i remember.

ru -tankers-

Nikolai Shishkin Page 1 of 3 In 1939 I finished high school with high marks in the Kazakhstan city of Petropavlovsk and applied to three colleges: Moscow Aircraft Construction, Moscow Architectural and Sverdlovsk Polytechnic.After being admitted into all three (they admitted the best students without exams), I decided to study at Sverdlovsk Polytechnic in the metallurgical department. Within two months after I started my studies and at the same time of the start of the Finnish War, they announced a voluntary call for students for the war service. I didnt have to go into the army, but we were all patriotic. Practically the entire class decided to volunteer for the defense of the Motherland, same as the guys from all our neighboring universities. We thought that they would immediately transfer us to the West, however, it turned out we were sent to the city of Achinsk. Snow already lay on the ground by the start of November. We arrived at our transit point, where we cleaned up and changed into army uniformwhich so changed our appearance that we at first could not recognize one another. They formed us up on the parade ground in two ranks, along which buyers walked and picked out soldiers for their sub-units. I and some other men found ourselves in the artillery unit of an infantry regiment. Thats how I became a gunlayer of a 76mm gun Model 1927. With that gun I went through both the Finnish War and the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. The commander of our platoon was Lieutenant Orel, while the commander of my gun was Seminwho would receive the star of the Hero of the Soviet Union for fighting in the Karelian Isthmus. This is how he received it: the Finns broke through to the headquarters of our regiment, and even though our gun was in disrepairthe counter recoil did not workwe swung it about and opened fire on them, counter recoiling the gun with our hands. Thats how we saved our regiment headquarters, and Semin was rewarded and later became a captain only to die in a stupid way They taught us well at Achinsk, but for too brief a period of time. We did not have live fire exercises we only trained to load our guns with a wooden dummy shell, and already by the middle of November they sent us to the front. [Translators note:The war began on 30 November 1939, so it appears that Shishkin is off by one

month so the dates he gives in November ought to be understood as December]As we went, Lieutenant Orel conducted exercises with us. I remember he forced us to work blind-folded, feeling the movement of mechanical part only by touch to set the deflection and elevation for our guns. We learned to place the deflection precisely, and we placed the elevation with error of not more than 2-3 hundredths off the mark. They unloaded us at the Dno station. Through snow we dragged our guns to the firing range and fired live ammo for the first time, getting the taste of the gunpowder. It must be pointed out that we left for the exercises at 10 or 11 in the morning, but the field kitchens forced their way through the snow only by the evening. We were hungry the entire day! And imaginethe cooks forgot the salt! They made pea soup, but how could you eat it without salt?! Lieutenant Orel said, Pour in sugarthe taste will be the same. We poured it in, but it became completely impossible to eat it. From there, from the Dno Station, as part of the 613th Rifle Regiment of the 91st Rifle Division, I ended up going to the Vyborg sector. Heavy battles raged there. In the month of December the snow was waist deep. It was true for us that Siberia had prepared and equipped us well. We were dressed in sheepskin coats, hats that covered our ears, and mittens to our elbows. I cant say that 40 degrees below zero was nothing to us, but we didnt feel it so severely. We could and did lie in the snow for several days. They taught it to us in Siberia, and they also taught us to run in the snow. The platoon leader, thanks to him, trained us. For example, we would bring our gun out to the position to shoot wooden dummy shells. Then he would give the command: Target: machine gun, reference point one, left 20, 2 shells. Fire! And then he would yell: To cover! That meant we had to run 200 meters in half-meter deep snow to get to shelter. Youd run that distance and then just collapse. We would catch our breath for a little bit, and then already the command: Detachment, to your gun! So youd run the same 100-200 meters back to the gun. Thats how he trained us and saved us from the frost. On the Karelian Isthmus that helped us a lot. We could quickly open fire, then run to seek cover from either an artillery or mortar bombardment. After all, through the whole war, we were able to use indirect fire only several times, otherwise the whole time we dragged our guns with our hands behind the infantry, always using direct fire. Wed capture a ridge, advance 100 meters and spend a week in one place, then advance another 100 meters and again stop. Thats how we were breaking through the Mannerheim Line. And even though I think that the command of the regiment was competent, the regiment received replacements more than once until we reached Vyborg. A.D.: What is your opinion of the cause of the heavy casualties? The command underestimated the enemy. I think the soldiers are not to blame. They fulfilled the task that they were given. The defense of the Finns was competent, with concrete bunkers, flanking fire, and of course, if you advanced into this defense without reconnaissance, without preparation, and without reliable suppression of enemy weapons emplacementthis happened more than oncethen losses would be great and unjustified. In our section of the front there were concrete bunkers called millionaires in which there were two or three machine or even an artillery piece. To capture such a bunker, we probably had to roll out a 203mm howitzers and put several rounds into the bunkers gun-port, or drag up to a ton of blasting charges. The war was very hard, but if it had not been for itthe Great Patriotic War would have been

even worse for us than it was. The Finnish Warit was the schooling that came with much blood. A.D.: What kind of missions did the regimental artillery fulfill? Supported the infantry. You could say that a regimental gun had double subordination. Before the battle, the commander of the battery, who was next to the a rifle battalion commander, gave the orders. He received the missions from the battalion commander and passed them on to the gun commanders through the commanders of the platoons, who were always next to him. The platoon commander would come running from the battalion observation post and give the command to two of his own guns (there was often not more than 100 meters to them): Reference point two, right 200, machine gun emplacement. As soon as we advance to attack, start pushing the gun after, do not fall behind more than 250 meters. As soon as the battle started, the command of our operations passed over to the infantry. For example, lets assume a rifle platoon advances toward some hill. In the platoon there may be 30 men or maybe only 15. In the hands of every fighter is a rifle and one to two machine guns per platoon, if they were intact. The task for the commander of the guns was to observe the weapon emplacements of the enemy, who might be located in the first trench or in deeper defenses. Well, my task as gun layer was to suppress these weapon emplacements. We all lay in the snow, or later in the Great Patriotic War on the ground, or behind the guns shieldbullets whistling, the enemy about 400-800 meters away. The commander would observe events though binocularsit was difficult for him as he had to poke himself out of the cover. The infantry runs for 20 meters and lies down seeking cover. At that time we would open fire on the flashes we had just spotted. At the signal the infantry would again get up to attack. And again we look to see from where they were shooting and fire our gun there. Lets assume we took the first trench. The enemy retreated to the second that was located 200-300 meters away. We moved the guns 100-200 meters forward and fired over the heads of our infantry. Then we would wait for command from the infantrythey had to indicate the target, or the commander of the gun himself picked them out if he spotted any. What kind of communications did we have with the infantry? From the commander of the company or platoon came a messenger running with an order to suppress some weapon emplacementthat was all the communications we had. Wire communications were down to the level of the company commander, and below that it was all by voice, whistles, and rocket signals. For example, a red rocket showed the direction of the movement, greenfor attack. Well, and then you just had to look and see what the neighbors were doing, the infantry.

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A.D.: What were the norms for ammo expenditure? The ammo load of a regimental gun consisted of 80 rounds, but during any given day we were allowed to fire no more than 20 or 40. We sparingly used the shells, especially during the Great Patriotic War under the siege of Leningrad, where every round was worth its weight in gold. I must say that there were always limits on

expenditure of ammunition. The limit was defined for the whole mission. For example, two ammo loads would be allocatedone ammo load used for carrying out the immediate mission, while a half or even a quarter of an ammo load for reaching the next objective. This was the case in both the Finnish and Great Patriotic War, only in the second half of the Great Patriotic War the expenditure of shells for the fulfillment of a typical task was increased. There were such battles where they allowed us to use unlimited quantities of ammunition. If in strained circumstances for similar tasks where they normally allocated two ammo loads, then they might assign three or four.Of course, we had to take into account that guns also wear out. You could use it up so badly in one day, that it wouldnt even fire the next day. We had to observe the regimen of firing, cleaning, and lubricating. So you had to use your head when firing. As to the expenditure of shells for fulfilling a concrete tactical task, there were established standards. For example, from the distance of 800 meters, a welltrained crew was supposed to hit a gun-port the size of 50 by 50 centimeters with at most the third round. Before the Great Patriotic War,during the competition for direct fire against a moving tank from the distance of 800 to 1000 meters, my crew was able to land all three shells in a square 50x50cm and receive the highest mark.Thats how well-trained we were! A.D.: Did you understand the reason for waging war against the Finns? The political instruction work during both the Finnish and the Great Patriotic wars was conducted very well. I think that the commissars and later the political officers [zampolit deputy commander for political work, replaced commissars in 1942] worked well. These were people who did not spare themselves, who did not think of themselves. They conversed well with the soldiers, often making small talk about life, asking who was writing from home, how we were fed, and they never crammed agitprop party of Lenin-Stalin stuff into us. I, for example, never heard the cry For Stalin! during battleobscene cursing was heard more often. Perhaps there was someone in the platoon or the company who raised the cry: For Stalin! For the Motherland! when going on the attack. But, overall, this was not the case. As regards to our battery, the circumstances turned out during the Finnish War that we never assembled for the commissar to talk with us. There wasnt the opportunitywe were all with our own guns within the combat formations of the rifle battalions. A.D.: Did they give you vodka during the Finnish War? All the time. In the morning a company could have 100 men, in the evening20, but there would be a full canister of vodka for the entire complement. You could drink as much as you wanted. But it wouldnt have an effect on you because of the frost. The ground was like steelwe could not even dig out a shelter. So youd lie behind a dead body, piercing a tin can with a knife to open it. What vodka?! The whole of three months we were in the snow. We made a rampart of it, lying down in the center layer and covering ourselves with snow. If we stopped for 2-3 nights, then we made tents out of pine branches. In the day wed light a campfire, but in the nightit was not allowedwe were afraid of planes seeing us. A.D.: Did they feed you well?

We never experienced constant hunger. Though, it happened sometimes that the field kitchen would fall behind. And under the siege of Leningrad in 42, yes, there was hunger. A.D.: Did you ever happen to meet the Finish cuckoos? Personally, I didnt, but there was much talk that the Finnish snipers organized ambushes up in the trees. I had no basis not to believe them, so far as it seemed to me that such a tactical method in the surrounding areas seemed fully justified. A.D.: Did you ever rub shoulders with the Finns? No. I saw them only through the gun sight. Its true, though, that this situation happened in our battery. Our cook was a big man, the merry fellow Vania Chechurin. The kitchen rarely succeeded in dragging up to the forward positionseither the snipers would prevent them or the snow had piled upso food carriers would set out to the positions with thermoses that contained enough food for 20. If there appeared to be a lull in the fighting action, then the kitchen came up close the positions of the battery. And so, one time the battery members lined up with mess tins. When another soldier came up to Vania, who was giving out food, Vania looked at him: And you? Who are you? Maybe youre a Finn?! And he whacked him on the head with his own ladle.It turned out that this was a real Finn. The Finn was so insolent that he came to our kitchen to receive a mess-tin of hot soup. For his vigilance Vania Chechurin was awarded the medal For Bravery. The last fight of the regiment they ordered us to Vyborg. During the assault we got delayed. Our neighbors succeeded in breaking through, while the Finns pressed our infantry to the ground under barbed wire obstacles with flanking machine-gun fire. And it was only 400 meters to the city! The commander of the regiment gathered all who remained, grabbing half of the personnel of the battery, and led everyone to the barbed wire. He himself raised the men to attack. And even though we lost a lot of men, we burst into the outskirts of Vyborg. On the night of the 12th, when it was already known that tomorrow there would be an armistice, all of our artillery fired on the Finns. There were forests with small clearings there, so our guns stood next to each other three meters apart, and all night we chiseled away at the Finns, not sparing any shells. In the summer of 1940 they transferred us to the Hanko peninsula, having already created the 8th Separate Rifle Brigade from our division. There we had to set up the state border. A special demarcation commission was established. I had to accompany it, dragging along the artillery director. The chairman of the commission was General Kriukov, besides him there was also the commander of a battalion from our regiment Captain Sukach, who had been decorated for his fighting on the Karelian Isthmus with the Order of the Red Banner. On the Finnish side a unit that had fought against us on the isthmus was quartered. When one of the Finns realized this he said to the captain: We were enemies there, but here we are making a peaceful border. I was a witness to this meeting. Besides that, the garrison of the peninsula also traded with the Finns, who provided us with milk, butter, and vegetables.

The regiment took up the defensive positions on the Petrovsky opening, through which, according to legend, Peter the Great had pulled through ships from one of the gulfs to another one on a different sea, and by June of 1941 was thoroughly entrenched. Page 3 of 3

Up to the 17th of June our regiment had only six dummy shells per gun with which we trained in loading, but on this day the order came to take up defensive positions, and instead of imitation rounds we received 200 real ones. The pillbox for our gun was still not finished: it had two lateral walls and a breastwork that screened the gun from the front so that only the barrel stuck up from it. We put channel bars above it and brought in and placed rocks on top, and later we buried this whole construction with dirt. We created a large hill, and even though we camouflaged it, it stood out distinctly against the terrain. A ditch was dug in front of it, and at the bottom of it were built three lines of electrified barbed wire obstacles. Two machine gun pillboxes for flanking fire were built in front of the ditch.Everything was mined. The engineer of our regiment was Lieutenant Repneva professional in his work and a big inventor. He installed not only mines, but also remotely detonated charges and rock throwers (in the ground we dug out conical holes, in which we put gunpowder charges, and on top of them placed sacks of rocks). So they told us that something would happen and gave us our missiondo not let the enemy pass. We could only shoot in response to the attack of the enemy because there were strict orders not to shoot, so as not to provoke a war. There was even this incident: The driver of the Komsomolets tractor attached to us, Emelian Gnesin, while cleaning his machine gun accidentally gave a burst of fire. They took him away to the special department, as a provocateur of war, but within some time let him go. We asked him, Well, Emelian, how are you? He answered, They told me to be quiet. Such was the gag 22nd of Junewar! But it was all quiet in our sector, nothing was happening. Only on the night of the first of July we came under artillery bombardment, which lasted for two hours, after which the Finns descended on our pillbox. Interview: Artem Drabkin Translated by: Mary Schwarz Editing: Oleg Sheremet

Arsenij Zonov Page 1 of 9 Arsenij Nikolaevich Zonov was born in 1925 in a peasant family living in the village of Balezinschina in the Bakhtinskij (now Kirovskij) District of the Kirovskaja County. Upon his graduation from the Factory Worker School No. 42 in the city of Kirov, from winter of 1942 until the summer of 1943 he worked as a machinist in a repair shop at a factory. In the summer of 1943, he was drafted into the Red Army; after graduating from the 32nd Tank School in Kirov, he served as a SU-76 gunlayer in the 1201st Self-Propelled Artillery Regiment, a T-34 loader in the same regiment, and a motorcycle section commander in the 94th Separate Hingan Motorcycle Battalion of the 7th Mechanized Corps. In total, he fought in the Ukraine, Rumania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and China. He was decorated with the Order of Lenin, Order of Glory III Class, two Medals of Valor (Za Otvagu Transl.), the Combat Achievements Medal (Za Boevye Zaslugi Transl.) and the Order of Honor. In 1950 he became employed at the Krin factory, where he works through the present day and where he earned the honorific of Expert Machine-builder of the Russian Federal Socialist Republic. A.B.: At the tank school did they immediately begin to train you as a loader? No, I was being trained as a gunlayer, and successfully completed that course. Then we started to drive out to practice shoots at a firing range near the Bahta village and the problem was that I was too short. I was a good student in the classroom, but in the vehicle itself I had to stand on my tiptoes just to try and reach the gunsight. The shoots were early in the morning, too, I didnt really see the target at all sent all my three practice shells into the empty sky (laughs A.B.). The assault gun commander was a veteran tanker, fought in T-70s, came to us straight from the hospital. When I finished, he nearly cried, and told me: son, what am I going to do with you once we get to the front? The assault gun exists to fire at tanks over open sights if we cant shoot, well just be a practice target for them. I was very disappointed too it was a bad practice shoot. But then, during my first battle, near Odessa, we ran straight into German forces and I was right on the leading edge. In my first combat I destroyed an armoured transporter, one gun and a lot of enemy infantry. The Germans and the Rumanians were retreating, and we formed up right in their path thats the kind of battle that was. For that fight I was awarded the Medal of Valor the first in my regiment! How did I manage to fire the gun? Before that first fight we did have some run-ins with the Germans, some long-range firing but nothing more substantial. During that time I rigged up an empty ammo crate to serve as a platform on which I could stand while firing the gun. The regiments commander later nicknamed me gunner with a lectern. I got my second Medal of Valor for destroying a German tank in another battle later on. We were behind the Dniester River, when that bridgehead was already somewhat enlarged. The assault guns were standing in prepared positions, then the infantry told us that there are German tanks in such and such a place. We moved out, I let off a few shots and hit him in the side, I think. Then I heard shouts hes burning

up! Its like this you move out, then you start maneuvering. The assault gun commander moved us forward, I fired my shots and he immediately moved us back and to the side as he knew that the Germans would aim at the spot from which we had opened fire. In any case, I was credited with a kill meanwhile, Im still not really sure whether it was my target that was burning back there. A.B.: How many shells did you fire? I cant say exactly. Its like this typically, you start by firing a few aiming shots with high explosive shells once youve zeroed in on the target, then you hit it with an armor piercing round. You have to fire aiming shots first though. On the other hand, if youre firing over open sights and can actually see the target in front of you, then you can use an armor piercing shell straight away. We were also issued specially made sub-caliber shells, 5 per combat load. I only ever got to fire one of those, for some reason they all had to be accounted for. Now regular high explosive or armor piercing rounds they gave us lots of those. A.B.: Were you trained in indirect fire from the start? Well, you see on the firing range we took practice shots after gunnery classes mainly to get used to the sound of the gun firing. I mean, thats how I understood it at the time everything was different at the front. At the front, youre firing on a live target. Artillery is an interesting and fairly simple discipline. They did train us in both direct and indirect fire, how to use the various instruments. Indirect fire training was fairly simple: you have your observer, but you yourself cant see the target. So you aim the gun and fire, then the observer gives you a correction: too short. But then at the front, I never had a chance to fire at something indirectly, from fixed positions. When youre right on the leading edge, youre always firing over open sights thats the only kind of targets you get. Thats precisely what small caliber artillery is intended for. The 45mm guns are anti-tank weapons, while assault guns are used to engage the enemy forces directly. War is war, and different equipment serves different purposes. A.B.: How were your assault guns used tactically? An assault gun isnt meant to go in with the main attack like the T-34 tank the tanks have armor, while our guns are completely open from the rear. This one time, at the village of Grigorevka near Odessa, HQ ordered us to go in with the tanks. Fortunately, my battery didnt participate in that attack a lot of the assault guns from my regiment burned up. Just imagine a SU-76 has two engines working on highgrade aviation gasoline. That thing could blow up from the tiniest spark, which is what happened near Dniester when I almost burned up. That was the one instance of when we went into the attack like that, and several people burned up. Seems thats how HQ wanted the attack to be conducted. The Dniester was forced in May, and we wound up on a small bridgehead about one kilometer deep and half a kilometer wide. If you can picture the steep shore of the Vjatka River thats how it was at the bridgehead, with a serpentine road leading up from the river. So 6 of the 21 assault guns in my regiment went up the serpentine and deployed to defend the bridgehead. Of course, the Germans tried to push us back into

the river, but the will of our soldiers was stronger than the Germans. A.B.: What other shortcomings did the SU-76 have, in your opinion? It was open-topped, for one. When youre in a T-34, you feel protected. Not in the SU-76. Of course, the fact that it lacked an enclosed crew compartment could be a good thing one time, an explosion threw me clear of the vehicle. If it hadnt, I might have died then and there as it were, my greatcoat was cinged and my face burned all over, but I got clear. The assault gun just continued to burn and eventually the shells inside detonated and blew it apart. And after all that I had to come back to the vehicleActually, it was an interesting event. I did a very dumb thing well, maybe I did the right thing, who knows. The SU-76 gunner serves as the machines secondin-command and has the right to issue orders to the driver independently of the crew commander, because sometimes the commander might not notice something important. You issued orders through a visual intercom system. The system had three lights white, green and red. Certain combinations of lights, for example if you pressed red and green, translated into different commands for the driver: start the engines, forward, back. An assault gun is more limited than a tank, which can rotate its turret 360 degrees. A tank can point its body in one direction while firing entirely elsewhere, while an assault guns main weapon can move 15 degrees right or left, no more than 30 degrees up, if I remember correctly, and 5 degrees down. Very limited.

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There was this one battle when we were in the Dniester bridgehead. Our assault guns were deployed in a fan formation, its a kind of artillery tactic. All our vehicles were fairly close to the river bank, and positioned close together so that the firing sectors of neighboring assault guns overlapped. All dug in, that was mandatory. Thats the main thing we were in dug in positions. When we dug out an emplacement, we always left a small cell under the vehicle to rest in. There is no place in the vehicle itself to rest when youre in defensive positions. So as the gunner, I would keep watch, the driver would be in his seat, and the rest of the crew would crawl into this cell. It was May 4, around 4 oclock in the morning. It was still dark, but the Germans lit up some houses. Someone brought me a map of the area after the war, and I couldnt find the village where all this took place. I kept looking for something named Sherpen, but the actual name of that village was Sherpeny, a neighbor of mine was from Moldavia and she set me straight. Anyway, the Germans open fire and commenced an attack from the village graveyard. I decided to get our SU-76 out of its emplacement, since we couldnt fire at the Germans from where we were. Just as I got it out and tried to turn it around, the thing got stuck. All the other crews were in a basement of a half-ruined hovel, only the men on watch were in the assault guns. So when the shooting started, they ran to their vehicles but the commander of a neighboring assault gun mistook my SU-76 for his own. Just at this time my commander jumped out, and a German shell or a mine went off right on top of my vehicle, my teeth clacked from the explosion. So the other commander helped me

bandage ours up. Meanwhile, the shrapnel knocked off my gunsight, and my commander is signing to me run, its no use, the assault gun is stuck where it is and the Germans are already advancing. I started to jump out of the vehicle, there was a pair of small doors in the back for that. All Ive got is a revolver. A gunner is supposed to have a revolver, the loader gets an SMG and the driver and commander each get a revolver. So three revolvers and an SMG, plus a few grenades. So first I went to grab a grenade from an ammo storage compartment, put in my pocket, grabbed my revolver it was attached by a chord to my arm and started to jump out. Just as I grabbed the doors, I was blown clear by the explosion. What happened? When my commander told me to get out, I thought to tell the driver. When I bent down towards his station, I saw his hatch was open and hed already split. Thats when a shell hit us and blew up. The ass ault gun has ventilation grilles on top of the engines, flames burst through those and burned my face. I shut my eyes, turned around, grabbed the doors and thats when the assault gun exploded. I was thrown clear for maybe five meters. Somehow I managed to turn to avoid getting hurt by the fall, and still had the revolver in my hand, although its chord was torn. At first I didnt feel anything from the adrenaline rush, and meanwhile the place is covered by a net of tracer rounds, and enemy shells are exploding everywhere. Then I saw some soldiers running behind the hovels if these were Germans, I would have run straight into their hands. But these were ours. I was completely disoriented, but finally got to a hovel where our soldiers gathered. My greatcoat was all cinged, my neck and face were burned. I saw my commander there, we went down to the river and I took him to the medical station. He was a good commander Lieutenant Aleksej Ivanovich Dylev. He was my second commander, actually, the first was Aleksej Ivanovich Dernov. Both were Aleksej Ivanovich, and both from Saratov. Dernov was wounded in the arm, while Dylev got it in the cheek. The German attack was repelled in the end, but there was only one assault gun left out of the six that were there. When I got my commander to the medical station the sun began to rise, and our IL-2 Shturmoviks began to arrive. I decided I had to go back to my assault gun I had no right to leave the frontline. I thought if I were to go back to the rear areas, theyd ask me what was I doing there. So I went back to my assault gun. My vehicle had completely fallen apart, I only remember the gearbox; it had been thrown clear and was burning with a blue flame. Our assault gun was on one side of the street, while right across from it stood a German tank. With a tanker half-fallen out of one of the hatches. My crew told me: we were standing right there, the German tank came up and got hit right in the side at point blank range, at most from 10 meters away. So thats what happened in the Dniester bridgehead. There was this one episode I want to talk about. On the white wall of one ruined hovel someone wrote with a charcoal: Tankers and assault gunners, dont let us take you prisoner, well cut you to pieces while youre still alive. And right nearby we found the bodies an assault gun commander, Lieutenant Rjazantsev, his gunner Karataev a kid from Vjatka, we were in the tank school together and his driver, forgot what the

guys name was. The commander had a star carved into his forehead, the arms were broken, his eyes were gouged out and his member was cut off and stuffed into his mouth. Karataev was stabbed to death with a bayonet, while the driver was apparently shot execution-style. Dont know what happened to the loader. They were all from the same crew we buried them in the nearby orchard under an apple tree and made an oath to avenge them. And we kept that oath. A.B.: Do you think it was the Germans or Vlasovs men? [Russian soldiers fighting on the German side Transl.] Vlasovs men, they were at the place around that the time. A.B.: Did you see any of them? We didnt see them since the whole thing happened at night. Plus you have shells exploding, all sorts of noise. [Laughs A.B.] During combat, during heavy fighting, you can never tell who is who. A.B.: When you were in a SU-76, what was your most frequent opponent infantry, artillery or tanks? You know, since I was a tanker I had to view enemy tanks as an obvious threat. Later on, when I was a scout, all threats were equally dangerous when youre on patrol, you are not protected from anything, not bullets, not shells, not bombs. But when you were in a tank, you didnt care about, say, a machine gun burst, or someone advancing towards you. Its when youre outside, you might as well be naked, and you have to work to make yourself invulnerable. A.B.: What happened after your assault gun unit was destroyed? Well, my face was all burned. Our regiments commander, a man named Makatsuba, he was a good man a frontline soldier, wounded many times. Well, he left the regiment soon afterwards, and his replacement was our chief of staff Dobretsov. His name really did describe the man. [The root word of Dobretsov is dobro or kindness Transl.] So Dobretsov ordered that I am not sent to some hospital, but rather that the medics would treat me while I remaind with the regiment. The only decorated crewman in the regiment and so forth. And thats how I managed to stay with my regiment. Page 3 of 9

We were withdrawn to the rear for reconstitution, and thats where we were given T34 tanks. We also got a new regiment commander, Colonel Muhin. Also a very good man, very good to the soldiers. Somehow Ive always been lucky in life with meeting good people, having good friends. My wife always told me you know Arsenij, its just a pleasure when your friends come over. And come to think of it, I never had any bad ones always people with whom you could have a decent conversation. Colonel Muhin was like that, a very good man.

