The mass shootings took place in each case outside the "maintained" town or locality, where natural hollows, abandoned infantry and artillery posts, and above all armoured dugouts or mass graves dug by the victims themselves, served as execution places. At the executions that happened in the first few weeks of the Russian Campaign, only men aged about 18 to 65 were killed, whereas women and children were often spared at first. Beginning in August 1941 at the latest, however – already at the shootings in Minsk – they furthermore switched over to killing men and women of all ages, and even children. After completing the preparations, the victims, who were offloaded from the trucks right near the shooting pit and who had to sit on the ground awaiting the further events, were either brought forth to the pit by EK 8 members, or driven forth through laneways built by Kommando members to the pits, if needed with the help of blows. After they had first given up their things of value and pieces of clothing that were in good condition, unless this had already happened when they were taken prisoner, they then had to lay themselves with their faces to the ground, and were then killed with shots to the back of the head. In the earlier shooting campaigns (Białystok, Baranavičy, Minsk) but also occasionally even later on the occasion of major actions, execution squads were put together from Einsatzkommando members and policemen assigned to them, which in strength matched in each case the numbers of the groups of people driven to the shooting pit, or in the odd case even possessed twice the strength, so that in each case, one shooter or two shooters had to shoot at one victim. These shooting squads, which were armed with carbines(Karabiner 98kurz), were put together mostly from policemen and commanded by a platoon leader from the police unit put under him who was appropriate to the command given him by the EK 8 leadership. At these executions undertaken by shooting squads it occasionally came to pass that the victims had to put themselves at the edge of the pit, to be then "shot into" the pit.