After recovering, Lieutenant Ibárruri joined the 35th Guards Rifle Division, which was formed from the 8th Airborne Corps in August 1942, as the commander of the 100th Machine Gun Company. The division was consigned to the 62nd Army, which defended Stalingrad. When arriving in the area, the division was rushed to the village of Samofalovka, 30 kilometres north-west of Stalingrad, to halt the advance of the German army toward the Volga River. By the night of 23 August 1942, only a part of the 35th reached the area. Ibárruri's battalion, commanded by Captain A.A. Stolyarov, was deployed in the Kotluban train station and immediately attacked by German forces. Stolyarov was killed in the fight, and Ibárruri replaced him, leading the soldiers while the rest of the division arrived. In the morning, he was hit by a bullet in the abdomen and sent to a field hospital in Srednyaya Akhtuba - a town on the other side of the Volga, 20 kilometres east of Stalingrad. He died from his wound on 3 September 1942.