Word: melitopol
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Last year Grandfather Golovaty gave 100,000 rubles for a fighter plane, which his Saratov neighbor, Guards Major Yeremin, had flown at Stalingrad, Rostov, Taganrog, Melitopol and in the Crimea. Now, wrote the beekeeper, the plane was "quite worn down." Meanwhile, Grandfather Golovaty's bees had produced much honey, earned a good bounty, helped stock up Moscow's long-depleted food stores (see cut). They could afford to give another 100,000 rubles for a new plane. And might Grandfather Golovaty, personally, present the gift to Major Yeremin...
...Army had thus ended what was probably the toughest part of the offensive begun at Stalingrad a year ago. It had beaten the Wehrmacht in its prime, vaulted over two great river barriers (Donets, Dnieper), captured the strongest of the enemy's strongholds (Rostov, Kharkov, Orel, Bryansk, Smolensk, Melitopol, Kiev...
When the Red Army launched its offensives against Kiev and Melitopol in September, the Wehrmacht rushed precious reserves of men and tanks to these points over strained and inadequate railroads and highways. The Russians saw their opportunity, struck between the two cities at the soft top of the Dnieper bulge (see map), won a small bridgehead below Kremenchug...
...Melitopol. Two weeks ago another force, under rotund and brilliant Colonel General Fedor Tolbukhin, increased pressure on Melitopol. Himself a veteran of Stalingrad, Tolbukhin had under him many a Stalingrad veteran-tough and fire-tested. To these men, fate seemed kind, for in Melitopol there were Germans they hated most: units of the Sixth Army, destroyed at Stalingrad and now resurrected with new blood; the Seventeenth Army, responsible for atrocities in the Caucasus...
Last week, on the eleventh day of the siege, Melitopol fell. Said Moscow's Izvestia: "Not one live German remains in the town. The dead ones can be counted by the thousands." Before the city fell, Hitler reportedly trebled each officer's pay, gave each soldier the Iron Cross. Stalin made the bravest of the victors Heroes of the Soviet Union...