Vyazma, October 1941: the militia faces the onslaught

In early October 1941, Operation Typhoon launched the great German offensive on Moscow. The panzer groups of Hoth and Hoepner, supported by the Luftwaffe, broke through the lines of the Western Front on the road to Smolensk and advanced eastward at lightning speed. The Soviet command, taken aback by the scale and rapidity of the maneuver, struggled to plug the breaches opening on either side of the Vyazma sector.

To shore up a shattered deployment, the Red Army committed to the front line divisions of the opolchenie, the people's militia hastily raised in the factories and universities of Moscow. Workers, clerks and students served side by side, barely trained, equipped with disparate and insufficient weapons, sometimes one rifle for several men. Many had received only a few weeks of drill before being thrown into the path of the tanks.

Around 6 October, the German mechanized spearheads bypassed Vyazma to the north and to the south, threatening to link up in the rear of the Soviet armies. Communications broke down, orders contradicted one another, the roads to the east filled with refugees and convoys. For the militia volunteer holding a muddy ditch, the vise tightened hour by hour. The moment to act had come.