Through the Dniester Floodplains

3rd Ukrainian Front, June, 1944. A soldier with binoculars sits on a tree; under the tree is a woman telephone operator. The commander of the 259th Rifle Division, Major General Aleksey Mitrofanovich Vlasenko, is watching the crossing of the Dniester Plains by the soldiers. The submachine gunners move along the trench in a chain. Fighters up to the waist and up to the chest in water, under enemy fire, walk, carrying weapons, reed rafts. Machine gunners, mortars fire, covering the passage of soldiers through the Plavni. Machine gunner Bogdanov shoots from a trench. Medical lieutenant Smolin makes his way to the wounded soldier in the water. Sergeant Yekaterina Chaika walks through the thickets of reeds, across the Dniester floods with a large thermos backpack on his back, in which he carries food for the soldiers. The fighters eat while standing waist-deep in water.

B&W

1

1944