The film is based on real events, happened in the beginning of WW2 in august 1941 in Belorussia.

Mikhail Romanov (Lumberjack) - a former Major General, who fell under the knife of Stalin's purges in the army and was sent to the camps. At the beginning of the war, he was sent to the front in Belarus along with other convicts. As part of the reinforcement, he was sent to the location of the 63rd rifle corps, which had just been encircled in the area of the river Drute. The corps was commanded by an old friend of the Romanov commander Leonid Maltsev. German commando group led by Lieutenant Colonel Hermann seizes a strategic bridge across the river, cutting off the last link to the corps with units of the regular army.—Peter-Patrick76 ([email protected])