A.B.: What was the most memorable part of the Jassy-Kishinev Operation for you? Heres why it was interesting. The defense lines were practically on the Romanian border. Stalin launched ten big offensive, and so this was number eight. We, soldiers, didnt really know all that much, but I think our commander was Tolbuhin. The mission was to break through the defense line in a couple of places, link up behind enemy lines and create a cauldron that was the point of the whole thing. We went in south of Bendery, practically in the enemys rear area. We were driving forward while the fighting was still going on behind us our mobile units like tanks and assault guns just tore forward. A.B.: At the start of the offensive did your regiment go in as a separate unit or were the SU batteries detached in support of other troops? No, it was like this. First, you had the antitank minefields they were mostly cleared by sappers, but the terrain didnt allow them to get at most of the anti -personnel mines. So the order came down as soon as the tanks and assault guns go through, the infantry will follow in their tracks. The shrapnel didnt really do anything to these vehicles, the mines just exploded harmlessly. Now, after the infantry went through the minefield, it could begin its attack and so was left behind while we surged forward. We broke through the defense line quite easily, actually, there was virtually no resistance. The artillery preparation must have lasted at least an hour a veritable curtain of fire from all sorts of guns. Our jump-off point was in a clearing of some wood, and so by the time we drove out in the open space we just saw the Katyushas firing on enemy positions. It was quite a spectacle. The Germans hunted them, tried to figure out their firing positions as soon as the first salvo landed. Katyusha units had to fall back to the rear as soon as they finished firing, because the Germans would start to pound their position with mortars and artillery, even with aircraft. This one time, when we were marching along the main roads, we ran into a German column. These were reinforcements moving up to the front, either didnt have radio contact with anyone or just got lost or some such. We caught them completely by surprise, took several thousand prisoners and left them with our supporting infantry. The Germans didnt expect us at all. I remember, we grabbed one of their officers near the Parizhi village, the guards fell asleep and he escaped, but before he did he told us that from the German perspective the offensive was very sudden and unexpected, like a bolt of lightning. When I got transferred to the T-34 I became the loader, while the tank commander worked the gun. I spent the entire the Jassy-Kishinev operation on the T-34. Of course, I didnt have any combats where I got to fire the gun, like I did on the SU-76. Our entire regiment, in fact, didnt really run into any heavy resistance, so my tank commander, named Isaev, also didnt get to do any shooting. Interestingly, they didnt change the regiments name even though it had T-34s at that point. When we were holding the line near the Dniester we got the honorific Ismailovskij you know where Suvorov fought? [Generalissimo A.S. Suvorov had famously captured the impregnable Turkish fortress of Ismail in Bessarabia towards the end of 1790 Transl.] I actually got to visit Ismail after I got out of the hospital, but I wont bore you with all of my biographical minutia.

I became a scout after I got out of the hospital. Since I had been a tanker, when I got to the 94th Separate Motorcycle Battalion I was in full tanker uniform, including the helmet. The battalion had some T-34s, and I told the CO that Im a tanker and wanted to serve in a tank. And he then says to me: - All of our tank crews are at full strength. If that ever changes, well look you up, but until then youll be a tank rider. Well, then I guess Ill be a tank rider. This was in December of 1944, in a Hungarian town of Bichki. So instead of staying a tanker I wound up in a scout unit. We actually didnt have any motorcycles at that point, so we were basically general infantry. I was a sergeant then; one day, they call me into the HQ in a village named Chabli and told me: - Sergeant, take this soldier, - mind you, this was about two or three oclock in the morning. Half the village was German, half ours. Take this soldier and get him to the forward edge, you know the way. Get the password and a written pass, and take a prisoner. - Yes sir, - I said, and went off on my way. At that point I didnt really know anything about being a scout in the reserve regiment near Slobodskoe all they trained us in was infantry tactics: defend a position, fire at the target. How to attack: short step, long step, run forward, crawl forward. Thats it. Plus, I used to be a tanker completely separate from the whole infantry business. Later on I understood that this particular mission was a test, of sorts. They were trying to see what I could do, what I was capable of. So I got to the forward edge, right to the sentry post, and told them were going to get a prisoner. They looked at us as if I said something absurd some teenage small fry going after a tongue (laughs A.B.). The other soldier was also pretty small, Vlasenko was his name. So me and Vlasenko crossed into no mans land without really knowing where the Germans were, where anything was. It was night. I said to Vlasenko: You know, we have no idea whats here or here the forward edge is lets just go this way. So we went down a gulley it was wintertime and there was a lot of snow on the ground towards a nearby grape orchard, these usually had bunkers converted out of wine cellars. We saw something on the ground near the bunker and figured that maybe it was a German, though I said to Vlasenko: Maybe hes just deadI mean, how are we going to snatch anyone if we dont even know where the Germans forward edge is? In any case, we crawled towards the bunker past what we thought was a hostel turned out it was just a big heap of straw. The bunkers door was half-open; I started to open it with my SMG barrel, and it squeaked if anyone had been inside, they would surely have started shooting. So I said: Cover me, just in case. Opened the door and went in I didnt go in firing though, so as not to light up as a target. Vlasenko went in after me. I told him to shut the door, and then I lit a match there were some steps leading down for a couple of meters, and a body of a dead German. I thought: Well, he probably went up to the door and got shot, then tumbled back down the stairs. Then I t old Vlasenko to give me some light and searched the Germans pockets he had some matches on him, a handkerchief, a torn newspaper and something resembling a letter.

He also had an automatic cigarette maker, its like a little box, you put in some tobacco and cigarette paper and a cigarette comes out the other end. Anyhow, I grabbed all his stuff, figuring that even if we didnt get a live prisoner, at least we had proof of some contact with the Germans. When we came back out of the bunker, the sun was already starting to come up. I told Vlasenko: Listen, if we just crawl back to where wed left our pass, were not going to make it before dawn. Its almost half a kilometer. Lets just walk normally, there dont seem to be any Germans around anyway. And so we went, but a patrol noticed us before we could pick up our pass. Page 4 of 9

- Who goes there? - Friendlies! - What friendlies? - Scouts - And wheres your pass? Pass, what pass, we just came back from a reconnaissance. So they sent us back to their HQ under guard. When we got there, we told them we were scouts from such and such unit, they called our own HQ and verified that two scouts were in fact sent forward on a snatch-and-grab. Thats when they finally let us go. A.B.: Did you ever carry any identification on a mission? No, of course not. You had to leave all that at the HQ, even your medals. Physical evidence. And at that point, there werent even Red Army IDs like we have today, they just gave out a written document saying that I serve in such and such unit. Anyhow, after that patrol, I reported to HQ, gave them everything I found on that German, and went back to quarters. A couple of days later they called me back in, and ordered myself and two other men to go forward and verify where our forward edge is. So we went along all our sentry posts, making sure they were where the map said they should be. Finally, we myself, Vlasenko again and another soldier whose name I forget got to the street where we were picked up the other night, it was right at the edge of the village, and very well covered by the Germans mortars and machine guns. It was dawning again, and so I said to Vlasenko: - Ill make the first run, then you follow. So I ran across, then waited for Vlasenko. He ran up to me and I asked him: - Wheres the other guy? - He aint there. - What do you mean he aint there? Why not?

- He was there one minute and wasnt there the next. - All right, wait here, Ill be back, - and I ran back across the street, looking for this other soldier. I mean, I couldnt get back to HQ without finding out what happened to him theyd ask me what happened, and Id be held responsible as his commander. So Im looking for him, calling out his name, and then I hear a muffled Im down here coming from something that looked like a brick doghouse built next to a hut. - What are you doing in there? - Im afraid! He was fairly young, too. - What are you afraid of?! Run! Meanwhile, mortars and shells are bursting all over the place of course the kid was afraid. Vlasenko and me we were veterans, we knew that if you could hear a shell, then its not meant for you. You never hear the one meant for you, if you can hear it, you can always dodge away or drop into cover. So I told him: Come on, dont worry just watch how I run across, then do the same. Then I ran across, and he followed. When I reported back to HQ, I didnt mention this incident. Why knock on a guy for getting a little scared? And after that, I finally began to feel like a real scout. Then we went after a tongue for real. Heres how its done first you have the observation team root around for about three days, figure out where the enemy is, what his patterns are, where his weakest link is. Then you send forward a capture team and a covering team. A.B.: Which team were you on that time? I was on the observation team, we watched the German positions through binoculars. The village was split in two our positions were on one side of the village hostel, the Germans were on the other. We crawled up into an attic and watched them from there. I think theyve managed to spot us somehow. There were three of us myself, Victor Jacenko and another guy. Wed move the shingles aside and watch. There was this knocked out German medium tank next to one of the houses on their side of the village. All of a sudden, a German with a Panzerfaust came out, leaned against the side of that tank and aimed straight at us. We were gone in an instant, I mean, he blew half the shingles off the roof. [Laughs A.B.] Clearly we gave ourselves away somehow, and then had to find another position. A.B.: Later on, did you ever go on a prisoner capture mission behind enemy lines? Did they give you special training as a scout? No, no special training. Usually, during a break in the fighting our commander would just march us out of our positions and tell us lets say the enemy is deployed over there, go capture a prisoner. That was all the scout training we had. We had that in Hungary a few times, but it was a real joke, we didnt even use training rounds, just whatever live ammunition we had on us.

Remember that guy I didnt report for getting scared under fire? Well, heres what happened to me and him one time. There is a town called Sekeshfehervar in Hungary, the Germans kicked us out of it twice after wed captured it. And there was a canal connecting Lake Balaton and Lake Velency. It was January 18, 1945, 20 degrees Celsius below zero, and we were falling back from the town. HQ gave the order to our sappers to wait until all the heavy vehicles had crossed the canal, then blow the bridges. The sappers, of course, went across first and then blew the bridges without waiting for anyone leaving all of our heavy equipment on the wrong side of the canal. So I wound up having to swim across. By the time I got across I had to ditch my SMG and my greatcoat, and I still couldnt lift myself out of the canal. Suddenly that very soldier turns up and shouts: Zonov give me your hand! I gave him my hand, he pulled me out, I was shivering badly (shows just how badly A.B.), but when I looked up literally a few seconds later he was gone. To this day its a mystery to me the place was completely open, no cover around at all, where could he have gone?

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A.B.: What was the most terrifying moment or incident for you in the war? The whole war was terrifying. I guess my test for toughness was that canal and what happened afterwards. After I got across, I walked for about 5-7 kilometers down the main road. At the time, we were moving fresh reserves to Sekeshfehervar, units from the Karelian Front. When the fighting in Karelia ended, they reformed those units and threw them to help our forces near Budapesht. Anyway, I walked up to a hamlet where we had either a field hospital or a medical station I saw wounded being carried out of the huts and loaded on carts. The Germans were advancing, so the wounded were being evacuated. It was very cold, and I didnt have my greatcoat so I asked them for one. They told me they didnt even have enough for all the wounded. So I went back to the main road, and thats when a Willis jeep and a couple of supply carts drove up. We always called these things hoofers, basically horses pulling peasant carts with rations or ammunition. So the Willis pulled up to me and stopped, a colonel came out in a fur coat and hat and asked me: - Where are you coming from, Sergeant? And I was just dying from the cold at that point. - From the other shore. - What other shore, - he asked? - Just keep driving down this way, Comrade Colonel, and youll see for yourself! The colonel then called a soldier over.

- Come here soldier! The soldier came over. Stand guard over this one Im going to drive up to the head of the column, line everyone up and have him shot for panicking. - You know, Comrade Colonel, - I said, - you can shoot me right now if you want. Im not going to just stand here and freeze. He got back into his Willis, but just as he was driving off some German aircraft appeared and blasted everything to bits. His car was flipped over, his carts were smashed, the horses were running wild. So I just kept going. Understand, I was walking and counting my steps, waiting for a shot in the back. I was under guard, you see. But at one point I looked back at my guard, and saw him leaning against a cart casually holding his carbine. [Laughs wryly A.B.] So I managed to walk away. By that point, it started to get dark. I was walking across a wood in some gulley when I saw a man approach wearing a captains insignia. - Who goes there? - Friendlies, - I answered. He came up and looked me over and I had nothing, no coat, no weapon. He then said: - Listen, sergeant, dont waste time talking, go past the wood and therell be some sheds. Go through the furthest door in the shed at the end, weve got a bakery there. Tell them captain so-and-so, - I forget his name, - directed you to them, theyll warm you up. I did what he told me. There were some men sitting inside the bakery, I remember one of them, a red-haired soldier with a moustache, said to me: - Oh, sonny, looks like youre gonna be a real live one! - not quite sure why he said that. All my clothes were completely frozen. I wanted to take a leak, but couldnt get my hands to work and so wound up wetting my pants. When I got inside the shed, towards the warmth, pain shot through my hands and arms thats how you know youre starting to warm up. They told me to take off my uniform but I couldnt. So they did it for me, and it was so frozen up that it came off looking like a church bell. They hung my clothes above the stove and they began to steam. So they undressed me, put me in a warm place, gave me some hot milk and fresh bred. Then, after theyd caught a hare, they gave me some of that. Long story short I woke up in the morning, dried out my clothes, got dressed, then saw some commotion. I asked them what happened, they told me during the night, a few more half-drowned soldiers showed up, and theyd stolen their last greatcoat as well as their carbine. Probably lost their own gear just like I did. So I tucked my uniform into my trousers, put on a hat and went outside. Right into the morning frost, it was so cold! As soon as I came outside, I immediately wanted to go back inside (laughs A.B.). But then I thought what am I going to do here, I need to find my unit. I asked them: - Did you get bombed here? - Dont know, could be bombs, could be heavy artillery. Lots of explosions, but everything missed the shed.

I went out on the road and decided to go back to the other end of the gulley. Then I came upon a big village with some troops inside. I couldnt tell whether these were ours or the Germans, at first, but then I saw a tracked APC and figured out these were friendlies. As I came up to the village, I heard some soldiers shout: - Zonov, good thing you showed up. The CO is in that house there. You know, my heart almost stopped when I heard that. The other day a colonel nearly had me shot, and here I show up at HQ without my weapon. Our scout battalion was Captain Kravchenko. I went into the house, and saw Kravchenko and some others sitting at the dinner table with a pitcher of wine and a big pan of fried potatoes. In Hungary, there was as much wine around as we had kvas back home. [Kvas a popular low-alcoholic Russian beverage made of fermented bread Transl.] - Comrade Captain, - I reported, - sergeant Zonov reporting for duty. Was forced to ditch my SMG and greatcoat in the canal. - Dont worry about it, Ill give you so much iron to carry around you wont be able to move. Lukashenko, didnt you have a spare greatcoat in your APC? Now this name I do remember. Go get it, would you? They brought be a big greatcoat and the captain said to me: Good thing that you made it out alive, sergeant. I need a machine-gun loader, so youre with me from now on. But I never got to be a machine-gun loader, because our unit wound up being encircled. We spent the entire night wandering around, trying to get to our lines. I remember those days very clearly, January 18 to January 22, 1945. After that episode, we got to this big village of Djomry near Budapesht theres also a town called Kishhunhalash nearby and thats where we got our motorcycles, Harleys. These got us to Prague and then back east, to the Great Hingan in Manchuria. We had either 104 or 114 Harley Davidson motorcycles in all. We also had a mobile recon element a tank company with 10 tanks, two APC companies. One company was on American wheeled APCs, and the other was on half-tracks, with rubber tracks. Plus we had an anti-tank battery of 4 guns. That was the 94th Hingan Separate Motorcycle Battalion. Even though it was on motorcycles, it served as the reconnaissance unit for the 7th Mechanized Corps. The Corps commander was General Katkov. Our unit was fairly strong, we could even engage small enemy groups. We could also engage enemy aircraft, our half-tracks M17s, if I remember right had turrets each with four 14mm AA machine-guns. I commanded a motorcycle section, 4 motorcycles with sidecars. A platoon had 4 sections, each sidecar had a Degtjarev machine-gun. I think each company had two platoons, plus a 12 RP radio. These were small, mobile units, while the half-tracks had really powerful radios, very good communication. Page 6 of 9

A.B.: What can you say about your motorcycles? Were they good? They were great, except for one flaw the engine was too loud. It was very noticeable on the move, you cant say the same about the M72. We got the M72s in China. The Harley is a good, reliable machine, a V-type engine protected by a fender, chain

transmission. But the wheel is just stuck to the axle like with a bicycle, no shock absorbers whatsoever. The M72 had shock absorbers, etc. But then, the Harley had a leather seat on springs, that dampened a lot of the hits. The sidecars were all ours, of course; Harleys were shipped as stand-alone motorcycles. A.B.: Could you use German gasoline in your bikes? We never had to try. I must say by that late in the war, there was an abundance of weapons and supplies. I remembered recently a conversation I had with the guys about this. SMG rounds came in black tar-paper boxes, probably 500 each. And you know, you take the rounds, load up the magazines and then just dump the box in the trench. No reason to carry it around anymore. We had plenty of fuel for our vehicles, too, the supply services were very good. A.B.: What tactics did your scout battalion use? One of the most dangerous tactical ploys was the so-called combat reconnaissance. They used it when they didnt know where the enemys weapons and firing nests were, what strength did the enemy have. So they would send a group of infantry and vehicles towards the enemy positions as live bait, to get him to open fire on a live target. A.B.: First, the motorcycles and then the tank company? No the key was to make it seem like there is a real breakthrough, a real offensive. For instance, if they know that somewhere in a certain direction there is German artillery. The Germans keep firing at our forward edge a few shells, then nothing, then a massive bombardment, basically wears you out and our guys cant get their exact coordinates. So a decision is made to get the guns to reveal their positions by sending a combat reconnaissance. You dont send the troops straight at where you think the guns are a bit to the side. So our infantry and vehicles move forward, and oftentimes its not just our battalion, wed be reinforced by other scout units or even regular army forces. A.B.: What other missions did you carry out? Other missions? Id say that reconnaissance units didnt have complex tactical missions but I cant really say for sure, since I wasnt in the HQ. My companys missions varied reconnoiter a road, find a side road. Theyd look at a map and say we need to verify that this side road branches out here, and whether heavy vehicles can pass. Or there could be a river, and wed have to find out if there was a ford, if there were bridges, what load could those bridges take. A.B.: How would you determine that if there werent any signs near the bridge? Well, I wasnt the one who made that call, but it seems pretty clear that if a bridge is built for carts or pedestrians, it probably wont take heavy tanks. Most of the time we just looked for a ford, because then you know all the vehicles can pass across. And that was more for sapper units, anyway the scouts job was to get there and get

across, while the sappers handled the actual logistics like building crossings and getting other units through them. A.B.: What were you feeling when you went off to war? When I worked at the factory, most of the time you just felt the cold and the hunger. Even though my ration was 800 grams of bread a day, and that was the biggest ration category. My sisters, with whom I was living at the time, also got that ration, but we worked for 12 or more hours a day, and on occasion we didnt leave the factory floor for days at a time. You know, when theyd say Everything for the Front! Everything for Victory!, and let the machines run non-stop. I was a repairman, and we kept a log where youd write down which machine came offline, when, for how long, what work was performed. God help you if you were slacking off, everything and everyone had to work at maximum capacity all the time. Plus you have the hunger and all that. So there were a lot of volunteers for the army, and when I got in I thought: Thank God! Because life in the rear areas was very hard. I mean, I did volunteer for the army because it was my duty, but its a fact that soldiers were fed a little better. And then, when I finished my training to become a tanker-gunlayer, and got into a combat vehicle, I felt that I was clad in armor, that I was invincible. My second disappointment was when I got to the forward edge and saw the wrecked vehicles, the whole meat grinder, complete with explosions. Then I felt like all that armor was nothing more than some plywood or a sheet of paper. The third disappointment was this when all you see around you are dead bodies, blown up vehicles, destroyed houses, when all you hear are screaming bombs and shells, machine-gun bursts and all sorts of gunfire, you think to yourself this is Hell on Earth. You want to run away from it, but you cant. Sometimes you look up at the clouds in the sky and think if only I could lie down and float away like that. For some reason, they always flew n the right direction, to the east, to where home was. Or sometimes you saw birds also flying away from the front, to the east. And you think to yourself if I were a bird, Id fly away from here. Those feelings passed after about a month. Fortunately, there wasnt any heavy fighting at first, I got to the front in February but combat operations didnt really get underway until March-April. For the first couple of months, the body just couldnt get used to war. It was very hard, there was just this strange feeling of dread. But and Ive always said this, then and now I was very afraid to show any fear. If someone had called me a coward, I think I would have shot myself right then and there, I swear to God. Thats how I was. However bad things got, I always tried to carry myself as if I werent afraid. Youre really afraid, but you look like youre not. Thats the sort of thing that you dealt with on the inside. A.B.: What did you feel during combat fear, excitement? Ill tell you this. There is such a thing as, if its the right way to call it, bat tle-lust. When youre in combat, youre not really controlling anything, youre not really feeling anything not even fear. You just start shooting, doing your job sometimes you have to stand up and expose yourself, but youve got a job to do so you ignore the danger. After its over, then you ask yourself: why did I do that? I had put myself in grave danger. Battle-lust dulls the self-preservation instinct, you lose control over

yourself. I wasnt the only one who felt it, and maybe someone else can describe it more accurately but this is my subjective definition. A.B.: Why did you fight? For the Motherland. Page 7 of 9

