Most of the bright pages in the history of the airborne troops are closely connected with the name of Vasily Filippovich Margelov, who was a talented military leader and general of the army. For a quarter of a century, he headed the "winged guard" of Russia. His selfless service to the Fatherland and personal courage have become an excellent example for many generations of blue berets.
Even in his lifetime, he was already called a legendary man and 1 paratrooper. His biography is amazing.
Birth and youth
The hero's homeland is Dnepropetrovsk, the city where Margelov Vasily Filippovich was born on December 27, 1908. His family was quite large, and consisted of three sons and a daughter. The father was a simple worker of a hot foundry, therefore, from time to time, the future famous military leader Margelov Vasily Filippovich was also forced to live in great poverty. The sons actively helped their mother to take care of the household.
Vasily's career began at an early age - at first he studied leather craft, and then began working forcoal mine. Here he was busy pushing coal carts.
The biography of Vasily Filippovich Margelov continues with the fact that in 1928 he was drafted into the Red Army and sent to study in Minsk. It was the United Belarusian School, which was eventually renamed the Minsk Military Infantry School. M. I. Kalinina. There, cadet Margelov was an excellent student in many subjects, taking into account fire, tactical and physical training. After completing his studies, he began commanding a machine gun platoon.
From commander to captain
The abilities of the young commander, which he showed from the very beginning of his service, did not go unnoticed by the chiefs. Even with the naked eye, it was clear that he works well with people and passes on his knowledge to them.
In 1931 he was appointed commander of a platoon of a regimental school that specialized in training commanders of the Red Army. And at the beginning of 1933, Vasily began to command in his native school. His military career at home began as a platoon commander and ended with the rank of captain.
When the Soviet-Finnish campaign was carried out, he commanded a ski reconnaissance and sabotage battalion, the location of which was the harsh Arctic. The number of raids on the rear of the Finnish army is in the dozens.
During one of the similar operations, he captured the officers of the General Staff of Sweden. This caused the discontent of the Soviet government, since the supposedly neutral Scandinavian state actually participated in the hostilities andsupported the Finns. A diplomatic demarche of the Soviet government took place, which influenced the King of Sweden and his cabinet. As a result, he did not send his army to Karelia.
The appearance of vests in paratroopers
The experience that Major Vasily Margelov (nationality testified to the presence of Belarusian roots) received at that time was of great benefit in the fall of 1941, when Leningrad was besieged. He was then appointed to lead the First Special Ski Regiment of Sailors of the Red Banner B altic Fleet, formed from volunteers. At the same time, rumors spread that he would not be able to take root there, since sailors are a peculiar people and none of their land brothers are accepted into their ranks. But this prophecy was not destined to come true. Thanks to his intelligence and ingenuity, he won the favor of his wards from the first days. As a result, a lot of glorious feats were accomplished by sailors-skiers commanded by Major Margelov. They fulfilled the tasks and instructions of Vice-Admiral Tributs, Commander of the B altic Fleet himself.
Skiers with their deep daring raids, which were carried out on the German rear in the winter of 1941-1942, were like an unceasing headache for the German command. One of the clearest examples of their history is the landing on the territory of the Ladoga coast in the Lipkinsky and Shlisselburg direction, which managed to alarm the Nazi command so much that Field Marshal von Leeb withdrew troops from Pulkovo to carry out its liquidation. The main purpose of these German troops at that timethere was a tightening of the blockade of Leningrad.
Approximately 20 years after that, the commander of the Airborne Forces, General of the Army Margelov, won the right to wear vests for paratroopers. He wanted them to adopt the tradition of their older brothers, the Marines. Only the stripes on their clothes were a slightly different color - blue as the sky.
Striped Death
The biography of Vasily Filippovich Margelov and his subordinates has many facts indicating that the "marines" under his command fought very famously. Numerous examples testify to this. Here is one of them. It so happened that the enemy infantrymen, consisting of 200 people, broke through the defenses of the neighboring regiment and settled in the rear of the Margelovites. It was May 1942, when the marines were not far from Vinyaglovo, near which the Sinyavsky Heights were located. Vasily Filippovich quickly gave the necessary orders. He himself armed himself with a Maxim machine gun. Then 79 Nazi soldiers died at his hands, and the rest were destroyed by reinforcements that came to the rescue.
