Heroism in war: an essay on courage and self-sacrifice

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Associations that arise in every sane person who heard this word, as a rule, are the same: shooting, explosions, fires, blood, corpses, weapons and armored vehicles. Deprivation and suffering, overexertion of forces, unparalleled courage and heroism. There can be no peace in war. There is no war without heroes.

Heroism in war. Essay-reasoning

But who is he - a hero? We have every right to reason about what courage and heroism in war are, based on the stories of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, books read, newsreel footage of those years watched, and films made. It's about the Great Patriotic War.

Deeds and accomplishments that we call heroic can be divided into several types. And I want to dwell on each of them without exception.

Logistic heroism during the war years

One of the most popular WWII slogans "Everything for the front, everything for victory!" was by no means an empty set of ideological clichés. Work in several shifts, constant overfulfillmentproduction plans, development and production of new products in the shortest possible time, which never dreamed of in peacetime. And all this against the background of constant malnutrition, lack of sleep, often in cold conditions. Isn't that heroism? Let it be small, daily, imperceptible at the individual level, but formed on the scale of the whole country into one Great Victory for all. Each of them was a hero: and a twelve-year-old boy who replaced his father at the machine who had gone to the front; and a teacher who teaches in cold classrooms; and a high school student going to the hospital after school to help care for the wounded; and millions of others, each doing their own thing, necessary at that time. Suffice it to recall the epic of the initial period of the war, when factories were evacuated to the eastern regions of the country, and literally a few months later, enterprises thrown into bare fields began to produce products much needed at the front.

Heroes of everyday life

Ordinary heroism during the war. Strange as it may seem, but this is how ordinary life at the front is seen - just a routine. If someone disagrees, then try to imagine being in the trenches every day, without movement and even without much fighting, with occasional gunfights. Every day, walk along one, rather limited route; every day to clean weapons and ammunition, various chores, etc. In a word, just live in one place. Routine. And now remember that this is all happening on the front lines; which is a few hundred meters awayliterally behind the ravine, there is a mortal enemy who at any moment can try to kill you or your friend; that every minute of your life here could be your last. And in these conditions of unbearable tension of will, strength and emotions to be constantly, but to find the strength to remain human. Isn't that heroic?

Heroism of officers

Here we will talk about officers in low ranks (from junior lieutenant to captain), holding posts from platoon commander to battalion commander, from crew commander to battery commander, etc. About all those who were on the line of direct contact with enemy - led a company into battle, commanded a tank, sat at the helm of an aircraft, went as part of a reconnaissance group behind the front line. In principle, any of them is the same soldier, but with a certain amount of additional responsibility assigned to him by the command.

Daily raise a platoon/company/battalion to attack, directly on enemy machine guns. And in the evening, write funerals for the relatives of the dead soldiers, while not forgetting the needs of the living. Every day, get into a tank and rush across an open field towards deadly gun shots, minefields, enemy armored monsters. Make three or four flights a day to the territory occupied by the enemy, on a steel, deadly, but such a vulnerable bird, realizing that at any moment you can be set on fire, and you have practically no chance of staying alive when falling from heaven. Stay at sea for weeks, occasionally descending into the water column on your submarine andunderstand that the sea is around, and the enemy will take advantage of any of your mistakes, leaving you not even a ghostly hope of salvation. And thousands of other dangers that are inseparable from the natural course of war, all of which cannot be mentioned in just one topic: “Heroism in War: An Essay on Courage and Self-Sacrifice.”

Unless in such conditions it can be said that before dinner the heroism of a man was shown in the war, and after dinner it is no longer? At the same time, it must be taken into account that the unit commander is obliged by position and essence to think not only for himself, but also for the entire personnel. He organizes and conducts the battle, he is responsible for people and material supply, the availability of ammunition, food and medicine. Huge tension!

Staff heroism

The work of a military leader in a war is incredibly difficult. He has in his hands huge masses of people, equipment, resources, but his personal responsibility from this only increases many times over. It is in his power to throw all this power into battle. But the lives of hundreds of thousands of people depend on how competently and usefully, from the point of view of the war, he manages all this. If he wastes his ammunition, burns tanks and planes in senseless attacks, ineptly loses artillery - all this will have to be restored by the rear, experiencing additional difficulties. If already at the beginning of the operation most of the infantry is lost, then in the future the commander simply will not have the strength to continue what he started. Not to mention the thousands of ruined lives, tens of thousands of families in which grief came. How can you measurethe whole burden that falls on the shoulders of this man is to send thousands of people to their deaths every day?