A.B.: What does that mean? It means a lot. It means that I live in this land, that I have loved ones who must feel peace and calm and not have to suffer the horrors that I am going through. Maybe it sounds brash, but I think every one of us was a true patriot and felt that it was his duty to fight. Some yelled: For the Motherland! For Stalin during battle I wasnt in the infantry, never fought hand-to-hand, so never heard anyone shout these things. There werent any slogans on our tanks, but you saw them on other tanks, gun barrels. It truly was the Great Patriotic War; when we were in the rear, the slogan was: Everything for the Front! Everything for Victory! Consequently, we fought to win. Thats it. A.B.: When you were escaping from the encirclement near Balaton, was your faith in Victory shaken? We would not have won without faith in Victory. We strove to break out and survive, and if you manage to survive then you must strike back at the enemy. And thats it. A.B.: How did you view the Germans? Maybe its just my own philosophy, but I felt that the Germans were people like us. Many of them didnt have a choice in fighting us. I was very negative towards the Germans that committed atrocities all of us hated those. But even though some of them were like that, most were treated just like regular human beings. Ill tell you this. After the war was over, we were near Prague. We, the scouts, were detailed to guard the German prisoners. There were some German colonists who had lived in Czechoslovakia, families, children. The Czechs threw them all out of their houses, called them Schwabs. Effectively, these people were living like refugees in occupied territories, even though the war was over. We saw these women and children, and went to local bakeries asking for bread. The Czechs asked us: Bread for whom? The Schwabs? We told them no, it was for us. Our units are quartered here and here. But really, it was for these kids, we would bring the bread and hand it over. Our feeling was: its not the womens fault, its not the childrens fault. When we had to march them all off to some place, you could see their bodies on the roadside. I was driving along on the motorcycle, and there was this red-haired German standing by the road, I remember his face as if it were yesterday. He was there on his knees, signing that he was hungry. I tell my driver a Bashkir named Juldashev, hey, stop the bike. See that German there is asking for some food. I had bread and other foodstuffs in the sidecar. So I took about half a loaf of bread, came over and gave it to

him. Juldashev said to me: We ought to just shoot him! And I told him: What, you havent done enough shooting yet? Shoot him for what? Let him eat! I gave the German the bread, and he was crying. His tears were leaving tracks in the dust covering his face. He was trembling when he took the bread. I turned and walked away, and he was making the sign of the cross at me. He was still doing it when I drove away. Thats what it was like the war was over. We fought until May 11, some general near Prague had refused to surrender. Then on May 13 my legs suddenly gave out, had to do with scouting operations, and I got a letter from my sister. She wrote me that my older brother had been killed, he was born in 1918. I wasI think, had we been guarding any Germans then, I would have taken an SMG and just executed them all right then and there. Thats what I felt grief for my brother. But it all passed, it was just a moment, a flash almost. And later I thought had I actually done that, I would have committed a great sin. A.B.: Aside from the Germans, did you fight against any other nationalities? Besides the Germans? Romanians, Magyars. When we crossed the Romanian border, they immediately came over to our side. Antonescu had ordered the Romanians to the Caucasus. I cant say what the difference between Germans and Romanians was, we never really ran into any. A.B.: How would you compare the vehicles on which you fought assault gun, tank, motorcycle? I wouldnt compare them, really. I liked machines in general, and I knew that I wasnt fighting on foot, that the machines would carry me around. Well, some of them also had powerful guns. So, in general, I always loved all sorts of machines, and will continue to love each in its own way. A.B.: What were the diversions at the front? Just imagine theres a lull in the fighting, and all the performers come out to liven up the scene. Not the state performers, just talented soldiers. Two or three of them would usually band together and say ok, lets do our act. Theyd gather troops around, tell stories not just about Vasja Terkin [A fictional soldier, the subject of a number of well-known humorous tales Transl.], all sorts of stories. Theyd sing some really bawdy couplets, tell jokes, tell war stories. It just helped everyone unwind a bit. A.B.: What was the favorite activity? Sleep, food, singing, dancing? To tell you the truth, sleep is what you wanted the most. These days, oftentimes I go to bed and cant fall asleep at all, but back then, the moment you found any suitable place, you were out cold. This one time, when I was on an assault gun before my commander was wounded there was a two-day battle near the Dniester River. You were constantly on alert. This was after the bridgehead, when I got my second Medal of Valor. We were dug in, and as Ive already told you there was this little space underneath the assault gun. I was dead tired after the battle, falling asleep while holding the gun. My commander told me: Lie down and rest a bit, sonny! That was

in the evening, and so I literally fell into that little space and went into a deep sleep. Then, in the morning, I woke up from someone shaking my foot. - Are you alive or not? My greatcoat was covered over with earth. I wiggled my leg out of someones grasp, and they shouted: - Hes alive! - Why wouldnt I be, - I asked. - Just look around! Apparently, a bomb went off about five meters away. The crater was almost big enough for our assault gun to fit into. And I slept through it. Then my commander said to me: Hey, theres something wet in the combat compartment, see what it is. I crawled into the compartment, checked the gun, and saw that a piece of shrapnel went through the side armor and sliced right through the recoil mechanism, so all the hydraulic fluid leaked out. Then, when I opened the breach, I saw that the gun barrel was bent. Another piece of shrapnel hit it from the side. Later on they told me that the entire vehicle almost flipped over, that the blast wave literally picked it up off the ground and dropped it back into the dugout. And I didnt hear a thing. If Id been up on top, I would at least have been shell-shocked. Now thats some nap. But besides that we didnt have any films or any concerts. After the war we finally got a jazz orchestra. When we were in Mongolia, theyd always start with The Waves of the Danube; later on, when we passed the Great Hingan, they switched to the waltz On the Hills of Manchuria. Page 8 of 9

A.B.: What was the most difficult time of the year for you? Winter, of course. Ill tell you this as scouts, we had to crawl all over no-mans land for weeks on end, not an iota of warmth. In Hungary, you get a little bit of heat during the day, but then the nights are very cold, the climate as a whole is quite wet. Your feet are always freezing, you had to carry two sets of leg wraps. One set is around your body, so that when the ones youve got on your feet get cold or wet, you can switch them around. And then about a half hour later, your feet are freezing again. I thought to myself if I survive this and get home, Ill wear warm winter boots even in the middle of summer! [Laughs A.B.] Yes, winter was the most difficult. When its raining or snowing, you have no place to warm yourself up, dry your clothes. I always dreamed of having some sort of a rubber cape, just to keep dry. Of course, in wartime any time of the year is difficult from a mental standpoint; but winter is the most physically challenging. So. A.B.: How would you characterize your relationship with your senior commanders?

For some reason, I always lucked out with my superiors. After the war as well. Seriously. A.B.: How would you define a good commander? Well, first, a good commander treats you well and understands you. He has to be able to give you sensible orders, in a way that you can understand them. There were all sorts of commanders. Some were very flaky, though most of them were good people. Sometimes you even pitied a commander who had made a mistake. Our scout battalion CO was a man named Ivan Dmitrievich Lustin. When we fought in the West, he performed just fine, but then at the Great Hingan he made a mistake. The scout battalion must be at the head of the Corps. Lustin didnt read either the map or the terrain correctly, and got the Corps a bit off track. It wasnt bad, but Corps HQ figured out that he led us the foothills of the mountains instead of where he was supposed to lead us and for that, he was relieved. Thats when we got another commander Nikolaj Nikolaevich, dont remember his last name but we really felt for Lustin. He had replaced Kravchenko after we broke out of the encirclement near Balaton. Ill tell you this when I was with the HQ as a drafter, I had to work very closely with my commanders. Id go out on reconnaissance with them, draft the maps, track the battle as it developed. So I was lucky, everyone treated me well. It depends on discipline, I guess; if youre self-disciplined enough, and carry out your orders, your commanders treat you well. Its a two-way relationship. Just because he might have a higher rank than you doesnt mean hell pull it on you every time. During exercises we were practically equals, within the bounds of unit subordination. Everyone had his place in the chain of command. A.B.: Are you familiar with terms like REMF, HQ rat, etc.? You heard them in conversation. Soldiers felt that way about certain officers, but I personally never really encountered this. It happened, of course. I dont know what the cause would be; I think I would have found it insulting to be referred to in this way. A.B.: How would you appraise the role of alcohol at the front? When I was in the scouts, and since I was still a kid, I did try wine. But I never indulged in any of the strong stuff. I was very negative towards that, and the army vodka ration was given out very rarely on the founding anniversary of the Red Army, maybe, or the anniversary of the October Revolution. On holidays, in other words. They never distributed it to us as part of our daily ration, though there was plenty of hard drink around if you wanted any. But you know, when youre out on a missionthey say a drunk feels that the sea only comes up to his knees. You can easily lose control, and lose your head. A drunk can get too careless, and so I was very negative towards drink. And the rest of the guys, they werent really drinking much. From time to time, of course, but I didnt see a single man drinking during combat.

They always gave us three days to rest between combat operations. You have refits, replacements, inventory of supplies and ammunition. Wed then usually be a few kilometers behind the front, and everyone starts to unwind. They find some alcohol, or even make some moonshine. Especially the older guys, from the Ukraine, we had a lot of them in our unit. A couple of days of this merriment go by, and then on the third day, the camp is quiet. Everyone becomes focused, gets himself ready for going back into battle. Its very sudden two days of hanging loose, and then everything gets serious again. A.B.: Was it the same way in assault gun units? Yeah, with everyone, with infantry as wellWell, assault guns werent really withdrawn to the rear that often. They still sent assault guns and tanks back for some R&R, just more rarely than other kinds of troops. But with scouts you go on a mission, and then you always get a couple of days of rest. A.B.: Do you believe in any omens or soldier superstitions? I never really thought about these things, but I will tell you this: on May 9 we were approaching Prague and they said that the Germans had capitulated, we heard the announcement by Levitan [the wartime Soviet State Radio anchor Transl.] over the APC radio. Cheers went up, and one soldier named Menchikov took out an accordion and began to play. And we had one soldier named Veselov [literally Cheerful-ov Transl.], a father, in his forties. He was with the HQ, mostly repairing boots making new pairs. When word of victory spread, he asked to be let off to be with us, soldiers, with his friends. So he just was sitting there in a motorcycle sidecar, while everyone else was up celebrating. I went up to him and called him by his name, I cant remember it now: - Listen, why are you just sitting there? Youve got a cheerful last name, why dont you have any cheer? And he just sat there. I went off to the side, but my heart told me something is going to happen to him. Ive always believed in premonition, things like that. Anyway, we moved on. The driver on Veselovs bike was an NCO named Kasperskij, he was also from HQ, a master watch repairman. They were driving along, when they came up on a German heavy prime mover with a little crane in a field near the road. Kasperskij stopped the motorcycle and ran towards the prime mover, while Veselov stayed in the sidecar. Turned out there was a German officer still in the vehicle, according to another motorcyclist who was there. Kasperski went: oooooh, and the German just shot him dead, right in the forehead. Veselov opened fire with his SMG, but the German shot him too. Both shot dead. The other motorcyclist brought Veselovs body to us but had to leave Kasperskij. And thats how Veselov died. Page 9 of 9

There were a lot of omens and superstitions at the front, lots of talk about them. For instance, it was always a bad omen when a soldier began to get nervous. The enemy

starts to bomb you or shell you (and I noticed this in myself, too), youre lying in some piece of cover and it just seems that the ditch in front of you is a couple of centimeters deeper. You start thinking that you just have to make your way to that other ditch to survive. But I knew from veteran soldiers that under no circumstances should you break cover. You take cover where you can and stay down until its over; if you start looking for a better spot, youll just find your own death! In that first combat where I got my first Medal of Valor, they started to bomb us and we bailed out of the assault gun. I managed to roll into some small slit trench, but then curiosity almost got the better of me. I wanted to see how a bomb falls to the ground (laughs A.B.). So I watched a bomb separate from the aircraft, and just then my commander screamed at me: Get down! Then I went prone. There was a saying at the front: when theyre bombing you, nail your arse to the ground. And its true, when a bomb explodes nearby, the earth shakes a little, you feel as though someone is pressing at your back. My CO told me afterwards not to stick my head out like that. Well, what can you do I was still a kid. But yeah, we had omens. A.B.: Were you religious during the war? Yes. I always kept my faith. My mother and sister were very religious, they passed their faith on to me. I just believe, I dont know a lot of prayers. I just believe that there is something there above us. A.B.: Did you ever pray at the front? Silently, yes. A.B.: Did it help? Probably. Who else could have prayed for me to survive the war and to live for all these years? Thank God he is still with me, and Im still needed here. If not for God Id already...thats just how I feel. A.B.: Do you recall the reaction back home when you returned from the war? I have two brothers and two sisters. All my life before the war they were never rude to me, always treated me kindly. When I came back, my one brother had five children, the other just one son and one daughter. I lived with my brother, he was our elder. Petr served in Stalingrad, among other places, had been wounded several times and demobilized from the army. He is a good smith, both my brothers are skilled workers. Petr worked for a whole year, and got only 20 kilograms of grain. Everyone in the village said your brother is about to come home from the army. In the olden days, I would have taken a plot of land for myself, something from my inheritance. But then, when I came back, I took a look at him, gave him my last greatcoat and said to him: Petja, you have helped me so much in my life. Let me raise one of your sons for you, give me your eldest. Ill take care of him. So I filled out the forms, as Id already bought a house of my own, sent him to school and told him: until you finish your 10 classes, I wont let you get married. He listened to me, finished school, got married, had a son of his own. Quite

unfortunately, something was wrong with his lungs, and he died at the age of 29. I grieved as if he were my own son. In general, my brothers and I were very close. I did not know my father, and my mother died when I was 15. When I came home, the first thing I did was go to my parents graves. I cried my eyes out, and then said: my brother made these two small crosses for you, and Ill give you full headstones. I made them from metal, then replaced them with marble headstones. Then replaced them with new ones, and put up ones for my brothers and sisters theyre all buried together. Its good for me here. Interviewer: Aleksandr Brovcin Editing: Aleksandr Brovcin Translation: Gene Ostrovsky

Vladimir Vostrov Page 1 of 4 V.V. I was borne in August of 1924 in the town of Jartsevo in the Smolensk region. I only managed to finish 8 grades of school before the war began. Five days after the invasion, our district created a destroyer battalion from Komsomol volunteers. The German bombing raids on the region were very heavy, and our battalion was tasked with guarding the two nearest railroad bridges, dealing with any German saboteurs and paratroopers, and patrolling the district. The battalion received one 1.5-ton truck, which provided all of our mobility. Our commander was a man from the towns militsia [local police Transl.] who had served a tour with the army before the war. We were issued one Vickers rifle and 5 rounds for it, housed in a schoolhouse and sworn in as soldiers. In July we had a battle with some German agents that had infiltrated behind the frontline, and even managed to capture one of them alive. Everyone was really surprised at how easily we dealt with the Germans then we could hardly have known what a terrible and bloody war awaited us all. We all wanted to get to the front as fast as possible, worried that the war might end without us getting to fight. Of course, later that summer I gained a more realistic perspective on the war. The area around Jartsevo was held by professional troops, very well trained and equipped. They had an echeloned defense 30 kilometers deep, with artillery positions every 100 meters. The commanders were fond of saying things like well fertilize the earth with German corpses! And the Germans they just flanked the entire defensive position When they did that, people started to panicour battalion just fell apart. We waited for orders to begin an orderly evacuation of noncombatants out of the region, but never received it. I myself managed to walk 20 kilometers along country roads to the next railroad station, and rode out of the encirclement on the last freight train that had escaped the Germans. G.K. And did your relatives manage to evacuate? V.V. My father was in the army by then, the next time I saw him was 1946. When I came home after being discharged, my father was waiting for me on the train platform. I walked by him twice, and he didnt recognize meThats how much the war changed me.My mother wasnt fortunate enough to escape. When my regiment liberated Jartsevo in 1943, she wasnt in town the civilians whod survived the occupation were hiding in the nearby forests during the battle. Our house had been completely destroyed. Someone later told my mother that they had seen me standing over the ruins of our home. After that, for a long time she kept going to Smolensk to meet the medical trains headed east, hoping to run into me. She never did, but I actually was on one of those trains when they shipped me to a hospital in the rear areas. Thats a mothers instinct for you One of my uncles, Semen Fillipovich Vostrov, tried to break out of the encirclement in a car with two of his friends. They ran into a German patrol and were killedanother uncle, Grigorij Fillipovich Vostrov, stayed behind with his wife Vera

and daughter Valja. At one point, they were hiding in their house a wounded Russian pilot whod been shot down behind enemy linesa neighbor told the Germans, and they shot my uncles entire family as well as the pilot. My family lost a lot of people during that terrible war G.K. What happened to you after you escaped from the German encirclement? V.V. I wound up near Moscow, worked as a garage mechanic for a while. In April of 1942 I volunteered for frontline service. I was first assigned to a reserve regiment, went through basic training, then became an infantryman on the Western Front. Towards the end of 1943 I was wounded, and after I was released from the hospital I wound up in an assault gun regiment. G.K. Would you like to talk about your life in the infantry? V.V. You know, Ive looked at your website, and there is already a wealth of stories from regular infantrymen. I dont think I could add anything substantial to that. The infantry was almost certain death. No-one who served escaped his fate. I was extremely lucky to last as long as I did on the frontline. I can tell you about my last infantry combat. The frontline was near Orsha. The German positions were 400 meters away from our trenches. We were deployed in defensive positions cant start any fires, they fed us cold stew and crackers once a day. Then suddenly they relieved us, took us back 10 kilometers behind the front. We washed up, got new uniforms. Then they formed us up and read aloud the order about a new offensive. The next morning, we attacked after an artillery preparation. We barely advanced 100 meters when the German dive bombers showed up and started plastering our lines. We couldnt retreat, and staying put meant certain death from German bombs and so we rushed forward. Across the barbed wire, across the minefield, under fire from German machine guns and mortars, and all the while the bombs kept whistling overhead and exploding among us. Finally, we captured the first German trenchline, and immediately the order came down Keep forward! Do not stop! At that moment, my SMG jammed. I squatted down, cleared the jam, then started to run again. I only had about 50 meters to go to the next German trench when I felt a hard blow to my legs. A German mortar shell exploded just behind me, and a big fragment lodged in my left knee. But once again I was extremely lucky. My boots and my greatcoat were full of holes and shrapnel, but only a few fragments actually hit me. A friend dragged me off into a fresh shell hole and bandaged me up. I crawled back to the rear using my SMG as a support not even the wounded were permitted to leave the field of battle without their weaponEventually, I wound up in our medical battalion, then they loaded up in carts and took us to a field hospital in the woods near Smolensk. There were many hundreds of wounded already there on the ground, waiting their turn in the surgical tents. The doctors worked as if on a factory conveyer belt. There wasnt really any anesthetic, but our people are hardy we just gritted our teeth until it was over. They operated on me, and then loaded the lot of us into freight cars and shipped us off to Moscow. Our train cars were usually used to transport coal, so by the end of the trip we were all black like Africans with only the teeth and the whites of our eyes showing. We arrived at the Belorussia train terminal, and then they took us by car to a hospital near the Aviamotor metro station. Then they operated on me again. A month and a half later they discharged me and sent me to an infantry school, but then my wound opened up again hardly a week after I got there. Another hospital,

another surgery, crutches. I had two more surgery after the war. After I was discharged from that hospital, they sent me to a convalescent battalion. I had thought theyd immediately ship me off to the front with a reinforcement company, but instead I was forwarded to a tank training regiment in Petushki. G.K. Was it difficult to think about going back to the front after all the things youd experienced in the infantry and the hospitals? V.V. No, there wasnt any fear or anxiety at all. I was ready to fight again, to fulfill my patriotic duty I wasnt looking for an easy way out. But I did see how hard it was for some soldiers to go back to face death. In the hospital, the guy in the bed next to mine was a senior NCO named Kapustin, one of the professional soldiers from before the war that was the sixth time he had been wounded! He once confided to me that he just didnt have any strength to go back into the meat grinder on the frontlines G.K. Did you want to become a tanker? V.V. When I was with the infantry, we all envied the tankers they had fewer things to lug around, dont have to sleep out in the open, in the mud, in the swamps, for months on end. But no-one had really wanted to become a tanker. The prospect of being burned to death wasnt exactly inspiring.

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G.K. What was the reserve training regiment like? How would you grade the training that you received? V.V. The reserve training regiment was formed on the basis of a tank regiment destroyed near Kharkov. We arrived in literally the middle of nowhere, and had to build out our housing bunkers and the training grounds ourselves while we trained. The training went for 12 hours a day, every day, though a meaningful portion of that time was spent on construction work. Hungerwe lived in huge 250-man earthen bunkers with 2-story wooden bed frames. Our beds were our greatcoats stretched out on the logs. But we werent complaining by that time, wed all forgotten what a warm bed was like after two plus years of the warThe regiment was preparing crews for T-34s, T-70s, T-60s and SU-76 assault guns. I wound up in a training company for tank gunners they taught me how to shoot reasonably well. They actually offered me a chance to stay on as one of the instructors, but by that time Id had enough of the regiments osobist [Special Department Representative an officer of the NKVDs counter-intelligence department, later reformed as SMERSH, responsible for moral and political health of his unit as well as for uncovering traitors, saboteurs and anti-Soviet agitators; generally disliked by regular troops. Transl.]. So I went off to the front the first chance I got. G.K. Whats the story with the regiments osobist?

