I have long wanted to write about anti-tank crews, I even started in “Rotten Tree”, but there the plot took a different path, resulting in a novel about corps commanders, when it turned out that only German infantry divisions were operating in the Osovets area. The hero of this book: a completely “crazy” person. It describes how the war could have gone if misconceptions about how anti-tank artillery should operate had not triumphed in the pre-war period and in the initial period of the war. Alas, during several years of the war, the Red Army lost the initiative to German motorized units, which greatly affected the results of the first two years of the war. Anti-tank defense on the battlefield, capable of resisting the German offensive, was created only two years after it began, and then, until the very end of the war, it was very, very difficult to stop German breakthroughs. It is impossible for a modern reader to imagine how much patience, effort and time is required for anti-tank crews who are armed with “tigers” and “Panthers”, whose crews are protected by 100 mm Krupp armor, and you are protected from them only by a 6 mm gun shield and scattered branches camouflage or a net with them. Alas, the hasty removal of the ZiS-2 guns from service and production, the removal from service and the shortening of the barrel of the 76 mm divisional gun put the anti-tank forces in very difficult conditions. But they survived, although they joked darkly about the length of their barrels and the lifespan of their crews.