16. The Unassuming Ukrainian Hero
The summer of 1941 was a bad time for the Soviet Union, and especially for the Red Army and its soldiers. The recent sudden German onslaught, Operation Barbarossa, had caught the USSR off guard and inflicted catastrophic losses upon the communist state. As Soviet military casualties mounted, the reeling Red Army’s personnel withdrew – or fled – in disarray from the advance of the rampaging Nazis. An unheralded Ukrainian soldier, Dmitry Ovcharenko, found himself among the millions caught up in the calamity.
Ovcharenko’s obscurity did not last for long, however. A few weeks into the German invasion, he managed to pull off an act of sheer brutal and lethal bloody-mindedness that set him apart and made him an early Soviet war hero. In a feat worthy of an action movie – or a horror flick – Ovcharenko took on scores of Germans, without a firearm. Instead, he slaughtered them with an ax. By the time his rampage was over, dozens of Nazis were slain, and the rest had fled in terror.