V.V. Well, during the winter a few men from the regiment were sent to pick up some supplies for the regimental kitchen in a Studebaker truck. On the way back, we were all dead tired I was sitting in a folding seat in the back of the truck, and the soldier next to me happened to have been a starover [a sect that had split off from the Russian Orthodox Church in mid-17th century Transl.] who had previously served in the long range artillery. The snow was really coming down. I dozed off, and when I woke up at the regiment the starover had disappeared. Apparently he jumped off somewhere along the way and deserted. Well, after that the osobist kept bringing me in for questioning almost every night and accusing me of being in on the whole thing youre the one who sat next to him and so you must have seen everything, its your fault that he deserted, you two thought this up together and so forthI just couldnt deal with that anymore, and so was very happy to finally wind up somewhere else the assault gun training brigade in Mytischi. G.K. Were the assault gun crews put together in Mytischi? V.V. Yes, we picked up our assault guns straight from the factory at Mytischi. There was a very similar factory in the city of Gorkij. After we picked up our vehicles, we had a 100-kilometer training run with firing trials, and then sent off as replacements to the 1433rd Separate Novgorod Self-Propelled Artillery Regiment in the High Command Reserve. Soon afterwards, the unit became the 423rd Guards Separate Self-Propelled Artillery Regiment. We arrived at the regiment in our own assault guns, and all the crews were the same as back in the training brigade. G.K. What was the regiments organizational structure? V.V. The regiment was a part of the 6th Mechanized Corps in the 4th Tank Army. Since the regiment was designated as separate, its organization was a little different from line assault gun regiments. The regiment had 4 batteries of 4 assault guns, plus a company of T-34 tanks on average, we had 25-27 machines in service before going into battle. We also had an antitank rifle company. Sometimes they attached a motorcycle platoon and a reconnaissance platoon on APCs. G.K. I know that you didnt really want to recall the war, and that the local veterans group had barely convinced you to agree to this meeting. Thats completely understandable even today, very few veterans are eager to talk about those terrible days. Even socould you at least talk a little bit about those battles that were most memorable? V.V. In all honesty, I dont really want to drag up those memories againFineIn February of 1945, the assault by our 1st Ukranian Front exhausted itself about 80 kilometers from Berlin. What remained of the regiment didnt even have fuel or ammunition. The dirt roads turned into rivers of viscous mud. In the beginning of March, the 4th Tank Armys commander, Leljushenko, arrived at our regiment and told us that we were going to be entrusted with a special operation. They lined up all of the regiments soldiers, and then the theater began. Leljushenko kept asking Who had already been in combat? Who had been wounded and still did not receive any commendations? Who had been recommended for a medal and still did not receive one? Does anyone have any requests? Meanwhile, his adjutants were

walking up and down the line noting down the names of the soldiers who replied to any of the questions. What did all this mean? Our losses during a typical special operation ran at about 50%. In this particular case, however, we understood that we were about to be sent on a suicide mission. Why else would Leljushenko himself be trying so hard to raise our spiritsAnyway, after all the theater, they ordered us to take a small German village, saying that only our all-terrain assault guns could get to it through all the mud So here we were, sitting in our vehicles, waiting for the order to attack. There was a minefield between our positions and the village. They sent in 5 T-34 tanks with mineclearing attachments ahead of us. The mine-clearing tanks are pretty slow, and the Germans immediately destroyed three of themseeing this, we all rushed forward, hoping to get luckythe minefield was made up of massive anti-tank mines, each with 100-200 kilograms of explosives. Any crew that drove over one of these went straight to heaven, their assault guns just disintegrated. A third of our assault guns blew up then and thereAfter fifteen minutes we reached the now-empty German village. Aside from those who died in the minefields, we had no losses. Most of the crews dismounted and began scavenging for trophies, but my guys stayed in the assault gun. I always thought it was a bad omen to take something that doesnt belong to you. All of a sudden I saw a friend of mine named Topkasov carrying a new pair of leather boots, and instantly got the feeling that something bad was about to happen And then it did. A counterattack by German tanks! Topkasovs assault gun was hit right in the fuel tank. You can imagine what happens when 200 liters of aviation gasoline light up, especially if the vehicle is carrying a full combat load of 80 shellsAll that was left of my friend was one leg in a new leather bootWe managed to repel the German counterattack with great difficulties, but the regiment was bled dry in the process. G.K. Did you believe in omens? V.V. Yes for instance, it was very important for me never to take any trophies. Our regiment commander used to be the director of a textile factory in Ivanovo before the war. A good officer, and a good manager. When the army allowed soldiers to send packages back to the Soviet Union, he ordered that every soldier in the regiment receive a gift package from things that weve scavenged to send back. I refused to accept mine, but then someone secretly sneaked a new suit into my assault gun. Two days later my assault gun burned up, along with the new suit. G.K. Did you ever pray before an attack? V.V. Well, sometimes you remembered God, but I was brought up as an atheist, and so didnt pray or cross myself or anything like that. G.K. You were wounded again in Germany. How did that happen? V.V. The battles on the approaches to Berlin were very bloody and inhumanly savage.

Wed just driven back to the rear from the battlefield. I was looking to replace my driver, who had been killed in that combat. Practically no fuel and very little engine oil left by that time. Just then, the regiments second-in-command comes up and orders two assault guns to make a combat reconnaissance, basically move towards the enemy lines and draw the fire of his guns so that our spotters could locate them. Then he attached two T-34s with tank riders for support. I told him, Comrade Captain, we dont have any fuel! He only replied: No talking I want you to move out in five minutes! And so we turned back towards the German positions. It was quiet, at first, there werent any Germans to shoot at us for several kilometers. Then we saw a German village, and some defensive positions just behind it. There was infantry, of course, plus at least one gun battery and some mortars. And thenwe managed to sneak right up to the German positions, then suddenly burst into them firing at point blank range. I could see the terrified faces of the enemy soldiers the moment before they were crushed by the tracks of my vehicle. The Germans ran. We really massacred them!..and then, the German artillery came alive all along the frontline. There was tremendous shelling, they were firing indiscriminately on us and on their own men. We barely managed to avoid the enemy fire I drove into the village, rammed an iron gate with my assault gun and took cover in the courtyard of a stone house. Later on, with incredible difficulty we made it back to our lines, all under enemy fire. And the next day they told us yesterdays mission was only partially fulfilled. Were going to have to do another combat reconnaissance today! I just sat down at the drivers station and told the guys who were staying behind: write to my mother about how her son had died The feeling was that we were doomedthe Germans were waiting for us. The moment we moved out they destroyed one of the T-34sI dont know how, but we almost made it back to the village. At that point, we were the only ones left, every other machine that went in with us was already burningAbout 100 meters away from the village, we were ordered back to the starting positions. The German fire was so dense that I could only think enough, kill me already! The ground shook from explosions, and on the way back we were finally hitThe assault gun began to burn, but we had enough time to bail out and take cover in a nearby ditchthen I felt something hit me in the leg. Shrapnelwe wound up crawling the two kilometers back to our lines under incessant enemy fire. G.K. As a SU-76 gunner, you have personally destroyed 12 German tanks and assault guns. What does a gunner feel during a meeting engagement with German tanks? V.V. Well, there was this episode in the beginning of 1945. We were supporting some infantry, shelling the Germans for about an hour. There was an escarpment about 150 meters to our right. Suddenly, we saw our infantry running from that direction. Tanks!..So we turned around to face the escarpment and waited. The first tank appeared well, first his gun barrel, and only then the rest of him. I aimed the gun and took him out with a sub-caliber shell. There was just this sigh of reliefand then the second enemy tank crawled out into sight. It was a duel who will manage to fire first? There was so much adrenaline in the bloodstream thenyou cant think of death, you dont even have time to get scared. I just aimed and fired. Got him. And then the infantry finished off the enemy crews with a squad machine gun. After a fight like this, youre just glad that you got lucky again G.K. What were the losses in your regiment?

V.V. During the last year of the war, less than 25% of our crewmen survived. You see, assault guns theyre really designed to provide artillery support for the infantry. And instead, we were often used in frontal assaults. A light assault gun just doesnt have the armored protection, and its gun traverse is very limited. Plus, by the end of the war tanks as a whole became much more vulnerable. But no-one ever spared us. Who has ever spared the common soldier? G.K. What is your view of the quality of German tankers? V.V. Their training was very thorough. The Germans were a very serious opponent. To be honest, their equipment was also a lot better. The German tank guns had a higher muzzle velocity and much better sights, which of course had very unfortunate consequences for us. But by the end of the war, the Germans didnt really take risks very often. This one night we were parked in a column of march, in a single file, actually, with all the motors shut off. Suddenly, several German Panther tanks rushed past us at high speed. We never understood why they didnt just shoot up our column at point blank range, we wouldnt have had any time to turn our guns towards them G.K. Were there any restrictions in ammunition use? V.V. A third of a combat load was considered to be a last ditch reserve, and we could only use it with the direct permission of the regiments commander. Of course, in the heat of battle we often shot off our entire combat load. No-one is going to physically count their shells in combat. One time we broke through to a German divisional headquarters, and only then realized that we had no ammunition left with which to blow it away. Command made such a fuss about that!..An analogous situation arose in another battle in Germany. The regiments commander was given the order to attack after wed already gone through most of our ammunition. All we could scrounge up was a single combat load for two assault guns. These two machines went forward, while the logistics chief grabbed three Studebaker trucks and rushed off to find some shells for the rest of the regiment. G.K. What personal weapons did assault gun crews carry? V.V. We were all issued a revolver. Each assault gun always had 20 grenades and 12 PPSh submachine guns for the crew. Everyone also usually stuffed two-three grenades into their coat pockets, some of us had German SMGs. You could salvage a whole arsenal from the battlefield, no-one really ever paid attention to what we were carrying around in our vehicle. By the end of the war, we were driving around with captured Panzerfausts. G.K. Were the German Panzerfausters especially bothersome? V.V. The German Panzerfaust detachments were very active against us from February to April of 1945. These were mainly put together from German penal units and Vlasovs men [Russian defectors who fought on the German side under General Andrei Vlasov, who had been captured in 1942 Transl.]. One time, they destroyed an IS-2 tank standing a few dozen meters away right before my eyes. Our regiment was lucky enough to enter Berlin from the Potsdam side, and we never had to fight through the center of the city, where the Panzerfausters were just running wild

Page 4 of 4

G.K. How did your regiment treat the German civilians? V.V. Well, all sorts of different things happened in the spring of 1945. But you know, the tank forces generally recruited people who were educated and mostly very conscientious. I cant remember anyone from my regiment doing anything particularly notable, although I would say that no-one who was there at the time would ever answer that question with 100% honesty. And if anyone does answer honestly, you might want to think ten times before publishing it. I remember, near Berlin we had captured a large mansion the garage alone was built for twenty cars. My assault gun commander was a Jew from Odessa who had worked as a teacher before the war and whose German was excellent. He was our translator. Turned out that the people hiding in the mansion were the cast of the Berlin Opera they told us, they were very glad that they were captured by tankers and not the infantry G.K. Did the crews in your regiment trust or respect the unit commissars? V.V. All of our commissars had been combat officers promoted out of the ranks. My own political officer, Vysotskij, for example, had himself commanded an assault gun before being transferred to do political work. People like that could be trusted. G.K. How did the crews view the regiments command? V.V. I dont like to talk about this subject. We really disliked tenure officers, people sent over from the academies or some rear-area training school to get some frontline experience. These generally liked to order people around, and all wanted to get a medal as soon as possible. We had a second-in-command like that, he really knew how to make a mess of things G.K. Another extraneous question. For your frontline service you have been awarded the Orders of the Red Banner, Patriotic War, Red Star, Glory 3rd Class. Any desire to talk about any of these medals? V.V. Not in the slightest. Only the staff officers care about medals. I was fighting for the Motherland, not for some award. I would say this, however each of my Orders was awarded for a particular combat episode. G.K. Where were you when you found out the war had come to an end? V.V. We were driving towards Prague through Sudetenland. Hadnt slept for three days incessant skirmishes with the Germans, mined roads with trees cut down on both sides for ambushes, the German antiaircraft guns firing at us from the hills. One night, we made a rest stop and then, suddenly, there were shouts everywhere: Victory! Hurrah! The war is over! The soldiers are all so happy theyre crying, everyone is firing guns in the air. My first thought was: What do you mean the war is

over?! I still have a full combat load?! For better or worse, I did get a ch ance to shoot off that combat load. Our regiments kept fighting in the Czech mountains for five more days after Germanys capitulation was announced. A few of our guys died after victory had been declaredMy last battle was on May 14, 1945. After it was over I said to myself: Well, now youre done shooting for sureCant wait to get home Interview: Grigorij Kojfman Editing: Grigorij Kojfman Translation: Gene Ostrovsky

Aleksej Shilin Page 1 of 2 M.S.: Aleksej Andreevich, how did you come to choose a military career? As I was born in a peasant family, I originally had no intention of devoting my life to military service. When I was drafted, I used my time in the army to finish the regimental school. However, just as I was coming up on my discharge, my friends and I were informed that the Defense Minister ordered that our service be extended, and that we are to transfer to an artillery training school. It was 1938. We couldnt refuse this order. I still have vivid memories of one episode from those days, when during the morning roll call the officers command everyone to stand at attention, then suddenly one of them shouts at someone in the back ranks: Belay that! You you are an Enemy of the People! [Official term for many of those arrested during Stalins purges Transl.] Me, an Enemy of the People? But how? the soldier protests. But no-one listens to him, and he is taken away right then and there. I remember a lot of arrests like this. Thats how it was in those days. Regardless, I still wanted very much to go home, to my village in the Penza region. So I decided to ask my commander to transfer me to a tank school instead of the artillery course, justifying the request by the fact that before I was drafted, I had graduated from an automotive mechanical institute. I had hoped that switching to tanks would eventually free me from the service how I was mistaken! At any rate, my commander agreed to my request and thats how I wound up in the tank school at Rjazan. M.S.: How did the Polish War of 1939 begin for you? The same as for everyone else on the early morning of September 17, 1939, the Red Army crossed the Soviet-Polish border. By that time, I had graduated from the Rjazan tank school and was commissioned as an officer. We managed to break the Poles initial resistance and begin our advance beyond the border, but we ran into very heavy action in Belovezhskaja Pushha. We did have losses there. However, eventually we overcame that resistance as well, and drove to Brest-Litovsk. After Belorussia, our forces advanced into Western Ukraine, where my regiment had to spend two weeks assaulting the city of Lvov. On our way back home, when we were passing through the Mogiljov region, I met my future wife, a young kindergarten teacher named Natasha. It would still be a while before we got married though. The regiment spent only two weeks in Mogiljov when one night an alarm summoned all the officers to headquarters. There, the regiments commander informed us that we were ordered to load our equipment on trains and ride north, where we would be added to the forces of the Leningrad Military District. There were immediate questions, of course why, how. Our commander answered that he knew as much as we did, and this uncertainty made me feel a bit uncomfortable. My regimental comrades felt the same way.

What was going on? Well, towards the end of November we were told that the Finns had shelled Soviet territory. Thats when the Red Army went into combat in Finland. From the first days of that operation I realized that this war would not be nearly as easy as was envisioned by command, which had expected a relatively costless victory within two to three weeks. Advancing through heavily forested terrain full of Finnish snipers was very difficult. The Finns fought bravely, and were very well armed. And the weather seemed to be on their side that winter was unusually harsh, and the snow reached three meters deep in places. Our officers were issued warm white fur coats, while the soldiers received thick leather jackets. Finnish snipers, of course, targeted primarily officers, their leaflets even said: Kill the white-furs! All that was just a prelude to the real fighting, however. When we reached the Mannerheim Line, we were forced to a standstill by the heavy Finnish fire. Worst of all, one could not even tell where that fire was coming from. The thick forest masked the Finnish emplacements. Something had to be done headquarters ordered suppressive fire over open sights from all available weapons. We complied with the order, of course. The shells literally obliterated the woods, and then we saw the Finnish defenses. These were egg-shaped, and constructed in a checkerboard pattern. Just imagine concrete, two-storied structures. We later determined that each floor had eighteen heavy machine-guns, and there was also an artillery position at the top of each emplacement. After the war I found out that the Finns had been constructing these positions for twenty seven years across the entire Karelian Isthmus. And back then, we couldnt even approach them. The tanks would bury themselves in deep snow, or else be stymied by concrete-lined ditches or all the trees cut down by our shellfire. Headquarters than ordered us to bring up heavy railroad-bound howitzers (monster 500 millimeter caliber guns, where each shell weighted 400 kilograms!). Youd look at one of these things and think this brute can smash through any defense. Of course, by that time, we had learned not to be too optimistic. I remember that part quite well. Besides the howitzers, the Finnish defenses were attacked by our aircraft dropping bombs that weighed several hundred kilograms each. There was a constant din of explosions, though we, as tankers, were already more or less used to it. But I was really unnerved when I saw that all these shells and bombs left hardly a mark on the enemy fortifications. We understood then that the battle wont be that simple for us. M.S.: Were there strains of panic? No, not at that point. We were being told that command was working on new offensive plans, but in the meantime we had to hold our positions. Of course, the wait was both hard and dangerous. The Finns kept on an incessant fire, and temperatures fell to minus 50 degrees Centigrade (roughly minus 45 degrees Farenheit Transl.). No fur coat could protect you from that. That was the coldest Ive ever been in my entire life. Page 2 of 2 Meanwhile, command decided to mount a new attack using so-called infantry tanks specially manufactured for this purpose. You know what they called an infantry

tank? Each tank was a plate of 12 millimeter armor with a firing slit for the rifle (the Red Army did not have SMGs then), which doubled as the vision slit for the soldier behind the plate. The entire contraption was mounted on skis and weighed over 80 kilograms. Now, think about this the designers really believed that we could use these things to encircle and break through the Mannerheim Line. Of course, reality had other ideas. The skis would cross or tilt, and the infantry tanks sank into two meters of snow. Many of my friends died then. I especially remember how one soldier, heavily wounded but still alive, tried to cover his face to ease his pain but froze before he could bring his hands up. Our losses were enormous, with virtually no results. Thats when our morale really fell, and people began to whisper dissent. Thats when command ordered another round of artillery and aerial bombardment, with bombs and shells harmlessly ricocheting off the Finnish emplacements once again. On the fourth day, the infantry was ordered forward, and the Finnish lines were captured with no enemy resistance whatsoever. As someone had explained to me, the incessant shelling began to starve the fortifications of air. And so the Finns left using secret underground passages one and a half to two kilometers long. Of course, no-one knew that the Finns had left until after their emplacements were captured. After that, there was still heavy fighting, the so called Valley of Death, where many of my comrades perished. By some miracle, I managed to survive. At noon on March 12, 1940, the Russo-Finnish War came to an end. I still remember the exact time. In January of 1941 I got married, and when on June 22 the Great Patriotic War began, my wife was already pregnant. I first saw the child only when I came home after the war. I went through my third war from beginning to end as with my first two, was captured, twice escaped imprisonment, went through a loyalty verification process in a KGB prison camp, and then, having returned to the front, celebrated Victory Day on a hospital bed. Interviewer: Maksim Sviridenkov Editing: Maksim Sviridenkov Translation: Gene Ostrovsky

Anatolij Shvebig Page 1 of 10 Childhood I was born on October 30, 1914 in St. Petersburg, during the First World War. My father was a junior officer [Poruchik, roughly a lieutenants rank Transl.] with the General Staff, he was working as a clerk in a hospital in Orenbaum. In 1918, life in St. Petersburg became very difficult the Russian Civil War had begun, and everything was in total chaos and so we moved to a town called Volsk in the Saratov gubernija [pre-revolutionary term for a county or a district Transl.]. My father worked there as an inspector; in 1921 during the period of hunger in the district he caught cholera and died within a day. I was seven then, with a brother and two sisters. How did we get by? Luckily, my cousin was with the Red Army in Posada (guarding a monastery), he helped place me into a cadet unit. However, in 1922 an order came down to send all cadets home, or to a state shelter if they didnt have a home to go back to. And so I returned to Volsk, and with my brother wound up in a state shelter in Saratov. We were right in the town center, our shelter founded the Podlipki park. But the place really didnt have enough resources like bedclothes or food, so in the summer the kids would leave to scavenge for themselves, going up and down the Volga on the steamers. We werent good for any heavy labor, of course, and so we wound up vagabonding, begging, stealing whatever was easy to steal but never taking more than we needed to feed ourselves. When we had to steal something I teamed up with my brother the rest of the time, we were each doing our own thing, there werent really any groups or gangs. By pure luck we ran into our mother down in Tsaritsyno, now Volgograd [also known as Stalingrad Transl.]. She had been visiting the market there to buy some goods for resale up at Volsk thats how she made a living at the time. When she saw us two vagabonds in rags she said: Enough is enough, Im taking you out of the shelter. That year, in 1924, I was lucky enough to visit the Crimea, the cities of Simferopol and Sevastopol. We had a relative named Golovanov in Sevastopol a former sailor, he was the city council chair at the time. That city is where I had seen my first ships and hydroplanes. After returning to Volsk, I entered third grade. The schoolhouse was brand new, we used to call it the school palace. All the classrooms were completely kitted out. The students were a pretty diverse crowd some were younger, some older. We were all in the same class because many did not go to school during the Civil War. In 1930 I completed 7 grades of school, though my marks werent very high owing to my lack of preparatory education. I had planned to attend the agricultural technical college in Balakovo (its a well-known city today, but back then it was just a village), about 20 kilometers from Volsk. But then when I took the entrance exam, I completely blew the one in Physics and had to go back home. Everyone, including my mother, were telling me to go back to school and complete another two grades so that I could get into the hydrological institute in Saratov. But things didnt turn out that way.

The FZO school Right around that time the FZO school [Factory Worker Education Transl.] was established, and they were accepting people with a seven-grade education. I entered the school, and right then and there became a member of the Komsomol. I dont know whether it had mattered to Komsomol that my father was an officer in the Tsarist army most likely it didnt. First, because my father had worked in the district inspection department after the Revolution, and second, because we had an electoral permit. This was critical, as those officers who were under suspicion or deemed unreliable had been excluded from elections my mother, on the other hand, had a voters permit, and besides that she had become a member of the local collective farm, which was also a plus. The collective farm, by the way, gave us our own plot of about one and a half hectares; we planted mostly potatoes, which gave us enough food for the winter and even a little surplus which we could sell in the market (potatoes cost 5 kopeks per kilogram back then). My first year at the FZO school was spent in study groups. A study group has five people, everyone studied separately but only one member of the group would take each exam. His grade became the grade for the group. The study groups didnt really take very well, and so they came back to the old system after that one year. While I was at the FZO school in 1930, the army was conducting maneuvers around Volsk. Thats when the first tanks rode through our town. They were moving very slowly, only 5 kilometers per hour, and so the boys followed them through the town. The maneuvers were observed by Kliment Voroshilov, by the way. So we ran after the tanks through the entire town, and then I declared that I am going to be a tanker. Working life After my graduation from the FZO school, I was placed at the chemical plant in Berezniki on the Kama river (the plant manufactured various acids: sulfuric, nitric, etc.). I was a metalworker 4th class. My foreman was a German, we called him Karl. It was hard. We werent even eighteen yet, and the job went in three shifts. The graveyard shift, from midnight until morning, was especially hard: by 4 AM all you wanted was to go to sleep. Sometimes, Karl would let me doze off for an hour or so. He taught me a lot of things first, how to work the sanding machine. The metal was very hard and you had to be very exact to sand off some small fraction without having an acid leak or something. In the summer of 1932, my mother fell ill and I had to return to Volsk. I managed to find a job as a metalworker at the Red Metallist factory, and also began going to the factorys night school. My mothers dream was for my brother and I to become engineers, and I was going to night school to prepare for university entrance exams. In general, I attended the FZO school and kept studying afterwards so that I would have at least some prospects for the future, so that I could make a decent living and support my mother. That was the main thing that drove me.

