Volokolamsk: hold the road or save the unit

An officer of the 316th Rifle Division, commanded by General Ivan Panfilov, holds the Volokolamsk axis, about a hundred kilometers west of Moscow. The division was formed in the summer of 1941 from recruits drawn from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, then assigned to the 16th Army to plug the breach torn open by the Vyazma–Bryansk catastrophe in October.

His men occupy makeshift positions along the railway, near the Dubosekovo crossing. The 1075th Rifle Regiment holds the sector with limited anti-tank weaponry — anti-tank rifles, grenades, a handful of guns — against armor followed by infantry.

The German offensive on Moscow, renewed in mid-November, seeks to break the Soviet defense before winter. The Stavka demands that every strongpoint hold as long as possible to buy time, while the open ground offers almost no cover and no fallback line has been prepared in the immediate rear.

On the morning of 16 November, the regiment's positions come under fire, then are closed upon by an armored column backed by infantry. As the tanks enter the field of fire, the officer must choose between clinging to the ground and defending it whatever the cost, falling back to save the men and the unit's cohesion, or slipping to the flank to dodge the armor's axis of effort.