Very interesting is the fact that the biography of Vasily Filippovich Margelov has that during the defense of Leningrad he constantly kept a heavy machine gun nearby. In the morning, a kind of shooting exercise was made from it: the captain “trimmed” trees for them. After that, he carried out the felling with a saber, while sitting on his horse.
When attacking, he personally raised histhe regiment was on the attack and was among the front ranks of its subordinates. And in hand-to-hand combat, he had no equal. In connection with such terrible battles, the marines were nicknamed the "striped death" by the German military.
Officer's ration - into the soldier's cauldron
The biography of Vasily Filippovich Margelov and the history of those long-standing events say that he always and everywhere took care of the food of his soldiers. It was for him almost paramount business in the war. After he began commanding the 13th Guards Regiment in 1942, he began to improve the combat capability of his combat strength. To do this, Vasily Filippovich improved the catering of his fighters.
Then food was divided: soldiers and sergeants ate separately from the officers of the regiment. At the same time, the latter received enhanced rations, in which the nutritional norm was supplemented with animal butter, canned fish, biscuits or cookies, tobacco, and for non-smokers - chocolate. And, of course, some of the food for the soldiers also went to the table of officers. The regiment commander found out about this while making a round of the units. First he checked the battalion kitchens and tasted the soldiers' food.
Literally immediately after the arrival of Lieutenant Colonel Margelov, absolutely all the officers began to eat the same as the soldiers. He also ordered to give his food to the general mass. Over time, such acts began to be committed by other officers.
In addition, he very carefully monitored the condition of the shoes and clothes of the fighters. The business manager of the regiment was very afraid of his boss, because in case of improper performance of his duties, hepromised to transfer him to the front line.
Vasily Filippovich was also very strict about cowards, weak-willed and lazy people. And he punished theft very cruelly, so during his command it was absolutely absent.
"Hot Snow" - a film about Vasily Margelov
In the autumn of 1942, Colonel Margelov was appointed commander of the 13th Guards Rifle Regiment. This regiment was part of the 2nd Guards Army, commanded by Lieutenant General R. Ya. Malinovsky. It was specially formed in order to complete the defeat of the enemy that had broken through in the steppes of the Volga region. At a time when the regiment was in reserve for two months, there was a serious preparation of soldiers for battle. Vasily Filippovich himself led them.
Since the time of the defense of Leningrad, Vasily Filippovich has become well acquainted with the weak points of fascist tanks. Therefore, now he independently conducted training for tank destroyers. He tore off a trench in full profile with his own hands, used an anti-tank rifle and threw grenades. He did all this in order to train his fighters in the correct conduct of the battle.
When his army was defending the line of the Myshkovka River, it was hit by a group of Goth tanks. But the Margelovites were not frightened by either the newest Tiger tanks or their number. For five days, a battle took place, during which a lot of our soldiers died. But the regiment survived and retained its combat capability. In addition, his fighters destroyed almost all enemy tanks, even at the cost of thisthere were numerous casu alties. Not everyone knows that it was these events that became the basis for the script for the film "Hot Snow".
Despite the shell shock received during this battle, Vasily Filippovich did not leave the battle. Margelov met the New Year of 1943 together with his subordinates, storming the Kotelnikovsky farm. It was the end of the Leningrad epic. Margelov's division owned thirteen commendations from the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. The final chord was the capture of the SS Panzer Corps in 1945.
On June 24, 1945, during the Victory Parade, General Margelov commanded a front-line composite regiment.
The beginning of a career in the Airborne Forces
In 1948 Margelov graduated from the Military Academy of the General Staff. After that, the 76th Guards Chernigov Red Banner Airborne Division, which was located in the city of Pskov, comes at his disposal. He was well aware that, despite the already fairly advanced age, he had to start all over again. He, as a beginner, must comprehend the entire landing science from scratch.
The first parachute jump took place when the general was already 40 years old.
The Margelov Airborne Forces, which he received, were mainly infantry with light weapons and limited landing capabilities. At that time, they could not be taken on to solve major tasks in military operations. He did a great job: the airborne troops of Russia received at their disposal modern equipment, weapons, and landing equipment. He was able to bring to everyone what only highly mobile troops who canat any time to land anywhere and quickly start active combat operations immediately after landing, you can entrust the execution of tasks behind enemy lines.