The army In 1932, a friend of mine who worked at the armys local draft board suggested to me that there is a chance for me to join up. At the time, the draft kicked in at the age of twenty one, but you could volunteer for service once you turned eighteen. He told me to go talk to one of the commissioners. During the medical exam, they asked me: - What arm of service do you want to join? I told them: - I want to be a tanker. Page 2 of 10 The board then explained to me that they could only assign me to a training school for tank mechanics, since I already completed primary education which many recruits at the time had not and since I should have already been drafted a year ago. I agreed. And so, on December 5, 1932, I was officially drafted and sent to the Tsugulov Rifle Division in the Trans-Baikal Military District. I was to serve for six months in the infantry, and then a nother six months in the tank arm. After my six months in the Tsugulov division, I was transferred to a mechanized regiment of a very famous cavalry division garrisoned in Daurija on the Manchurian border. The divisional commander was Rokossovsky. Upon my arrival at the regiment, I was made a tank gunner. At first we had the T-26 tanks, and, later on, BT-2s and BT-7s all of them with a single turret. The T-26 had a 45mm main gun and a single machine gun. The BTs were fast tanks, with M-17 aviation engines, and they also had the 45mm main gun and a single machine gun. I remained with the division until September of 1933. While I was in Daurija, the regiments tankers were all receiving aviation rations which was a considerable perk. We also had leather uniforms boots, overalls, helmets. We got up at 7 in the morning, while the cavalrymen had to get up at 3 AM because they had to feed their horses. They were jealous of us, of course, and were always after our sugar ration (which they used for horse treats). Yes, back in those days, our tankers were treated very well. Tank mechanic school In September of 1933 I was sent to a school for tank mechanics in Leningrad. The school was right in the center of the city, near the circus right where the sports arena stands today. We had a tank park the school generally had a very good equipment base. While at the school, we also got to do internships at all the major tank factories Kirov, Kharkov, etc. Our studies were mainly directed at mastering the T-35 tank. This was a tank with five turrets, the central one with a 76mm gun, two with front- and rear-facing 45mm guns and two mini-turrets with machine guns. In all, the tank had 3 main guns and 6

machine guns. The crew consisted of 10 soldiers, 9 in the tank itself plus one mechanic. Bike tours In 1935, the schools director (at the time, ranked as a divisional commander we didnt have generals back then) called me into his office and told me that we needed to put together a platoon of bike riders. A major bike tour was going to be held, and our school was going to participate in it. They wound up selecting seven of us, organized as a single platoon. We began training I had already been a decent rider, as back at Volsk the kids lent bikes to each other all the time. The bike tour had about 50 riders in all, from all military districts. The goal was to test the reliability and ruggedness of three types of bikes from Moscow, Penza and Kharkov. Our platoon of seven got the bikes from Moscow. The tour started in June from the Uritsk Square in Leningrad. The route was as follows: Leningrad-Moscow-Nizhnij Novgorod-Kazan-Bahchisaraj-Perm-KurganZolotoust-Sverdlovsk-Cheljabinsk-Orenburg. Then the next leg was VolgogradElista-Nalchik-Tbilisi, then up the Black Sea Coast to Suhumi, then to Rostov-onthe-Don, then to Kiev, then to Minsk and back to Moscow. The entire route was about 14,500 kilometers we made it in three and a half months. The bikes from Moscow proved to be the best not without flaws, mind you, the chains and the tires had to be changed fairly frequently. But they were the best of the three types the bikes from Penza, for example, had very fragile frames. We had a pretty good reception when we got back to Moscow. Ordzhonikidze himself awarded each rider a new bike. Not one of us dropped out during the tour, and we even set a world record for a single days stage length (sometimes we rode for up to 250 kilometers in a single day). After the bike tour, I became involved in competitive sports for a time. When they had the first Soviet bike tour for 2.5 thousand kilometers, I took 7th place, i.e. made it into the top ten in the nation. I also tried to do an All-Ukraine tour, but didnt finish: just before Nikolaevo I was riding downhill towards a bridge, when a horsedrawn cart rode on from the other end. I swerved and fell on the rocks and scratched myself up a bit, even had to spend some time in the hospital. The 5th Heavy Tank Brigade and the academy Upon my graduation from the tank mechanic school I was promoted to Military Technical Specialist 2nd Class and sent to the 5th Heavy Tank Brigade. The brigade, based on Holodnaja Gora in Kharkov, was at the time the only one in the army equipped with heavy tanks, and so every year one of our battalions would drive up to Moscow to participate in the military parade there. I eventually rose to command the Service & Repair platoon of the brigades training battalion. The battalion was commanded by then-major Shtymenko. In 1938 I applied to the military academies. Back then, the entrant evaluation process was quite strict first, you had to get past the screening commission in the military

district itself, and only then were you allowed to take the entrance exams, which themselves spanned 11 different subjects. I ultimately selected to go to the Academy of the Motorization and Mechanization of the Workers and Peasants Red Army (now the Armored Forces Academy). My commander, Shtymenko, went to the General Staff Academy instead. We still met occasionally during our studies in Moscow, however. The head of my Academy at the time was Divisional Commander Lebedev. When we arrived for our entrance exams, he had us fall in and said: - Comrade officers, you are not facing a competition here, - an important point, since during 1938 the Academys engineering department began to accept civilian applicants as well. If you manage to score Cs or better on your exams, youll get in. Of course, the exams were still quite difficult, and even one failure say, on the Army Regulations Exam meant an immediate rejection. There were a lot of good officers who didnt make it in and some of them had come from as far as the Far East. There were five people from my own brigade, and I was the only one who made it in just barely. That was in 1938. Of course, the war began shortly after that, in 1941, and so our studies had to be cut short. Classes were graduated ahead of schedule, the training programs were accelerated, and students were allowed to take the final examinations without completing their degree thesis. The order about my own accelerated graduation came out on October 7, 1941. Page 3 of 10 When we were at the Academy, both ourselves and our instructors believed that war with Germany was inevitable at least, thats how our discussions developed. Later on, during my meetings with Shtymenko, I found out that the General Staff was of the same opinion that war was coming very, very soon. All of our efforts were directed into preparing for war. On May 1, 1941, the draft was expanded to fully staff the existing units and expand the army to 5 million men. That must certainly have meant something. Subsequent to this, all 7 mechanized corps and aviation units were shifted to the Western border. Our mechanized corps were still at peacetime strength, and were supposed to be brought to full combat readiness only by autumn. Everything was leading towards a confrontation either the Germans get us, or we get them. Of course, there was no talk of attacking first, as we believed that we just werent ready for preemptive action. Of course, when the Germans broke through our defenses and captured Minsk and other cities, we couldnt understand why the 7 mechanized corps and the front aviation were shifted so close to the border in the first place: they would have been more useful defending a deeper line. As it were, we lost a lot of our forces on the first day alone

Well, weve had a number of conversations along those lines back then. And then, there was the infantry my brother had just turned eighteen at the time of the May 1 order, and went straight into the army. The war began in June he didnt even know yet how to shoot, how to maintain his weapon, when all of a sudden the German force crashed into him from the air, from the ground. Sirens, tanks, fully-equipped German infantry. And the guy winds up having to surrender, and he is far from being the only one. The May recruits should have been held in reserve, while the defenses should have been manned by fully trained units. Back at the Academy, we had already been focusing on studying German tactics. Of course, both the students and the instructors had some doubts about the whole thingWe knew, of course, that Stalin was paying a lot of attenti on to the modernization of the army. The Red Army changed a great deal between 1939, when the Second World War began, and 1941. A universal draft law replaced territorial draft. The armaments factories began to pay attention to equipment characteristics. Stalin personally inspected the aviation and the T-34 prototypes. Then they analyzed the results of the Russo-Finnish War. That war revealed a great many deficiencies in the army, especially during the assault on the Mannerheim Line. The deficiencies were noted, and solutions were being implemented. At the Academy we were already studying the new T-34 and KV tanks before they had even entered serial production. Thats why when we graduated in 1941 we were already prepared for operations with these machines. After graduation, I was made the technical chief (with a rank of Engineer Captain) of a tank regiment in the 28th Tank Brigade that was being formed in Narofominsk. We were taken to Narofominsk by bus right after the October 7 order about our graduation. The enemy was approaching Moscow at the time. From Narofominsk, we were taken to the Gorodetsk camps, where the brigade was formally constituted on October 22. From there, the brigade drove to the tank proving grounds at Kubinka. We had 16 T34 tanks, 5 KV heavy tanks and 16 T-60 light tanks we were supposed to have T34s instead of T-60s, but there just werent enough T-34s at the time and all the factories had just been evacuated to the rear and so couldnt ramp production to where we needed it. The whole brigade, in fact, was basically at battalion strength. We were subordinated to the Western Front and received an order attaching us to Rokossovskys 16th Army and directing us to reach Volokolamsk by October 25. On October 23, we moved out. Our wheeled vehicles went through Moscow, while the tanks were supposed to drive through Kubinka to Zvenigorod, and then to the Volokolamsk highway and onwards to Novopetrovsk. On the night of October 25, we arrived in Novopetrovsk and met up some militia. They were led by a constable on a horse, and were generally armed with whatever they could get their hands on. Our scouts reported that the Germans were at Rozhdestvenno, about 5-6 kilometers away.

Based on this report, the brigade commander, Lieutenant Colonel Malygin, concluded that if we didnt stop the German advance now, they would have broken through to the Volokolamsk-Moscow highway and would then reach Moscow and encircle the 16th Army at Volokolamsk within a matter of days. A decision was immediately made: the tank battalion will take positions in the Novorozhdestvenskij Forest near Novopetrovsk, while the motor rifle battalion will remain in Novopetrovsk itself and cover the way to the Volokolamsk highway. We then informed Rokossovsky and Front HQ. The headquarters replied: Remain where you are and await further orders. Baptism of fire On the 26th we received the order to launch an attack on the morning of the 27th on a large grouping of Germans in the village of Shkirmanovo. Prior to the attack, the brigade was reinforced by detachments of artillery and Katyusha launchers as well as an armored train. At around 0900 hours on October 27, following an artillery preparation, we began our advance on Shkirmanovo. There was some high ground in front of the village, and we had to attack these heights first before assaulting Shkirmanovo itself. We sent our heavy tanks in first, followed by medium tanks and then by the militia and our motor rifle battalion. As soon as we crested the heights, we came under intense fire from the enemy. The battle lasted roughly three hours. We failed to take Shkirmanovo and eventually fell back towards our jump-off points. During the battle we lost our battalion commander and commissar as well as approximately five tanks, while taking out eight German machines. We were expecting the Germans to launch a counterattack, but for some reason they never did. This was my baptism of fire, my first battle. As the brigades technical chief, during the fight I was in the so-called observation-and-control outpost, a point close enough to the battlefield to allow us to spot and quickly evacuate any of our tanks that were knocked out. The battalion commander had left us a KV heavy tank with which to tow any knocked out machines to the rear before the Germans could finish them off. In all, five of our tanks were total write-offs, while almost all of the rest were knocked out by enemy fire and had to be towed to the rear during the battle. Page 4 of 10 Repairing knocked out tanks When a tank was a total write-off burned out, for instance it was sent off to be melted down as scrap metal. This was generally done at the Front level. Of course, during the Moscow battles we didnt have any assistance from the Front and had to cut up and ship off the burned out tanks ourselves. Later on, in 1943, this was all done by special Front detachments. When we sent off a burned out tank we also attached a report detailing things like where the tank was destroyed, how, etc.

If a damaged tank could be towed back to our lines, the repairs began immediately. Any minor repairs would be done on site and typically enabled the tank to return to service very quickly. Most frequently these involved something with the machines motive system a torn track, cracked roadwheels, etc. Some tanks had dents in their armor from shots that failed to penetrate. Of course, when the armor was penetrated there wasnt anything that could be done on site. Either the shell would hit the fighting compartment and the tank would burn out, rendering it a total write-off, or else it would penetrate into the engine compartment and wed have to send it back to the factory for major repairs. The repairs were done by the brigades Repair & Rebuilding Company. We had a Flying Truck Type A with all our instruments, which allowed us to do quick on-site repairs, and a Flying Truck Type B with heavy equipment like welding rigs, which we used as a mobile workshop for rebuilding certain parts or repairing armor. We also had a mobile generator as well as a compressor with several air tanks. Our company was lucky in that we were allocated five Voroshilovets tractors. These had aviation engines and were considered quite powerful at the time. We used these to tow damaged tanks from the battlefield. Unfortunately, by the middle of the war we had lost these tractors and didnt really have any comparable substitute. How did the tanks tend to break down? Well, lets take a KV. The first thing that broke on that model was always the clutch, since it was a very heavy vehicle and the system just couldnt handle the load. Next, the transmission and the gears themselves again, because of very high loads (46 tons is a lot). The torsion system also tended to fail frequently. There was some minor stuff, too one time, I remember one KV tank where the fuel pump broke down and I had to rebuild it myself because we didnt have any specialists in the field. The KV tanks had diesel engines while others used gasoline. During the winter, the tiniest malfunction of the radiator led to a breakdown. Also, the carburetors tended to clog up frequently. The T-34 was a different story. The rubber coating on the roadwheel rims tended to tear. The main source of problems was the fuel injection system. Sometimes the electrical components broke down. The transmission boxes actually didnt break down very often, although later on, when we had to drive through mud, the loads would cause first gear to break. The myth that the early-model T-34s couldnt go for a hundred kilometers before breaking down is sheer nonsense. My own brigade drove for a hundred kilometers from Kubinka to Novopetrovsk without any problems. The T-35s armor was only designed to be bullet-resistant. All light tanks had very weak armor protection, though they did get up to 10mm of armor. The 76mm gun was a short-barrel howitzer, very low striking power. And we had to use high explosive shells, too there just wasnt any armor-piercing ammunition available. We didnt really pay much attention to which factory we got our tanks from. Of course, the best tanks were made at the Kharkov factory before it was captured. After that, the Leningrad factory was the only one making KVs. So far as T-34s go, the Tagil factory was the best, the Cheljabinsk was so-so, Omsk had the worst quality.

When we received new tanks we would examine them top to bottom. Youd see things like parts that werent oiled, motive system defects. Wed have to get the tanks up to code ourselves, at least when we had the time. Quality did improve during the war. In 1941 the main emphasis was on production speed, and most of the factories had to evacuate and then restart the production lines someplace else, so there were a lot of defects. We did have quality control though. The factories feared it mightily. We had to put together reports on every tank that we accepted from the factories. There were never enough defects to warrant sending the tank back to the factory, but we did have engine replacement claim forms that wed sent to the factories. German POWs On November 8 I was going to the 28th Tank Battalion, then based in a clearing near the village of Andreevka. I was in a civilian car, a ZIS-110; most of the civilian vehicles, especially near Moscow, had been abandoned during the German advance. We found the ZIS-110 near the city, repaired it, and as they say it came in handy. By this point in time, I had been promoted to the brigades second -in-command. The previous 2iC was named Shalagin. One day, I drove to the brigade HQ in Novopetrovsk, and there was a German air raid just after I went into the house with our technical section. I ran outside into the courtyard when the house was hit. It disappeared, in fact, and we found Shalagin wounded in both legs. He died on his way to the hospital, and so I was promoted to the 2iC post on the spot. In any case, the ZIS-110 was a very comfortable vehicle, and the road was in good condition, so we were moving along at a very high speed. About one kilometer before we got to the battalion we had to stop the road was blocked by a deep ditch dug for who knows what purpose, and there wasnt any way around it as the road was flanked on both sides by woods. I left the driver in the car and began to walk towards the battalion, but about halfway there I spotted two Germans in winter camouflage and helmets hiding in some bushes. Each was wearing a belt with a knife on the left and a grenade on the right. They moved towards me, and I dropped to the ground loosing a few shots from my sidearm, hoping to attract the attention of the battalion and my driver. My driver ran up and drove the Germans deeper into the woods with SMG fire. When he found out about the firefight, the battalion commander Captain Agopov immediately sent search parties after them. They were caught inside a half hour. During the questioning, they acted with considerable arrogance, saying only that Moscow is kaput and that their capture was a temporary mishap. Nowhere to retreat We really did not have any room to retreat. If we pulled back, the Germans would have broken through to the highway. We had to fight where we stood, to the death, as they say. Of course, Rokossovsky was already pulling back from Volokolamsk, but he was only avoiding an encirclement.

Page 5 of 10 On November 16, the Germans reached the highway. We had nothing left by this point I had just two operational tanks. Most of the brigade was ordered to pull out towards the Istra River so that it could evacuate and repair its damaged vehicles. Thats when the Germans started to bomb us pretty heavily. I decided to rejoin the brigade by taking a shortcut through the woods to avoid the German aircraft. When we entered the woods, we unexpectedly caught up to a T-34 column in a clearing. I stopped my tanks, and then suddenly heard German speech so I drove right back into the woods. The Germans were afraid of going into the woods, they knew that its be kaput. I set course for the Istra reservoir and eventually caught up to the brigade. On November 20, we were forced to disengage from the battle. They redeployed us to the Podlipki district, we bivouacked right in the Podlipki resort. We received some reinforcements now we had 8 KVs, 22 T-34s and 34 T-60 light tanks. We kept fighting until April 20 in the so-called Olenino Ring, somewhat east of Rzhev. There was a small bridgehead there across the Volga, and we were defending it. The Rzhev battles were very hard, truly terrible. Our side had very large losses. All we had in the narrow bridgehead was two or three rifle divisions, and they ordered us to widen it. That just couldnt be done you throw in a brigade, or a division, but the German defenses are too strong we never managed to widen anything. Later on, we pulled back to the Volga and threw a rope bridge over the river. Thats how we were evacuating wounded and transporting food and spare parts back into the bridgehead. It wasnt too bad, and we managed to hold Then we were taken out of the bridgehead, and thats how the Battle of Moscow ended for our brigade. When we fought the Germans in 1941, we werent thinking whether they had superior forces than us. Our view was we had to hold our defense line no matter what. We didnt even know how many tanks the Germans had, it didnt really matter. When several of our armies were encircled near Moscow, there were no forces left to cover Volokolamsk or the highway to Moscow. We had to take stop-gap measures, like moving my brigade to Novopetrovsk anything to stop the Germans from reaching the highway. It is to the credit of our encircled troops, who kept fighting to the last, that the Germans were held up long enough. They held the Germans up for a long time, if not for them, the Germans would probably have reached Moscow. With a mindset like that, you cant really discuss force superiority we didnt feel the Germans facing us. The Germans had their problems. I remember May 1 near Rzhev spring rains, mud. We had zero rations left. The Germans kept dropping leaflets on us saying that the Red Army had abandoned us, that were going to starve to death. Between our lines and the Germans were fields of potatoes we used them to bake little cakes. But our soldiers werent the only ones sneaking forward to dig up some half-frozen potatoes the Germans were doing the same! So who was superior to whom?

Later on, our depots were shifted from Kalinin a little closer to the frontline. The supplies still had to be hauled through the woods, however. I had one tank towing vehicle, and I had to send it to get the food from the depots. There were plenty of supplies, just no way of getting them to the front. Thats how we were celebrating May Day [May 1, International Labor Solidarity Day Transl.] and neither the Germans nor ourselves were doing any shooting. Everyone just wanted to survive The Rzhev battles Afterwards, we were moved closer to Rzhev. In the summer, the Stalingrad battle began and so we launched a very large offensive of our own. We had a slogan: A German killed near Rzhev wont be fighting at Stalingrad! In 1942 our brigade was ordered into the first echelon with the 379th Rifle Division and tasked with breaking through the enemy defenses east of Rzhev with the view of reaching the Volga. The terrain was very swampy and completely covered with brush. The assault on the German positions began at 0800 hours on July 30. The fighting was very heavy. We couldnt attain the element of surprise since the tanks could only move very slowly through the mud, and kept getting stuck and having to tow each other out. There was no other place to attack, however everywhere else were swamps, and the nearby Dobryj stream had overflowed and became impassable. The operation was commanded by Zhukov. By the end of August 15, when it seemed that victory was almost within our grasp, that one last effort would get us on the eastern outskirts of Rzhev, the brigade had only three T-60 light tanks left in service. Lieutenant Colonel Malygin called me in: - Anatolij Petrovich, - he said quietly, - you know the situation. What are we going to do? - Attack Rzhev eastern outskirts, take the airfield. - Attack with what? he looked at me with very tired eyes. My only hope is that your mechanics will pull us through About two hours later, the brigades operational strength was 3 KV tanks, 5 T-34s, 2 T-70s and 4 T-60s. During the fighting from July 20 to August 23, our technical company repaired a total of 10 KVs, 28 T-34s and one T-60 light tank. The summer and autumn operations near Rzhev, especially the summer 1942 offensive, were essentially designed to distract the Germans from the Stalingrad axis. Nevertheless, there were considerable forces involved in addition to the troops near Rzhev, there were the units attacking from the Vjazma direction and from other places. As the Germans carried out a powerful counterstroke, even Getmans division I mean, Getmans corps became involved. But the main goal for us was always to fix the German forces and not let them shift any reserves to Stalingrad. We didnt have any objectives to go after. Just hold on to Rzhev and, before that, capture Rzhev and continue engaging whatever enemy troops could be found locally so that they couldnt escape.

My view on the offensives lack of success and large losses? By the time we launched it, the Germans strengthened their defenses considerably. After the battles near Moscow, they realized that they had to have strong defenses to contain us. And now they had strongpoints, concrete bunkers, deep trenches, things we hadnt encountered before and besides that, the terrain was very bad for the attacker. Very swampy, and the rains had just turned the streams into rivers. The Germans were building extensive minefields. We had to make improvised minesweeping equipment. How did we do it? We took the roadwheels from a KV tank, welded metal spikes to them, attached them to something resembling a sleigh and the whole contraption was hooked up to the front of a T-34. The tank then moved through a minefield ahead of everyone else, exploding the mines the KV roadwheels were very sturdy, and there was practically no damage to the tank itself. Thats how we cleared lanes in the German minefields for our tanks. Page 6 of 10 We also had to do some T-34 flame thrower conversions. Our brigade received five conversion kits from Moscow and we had to install them with whatever resources were on hand. The flame thrower weapon replaced the main gun, with a high-pressure fuel drum inside the tank. Effective range was roughly 100 meters, and we used these tanks to burn the Germans out of their bunkers. This was the first time we had to do a conversion job like this they just gave us the kits, and we figured out how to install them. My main battles I left my brigade in March, when I was promoted to the Technical Chief of Armored and Mechanized Forces in the 39th Army, basically the officer in charge of equipment, logistics and repairs. The 39th Army was a combined-arms army fighting near Rzhev. She had been inside the Olenino Loop but was never fully encircled, which was the problem. My brigades mission had been to widen our bridgehead and free the 39th Armys flanks, but we never succeeded in this. So by the time I arrived at the Army in 1943, it had already been almost completely reconstituted. In April I was called back to Moscow. I was received by Fedorenko the Red Armys Commander of the Armored Forces. He offered me the Technical Chief post in the 16th Tank Corps, which at the time was in the Fatizh district near Kursk. I accepted. I arrived at the Corps at the end of April, and was with it when we went into action during the Kursk Defensive Operations. The 16th Tank Corps was a part of the 2nd Tank Army, and conducted that armys main thrust on Olhovatka. The Armys second tank corps, the 3rd, was attacking around Ponyri. We were operating in the sector of the 13th Army commanded by Puhov. Basically, we withstood the German assault. By July 12, we stabilized the situation in our sector. Later, we were transferred to a different part of the front and we began to advance towards Kromy. Our combat operations were completed on August 23, and the 2nd Tank Army was withdrawn into Stavka reserve near Lvov where we remained through the end of December. In December of 1943, we received orders to relocate to

the Svjatoshino district west of Kiev, and from there we transferred to Belaja Tserkov, where we received our vehicles. On January 20 the enemy mounted a powerful counterstroke from the direction of Vinnitsa and broke through our defenses. Our 2nd Tank Army, still without all of its vehicles, was sent to seal off this breakthrough. We stopped the Germans in the Lipovets-Oratov district northeast of Fastow. Next, on February 4 the Korsun-Shevchenkovskij pocket was sealed off. The Germans were trying to break through to their encircled units in the Lysjanka region. Our 16th Tank Corps received orders to redeploy 120 kilometers towards the German thrust. The weather was rainy and the roads turned to mud the tanks had to crawl forward in first and second gear. However, we completed the redeployment by February 5 and attacked the enemy. There was heavy combat sometimes we were attacking, sometimes defending. Some villages changed hands many times Then the Germans finally broke through in the 6th Tank Army sector, and both ourselves and the 6th TA began launching counterattacks. Eventually, we recaptured Lysjanka, and on February 17, the Korsun-Shevchenkovskij operation was over. On March 5, the Uman-Botashan operation began. We were a part of the 2nd Ukranian Fronts main thrust towards Uman. The 2nd Tank Armys mission was to capture Uman and break through to the Dniester River. We reached Uman on March 9 and became heavily engaged with the Germans. By the night of March 10, a tank company commander named Dankov drove around the town through a gulley and entered it from the northeast. The 11th Tank Brigade broke into Uman from the north, our Corps from the northwest, and the 3rd Tank Corps also moved up from the northeast. Later in the day on March 10, we liberated the city of Minsk. We thought that wed be given a rest after all that, but on the morning of March 11 we were sent in pursuit of the enemy, and by March 12 we approached the Bug River near Dzhulivka and captured a bridgehead on the opposite shore. All the crossings had been dynamited, and we had to send the first seven tanks across underwater. We then reached the Dniester River. The Germans had blown the bridge, and while the motor rifle units got across on makeshift rafts and managed to establish a bridgehead near Soroka, the tanks had to wait until a new bridge could be built. The offensive continued. We reached the Prut River, on the pre-war USSR border. We carried on fighting in the mountains of Rumania until June 12, when we were withdrawn into the High Command Reserve and shifted into the Koll region, just in time for the Belorussia operation. During this offensive, we attacked towards Ljublin, then Deblen, and finally approached Prague from the opposite bank of the Visla River. During our battles near Deblen I was wounded shrapnel hit my back, my right leg, and even nicked my neck a little. It happened like this. The Corps commander called me in and said: - We just took Deblen, and we need to get across the Visla. There is only one rail bridge left, can the tanks make it across?

