The desperate Vaskov, armed only with knife, one shot in his revolver and a grenade without a fuze, returns to the cabin where the Germans are resting from their wounds. By stabbing a soldier, shooting another and bluffing with the grenade, he captures a submachine gun and forces the remaining Germans to drop their weapons. Though he mocks them ("Five girls... five young girls were here, only five, and you did not pass! You'll croak here, everyone will croak!.. I'll kill each of you with my own hands... with my own hands! And let them judge me..."), he eventually takes the three remaining Germans as prisoners back to Soviet lines. The rest of the women of the regiment, who have come to rescue the group, find Vaskov before he passes out from exhaustion.