil, clanking forward on its tracks. Senior Sergeant Nikolai Sirotinin volunteered to halt the German forces advancing along the Warsaw–Moscow highway.
That day, the rolling waves of cornflower-strewn rye along the Belarusian Dobrost River became the final sight for 57 enemy soldiers and officers. Never before had a lone warrior, armed only with a light 45 mm gun, proven so lethally effective.
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