Questions like this were my area of responsibility. Theoretically, the tanks could get stuck cold on the narrow rails, but not on this particular bridge. And so I told him the tanks could pass, and just as the first tank column approached the bridge, the Germans bombers blew it up. I was wounded then, but not very seriously, and so was able to get back to duty straight from the dressing station. At this time, our Corps received orders to move into the Magnushev bridgehead in support of Chuikovs 8th Guards Army. The Germans were launching heavy attacks against the bridgehead, and Chuikov was afraid his army wouldnt be able to hold on unsupported. Of course, before we could offer any support, we had to cross the Visla River into the bridgehead itself. It was autumn, and there were no specialized tank crossings in the beginning. The sappers had to improvise rafts, etc. We got the first few tanks across in this fashion, and only later did we throw a proper tank bridge. We remained in the Magnushev bridgehead until January 15. On January 15, the Visla-Order Operation commensed. We were supposed to surge through a hole in the German defenses opened up by the 5th Army. But the planned breakthrough was never effected, and we had to complete the breaking process ourselves. Then we succeeded in forcing the Pirlitsa River on the move the river was deep, tanks kept bogging down. We wound up chaining them to each other in a column, that way if a tank got stuck, we could pull it out towards the nearest shore. Just as the crossing got underway, commander Bogdanov drove up and said: - Well done! Give the guys who thought this up medals. Page 7 of 10 At any rate, we got across Pirlitsa pretty quickly, and then reached Schnaimedun. Then, during the Pomeranian offensive, we reached Stettin and circled back to Kustrin, where we began to take replacements. On April 16, we went forward again as part of the Berlin offensive. We were sent in during the first day of the operation. The plan had been to wait until the infantry could tear us a hole to surge through, but again, the breakthrough never materialized on time. We had to launch seven or eight attacks ourselves on that first day alone to break through the enemy defense line, and for all that effort only managed to advance 3-4 kilometers. The breakthrough did come on the second day though. The first objective that Zhukov had assigned to our Corps was to enter Berlin 24 hours after the offensive began. It took us six days just to get to Berlin suburbs, with heavy fighting. As I recall, we reached Berlin on the 20th, and then began the assault on the city itself on the 21st. Our Corps and the 16th Tank Corps passed the 2nd Tank Corps from the north, then pulled back a little. The 3rd Corps brought up the rear those were the units that hit the city from the south while we stormed the center. We crossed the Unterderlinden Strasse towards the Brandenburg Gate our last battles were near the Brandenburg Gate and the Tiergarten. Then the 8th Guards Army came in from the east, and it was all over. Combat ceased in our sector at 0200 hours on May 2, in the park near the gates.

We suffered heavy losses in Berlin, primarily from the fausters [Panzerfaust-armed infantry Transl.]. Our combat formation during the city battles was as follows first the sappers, then the tanks, then SMG infantry behind the tanks. The sappers defused mines, while the tanks shot up the buildings from which the Germans were firing with HE shells, and the infantry mopped up. But the fausters hid a lot, waiting for a chance to ambush a tank. The German artillery was second to the fausters but still bothersome. The Germans had converted every sewer manhole into a gun pit and mined the streets around them. So it was difficult to move forward, the attack progressed very slowly. Think about it we were fighting in Berlin from April 21 to May 5. Thats when we had the idea to rig up nets out of bedsprings on our tanks. I held a meeting of the brigade technical chiefs, and thats where the suggestion was brought up, seeing as there were a lot of bedsprings around. - Why not try, Comrade Lieutenant Colonel, - they said to me. I agreed. Thats how we began to weld bedsprings to tanks. The tanks just lookedwell, the Germans were very baffled what sort of a tank is this? But, when a Panzerfaust rocket hit one of these nets, it would be deflected. Day-to-day When we got to Moldavia [now Moldova Transl.], we were still in felt boots, winter coats, fur hats and the weather turned to +25 degrees Celsius! The lice were atrocious. Whenever I took off my coat, it literally stirred thats how many lice were in there. You couldnt sleep. We used to take a rag, wrap it around the neck, wait until a bunch of lice crawl on it then toss it off and repeat this with another rag. What else could we do? We were marching nonstop, day after day. Later on, when we were in Rumania and finally got to rest a bit, we had time to roast our clothing over a fire to get the lice out. The senior officers were generally on good terms with each other. All the orders were carried out without any politicking. Of course, sometimes someone would get yelled at, but generally speaking everything was quite polite. The SMERSH [army counterintelligence Transl.] representative didnt really bother us he was a swell guy. One time, when we were in the Magnushev bridgehead, he came up to me and asked: you want me to show you something funny? So he took me to this small hut with some benches. A bunch of old men came in and sat down, and we grabbed a couple of seats in the front row. And then, right in front of this audience, some couple had sex for real! I later found out that all these old men had taken young wives after the show they would go home and repeat what theyd seen. You know, back when I was in the brigade equipped with T-35 tanks, two men were purged. The public consensus was that they were purged for a reason that they were enemies of the people. We didnt really know anything back then. These two guys were great officers one of them, a battalion commander, was very thorough. And there werent any complaints about the second guy - the battalions technical chief, a

man named Vagner either, he was very knowledgeable, in fact. Of course, I cant really say that their absence hurt the brigade, in fact, I dont think it really had any impact on the brigades performance. There was a lot of personnel work, including disciplinary actions. We didnt send anything to the shtrafbat [penal battalion Transl.] only a judge could do that. Our Corps had its own tribunal, comprised of a chairman, a judge and a prosecutor. We could refer a case to the tribunal, if circumstances warranted it. This did happen sometimes. One instance took place when I was serving near Moscow. When we reached Shkirmanovo, the brigade commander ordered a company of SMG infantry to conduct a combat reconnaissance of the enemy. They were supposed to engage, draw as much enemy fire as possible and somehow map out the forward edge of the enemy defenses. Instead, they spent the night in some gulley, and, of course, didnt scout out anything. This was, of course, a very gross violation they were executed before the brigade. Of course, as a technical chief, I never had to impose punishments this harsh. Heres one incident - this one time near Kursk we were joined by one Rokossovskys representatives. Cant remember his name now. He basically observed everything, corrected things. Right around that time, the commander of the 107th Tank Brigade became heavily engaged with the Germans; he was defending near Ponyri and ran into a counter-attack by 50 German tanks, half of them Tigers. Almost the entire brigade was knocked out. The commanders own tank was hit and brewed up, but he somehow managed to bail out. He then made it back to Corps HQ and reported that his brigade was gone. Fortunately, I had some spare machines in reserve, so we were able to quickly reconstitute the brigade. But before the man could go back to the front, Rokossovskys representative ordered him arrested and tried before the tribunal for cowardice. When I heard of this, I personally went to the Corps commander: - Comrade General, I was there myself, observing with the brigades technical chief Major Karakoza. We saw everything. The commanders tank was knocked out, he barely made it out alive. The Corps commander told me to go on, and I said to him: - What, you dont believe me? The Corps second-in-command saw the whole thing too. The tank was knocked out, it brewed up, what more proof do you need? Page 8 of 10 And so the brigade commander, a man named Chelikov, was released. Just before the Berlin operation, he became the Corps commander thats when he was wounded. Generally speaking, we were on good terms with our political officers. Of course, there were exceptions. One time I got into a spat with the Corps chief political officer. He had requisitioned a Dodge 3/4 truck from a technical support company while I was wounded, and loaded it up with his war trophies [loot Transl.]. When I got back to the Cops, I told him that he had to give the truck back, since under regulations he was only allotted one vehicle a Willis Jeep. He got testy, and we really went at each other. I still had a limp from my wounds, and swung at him with my walking stick. He tried to tell the Corps commander, but the man was very principled and told the

political officer to give the truck back. I thought the story had blown over, but then later on, when I came to Moscow as head of the Technical Departments Combat Preparedness division, the head of our departments Party committee came to me and said: - Anatolij Petrovich, did you know that there is a strict censure on your Party record? - No clue whatsoever, - I replied. - Well, here it is. We need to find a way to get it off. Thus, without my even knowing it, the Corps Party committee had censured me. German tanks At first, we didnt have a lot of tank recovery vehicles. What were they? Well, basically we took a knocked out tank, or one with a damaged turret, took the turret off and turned into a tank recovery vehicle. We made a lot of these, but during the first period of the war our combat losses werent high enough, and there wasnt any time to tow back damaged tanks from the battlefield the battles were very see-saw. We had to leave damaged machines on the frontline, there was just no way to get them back to our lines. We didnt really use any German tanks. Cars and trucks definitely, but not tanks. The Germans only ever left us machines that were burned out, and in any case we didnt have any spare parts for them. Maybe some of the other tank corps used captured tanks, but not us. My duties as a technical specialist included examining German tanks. During the Kursk battles, we held our first seminar with all our tank crews on the vulnerabilities of German tanks, including the Tiger and Panther models. These seminars were one of the technical units responsibilities. By this time we had fairly decent data on these tanks. Basically, you had to hit them in the flank or in the tracks, since the front was pretty well-armored. You could also get them from the rear, but that was a difficult shot to make, you basically had to wait until the target tank turned around. In 1943, just before the Kursk operation, we received our first sub-caliber ammunition. These had no problem penetrating the armor of Tiger and Panther tanks. Before, we only had high explosive shells and solid shot. The German tanks were well-armed. They had the 88-millimeter gun, after all. We did start receiving 85-millimeter guns at Kursk in 1943, but these were a little inferior to the German weapon. Besides good armament, the German machines werent anything special. The Tiger tank also had very poor mobility. They couldnt use it like we used our heavy tanks at the point of attack. Instead, with the Germans, the medium tanks went in front while the heavy tanks supported. The Tiger wasnt a badly designed machine, it just lost out in terms of mobility and maneuverability. The Panther, on the other hand, was much more mobile, and more compact not like the unwieldy Tiger.

Our tanks Our brigade was the only one in the Red Army that had a company of radio-controlled tanks. This was classified, of course. And the radio controls werent perfect you generally lost reception if you descended into a gulley but it worked well enough at short range. When we got the new T-34-85 tanks, we found that the part that broke down most frequently was the guns firing pin. It wasnt sturdy enough, and so had to be replaced after firing off two or three combat loads. Otherwise, the shells would start denting or damaging the gun barrel, and we basically had to cut the barrel down, rebalance everything, etc. We tested the repaired guns ourselves each time was pretty stressful, you sat there guessing if the gun will fire properly or if the shell will explode in the barrel. My main task as the brigades Technical Chief was to ensure our tanks were combatready. Before every battle, the technical crews checked every machine like an aircraft mechanic checking a plane before it takes off, same principle machinery, combat loads, etc. Each companys technical chief looks everything over him self, and also interviews the crews if they tell him that something isnt right with the tank, he has to make a call whether to send the machine into combat. This was a big responsibility, and for the tank crew as well. There were instances when crews disabled their own tanks. We observed the action with the company technical chiefs from special observation posts, and sometimes we would see a crew bail out without any sign that it was hit. This happened especially often in Rumania, towards the end of the war. The terrain was mountainous, the crew would bail out and send the tank rolling downhill, where it would burn up. They didnt think anyone would see, but the whole thing would take place in plain view of our observation posts. Crews like that were, of course, given over to SMERSH. There were also cases where the crew would cause some technical malfunction weaken a few bolts here and there or something and then report to the company technical chief and request that the tank be repaired before being sent into battle. These cases were difficult to prove, but, fortunately, they were pretty rare. Especially since all the maintenance work was done in plain sight of other crews. In general, the crews fought honestly. If a tank fell behind, wed leave a squad of mechanics with it to get it back into service. That was our task to make sure that every broken down tank was repaired and returned to its unit. Sometimes this was a fairly complicated exercise for instance, during and after the Uman battles, our tanks moved 50-60 kilometers a day. A broken down tank could fall 100 kilometers behind by the time it was repaired, and it didnt even have enough gas to catch up. We had to set up a chain of impromptu gas stations as we advanced. There were many other things involved, of course. Every damaged tank had to be carefully examined and the results entered into a report, the tanks needing factory work had to be sorted out and evacuated to the rear, etc. Every burned out tank had to be looked over, and a report had to be filed detailing the cause, where the fire started, etc. Later on, we had instituted so-called control commissions each had a mechanic, a SMERSH representative and a combat officer. These three men would finalize and sign off on the report for each burned-out tank.

Page 9 of 10 Everything was very tightly controlled from burned out tanks to new deliveries from the factories. For instance, we once received replacement tanks at Belaja Tserkov in the dead of winter. The accumulators had been removed, to get the engines started we had to either find oil or diesel for the heaters and we wound up siphoning it off from the trains that had delivered the tanks in the first place. Then, when we got the accumulators from Cheljabinsk, they were all out of charge, and we had to recharge and test every one of them. This other time, in Manevichi near Kovel, during the Belorussia operation, we received tanks with time to spare before the next offensive. We knew that we were going to be sent through the swampy region near Kovel, and so we rigged tree logs on every tank (without any camouflage paint) and trained the crews in getting the tanks across the swamps. Then, when we made a 50-kilometer march, the fuel pumps broke down on all the fuel tanks. We telegraphed Cheljabinsk, they sent a team out and fixed the problem turned out to be a plunger defect. At that point, we had T-34 and IS-2 tanks, the latter as replacements for the KV series. The IS-2 was a good tank, with a 122-millimeter gun. Tank camouflage was also one of my responsibilities. For instance, painting the tanks white in wintertime. During the Moscow and Rzhev battles we used ground chalk later on, we didnt have the resources anymore, all the tanks stayed green regardless of the season. The mechanics were also responsible for camouflage nets, and for making tank decoys. These decoys fooled the Germans a number of times. I dont remember ever encountering any German-made decoys though. The main source of tank losses was German artillery. Losses to aircraft were fairly small maybe 10%. The tank could only be knocked out with a direct hit, otherwise the bomb fragments would just bounce off harmlessly. During the Kursk battles, 76% of our losses were due to enemy guns, the rest due to mines and aircraft. When we first ran into the fausters during the Visla-Oder offensive, they didnt account for more than 10% of our losses. Our replacement companies generally arrived at the front with three months of training. They had good basic skills, of course, but werent really ready for combat. During the battle, these crews would charge forward very courageously but without regard for terrain, battle conditions, etc. A veteran driver would instead steer the tank towards some cover, coordinate with his tank commander or the company CO on when to open fire. It generally took two-three battles for a novice tank driver to become a veteran at first, they would just charge straight ahead, thinking they were invincible. Some would drive straight into a swamp. You had to tell them over and over in the beginning to take things like terrain into account. Also, they could drive the tank but werent really prepared for maintenance work. Maybe they knew how to check the oil, but you had to teach them everything else. How to prepare a tank for winter, for example you had to change the oil, add antifreeze to the cooling system, give a coat of winter grease to everything. The same with preparing a tank for storage after the war, I mean you had to change the oil, hermetically seal the tank, etc. Even the officers werent really up to speed on all that stuff.

The German populace In the beginning, the people of Berlin hid from us. When they saw that we werent causing them any harm, they began to come out. We were even a little surprised when they appeared while we were still fighting for the city, it seemed that there was a shooter at every window, in every attic. Then, when we finally captured Berlin everything just stopped. They really understood that it was over. [By the way, heres something that happened to me during the Visla-Oder offensive. The Corps was advancing very rapidly, and I fell a bit behind while organizing the repair units. So I wound up taking a Willis Jeep to catch up to the Corps I had my driver with me, as well as an adjutant and an orderly. This one stretch of the road ran through a narrow gap between a lake and a river. Just as we reached a clearing, we saw a group of Germans. Our troops were far ahead of this place, we couldnt call for help so I ordered everyone to take up defensive positions and sent the adjutant on ahead to see if the Germans would surrender. It wasnt the easiest decision, of course, but we couldnt really retreat at that point. So we went prone while the adjutant went forward and then, suddenly, the Germans all put their hands up. There were about 60 of them there! We handed them over to the first motor rifle unit we came across. It was a very frightful episode, but we survived it.] There werent any incidents with the civilians in Berlin while we were there. Later on, there were some issues with the occupational authorities. There was a separate commander assigned to every town, the locals would go to him with any complaints but there were never any complaints about us. Nor did anyone ever complained to me about anything specific, even though I was one of the commanding officers. Of course, people would come to me if they were afraid, and I would calm them down. One time, a ballet dancer from the state theater company came to me and said: Comrade Colonel, I am afraid. I offered to let her stay in our HQ hut, which was always under guard, she was very grateful. I remember there was a lot of money (Reichsmarks) just dumped everywhere. We never took any of it of course, when I think about that today, maybe we should have taken some. There were bags of it everywhere, from some local banks. We did have war trophies, of course, but these were mostly cars, tanks. And we would have to give them up after a while. Everything was very well organized the food warehouses, for instance, were put into place almost immediately. No-one stole or looted anything what for? Where would you hide the loot? We stayed in Germany until 1948, setting the place back in order. The Germans treated us well, I remember we used to buy their early vegetable crop tomatoes, cucumbers. I myself had to work especially closely with the local population, since we had to exchange our old tanks for new ones but didnt have any spare parts like headlights and had to order them locally from German mechanics. At first, there were a lot of confiscated passenger cars, but then after a while they all had to be registered. There was an agreement signed in Karlchrest, there was a specially formed commission that took inventory and issued owner permits. The permit was in the name of an officer, who was then allocated space to ship things back to Russia. For instance, I, as colonel, was allocated one freight car and one flatbed car. I loaded the freight car with furniture and the flatbed with a civilian

Mercedes, which I wound up selling some time later. The point is, all trophy cars were issued owner permits. The customs service was very thorough, they even inventoried all the furniture in my freight car. Wives We did have instances of field wives for instance, Vitruk, the Cops commander, had one. They got married after the war. His chief of operations also had one, but then went back to his legal wife after the war ended. Generally, during the war there were hardly any instances of officers bringing their wives to the front for a visit. This one exception was when we were in Podlipki and I arranged for my wife to come down from Moscow for the New Year. We had just gotten married, on September 6, 1941, in Moscows Pervomai District basically went to the municipal offices and got a marriage license. So I brought her in for New Years. Thats about the only time I remember anyone doing this. Later on, when the war had ended, the Corps commander instructed me to escort three wives from the USSR his own, his second-in-commands, and mine. There was an Air Corps near Stecken at the time, commanded by Vasja Stalin. We had met fairly often they were our supporting air corps and he told me thered be a plane coming in from Moscow. So I flew into Moscow in October of 1945, but we still didnt have official permission to bring our spouses to Germany. So we got some papers together saying they were signals officers, dressed them in military uniform. I told them what to say, where they served, etc., and brought them to the plane. The pilot was Kokinaki, the brother of the famous air ace. We got through customs, boarded, and flew off though we had to make an emergency landing in Poland first, because of bad weather over Berlin. The Poles received us well, arranged for our hotel rooms. In the morning, we arrived I nerlin. Interview conducted by: Artem Drabkin Editing: Maksim Sviridov Translation: Gene Ostrovsky

Arseni Rod'kin Page 1 of 9 I was born in 1924 in a small country town of Perovka, Samara region. By the time the war broke out, I completed seventh grade of secondary school and commenced my studies as mechanical fitter at the regional TAFE in the town of Borskoye. In a fall of 1941, all of the students were sent to the German settlements in Volga region to harvest crops. Within a short while, the Germans were relocated to Siberia and we were left on our own. In a month and a half time the refugees arrived which had been evacuated from Ukraine and White Russia, they usually occupied the dwellings abandoned by Germans and we returned to Borskoye. I completed the short course in a local TAFE as mechanical fitter (agricultural fleet) and together with the other two graduates was assigned a job of mechanic in a country service station. The wages were low and food was scarce, we received bare 600 grams of bread a day. While money lasted, we used to go shopping to a local market and bought potatoes and milk, until we ran out of funds. I said to my mates: Boys, well kick a bucket going like that. We have to piss off soon. The three of us took off and headed to our own country town straight, passing remote villages which had not seen a war yet and where there were no refuges. We would knock at the door. Where are you from? The trenches or what? The trenches You poor souls! Our clothing looked bad and untidy, we were bitten by frost a bit, and it was about minus 20-25 C at the time. Up the oven you go, get some warmth Arseni Rodkin 1945

We would get some food, and move on in the morning. When we arrived home, I got a job of mechanical fitter with a local service station and was promoted to a tractor operator by the time the spring came. In a fall of 1941, I was called for service. Whats your job? Tractor operator Will go to a tank operator school In all honesty, I did not want to go to war and fight, and if I had a choice I would not, I would not do any favors to Soviets. Surprised? Do you think everyone was creaming Hurrah-Hurrah! at the time? In 1941, my uncle was arrested. I knew it in the school that he died in action somewhere up North. I was all upset about whole situation. I was thinking deserting the school, however later decided that the Kremlin bastards come and go, but Motherland stays forever. One simple though that already Germans got to river Volga gave me strong feeling of grieve. What the heck!? Needed to kick their arse. That is to say, I was defending my country not the Soviets. Well then, I was firstly assigned to Sysran tank school and from there transferred into Ulyanovck School. At school we learned how the gear works, battlefield tactics of a tank unit by itself and as integral part of a tank platoon. We were taught firearms and heavy ammunition, our own as well as German to be familiar with both. We had also separate classes on communications and elementary coding systems. However, frankly, we never used any ciphers but simplistic ones like Boxes-Tanks, PencilsInfantry, Nuts-Shells. We had, of course some field experience in driving and shootouts. Everything we would need at the front and politics of course. We had to study Short Course in Communist Party History. We specifically concentrated on HQ orders, which we had to takes notes of, however these were in abundance so that we never had enough time to finish them all. And the Drill of course. We spent just about a month mucking around with T-34, and after that entire squad were transferred to learn KV tank. The school was awarded a Special Guard title in 1943. There was a funny story related to this award. Second in charge, there was Colonel Naumov, he had been in action, grumpy looking middle-aged bloke, and he would not let any student pass by without having a go. Looks like everything is fine: outfit as per, boots are shining. Not but: Have you got a needle in your cap? No? 5 days of lock up. Yet will add: Youre twit. After the School had been awarded that Special Guard title, he stopped a student and said: Not good again you chicken No way Special Guard Comrade Colonel, not a chicken!

How do you mean? Special Guard Chicken, Comrade Colonel! You son of a bitch, made me laugh you bastard. Piss off! In 1943, we completed the 8-month military programme at the school and went to Chelyabinsk Kirov manufacturing Plant to receive our tanks. We stayed at the plant until January 1944. The plant had already ceased production of KV tanks, and was in a process of adjusting production facilities to be able to produce JSs. Within a few months, in a local reserve, a large number of officers in the ranks from lieutenant to captain, which were arriving from not only schools but hospitals and frontline as well, assembled. At the beginning, we had been fed at level three, however after our numbers increased, we had been fed as reservists. However, people were arriving at fast rate. Those who were after T-34 would arrive, have a sleep, receive their tanks and leave next day, we would just sit there and wait. Our team, being young and inexperienced, kept quiet, however those from the front, a bit older and having been around, started winging: Why the hell we are kept here hungry as? Send us to the front now! Page 2 of 9 Reserve Regiment Commander and his right hand man arrived: What is the problem boys, why the brawl? What do you think you are doing keeping us hungry here? Send us to the front! Sick of sitting here sucking fingers! Does not depend on us boys. We shall consult Headquarters. Shortly after, they split us into some groups of 25 people and sent to Moscow, as BTMB reserve. That was where Fedorenko played a trick when he called reserve regiment with which we had arrived a training squad. In addition, training squad means ninth level food supply. In this regiment, they re-trained us for T-34 equipment and relocated to city of Gorky. In Gorky, I was assigned to a battalion and given a tank crew. Battalion Commander said to the crew introducing myself: Here is your driver-mechanic, his name is Alexander Ivatulin, and he has some discipline problems. If anything, give him a squeeze. The blokes smiled: Comrade Senior Lieutenant, well find some common grounds, no need to beat him up.

