His men shot three sentries to take a soccer field in which were parked fifty tanks. Could it be so easy, Volodya wondered? Was the force that had conquered half Russia now depleted and spent?

The corpses of Soviet soldiers, killed in previous skirmishes and left to freeze where they had died, were without their boots and coats, which had presumably been taken by shivering Germans.

The streets of the town were littered with abandoned vehicles – empty trucks with open doors, snow-covered tanks with cold engines, and jeeps with their bonnet lids propped up as if to show that mechanics had tried to fix them but had given up in despair.

Crossing a main road, Volodya heard a car engine and made out, through the snowfall, a pair of headlights approaching on his left. At first he assumed it was a Soviet vehicle that had pushed through the German lines. Then he and his group were fired on, and he yelled at them to take cover. The car turned out to be a Kubelwagen, a Volkswagen jeep with the spare wheel on the hood in front. It had an air-cooled engine, which was why it had not frozen up. It rattled past them at top speed, the Germans firing from their seats.

Volodya was so surprised that he forgot to fire back. Why was a vehicle full of armed Germans driving away from the battle?

He took his company across the road. He had expected that by now they would be fighting their way from house to house, but they met little opposition. The buildings of the occupied town were locked up, shuttered, dark. Any Russians inside were hiding under their beds, if they had any sense.

More cars came along the road, and Volodya decided that officers must be fleeing the battlefield. He detailed a section with a Degtyarev DP-28 light machine gun to take cover in a café and fire on them. He did not want them to live to kill Russians tomorrow.

Just off the main road he spotted a low brick building with bright lights behind skimpy curtains. Creeping past a sentry who could not see far in the snowstorm, he was able to peer in and discern officers inside. He guessed he was looking at a battalion headquarters.

He gave whispered instructions to his sergeants. They shot out the windows then tossed grenades through. A few Germans came out with their hands on their heads. A minute later, Volodya had taken the building.

He heard a new noise. He listened, frowning in puzzlement. More than anything else, it sounded like a football crowd. He stepped out of the headquarters building. The sound was coming from the front line, and it was growing louder.

There was a rattle of machine-gun fire then, a hundred yards away on the main road, a truck slewed sideways and careered off the road into a brick wall, then burst into flames – hit, presumably, by the DP-28 Volodya had deployed. Two more vehicles followed immediately behind it and escaped.