Whoever finds this note, please report our deaths. There are five of us left, our ammunition has run out, all we have are three dozen grenades. Enemy tanks have appeared in the distance. Farewell, dear comrades, we have died for our Soviet motherland.... 12.VI.1943. V. Boiko, A. Kravchenko, G. Vetrov, V. Yablochkin, A. Siyanovsky.

p On August 30, 1961, a young schoolboy, Zhenya Kistanov, while playing near his home near the Glazunovka drying works found a cartridge case, mildewed with age. Inside the case he discovered a tightly rolled piece of paper from a note-book on which the gallant five’s last words had been inscribed. They had apparently taken part in the battle on the Kursk-Orlov Bulge.

After the publication of the note in the central newspapers the pupils of Glazunovka secondary school received many letters from those who had taken part in this great battle and from relations of the dead five. Ex-soldiers wrote of the bloody encounters that had taken place in the summer of 1943 in the neighbourhood of Glazunovka Units of the Central front had beaten off attacks of enemy tanks and self-propelled guns.