Within a short while, we went to Sormovo, where we received our tanks. At the training grounds near railway station Kosino, they were putting battalions together, conducted tactical assignments with shootouts. That is how I became a tank Commander. They loaded us up onto the train and sent to the front. However, some smarties hooked a platform up to our train with vodka (two 500 l beer barrels). After a while, one morning I noticed my gun layer Gabidullin hardly ever managed to get on to the platform. I asked him to explain. He was playing a fool for a while and then admitted: Comrade Lieutenant, I had just about full mess-tin of vodka Where did you get it from? Are you nuts or what? There is a platform at the end of the train, and there is plenty there. If you find a container, the expediter will pour you some It turns out they gave a mess-tin full of vodka. On his way back he ran into a train director: What youve got there? Water, comrade Lieutenant The other, however had a different thought: Empty it now! This is not water, its vodka. Then have as much as you can, get rid of whats left He grudged the contents and drank the whole lot, poured out some for the sake of appearance. Jesus Christ! Get in the tank, lay back on the ammunition and keep quiet, Ill be in trouble with authorities otherwise. Meantime I got a twelve-liter tank bucket and headed towards the platform. I then filled some three-liter water barrels using this bucket (reserve stock), and half the bucket for current needs. Arrived to Rzhev. There we found our train next to the infantry troops train. It turned out that there was a younger brother of our platoon leader, whose name was Ivan Chugunov. What do you do? Have to have a youngster with us! We approached the infantry train commander, made up some bullshit paper and put down three liters of vodka for him and three to the superintendent. That is how Vasiliy got in touch with his brother and they fought together.

Senior Chugunov got a promotion to a company commander, and when we broke out the encirclement in the fall of 1944, he distinguished himself and was awarded a Hero. After the war, we would always remind Vasiliy: Remember how we bought you out for three liters of vodka? We arrived at Vitebsk outskirts Bychiha station round about 20th of May 1944 and joined the 89th tank brigade of 1st tank corps. The corps contained the 89th, 117th, 159th tank brigades and 44th mechanized brigade. The corps also had artillery regiments, a katiusha regiment and self-propelled artillery regiment equipped with Su-76 that we called canvas Ferdinands. At this time a Bagration offensive was being planned. We were involved in reconnaissance, usually disguised ourselves as infantry, so that the Germans would not get suspicious. On the 21st day of June we assembled in the woods, some 15 to 20 kilometers away from the frontline. Strong showers were pouring that night. In the morning we opened artillery fire, and later on the penal battalion attacked. However long the frontline had been stable here for, the Germans did not have in depth defensive zone constructed, and penal battalion broke (dashed) through quick. In the morning we did not attack, but went on by road as a march column. The roads were all like thick mud and almost impassable after last night showers. Our tanks crawled on their bellies, hardly ever sticking to the hard surface, leaving a glossy track of pressed mud behind. Germans did not show a lot of resistance, we suffered more from our own battle planes; we had however a battle plane coordinator in our squad, but by the time hed transmit coordinates, and some messing around the battle plane take off, we would reach the probable enemy locations. The battle planes would bomb us instead. What the hell, we are in a tank! The infantry however is on the armouroutside. We had to stop, scatter around and hide. Nowhere to hide though, swamp is everywhere, wet and muddy. To cut it short, my impressions of the first day offensive were like that: tanks in march columns, battle planes attack, Germans run and we are after them. We did not have any casualties in our company in the beginning. However, on the second or third day of the offensive one of the gun commanders died. One of the tank caterpillars tore up, we hooked it up by a steel rope, and attempted to tow the tank with another tank to the woods. All of a sudden, the Germans fell upon us and started bombing. Under this nervous circumstance that gun commander who was at the time right behind damaged tank tower was pushed against the tower by another tanks gun and had his pelvis crashed. He died about half an hour later. Page 3 of 9 Before we entered Vetrino, platoon Commanders tank broke, the friction mechanism pulled off. Commander changed over to my machine, and left me with his own damaged one. We worked all night with no result, could not get it fixed. By the morning, the service unit rocked up, and managed to get it right.

The deputy chief of the mechanical unit explained to me where my brigade was operating and showed on the map, and rolled away. However, he explained location correctly but indicated wrong road. We got lost and decided to come back. My mechanical controller was driving. The road went downhill, and at the end turned right sharp, circling around the swamp. Mechanic did not have enough experience and could not keep our tank on the road and let it go off into the swamp at high speed, where it got stuck up the knuckles. We managed to get it out with enormous efforts using a tree log. How do you think this self-pullout happens? A tree log is placed under both tracks and hooked up to them with a thin steel rope. When moving backwards, the log stays, and tank moves forward by a body length. The log then is released and procedure goes repeatedly until the tank reaches hard surface. If there is anything around to hook the rope up to, a tree or something, then the other end is attached to a track, to be wound up on it, however we did not have that luxury. We pulled the tank out, careless enough to break the oil line, oil was pumping out. Absolute misfortune! Somehow managed to get back to where we were yesterday. Went to sleep. Deputy chief of mechanical unit rocked up in the morning: Whose tank is that? Mine Whats happening? Why had not arrived to destination? Youd given me wrong route to follow. All right, all right, keep moving, heres the road. All in all, while playing lost and found, Vetrino got taken, and my unit where platoon commander had been hit by a shell or a mine, loaders periscope damaged, loaders dead and tank hatch tore off. Gun-sight went off its rear bracket and was kept in place by a front bracket only. Sedov, Battalion HQ Superintendent met me: Your unit damaged altogether, get on the trophy bike and go to the lost HQ vehicle, and fetch the maps, already ran out. I did not have any sleep for a couple of nights, however had no choice as to accept an order and went. My gun commander stayed with the tank, the others were re-located to different machines. I found the vehicle, rolled up the maps and came back on a bike. They cannibalized the tank while I was away, took away all the tools, whacked in almost dead battery, poured fuel out and dismantled the tower motor drive unit, I could roll the tower freely by hand, left just bare bone machine. I asked my gun layer: Why would not you stand by our tank? Battalion commander ordered.

Here are the maps. Catch up with battalion using passing transport, give them all to HQ Chief and come back. Get something to eat. Off he went, a maintenance tradesman and I stayed with the tank. I climbed under the tank, dead tired. Hardly caught a sleep, heard the tradesman: Germans, Lieutenant! What Germans, where from? Coming here next to railway line. Come out quick. Need to do something We looked around: whether Germans or not, did not know. God knows! What do we do? No fuel and all. Found a couple of containers with gas oil, which we used to clean the grease from shells and a bottle of trophy champagne, knocked a bottom off and made a funnel. No filter though. Had to prime straight. The batteries were just about dead; luckily, we had some air, started engine up. Approached the village, parked. Some time passed, refueller goes by. Listen mate, give us 100 liters or so of reserve fuel. Have to get back, will get more fuel at HQ One not supposed to, you are not from our unit Are you from a collective farm or what? We all the same here, same tasks. There is no fuel in the tank and you compromising our military objective. I will record you number and report, youll end up in penal lock-up at least. All right, get some. We had about 100 liters. Hungry though. Walked in a peasants hut, asked a mistress: Dear, could we get hold of some food here? There are some rabbits around. Catch a few, and here you go. Catch with what? I got my gun out and shot one. The mistress boiled it. We got on moving and at a turn near the swamp track broke down, there was not enough just two of us to put it back. The tradesman said: No point for me staying here, I am going back to battalion. How can you leave me alone here? All right, off you go. Page 4 of 9 Some time later I saw our battalions refueller, Kostin go by. Kostin was an old stager, had been at Stalingrad, with a KV regiment. In an assemble area that Kostin

got together youngsters never seen the battle and was telling them his Stalingrad experiences: You know, KV armors great! Once the Germans shot us with a blank, I see it red crawling in through the armor. I got a sledge-hammer and hit it big time, it went off! Young blokes listened carefully, did not know much about front. I went aside, laughed. Then I said: Kostin, knock it off, fuel me. Lets do it then, no difference to me who to prime. Started pumping with a hand driven pump. When finished I asked him to advise battalion what circumstances I found myself in. Kostin went away, I was on my own. Night fell. The tank was open, no hatch on the tower. What do I do? Anybody can come over and choke me asleep. However spent the night, got up in the morning and saw an old woman come by. However, in all honesty she might not be old at all: could be about 40, however, for a youngster like me she seemed old. She stopped by my tank, started talking: Where are you going? My son got killed being with Partisans. Looking for his grave. Household got ransacked, not even horse there to work the land. You know mother, come back tomorrow, I will find you a horse. The thing was, that during our offensive, not only Germans fell back, but Russians as well. The offensive was very fast and they could not flee far away and come back. Soon I saw a carriage with one horse yoked in, the other was on a leash behind. I stopped them: Give me one horse. They obeyed unquestioningly, and I let the horse to graze around. The other woman comes back next day: Here is a horse, you can have it and use. She brought me some food out of gratitude, a tin full of scrambled eggs, two bottles of distillate and some bread. I said to her: Whats that for? You are in trouble yourself. It is not for food I got you that horse.

Dont mention it. Take the food and eat. There is a small river ahead, a tank had blown the bridge across it. There are you tank troops, busy doing something. She left. I got on my bike and headed there. It was true that Ivan Bedayev sank his tank attempting to cross the river over that bridge. They had been pulled out already and were putting themselves together on the ground. I made a deal with them to tow my tank over to the riverbank, it was very awkward to pull the track over the wheels in the swamp. We hooked tank up with some steel ropes, attached the track. Pulled it up there, fixed the track. I said: For what youve done for us, Ill treat you right. What youve got though, looks like youre hungry yourself. I am not hungry. Treat you with some homebrew. How come youve got any? There are good people around still. We sat down, had a few drinks and went off. We had caught up with our brigade, I handed the tank over to repair shop and got another one. I had my old mechanic Ivatulin back with me, the rest of the crew all newcomers. The offensive went on. July happened to be very hot, the roads dried out. Need to say, T-34 would generate an awful lot of dust clouds over these country roads, having its exhaust pipes look downwards. We suffered from the impassable mud before, now we could not see a thing through the dust clouds. Sometime around 12th or 15th of July 1944 we were moving along the road, expecting an encounter with Tigers as we have been told. I was following my commander Chugunov tank, however very soon I said to my driver: Cant see Jack shit through that dust. Turn over down to that depression. We went down into that hollow and followed our battalion moving along. We got under the fire, however shells were flying over us. No worries! The hollow opened up into a wide gully, on the opposite side of which one could see a little farmstead. In front of the house, there was a huge pile of rocks collected from the fields, and there was a knoll right behind it. Our tanks went leftward up there following the road, I went straight ahead to the farm. All of a sudden, a machine-gun opened fire from that pile of rocks. We had chucked a few splinter shells in there and shut it down. We went up the gully slope, which was covered with rye, and approached the rocks. About 15 Germans scattered around in all directions from these rocks. Slightly to the left there was a wooden farmhouse with a plinth made of a wild stone. God knows where these Germans disappeared! German tanks and artillery were most important things for us, where as infantry seemed immaterial. Nothing of that kind here at the farmstead.

As I said before there was a knoll about 50 meters ahead. Two helmets were hanging out from there. We fired a couple of bursts and shells over there. Everythings quiet, nobodys leaning out. However, something is burning on the road. I thought: Bloody hell, it might have been our tanks. Then, it looks like Tigers are hitting them. Page 5 of 9 I said to Ivatulin: Up that hill quick. Need to give our boys a hand. Junior (he used to call me junior), if we show ourselves, they will plaster us around. He was right, however something needed to be done! I knew we were alone here. All right, stay put. I grabbed a couple of grenades and sprang out of the tank. I jumped down in the rye and laid there. God knows why I did that! Ivatulin goes: Junior, where are you going? I thought I would crawl up the hill and work it all out there. Pulled my handgun out and crept up. All of a sudden, there was a German in front of me! He laid there cuddled down to the ground and had a machine-gun in his hand.

Battle near the farm Probably did not hear me coming, or was deafened or was scared shitless so that could not think straight. I killed him on the spot, got his gun and crept ahead. Reached the corner of the house, looked out and saw some Germans in a shallow trench! I slashed few rounds over them and hid back behind house corner. They shouted. I looked out again and knew they were dispirited. There was not much time left for me to do something, or else be killed. Threw a couple of grenades there, killed a few and

wounded a couple. One of the Germans rushed out of the rocks and ran towards the woods about 200 meters behind the farmhouse. I wanted to chop him down with my gun, however ran out of bullets by then. Dropped machine-gun, got my handgun out, shot twice at him and missed. Hell with you, keep running. There was a pit on this knoll, probably used as a clay-pit before, had a couple of Germans captivated there. What happened to them? God knows. They were all a bit dosed. They could have easily had me killed with no effort then. By that time my crew arrived, and two or three tanks as well. Began the search of this place. There was a door in a plinth, I was thinking about putting a couple of shells in there before, however forgot about it. The boys picked up some posts and pushed this door open from aside. Door opened, then closed slowly. They lit a bunch of straw, opened the door with a post and threw burning straw inside. The Germans, which were there, about 10 people, clamored and got out. As I knew later there was a powerful transmitter station at this farmhouse manned with personnel inexperienced in action, signalmen. I was lucky then, if they happened to be seasoned action personnel, it would have turned out badly for me. Our Commissar Ganapolskii, farther of Matvei Ganapolskii by the way, used to make a joke out of it later, that one could let Rodkin fight a German company by himself armed with a hand-gun only. We changed direction there and headed towards Dvinsk. We did not attack. It was very rare that we had to advance in a classical manner against organized defense lines. The Germans usually arranged some ambush, where they used ArtStorms, sort of self-propelled artillery equipped with 75 mm guns. They moved quietly, had lowprofile construction and easily disguised, were extremely hard to detect. We advanced in a march column order, as an advance point, a few tanks in front, the others at some distance. If the Germans arranged an ambush that meant that advance point would be knocked out surely. Those alive would get out, remaining tanks would open fire. However where to shoot? God knows! Germans already disappeared. After some shooting, we would fold up into a march column again and be after them. Once caught up with the enemy we would annihilate them. Once we came across such an ambush. Two tanks, which were ahead of us, were burnt, the third one was retreating firing back. They stuck a billet right under the turret bed and it caught fire. Meantime we turned away from the road, the engines died, ran out of fuel. That is why we heard people scream inside the burning machine. I got down to the tank gun and kept firing towards the enemy, I could not see them, however tried to scare them a bit, my crew ran up to the burning tank equipped with fire extinguishers to help. We opened the hatch. Tank commander jumped out wounded, it appeared that in that feverish haste he did not realize he was wounded, and fell down next to the tank. We pulled the tank-driver and the gunman with a broken leg out, signalman and gun-loader died. The tank-driver remained unconscious and did not make it to the hospital, died on the road.

After that ambush we stopped to have some sleep. We locked ourselves up inside at night and went to sleep. The infantry would usually guard us from the Germans. Woke up in the morning, sat down to breakfast. Ivatulin, though Russified, was a Tatar by origin. He was extremely foolhardy, nothing could ever scare him. He was considered a trophy man, he would always bring either a captured truck or a tank. He always had a German rifle on him, used to shoot German planes. This time around he bagged a piglet somewhere. The boys cooked it up in a laundry bucket, sat down and started eating. At about 100 meters away from us there was a dead horse on the ground, its carcass all inflated and all legs spread wide open. The gun layer, Zhdanov, deceased now, said to him: Listen, Sasha, you can not eat this pork. Why is that? You are a sort of a Muslim, you Allah had some horse-flesh cooked up for you. Over there, see that fatty horse sent by Allah? Leave the pork alone, have some fatty horseflesh instead. Sasha pulled his Parabellum and shot. The gas relieved and carcass blew off. No thanks, too skinny of a horseWhat are you offering then? Page 6 of 9

After breakfast we went further ahead, though changed direction. Stretched into a column, all of a sudden our advance point disappeared. We did not know what happened to either people or machines. Battalion Commander stayed in between those little trees, while our company advanced up about one kilometer and a half ahead. Position that we held was not good, in a centre of a swampy depression covered with short shrubs and trees. There was a settlement about one kilometer ahead, and to the right there was a road leading to it. When I was watching the settlement I noticed a Tiger in between the dwellings and the plantings, however could not aim at it properly, the line of fire was obstructed by tree branches. I then approached my Platoon Leader Lieutenant Velikov, to try to swap the German of his tank. His tank stood somewhat at an angle to that village in an open spot. Velikov slept in a tank. I climbed up his turret, there was his tank-driver Sergeant Moiseenko there. We woke Velikov up. I said: Have a look over these houses, there is a Tiger there. No, that can not be. It looks like a barn. No, there is a square there, and something black in the middle. We looked up once again through binoculars, seemed like a tank. Decided to smack it with a shell.

As soon as Velikov started to turn the turret around I saw a flash and shouted to Sergeant: Jump off! I myself jumped off behind the tank, and Moiseenko fell off the other side facing the enemy. The billet hit the side of the tank, rebounded and took his scull off. The German second shot hit the ball machine-gun turret, and the third shell struck the turret itself, however did not breach the amour. Velikov jumped out of the tank: Need to withdraw, where is the driver? Lies over there. More to our troubles German planes turned up. They did not have any bombs, however they circled above, firing their machine-guns at us. I got back to my tank. Ivatulin got a place next to it, holding his rifle and was scorching the planes. One could hear machine-gun fire around us and bullets whistling. It was time to knick off. I said to the gun-layer: Go see whats happening over there behind those bushes. He was just a youngster: Lieutenant, how could sent me there, Id get shot. All right. Ivatulin, enough fun, get down to the levers, need to go now. He tried turning the tank around and got a bit bogged down in the swamp. Here and there, we found that we were alone, all other tanks slipped away.

Battle near the swamp One of them decided to go off across the road and retreat behind the road embankment. That was a good decision in principle, since there was an empty space before the woods we were heading towards. However it did not have time to make this plan and was hit by a Tiger. I could only see a few puffs of black smoke, the boys got knocked out. It turned out later that the billet hit the second fuel tank. The

spilled over fuel burst into flames, but then it went out burning itself off and the boys did not get hurt. They did however race through over the road at a high speed and buried themselves just about up the turret in a thick turf swamp. They sat there as they were until pulled out. Meantime we somehow managed to get to the sealed ground. Ivatulin revved up, apparently thought that I would manage to jump on the transmission, however it was a dangerous thing to do at this time, machine-gunners could take me down. I should have gone inside through the tank drivers hatch, but tank accelerated sharply when it turned out of the swamp. I happened to be at its side and ran under its cover. I ran and ran, however tank was faster and when it reached the road it got into the 3rd gear and reved-up even more and rushed along, I fell down in the ditch. When I caught my breath back I jumped over to other side of the road. There was another tank whose commander was totally confused. I said to him: We are retreating, keep moving to the woods. Shortly after our HQ Commander, Gladkov met me: Why did you make such a panic and mess ? What panic? It turned out that Ivatulin slipped through Battalion orders and rushed back in the rear. My tank was the last one retreating, I did not make it with it myself, did not have time. All right. I got to my tank, gave Ivatulin good scolding for leaving his Commander behind and rushing God knows where. Page 7 of 9

Some time later Platoon Leader Velikov arrived. Received a radiogram from the Brigade Commander, he needs some tanks. Take Liubertsev with you and go back to the rears. All right. We took off and as everybody does I sat down on the tank wing next to tank drivers hatch. Velikov says: Youd better sit inside the turret, just in case. He might have known the circumstances there however did not tell me anything. We went by a few kilometers, got up the next hillock, and suddenly I saw a tank across

the road about 500 meters ahead, firing towards the woods, to our left. What the hell was that? I stopped. There was some dwelling on the right side of the road, behind which hid two or three other tanks. The one on the road, which was firing, caught fire as I was looking at it. I approached tanks behind the dwelling.../p>

Battle with SPGs Whats happening boys? They already had some men wounded, bandaged each other. There are some Tigers or self-propelled guns it appears. And what is the tank burnt on the road? Hell knows. I got back, climbed up the amour and looked around through the binos, saw these ArtStorms in the woods about 800 meters ahead. Ivatulin described later: They kept firing at our tank, and my Commander got up the turret and watched them through his binos! I needed to know the disposition though. They ceased fire. I felt that I had been taken to aim, but they hesitated to fire. What should I do? Zhdanov, as soon as Ivatulin takes off, you turn the gun around and fire. Ivatulin, you go around and hide behind this dwelling. We had hardly managed to turn around when they hit us in the side. Tank caught fire and we all jumped off into the right, farthest from the enemy ditch. Lost view of Zhdanov at this moment. Started looking for him, could not find in our ditch. Crawled over on the other side. Our tank in flames, shells are firing, however no detonation. Started searching the ditch and found Zhdanov dead, his clothes all burnt. We

retreated and I reported to Battalion Commander that I lost the machine burnt and Zhdanov dead. We had stayed for a couple of days next to that spot where our tank got burnt. We did not have our tank anymore and saved ourselves from bombing and shellfire, which happened to be quite often, under our Company Leader Chugunov. All of a sudden three ArtStorms appeared at a distance, apparently those that smashed us before and started moving up the roads towards us. By that time we already had three or four tanks of our own. Two of the three self-propelled machines stopped behind the knoll, the third one moved forward. There were about 15 of the German marines on it. We gave it a sharp blow and it stopped. It was understood later that the billet blew off the top of the turret, and its debris hacked the crew and marines into pieces. Ivatulin and I went to see what happened to the Art Storm. There were dead bodies lying on the amour, and some chopped off around the machine. We could see half of the corps, or other part, it was terrible, and we threw all of the dead from above to the ground. I looked inside, dead Germans were sitting there. Radio station was on. I said: Ivatulin, get in. He got in, pushed away dead Germans (there was no desire to pull them out exactly), cranked it up and we went off to our locations. That is how we got ourselves a tank. A bit earlier Chugunov crew captured a German amphibian truck. There was no place to swim, so we would turn on the impeller and get on at a full speed towards nearest woods. Puffs of dust behind us, creates an illusion that march column advances and Germans would open gunfire. We had a warning from Battalion Commander that it might not end any good for us playing with fire like that, however we kept entertaining ourselves. That is how we have come into possession of that amphibian and an ArtStorm. In the evening the shower developed. Battalion Commander arrived, apparently under orders to break the encirclement in which we found ourselves. I asked him what I should do, since I had this amphibian and ArtStorm. Stop dreaming, drop everything and get on with it. Surely, we could not just leave the amphibian there. We did hit the road, however did not have a chance to swim, died to swim in it, we were only kids then. We abandoned the ArtStorm, should have better burnt it off, however forgot all about it in that hurry. All the tanks stretched in a long column, we squeezed ourselves in a middle there on a truck. They would position their guns in a herringbone pattern and thrashed shells in all directions. We would get blind at every shooting, could not see a thing. We thought we would get stuck in there, however did not. The boat had a 4-wheel drive arrangement, she would press a tree down and would get over it. Somewhere at the turn tanks waded some mud, and we managed to get bogged down there, being blinded by the shootings. We happened to have a steel rope, asked: Boys, hook us up please.

