Battalions are asking for fire. Bondarev Yu.V.

1943 The liberation of Ukraine. Two battalions of the 85th Infantry Regiment under the command of the Mayors Bulbanyuk and Maksimov receive an order to force the Dnieper and form a bridgehead on the enemy shore and hold it until the main approach. During the operation, the operational-tactical situation quickly changes and the place of crossing becomes a secondary direction, and the battalions deprived of artillery support melt under enemy fire.

What is the success of the story of Yuri Bondarev? What distinguishes it from other books about the Great Patriotic War? “The battalions ask for fire” is one of the writer's early works in which he was able to show one of the tragic moments of the past war. Officers and soldiers continue to brave bravely even without the support of artillery and at the end, only five fighters remain alive. One of the survivors, Captain Boris Ermakov, mourning about the dead colleagues will tell the division commander "I cannot consider you a man and an officer." But could the division commander act differently...

The story “Battalions ask for fire” was a loud success in the Soviet Union. In 1969, the episodes of the story were used to create the script of the second film of the film epic "Liberation", and in 1985 the story was filmed under the name of the same name. In 2013, the story was included in the list of “100 books” recommended to schoolchildren by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation for independent reading.