Alexander Matrosov

Alexander Matveyevich Matrosov ( February 5, 1924 – February 27, 1943) was a Soviet infantry soldier during the Second World War, posthumously awarded the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union reportedly for blocking a German machine-gun with his body.

His official Soviet biography states he was born in Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipro). However an evidence emerged that both his name and place of birth were invented by him while he was a street child.

On 23 and 24 February 1943, in the battle to recapture village of Chernushki, near Velikiye Luki, currently in Loknyansky District, Pskov Oblast, the Soviet forces struggled to take a German heavy machine-gun, housed within a concrete pillbox, which blocked the route to the village. It had already claimed the lives of many of the Red Army troops. Matrosov crept up to the pillbox and released a burst of rounds into the slot in the pillbox. One round hit a mine inside, and the machine-gun temporarily fell silent. It restarted a few minutes later. At this point Matrosov physically pulled himself up and jammed his body into the slot, wholly blocking the fire at his comrades but clearly at the cost of his own life. This allowed his unit to advance and capture the pillbox and thereafter retake the village.

Stalin officially renamed his regiment the Matrosov Regiment.

During the First Indochina War, in Battle of Dien Bien Phu. A Viet Minh soldier named Phan Đình Giót sacrificed his life to fill the machine gun bunker of the French army to create opportunities for fellow soldiers to advance.

In popular culture

Matrosov is the main character a number of books and of the 1947 war film, Private Alexander Matrosov (Рядовой Александр Матросов), directed by Leonid Lukov.

In the film Война (War) directed by Alexei Balabanov in 2002, a character introduces himself as Alexander Matrosov at the 57:24 mark.