Myasnoy Bor (44 photos)
Writes feldsparta4: In the winter of 1942, our troops attempted to break the blockade of Leningrad. The second shock army hit the rear of the German troops and managed to go several tens of kilometers deep into the front line. The neighboring 52nd and 59th armies were unable to complete a similar task - as a result, they ended up in a bag, an open encirclement. The corridor either expanded or closed completely. From March to June, our troops tried to break through to their own - but in the end, due to supply problems, they died in those swamps... Only ten thousand soldiers were able to reach their own, more than one hundred and fifty thousand people remained lying in these swamps not far from Veliky Novgorod . After the illness of General Klykov, General Vlasov took command of the Second Shock. In June, it was he who gave his troops the command to reach their own in scattered groups through the rear - as a result, he himself was discovered and surrendered to the Germans. I won’t talk about subsequent events here, everyone is aware. But his soldiers received the brand of “Vlasovites,” and until the end of the eighties, no work was carried out to raise the bodies of the soldiers killed at Myasny Bor - they were traitors, after all, and in general, the Ministry of Defense said, no one was lying there. Moreover, during the construction of power lines in this forest, bulldozers raked sand with remains on both sides of the clearing, and tractor drivers sowed the spruce forest, driving right over the bones and grinding them. Now, right through Myasnoy Bor, they are planning to build a toll-route-Moscow-Petersburg-which-passes-through-the-Khimki-forest. At the same time, the developer, Avtodor, does not publish project documentation and thereby does not allow search engines to work right now on the territory of the highway. Active search work has been carried out in the area since 1989, carried out by volunteers - people from all over Russia, from Tula to Tyumen. We spent three days with a detachment from Kazan.
1. At the headquarters coordinating searches throughout the Novgorod region, the most interesting finds of the current season are on a special table
2.
3.
4. Aizilya
5. View from the all-terrain vehicle on the road to the forest
6.
7. All-terrain vehicle
8.
9.
10.
11. Such monuments are found in the forest every 20 meters. At the same time, approximately every fiftieth of the soldiers found can be identified.
12.
13. Searches are carried out using a probe - a stick with a metal end, which is often stuck into the ground and the sound is carefully monitored.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19. Kostya
20. Found helmets are hung on trees or placed in a visible place - so as not to be distracted the next time you work in the same place with a metal detector
21.
22. Remains
23.
24.
25. Power lines
26.
27.
28.
29. This is what the excavation looks like. Several individual remains, vertebrae collected in a bag
thirty.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38. During the year, all found soldiers are temporarily buried in a special place at headquarters
39.
40. ...and every year on the eve of Victory Day they are buried in mass graves in Myasny Bor
41.
42.
43.
44. Vladimir Sergeevich Ivanov is one of fifteen veterans who fought in those places and now live in Moscow. Of these, only two were able to come to the regiment’s meeting in Gorky Park on May 9.
