The Gruesome Battle of Meat Grinder Village – Over 800,000 Casualties in World War 2’s Deadliest battle

　　There is a Novgorod state in the northwest of Russia, and there is a small village in the northwest of the state called “Meat Pit Village”. According to legend, when Peter the Great built St. Petersburg, he hired a large number of strong laborers. In order to improve labor efficiency, he needed to provide them with fresh meat. The emperor ordered people to find a depression by the woods outside the city, and built a livestock farm and a slaughterhouse.
　　Over time, herders and butchers settled in the lowlands, and the village gradually formed, and people gave the name of the village: Roukeng Village. A dense forest grows behind the village, and the forest is not only filled with miasma, but also has unfathomable swamps. This is the famous battlefield of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union – Death Valley of Roukeng Village.
　　In the “Valley of Death”, people can see the Soviet-style narrow-gauge railway left over from the Great Patriotic War more than 80 years ago; with a little digging in the forest, human remains or the remains of weapons and equipment can be found.
　　At present, the Death Valley of Roukeng Village is designated by Russia as a national war memorial site and a base for excavating and researching sites of the Great Patriotic War.
　　In late December 1941, the Second Shock Army under the command of Lieutenant General Vlasov of the Soviet Red Army launched an attack on the German army besieging Leningrad from the vicinity of Roukeng Village. The Red Army quickly tore through the German line of defense and advanced 15 kilometers to the settlement of Liubani, which is close to the city.
　　A veteran of the Red Army said in his memoirs that at that time, Soviet infantry and artillery vehicles were walking on the narrow passage, and the German troops were on both sides 500 meters away, and their firepower was fierce. Due to the lack of heavy weapons and positional advantages, the Second Assault Army launched an attack on the German army without artillery preparation, resulting in heavy casualties.
　　Soon, the German army built solid fortifications along the Moscow-Leningrad railway, not only with strong firepower, but also with sufficient ammunition. The Second Assault Group was then deeply surrounded by the German army. The Red Army soldiers were short of ammunition and food. Each person only sent 10 to 20 rounds of bullets and a few pieces of rusk per day. Not only were they unable to break into the village, but they were also unable to expand their beachhead, and could only barely hold off with the enemy.
　　In April 1942, the German Command dispatched 6 divisions and a brigade from Europe to reinforce Roukeng Village, which completely encircled the Second Shock Army. After hearing the news, Vlasov, the commander of the Second Assault Army, rushed to the front line at the beginning of the month to personally deploy and command the whole army to break through.
　　The so-called “breakout expert” of the Soviet Red Army tried to turn the tide at a critical moment, but the Second Assault Army fell into the forest swamp, and eventually ran out of ammunition and food, officers and soldiers were killed and captured until the entire army was wiped out. Army commander Vlasov himself was captured in July. He later defected to the Third Fascist Reich, led more than 100,000 people in Russia, changed its banner to the “Russian People’s Liberation Army”, turned against the Soviet Union, and attacked the Soviet Union. Stalin defined it as the “Army of Traitors”.
　　On July 29, 1942, the Soviet Union announced that the Second Assault Army of the Red Army fell into the encirclement of the German army. Except for a very small number of officers and soldiers who broke through the encirclement, all of them died heroically. The official first said that as of July 1942, 10,000 people in the Second Shock Army had been killed in battle, and another 10,000 people were missing. It was later said that from January to April of that year, 12,500 members of the army disappeared.
　　Later, according to the data released by the Novgorod State Military Committee, the number of Soviet, German and Spanish troops who died in the Death Valley of Roukeng Village was more than 800,000—and the remains that have been discovered so far, and the buried dead The number is 510,000. Among the buried dead, only 200,000 were given names, and the remaining 300,000 were unnamed corpses.
　　Today, more than 80 years later, there are still more than 300,000 remains scattered in the dense forests and inaccessible swamps and rivers of Novgorod. People who paid homage to the ancient battlefield found that there were often rumbling noises in the place where more than 300,000 remains were scattered, and sometimes mirages could be seen in the sky there.