Let's remember one of the best marshals of the USSR - K. K. Rokossovsky. Throughout the war, he personally never fired at the enemy, and personally observed the battles exclusively from the headquarters trenches, from a safe distance. But how can you say that he is not a hero? A person who brilliantly develops and embodies the most striking operations; a commander whose troops inflicted colossal damage on the enemy; a military leader whose military talent was recognized even by Wehrmacht generals; a person who is one of the creators of the Victory is a real hero. The same heroes were, are and will be all those thousands of officers who fought in that dashing time. The number of stars on shoulder straps and the positions held are not important, because any of them, from a lieutenant to a marshal, from a platoon commander to the Chief of the General Staff, each did what the Motherland instructed him to do. Each carried his own measure of cargo, the same for all commanders.

Spontaneous heroism

Thinking about what heroism is during the war years, it is imperative to single out exactly this type - spontaneous heroism. There are no divisions according to ranks and positions held, because anyone can become the creator of the Feat. Everything depends on external circumstances, unique in each case.

Heroes of the past, present and future

Heroism in the war… Every student writes an essay on this subject repeatedly, based primarily on a certain collective image formed by various sources. But they all have in commonwhat is happening is a description of something bright, extraordinary, uniquely out of the general range of events that are impossible in civilian life, but at the same time quite ordinary during the conduct of hostilities.

How can one not remember the feat of the garrison of the Brest Fortress? The piercing words “I’m dying, but I don’t give up! Farewell, Motherland!”, scrawled on the wall, forever engraved in the memory of anyone who saw them. The nameless hero, realizing the hopelessness of resistance and preparing for inevitable death, remained faithful to the oath to the end.

Nikolai Talalikhin, a fighter pilot, patrolled the skies of Moscow, spent all his ammunition, but he had an order not to let German bombers into the capital. And he made the only possible decision at that moment - a ram. Without thinking about his own safety, without weighing the chances of survival, he carried out the order to the end. The first night ram went down in history!

Stalingrad. Pavlov's House

Sergeant Pavlov with a handful of fighters captured a house in a burning Stalingrad. The ruins, which were a strategically important object, the unit under his command held two long months - sixty-three days of endless shelling and attacks. Sixty-three days of Labor!

Nikolai Kuznetsov, a Soviet intelligence officer, disguised as a German officer in the very lair of the enemy, alone against everyone, obtained the most secret information, destroyed the major leaders of the invaders.

Alexander Matrosov is a simple infantryman. When his company went upon the attack, closed the embrasure of the German pillbox with his body. He went to certain death, but saved the lives of dozens of his colleagues by his act, ensuring the success of the attack.

Nikolai Sirotinin, senior sergeant, left alone, delayed the advance of the German tank regiment for more than two hours. He single-handedly destroyed eleven tanks, seven armored vehicles and almost sixty Nazis with fire from a gun and a carbine.

Dmitry Karbyshev, the general, being in captivity, repeatedly received proposals for cooperation from the command of the German troops. Being an excellent military engineer, he could have found himself in excellent conditions without experiencing any hardships. Realizing the gravity of the consequences of his decision, he rejected them. He led the underground in concentration camps. He died without bowing his head to the enemy.

Sidor Kovpak

Remaining in the occupied territory, in a short time he created a powerful partisan formation from a small group, which terrified the Germans. Combat units were withdrawn from the front to fight him, a huge amount of resources was spent, but Kovpak continued to smash the enemy, causing huge damage to manpower, equipment, rear communications and infrastructure.

Within one article, it is simply impossible to mention all those millions of cases when heroism was manifested in the Great Patriotic War. And yes, it's not worth it. After all, what unites them all? What they have in common is that none of the people who accomplished the feat planned it. Perhaps many of them did not even think about the possibility of its commission. But it's time, formed upcircumstances, the right moment arose - and they, without hesitation, stepped into Eternity. Without hesitation, without assessing the chances for a successful outcome, without thinking about the consequences, but solely at the call of the heart and the dictates of the soul, people did what was required of them at that moment. Many gave the most precious thing they had - their lives.

Heroism in war

Any war is grief, loss, personal and state problem. There is a lot of heroism in the war, without it it is simply impossible to imagine any armed conflict, and even more so the Great Patriotic War. And the final result depended only on each of its participants. And our ancestors did it! As they did hundreds of years before them, as they will do after them.

We have considered the question of what is heroism in war. The arguments given here may seem naive and controversial to some, but I would like to hope that someone will agree with us and, perhaps, supplement the topic: “Heroism in War: An Essay on Courage and Self-Sacrifice.”

Eternal glory to the heroes! Their deed is immortal. Their feat is priceless.