Soviet machine-gunner Mykhailo Petrik and his platoon comrades lay in their makeshift bunker on the open steppe land 30 miles northwest of Belgorod awaiting the enemy’s advance on the first day of the titanic clash at Kursk. He and his comrades were situated in the path of XLVIII Panzer Corps of German Army Group South. Petrik was armed with a 7.62mm gas-operated DP-27 Light Machine Gun. With its pan magazine perched on top, it was light enough to fire from a hip but had far greater accuracy when fired from a bipod.
“We were targeted by dive bombers, artillery, and tanks,” he recalled years later. “But then it stopped as the [German] infantry rushed forward, and was replaced by the drilling sound of German machine guns and the explosion of mortars.” With their ammunition and grenades in easy reach, Petrik and his fellow soldiers braced themselves for a fight with the veteran German infantry that followed the German panzers and tank hunters. “We did not expect to survive, and we knew death was arriving, and I could not catch my breath,” he recalled. When the German infantry reached them that day, they would experience a firefight like never before.
