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Heroes from History People Really Don’t Appreciate Enough

Khalid Elhassan November 10, 2020 32 min

William Colby - William J. Donovan — William Colby (oak leaves on cap) with OSS personnel and Norwegian Resistance members in Norway. Special Operations

2. This Hero’s Account Was Disbelieved at First – Until His Comrades Saw With Their Own Eyes the Carnage He Had Caused

After slaughtering over a score of Nazis, Dmitry Ovcharenko eventually grew tired of chasing the fleeing enemy soldiers with an ax. So the exhausted hero returned to his cart, whose surroundings were now a field of carnage.

He collected all the maps and documents and weapons of the dead Germans, loaded them in the cart, and delivered them to the 389^th Regiment’s HQ. When he explained what had happened, Ovcharenko was not believed at first – which is not surprising, considering just how extraordinary his actions had been. He was finally believed when his comrades inspected the scene of his one-man rampage, and saw with their own eyes the gruesome evidence scattered all over the place.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.