Battle of Sokolovo (1943)

Battle of Sokolovo took place on March 8 and 9, 1943 around the town of Sokolovo near Kharkiv in Ukraine where the on-going attack of Wehrmacht was halted by joint Soviet and Czechoslovak forces. It was for the first time that a foreign military unit, 1st Czechoslovak Battailion fought together with the Red Army. Under the command of Ludvík Svoboda, later President of Czechoslovakia, the Czechoslovak soldiers effectively prevented any further advance of Germans across the Mzha river. The Soviet supreme command highly valued both the bravery of the Czechoslovak soldiers and the political significance of the fact that the Soviet people were no longer alone in their deatless struggle against the harsh enemy, the outcome of the war still being undecided. Captain Otakar Jaroš, the commander of the 1st company who was killed in the course of the battle, was awarded the highest Soviet military order, the Hero of the Soviet Union, as the first foreign citizen ever. Moreover, one of the local schools in Sokolovo was named after him in his honor.