This is also the main theme of many of Margelov's scientific papers. He also defended his Ph. D. thesis on it. Quotations by Margelov Vasily Filippovich taken from these works are still very popular among military scientists.
It is thanks to V. F. Margelov that every modern Airborne Forces officer can proudly wear the main attributes of a kind of troops: a blue beret and a white and blue vest.
Brilliant work results
In 1950 he became commander of the airborne corps in the Far East. And four years later he began to lead the airborne troops.
Vasily Margelov - "paratrooper No. 1", who did not take long for everyone to begin to perceive him not as a simple soldier, but as a person who sees all the prospects of the Airborne Forces, and who wants to make them the elite of all the Armed Forces Force. To achieve this goal, he broke stereotypes and inertia, won the trust of active people and involved them in joint work. After a while, he was already surrounded by carefully nurtured like-minded people.
In 1970, an operational-strategic exercise called "Dvina" took place, during which in 22 minutes about 8 thousand paratroopers and 150 units of military equipment managed to land behind the lines of an imaginary enemy. After that, airRussian landing troops were lifted and dropped in a completely unfamiliar area.
Over time, Margelov realized that it was necessary to somehow improve the work of the landing troops after landing. Because sometimes several kilometers of the not always flat earth's surface separated the paratroopers from the landing combat vehicle. Therefore, it was necessary to develop such a scheme in which it would be possible to avoid significant losses of time for the soldiers to search for their vehicles. Subsequently, Vasily Filippovich put forward his candidacy for the first test of this kind.
Foreign experience
It's very hard to believe, but in the late 80s, well-known professionals from America did not own equipment that would be similar to the Soviet one. They did not know all the secrets of how military vehicles could be dropped with soldiers inside them. Although in the Soviet Union this practice was carried out back in the 70s.
This became known only after one of the demonstration trainings of the parachute battalion of the "devil's regiment" ended in failure. During its conduct, a large number of soldiers inside the equipment were injured. And there were those who died. In addition, most of the machines remained standing where they landed. They were unable to move.
Centaur Trials
In the Soviet Union, it all began with the fact that General Margelov made the courageous decision to put the responsibility of the pioneer on his shoulders. In 1972, tests of a completely new Centaur system were in full swing, the main goal of creatingwhich is the landing of people inside their combat vehicles using parachute platforms. Not everything went smoothly - there were also ruptures of the parachute canopy, and failures in the operation of active braking engines. Given the high degree of riskiness of such experiments, dogs were used to conduct them. During one of them, the dog Buran died.
Western countries also tested similar systems. Only there, for this, living people sentenced to death were put into cars. When the first prisoner died, such development work was deemed inappropriate.
Magerlov was aware of the riskiness of these operations, but continued to insist on their implementation. As dog jumping began to go well over time, he made sure that fighters began to participate in this.
On January 5, 1973, the legendary airborne jump of Margelov took place. For the first time in the history of mankind, using parachute-platform means, a BMD-1 was landed, inside of which there were soldiers. They were Major L. Zuev and Lieutenant A. Margelov, who was the eldest son of the commander in chief. Only a very courageous person would be able to send his own son to perform such a complex and unpredictable experiment.
Vasily Filippovich was awarded the USSR State Prize for this heroic innovation.
"Centaur" was soon changed to "Reaktaur". Its main feature was four times the rate of decline, whichsignificantly reduced the vulnerability to enemy fire. All the time, work was carried out to improve this system.
Margelov Vasily Filippovich, whose statements are passed from mouth to mouth, treated the soldiers with great love and respect. He believed that it was these simple workers who forged victory with their own hands. He quite often came to them in the barracks, the dining room, visited them at the training ground and in the hospital. He felt boundless faith in his paratroopers, and they answered him with love and devotion.
On March 4, 1990, the hero's heart stopped. The place where Margelov Vasily Filippovich is buried is the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow. But the memory of him and his heroic life is still alive today. This is evidenced not only by the monument to Margelov. It is kept by airborne troops and veterans of the Great Patriotic War.
