Comrades who saved the day!
In December 1943, huge Soviet operation wan on-going. Whole north part of SSSR was liberated. Even so, still there was some difficulties. One of the kind story goes for Lieutenant of T-34, Stepan Tkachenko, who got stuck with his tank in a half-frozen swamp close to Pskov (not far from Estonian and Latvians border).
After the whole crew was killed only radio operator Viktor Chernyshenko left alive. During the night he found another tank driver and joined by another tank driver Alexey Sokolov, who secretly reached the tank from the positions of the Soviet troops. But, he couldn’t put tank off the swamp embrace and save his colleague.
Still, Chernyshenko and Sokolov decided not to abandon the T-34 but to fight, and for 13 days they resisted fierce attacks by the German infantry. With just several cans of meat, a bit of sugar, several biscuits and just the water which dripped into the tank from the swamp.
Frozen, hungry and sleepless, the two Soviet soldiers fended off the continuous barrage of German attacks until on December 30 the Soviet troops broke through the enemy lines towards the solitary T-34.
In the end, Alexey Sokolov died the next day after the rescue. Chernyshenko managed to survive the battle, but unfortunately had to have both legs amputated.
Link: https://www.rbth.com/history/329862-3-greatest-victories-t-34
Image: https://66.media.tumblr.com/17bd54b845dd4de960eaf69bc1eb9def/tumblr_ox2tm7PKUw1w636mro1_1280.jpg