Before the other two squads of 3d Platoon got within grenade range, Sergeant Fastov's squad on the left began to take heavy fire from a small gully. Several German infantrymen were well dug in, and shielded by a small hill from BMP fire. They hit Sergeant Fastov and most of his men in a succession of quick volleys of rifle fire. Then they turned their attention to Demchenko's squad.
Demchenko shouted to his men to halt and hit the ground. Private Zakharian, the sniper, was the squad member nearest the Germans, and he was hit in the leg. The round had hit the bone itself, crumpling Zakharian. In extreme pain, he cried out for help. The other squad members ignored him, trying to bring the Germans under fire. Demchenko and his radioman hid behind a slight rise in the ground. He looked around for Nikolai Grachev, with the squad machine gun. Grachev was huddled behind a tree stump some distance away, seemingly frozen in place. The other rifleman, Kazanbayev, was out of ammunition and was furiously trying to reload.
The RPG gunner, Fyodor Ignatov, was trying to free himself of the backpack with spare rockets. These projected over his head, and if hit by rifle fire would explode, and him with them. Demchenko began firing at the Germans, but his single assault rifle alone was not enough. He was soon out of ammunition. To make matters worse, some other German infantry had noticed the plight of the 3d Platoon and seemed to be making their way toward them to finish them off. By now, the Soviet and German troops were in too close a proximity for the BMPs to offer much covering fire.
Demchenko shouted to Kazanbayev to throw him a banana magazine of ammunition. The little Tatar stared back at him, stupefied. In all the noise and excitement, Kazanbayev had forgotten what little Russian he knew. The source of the problem finally occurred to Demchenko, and he pointed to the open feed on his assault rifle, shouting "Hungry, hungry!" The two words that every Soviet soldier knows are "hungry" and "tired." Kazanbayev threw over a magazine, which struck Demchenko's helmet.
Demchenko ordered his radioman, Makhmet Latipov, to drop the radio and fetch the PKM machine gun. Latipov nodded and ran at a crouch over to Grachev's little haven behind the tree stump. Grachev had not frozen. He had been hit in the chest by rifle fire and was in shock. Latipov cocked the PKM and from a prone position began firing into the German position. Ignatov finally had managed to free himself of the harness, and aimed the RPG-16 rocket launcher at the Germans. To his horror, Demchenko noticed that the back end of the RPG was pointed at him. He managed to roll clear before Ignatov fired. Excited by the fighting, Ignatov had not realized that the end of the rocket launcher was perilously close to his own right leg. When he fired, he badly scorched the back of his leg. But the rocket grenade did the trick. The machine gun fire had killed two or three Germans, and the rocket grenade broke the nerve of the few other German infantrymen. Two or three Germans tried to make their way back toward the farm building.
Another group of Germans had worked its way into an irrigation ditch between Demchenko's squad and the survivors of Sergeant Yermakov's squad to the right. Yermakov's squad was having a hard time of it. Yermakov had been one of the soldiers inadvertently hit by BMP fire. The squad had repulsed an earlier German attack, but in the process had exhausted most of its ammunition. Like many inexperienced troops, the men had little fire discipline, and were prone to fire off long bursts. It didn't take long to exhaust three magazines. The squad PKM was already out of ammunition. The men were using grenades to fend off the Germans. They tried to radio for help, with no luck.
Demchenko could see the problem, and after collecting Latipov and Kazanbayev, began cautiously moving toward the Germans. Intent on wiping out Yermakov's squad, the Germans did not notice the approach of Demchenko and his riflemen. At a range of about thirty meters, Demchenko and the remnants of 3d Platoon began hitting the Germans from the side. Of the four of them, two were hit by a quick burst from the PKM, another was hit by Kazanbayev's rifle fire, and the fourth tried to run but Demchenko caught him with a single burst. The squad began to cautiously move forward toward the farm buildings.
There seemed to be little fire coming from the form buildings, which were small and made of orange brick. The faces of the buildings were badly gouged by cannon fire from the BMPs. Big chunks had been blown away by high-explosive rounds, and the armor-piercing rounds had made holes straight through the walls. The German infantry had abandoned the farmhouse when the roof had caught fire. The Milan team lay sprawled near their missile launcher, their bodies roughly mangled by the 30mm cannon fire from the BMP. Two or three German riflemen remained behind a stone wall at the rear of the farm. Demchenko, his two men, and the remnants of Yermakov's squad carefully made their way through the farmyard. The Germans opened fire as Latipov came around the corner of an outbuilding. Luckily, he was not hit. He fell backward on his rump, which knocked the wind out of him. Kazanbayev had picked up an AKS-74 with a BG-15 grenade launcher on it from a dead rifleman of the 3d Squad. He aimed it carefully at the wall, hitting it squarely with a 30mm grenade. The grenade shattered the wall, spraying the Germans behind it with sharp shards of fieldstone. With three out of four wounded, the Germans surrendered.
Demchenko and his men carefully inspected the remaining buildings for other German troops. It was done in the usual fashion: A grenade goes in first, then a stream of rifle fire. They found a few dead German soldiers, probably killed earlier in the battle. Some Soviet riflemen from the 1st Platoon could be seen on the other end of the farm, making their way through a stone barn. They seemed to have overcome the resistance there as well. By now, a BMP-2 from 2d Platoon had made its way to the outer entrance of the farm. It seemed sure that the farm was securely in Soviet hands.
The cost had been high. The company had lost two BMPs to missile fire. The dismounted infantry had suffered the worst. Of the fifty-four men who had begun the assault, nine had been killed and twenty-one wounded or injured. The Germans had lost two Milan launchers and about eighteen men. Four German soldiers had been captured.
Aleksander Zarins, the gunner on Bobrov's BMP, spoke a bit of German. He was sent forward for a quick interrogation. After a rough frisking, Zarins questioned the German prisoners. Not regulars, but reservists from a territorial brigade, they were unwilling to say how many other troops from their unit were in the area. In fact, they were quite obstinate, and Zarins could get little out of them even after a few smacks in the face with a gun butt. Bobrov radioed to battalion headquarters to send a jeep to pick them up for a proper questioning by the regimental staff.
Demchenko left the farmyard and returned to the spot where his men had been hit. Ignatov was sitting on the ground with his right trouser leg torn away. He had a nasty-looking burn on the back of his right leg and was trying to apply a cloth bandage. Private Zakharian was flat on his back, with a pool of blood under his shattered leg. Ignatov had already applied a tourniquet to stanch the bleeding. Both Ignatov and Zakharian would live. Nikolai Grachev was another matter. He had been hit twice in the upper chest. One rifle bullet had shattered his left shoulder; the other had smashed into his left lung. The power of modern assault rifle ammunition was appalling. Grachev was ashen and having difficulty breathing. Demchenko tried to get the attention of the company medic, but there were plenty of other wounded from the other squads. With the help of a soldier from Yermakov's squad, Demchenko brought Grachev to a BMP being used as a temporary aid station. After leaving word with the medic about Zakharian and Ignatov, Demchenko returned to his platoon. The Germans might counterattack, and they would have to be ready.