Come on, no time, need to get out of encirclement quick. And you are here with your. Pity to leave it here. Pull us out. Page 8 of 9

While we were making a deal, the column took off. Those tanks, which were behind rolled over our boat and crushed it. We had to go up one of the tanks. That is how we failed to swim the boat. Right for that reason, breaking the encirclement, Battalion Commander and Chugunov were awarded the Hero of Soviet Union star. An order arrived to reward the three. Two people they found, however third one got missed. I received my new tank with the new crew. Ivatulin asked me if he could be with us, but there was a driver already there, and I thought it to be unethical to bring a friend in. By that time we become friends, swapped two tanks over together. I said: As soon as I can Ill get you in. On the 10th October we crossed German border. Captured Shipen, crossed a railway Memel-Tilsit and advanced towards Tilsit. On the 11th October I was wounded. On that day I was moving fourth as part of an advance unit. The Germans had a gun and something else in the ambush there. I saw the gun when I got out of the tank after it was hit in the right-hand side by a billet. At first I felt that something hit me in my hip and saw flames underneath. I got out and then knew I was wounded, some debris shot me in the hip and the anklebone. I ran off into the ditch on my right hand side. Together with me a gunner jumped out which I had in my crew in the place of a signalman-gunner, whom I did not have. The rest of the crew hid in a left-hand side ditch. I noticed the German trenches about 30 meters ahead of us. Suddenly there was a German, apparently an officer who was popping out of the trench and shooting me with his handgun. I shot back. I called my driver Dima Spiridonov and asked him to throw me a grenade over. He did. I threw it towards the German, however missed, grenade detonated a few meters before the trench. The German popped up from the trench and threw a pineapple at me, missed too. I though: Hell with you. Sit there and shoot. My gunner pulled the boot off me, bandaged my wound. We started crawling towards our positions. There was a gunfire from both sides, Germans and Russians. There were mortars, German and our own Katiushas, roaring hard. We crawled about 200 meters, come across a sewerage pipe and got inside it, and sit there waiting for all this mess to stop. When it all calmed down, kept crawling further. I was getting tired, and it was very hard to move, I said to Dima: Keep going, Ill manage on my own. He yelled at me:

How good an officer you are then! All right, all right, be quiet, I shall crawl then. We reached the intersection, needed to cross the road. He says to me: You go first, boss. I got over the road, he started crawling, Germans gave him a few bursts, however missed. The gunner followed, and got wounded. He came back to where he was and cried: Tankers, do not leave me alone here, I am wounded. I said: Dima, need to save the bloke. How do we do that? We said to him: Drivers Alexander Ivatulin and Dmitry Spiridonov 1945 . You take care of yourself, well send your own gunmen later to rescue as it gets darker. We ca not help you now.

We reached where our tanks were resting, organized the gunmen to rescue their wounded friend. Then they got me in the truck and rushed to hospital. I spent about two months in a hospital. I was still limping a bit, but because the hospital was relocating I was very scared to lose the trace of my unit. I approached the Chief Doctor and asked to be dismissed from the hospital. There was a few of us walking-wounded people, which were released before our time, and went to look for our units on our own. I returned to my battalion by mid December. Moreover, on the 13th January new offensive commenced. I happened indeed to be in reserve at his time and did not have a tank. Sometime around 18th January I took command of a platoon within the third battalion, and by midday we assumed our initial position. I managed to get in touch with a couple of officers there, junior Lieutenant Lyashenko and Lieutenant Levin. They asked me: What is best for us to do? Hell knows. Do as I do. Our Battalion deployed and attacked the enemy. Shortly after Levin got hit from the left somewhere. All in all there was not much of a gunfire, we kept moving and moving

Once got into a ditch and caught a bit of a dirt into a barrel, luckily I picked it up. Drove around behind a dwelling and cleaned the gun up. Then we kept moving and reached the main military disposition. By that time everything seemed like a big mess. Our Battalion Commander rushed somewhere forward and disappeared. We were under command of a neighboring Battalions Commander whose name was Udovichenko. He said to me: Do you see that knoll and the little house there to the left? Get over there, have a look around and make sure they can not hit us from there. We took off. It turned out that there was an anti-tank ditch right in front of that knoll. I noticed it 5 or 7 meters before, however had my internal radio turned off, and I did not have enough time to warn the driver, and he noticed it only when our tank reached the edge of the ditch. Page 9 of 9

He pulled up sharp, the tank froze up, however front of the machine outbalanced the rear and it pecked down, drove into the dirt with its barrel. And we got stuck arse up just about vertically there. I leaned out of the hatch. I noticed a German (Gerry) about 30 meters away from us holding a grenade launcher, popping out from behind a dwelling. I fired at him from my handgun, making sure he could not aim properly. He managed to make a shot, however the grenade blew off hitting the ditch parapet in front of the tank. I said to my crew: Get out, or else well get burnt in here. All of us got out and scattered around quick. I had a warm German pants on me equipped with straps, which I wrapped around my waist. When I was getting out, I caught something on there and hung up on these straps, as a sausage. Well, I thought, Im finished. Meantime the German jumped out from behind the house and ran towards our tank holding his grenade launcher, apparently thinking everybody scarpered. I got my handgun out and shot him. He fell and I shot him one more time to be sure. I twitched and twitched hanging on this straps, at last fell down in the snow. My boys disappeared, leaving me alone in actual fact. I could not however leave my tank by itself, it was still in good order. Sometime later I heard the tracks clacking. My crew brought two tanks with them, my former driver Dima Spiridonov was in one of them. We hooked up our tank by steel ropes and pulled it out. The gun barrel was clogged with the clay, all the teeth of the lifting gear got cut off clean. We caught up with our Battalion and got in line. The night was approaching fast. We folded up in a marching column and went on the road, where The Germans were retreating. We ran over wagon trains, people, horses and the trucks. I have not seen anything like this mess ever in my life. In the morning we saw that all the sides and

the wings were torn off. In the morning we drove our tank away to the maintenance and repair unit. The repair crew heated gun barrel up, cleaned up all the dirt and replaced the lifting gear unit. By midday I had been back to my unit already. One evening I got into someones house. We walked in, and then we saw entire floor in a big room covered with German banknotes. We looked around, did not take anything and went off. Later when we stayed at Kenigsberg I went through hard times seeing these banknotes in circulation as well as Soviet notes! We would be issued Soviet banknotes and twice the amount with German notes! Bloody Hell, one could have become a moneybag there and then. One night, a German came over. He was mumbling something, we could only understand that he was a Czech, not a thing more. Come on , speak Russian No russki. Then go away. He went away and came back a little later with a carton box. He happened to be a truck driver and had the whole truck full of boxes, unused Christmas presents. The lads got a drift of it quick. They brought a few of these boxes in their tanks in portions. There was about twenty plastic bags in each box, with biscuits, chocolate, mint chocolates, overall about a kilo a bag. We even stopped having our lunches, we would be full up with chocolate and bisques, just waiting for a cup of tea. Next to Topiau my tank got burnt off again. We needed to cross over a high embankment, which was in a line of fire. The Company Leader ahead, I was behind him. Behind me was Levin, Lyashenko followed him. Kept moving. I noticed that the canvass covering transmission on the first tank went off. At that time I had some water frozen into ice inside my periscope and could not use it. I did not have time to look after it then. We did not even have time to eat, just had some chocolate. I kneeled on my seat and stuck my head up trying to recognize where they shooting from. There was a usual winter weather: cloudy and still air looked hazy with some hoarfrost. The Germans camouflaged in the woods and clearly saw us moving on the road against the sky background, they had all the options to pick and choose a target. I saw a black billet flashing by against white snow. I yelled to my driver: Get in the gear quick, we under fire. I looked back to see if Levin was hit by a billet and saw my own transmission in flames. I ordered my crew to jump out of the tank one by one. I knew that if we stop the road would be blocked. That is why I wanted to pull the tank down by the side of the embankment. I went on the side of the tank to show my driver what to do, but he could not understand me. We went up a little bit and he stopped the machine behind another smashed tank.

It looked like someone tried to slip through here and got burnt. The driver cried: Our batteries are burning! The whole tank is burning. Get on with it, crank it now, weve already blocked the road. Cant do. All right, get out. We went down the embankment. We were already coming back when I saw Levin rushing ahead on the road not knowing it was blocked. I wanted to warn him and yelled and waved my hands to him, however he did not see me kept looking forward. He collided with two tanks and when he attempted to turn around, he got burnt. He died and his gun commander with him. Lyashenko did not go then. And our Brigade went off in a different direction. Later on I received another tank platoon, and shortly after I took over Battalion Commanders tank. Somewhere in February 1945 all our tanks were destroyed and our Brigade and whole corps were withdrawn from action, there were no tanks. Later on these tanks, which were repaired, were formed into Battalion and sent into action to Zemlanski peninsula. I did not however take part in this action anymore. Interview: Artem Drabkin

Dmitriy Loza Page 1 of 7 - Dmitriy Fedorovich, on which American tanks did you fight? - On Shermans. We called them "Emchas", from M4 [in Russian, em chetyrye]. Initially they had the short main gun, and later they began to arrive with the long gun and muzzle brake. On the front slope armor there was a travel lock for securing the barrel during road marches. The main gun was quite long. Overall, this was a good vehicle but, as with any tank, it had its pluses and minuses. When someone says to me that this was a bad tank, I respond, "Excuse me!" One cannot say that this was a bad tank. Bad as compared to what? - Dmitriy Fedorovich, did you have just American tanks in your unit? - Our 6th Guards Tank Army (yes, we had six of them) fought in Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Austria. We ended the war for us in Czechoslovakia. Then they rushed us to the Far East and we fought against Japan. I briefly remind you that the army consisted of two corps: 5th Guards Tank Stalingrad Corps on our own T-34s and 5th Mechanized Corps, in which I fought. For the first time this corps had British Matildas, Valentines, and Churchills. - They delivered the Churchill later. - Yes, a bit later. After 1943 we largely declined British tanks because they had significant deficiencies. In particular, they had 12-14 h.p. per ton of weight at a time when good tanks had 18-20 h.p. per ton. Of these three British tanks, the best was the Valentine produced in Canada. Its armor was streamlined but more importantly, it featured a long-barreled 57mm main gun. My unit switched over to American Shermans at the end of 1943. After the Kishinev Operation our corps became the 9th Guards Mechanized Corps. I missed to tell you that every corps consisted of four brigades. Our mechanized corps had three mechanized brigades and one tank brigade, in which I fought. A tank corps had three tank brigades and one mechanized brigade. Yes, we had Shermans in our brigade at the end of 1943. - But the British tanks were not withdrawn from service, so they fought until they were gone. Wasn't there a period when your corps had a mixture of tanks, both American and British? Were there any problems associated with the presence of such a broad variety of vehicles from different countries? For example, with supply and maintenance? - Well, there were always problems. In general, the Matilda was an unbelievably worthless tank! I will tell you about one of the Matilda's deficiencies that caused us a great deal of trouble. Some fool in the General Staff planned an operation and sent our corps to the area of Yelnya, Smolensk, and Roslavl. The terrain there was forested swamp. The Matilda had skirts along the sides. The tank was developed primarily for operations in the desert. These skirts worked well in the desert-the sand passed through the rectangular slots in them. But in the forested swamps of Russia the mud

packed into the space between the tracks and these side skirts. The Matilda transmission had a servomechanism for ease of shifting. In our conditions this component was weak, constantly overheated, and then failed. This was fine for the British. By 1943 they had developed a replacement unit that could be installed simply by unscrewing four mounting bolts, pulling out the old unit, and installing the new unit. It did not always work this way for us. In my battalion we had Senior Sergeant (Starshina) Nesterov, a former kolkhoz tractor driver (Kolkhoz is sort of farm Valeri), in the position of battalion mechanic. In general each of our tank companies had a mechanic and Nesterov was it for the battalion. At our corps level we had a representative (whose name I have forgotten) of the British firm that produced these tanks. At one time I had it written down, but when my tank was hit everything I had in it burned up -photographs, documents, and notebook. We were forbidden to keep notes at the front, but I did it on the sly. Anyway, this British representative constantly interfered with our efforts to repair separate components of the tank. He said, "This has a factory seal. You should not tinker with it!" We were supposed to take out a component and install a new one. Nesterov made a simple repair to all these transmissions. One time the British representative came up to Nesterov and asked him, "At which university did you study?" And Nesterov replied, "At the kolkhoz!" The Sherman was light years better in this regard. Did you know that one of the designers of the Sherman was a Russian engineer named Timoshenko? He was some shirt tail relative of Marshal S. K. Timoshenko. The Sherman had its weaknesses, the greatest of which was its high center of gravity. The tank frequently tipped over on its side, like a Matryoshka doll (a wooden stacking doll). But I am alive today thanks to this deficiency. We were fighting in Hungary in December 1944. I was leading the battalion and on a turn my driver-mechanic clipped a curb. My tank went over on its side. We were thrown around, of course, but we survived the experience. Meanwhile the other four of my tanks went ahead and drove into an ambush. They were all destroyed. - Dmitriy Fedorovich, the Sherman had a rubber-coated metal track. Some contemporary authors point to this as a deficiency, since in combat the rubber might be set on fire. With the track thus stripped bare, the tank is disabled. What can you say in this regard? - On the one hand this rubber-coated track was a big plus. In the first place, this track had a service life approximately twice that of steel track. I might be mistaken, but I believe that the service life of the T-34 track was 2500 kilometers. The service life of the Sherman track was in excess of 5000 kilometers. Secondly, The Sherman drove like a car on hard surfaces, and our T-34 made so much noise that only the devil knows how many kilometers away it could be heard. What was the bad side of the Sherman track? In my book, Commanding the Red Army's Sherman Tanks, there is a chapter entitled "Barefooted". There I wrote about an incident that occurred in August 1944 in Romania, during the Jassy-Kishinev Operation. The heat was fearsome, somewhere around 30 C. We had driven approximately 100 km along a highway in a single day. The rubber linings on our support rollers got so hot that the rubber separated and peeled off in long pieces. Our corps paused not far from Bucharest. The rubber was flying around, the rollers had begun to jam up, the noise was terrible, and in the end we had been stopped. This was immediately reported to Moscow. Was this

some kind of joke, an entire corps had halted? To our surprise, they brought new support rollers to us quickly and we spent three days installing them. I still don't know where they found so many support rollers in such a short time. There was yet another minus of rubber track. Even on a slightly icy surface the tank slid around like a fat cow. When this happened we had to tie barbed wire around the track or make grousers out of chains or bolts, anything to give us traction. But this was with the first shipment of tanks. Having seen this, the American representative reported to his company and the next shipment of tanks was accompanied by additional track blocks with grousers and spikes. If I recall, there were up to seven blocks for each track, for a total of fourteen per tank. We carried them in our parts bin. In general the American representative worked efficiently. Any deficiency that he observed and reported was quickly and effectively corrected. One more shortcoming of the Sherman was the construction of the driver's hatch. The hatch on the first shipment of Shermans was located in the roof of the hull and simply opened upward. Frequently the driver-mechanic opened it and raised his head in order to see better. There were several occasions when during the rotation of the turret the main gun struck this hatch and knocked it into the driver's head. We had this happen once or twice in my own unit. Later the Americans corrected this deficiency. Now the hatch rose up and simply moved to the side, like on modern tanks. Page 2 of 7 Still one great plus of the Sherman was in the charging of its batteries. On our T-34 it was necessary to run the engine, all 500 horsepower of it, in order to charge batteries. In the crew compartment of the Sherman was an auxiliary gasoline engine, small like a motorcycle's one. Start it up and it charged the batteries. This was a big deal to us! For a long time after the war I sought an answer to one question. If a T-34 started burning, we tried to get as far away from it as possible, even though this was forbidden. The on-board ammunition exploded. For a brief period of time, perhaps six weeks, I fought on a T-34 around Smolensk. The commander of one of our companies was hit in his tank. The crew jumped out of the tank but were unable to run away from it because the Germans were pinning them down with machine gun fire. They lay there in the wheat field as the tank burned and blew up. By evening, when the battle had waned, we went to them. I found the company commander lying on the ground with a large piece of armor sticking out of his head. When a Sherman burned, the main gun ammunition did not explode. Why was this? Such a case occurred once in Ukraine. Our tank was hit. We jumped out of it but the Germans were dropping mortar rounds around us. We lay under the tank as it burned. We laid there a long time with nowhere to go. The Germans were covering the empty field around the tank with machine gun and mortar fires. We lay there. The uniform on my back was beginning heating up from the burning tank. We thought we were finished! We would hear a big bang and it would all be over! A brother's grave! We heard many loud thumps coming from the turret. This was the armor-piercing rounds being blown out of their cases. Next the fire would reach the high explosive rounds and all hell would break loose! But nothing happened. Why not? Because our high explosive rounds detonated and the American rounds did not? In the end it was because the American ammunition had more refined explosives. Ours was some kind

of component that increased the force of the explosion one and one-half times, at the same time increasing the risk of detonation of the ammunition. - It is considered noteworthy that the Sherman was very well appointed on the inside. Was this true? - It was true. These are not just words! They were beautiful! For us then this was something. As they say now, "Eurorepair"! This was some kind of European picture! In the first place, it was painted beautifully. Secondly, the seats were comfortable, covered with Dmitriy Loza with his father Fedor Loza some kind of remarkable special artificial leather. If a (from D.F.Loza archive) tank was knocked out or damaged, then if it was left unguarded literally for just several minutes the infantry would strip out all this upholstery. It made excellent boots! Simply beautiful! - Dmitriy Fedorovich, how did you regard the Germans? As fascists and occupiers or not? - When one is standing in front of you with a weapon in his hands, and it is a question of who will kill whom, there was only one response. He was the enemy. As soon as the German threw down his weapon or we captured him, then it was quite another matter. I was not in Germany. I have already told you where I fought. Here is an incident from Hungary. We had a trophy German "letuchka" (light maintenance truck). We had penetrated into the German rear in column. We were going along a road and our light truck had fallen back. Then another light German truck, just like our own, attached itself to the back of our column. A while later our column halted. I was walking down the column, checking vehicles. "Is everything in order?" Everything was fine. I approached the last vehicle in the column and asked, "Sasha, is everything OK?" In response I heard "Vas?" What was this? Germans! I immediately jumped to the side and cried out "Germans!" We surrounded them, a driver and two others. We disarmed them and only then did our own light truck come up the road. I said, "Sasha, where were you?" He responded, "We got lost." "Well, look," I said to him, "Here is another light truck for you!" - So, you didn't have hatred for these enemy soldiers, did you? - No, of course not. We understood that they were also human beings. - What about your relationships with the civilian population?

- When the 2nd Ukrainian Front reached the Romanian border in March 1944 we stopped, and remained in place until August. In accordance with wartime laws, the entire civilian population had to be removed from the front-line zone to a depth of 100 kilometers. These people had already planted their field gardens. The authorities announced the evacuation to the population over the radio and sent out transportation to pick them up the next morning. With tears in their eyes these Moldavians shook their heads. How could this be? They had to abandon their fields! What would be left upon their return? So the evacuation went ahead as required, and we had practically no contact with the civilian population. At the time I was chief of staff for ammunition supply for the battalion. The brigade commander summoned me and said, "Loza, are you from peasant stock?" I replied in the affirmative. "Well, I thought so. I'm appointing you as team chief! You will be responsible for weeding these gardens and ensuring that everything grows and so on. And God forbid that even one cucumber is spoiled! Don't touch anything! If necessary, plant your own crops." Teams were organized; in my brigade we had 25 men. All spring and summer long we fussed over these field gardens. In the fall, when the troops departed, we were told to invite a kolkhoz chairman as a representative, and we formally signed over to him all these field and kitchen gardens. When the housewife returned to the home where I myself was living, she immediately ran out to her garden and was dumbfounded. There she saw enormous pumpkins, tomatoes, and melons. She returned to the house on the run, fell at my feet, and began to kiss my boots. "Dear son! We thought that everything would be dried up and beat down. But it turns out that we have everything, and all we have to do is gather it in!" This is an example of how we related to our populace. In the war medicine worked well, but there were cases for which the medics could do nothing except hang their head! Fellows, Romania at that time was simply the venereal cesspool of all of Europe! We had a saying: "If you have 100 Lei (Romanian currency) you may sleep with a queen!" When some German POWs fell into our hands, their pockets were full of prophylactics, as many as 5-10. Our political officers made a big deal out of this "Look at this! They have these so they can rape our women!" But the Germans were smarter than we were and understood what venereal disease could do to an army. If only our own medics had warned us about these diseases! Even though we passed through Romania quickly, we had a terrible outbreak of venereal disease in our units. Our army had two hospitals: one for surgical cases and the other for light wounds. They were forced to open a venereal section, even though it was not provided for in the table of organization and equipment. Page 3 of 7 Here is how we interacted with the Hungarian population. When we entered Hungary in October 1944, we saw practically deserted villages. When we entered homes we found warm stoves, with food warming on them, but not a person in the house. I recall that in one town a gigantic banner hung on the wall of a house. It depicted a Russian soldier eating a baby. These people were so terrified that when they were able to flee, they fled! They abandoned all their possessions. Later, with the passage of time, as they began to understand that all this was nonsense and propaganda, they began to return to their homes.

I recall when we halted in northern Hungary, on the border with Czechoslovakia. At that time I was already chief of staff of the battalion. One morning they reported to me that an old Hungarian woman had entered a barn the previous night. We had counterintelligence personnel in our army who worked for SMERSH (Russian for "Smert Shpionam" or "death to spies", the NKVD structure within the Red Army). There was a SMERSH officer in each tank battalion, and in infantry units only beginning at regiment and above. I told my SMERSH officer to go check it out. They poked around in the shed and found a young girl, 18 or 19 years old. When they dragged her out she was all covered with scabs and coughing. This old woman was in tears, thinking that now we would rape her daughter. Nonsense! No one laid a finger on her! On the contrary, we gave her medical treatment. Later she came to us often, spending more time with us than at home. When I visited Hungary twenty years after the war, I met her. What a beautiful woman! She was married and had children. - Therefore, you didn't observe any excesses with the civilian population, did you? - No we didn't. One time I had to go somewhere in Hungary. We took one Hungarian as a guide so that we would not get lost -after all this was a foreign country. He did his work and we gave him money and canned meat and let him go. - In your book "Commanding the Red Army's Sherman Tanks" you wrote that the 233rd Tank Brigade's M4A2 Shermans were armed not with the short-barreled 75mm but the long-barreled 76mm main gun in January 1944. Wasn't this a bit early? Didn't these tanks appear later? Explain one more time which main guns were mounted on the Shermans of the 233rd Tank Brigade. - Hmm, I don't know. We had very few Shermans with the short-barreled main gun. On the whole, ours had long-barrels. Not just our brigade fought on Shermans. Perhaps these were in other brigades. Somewhere in the corps I saw such tanks, but we had the tanks with the long barrels. - Dmitriy Fedorovich, there were personal weapons in each Sherman that arrived in the USSR, Thompson submachine guns (also known as the Tommy gun). I read that rear area personnel stole these weapons and that few tanks arrived in units still equipped with them. What kind of weapons did you have, American or Soviet? - Each Sherman came with two Thompson submachine guns, in caliber 11.43mm (.45 cal), a healthy cartridge indeed! But the submachine gun was worthless. We had several bad experiences with it. A few of our men who got into an argument were wearing padded jackets. It turned out that they fired at each other and the bullet buried itself in the padded jacket. So much for the worthless submachine gun. Take a German submachine gun with folding stock (MP-40 SMG by Erma -Valeri). We loved it for its compactness. The Thompson was big. You couldn't turn around in the tank holding it. - The Sherman had an antiaircraft machine gun Browning M2 .50 caliber. Did you use it often? - I don't know why, but one shipment of tanks arrived with machine guns, and another without them. We used this machine gun against both aircraft and ground targets. We

used it less frequently against air targets because the Germans were not fools. They bombed either from altitude or from a steep dive. The machine gun was good to 400600 meters in the vertical. The Germans would drop their bombs from say, 800 meters or higher. He dropped his bomb and departed quickly. Try to shoot the bastard down! So yes, we used it, but it was not very effective. We even used our main gun against aircraft. We placed the tank on the upslope of a hill and fired. But our general impression of the machine gun was good. These machine guns were of great use to us in the war with Japan, against kamikazes. We fired them so much that they got red hot and began to cook off. To this day I have a piece of shrapnel in my head from an antiaircraft machine gun. - In your book you write about a battle for Tynovka by units of 5th Mechanized Corps. You write that the battle was on 26 January 1944. Someone has gone there and excavated some German maps, judging by which Tynovka was already in Soviet hands on 26 January 1944. In addition, the man also dug up a German intelligence report, based on the interrogation of a Soviet lieutenant from the anti-tank battalion of 359th Rifle Division. This report indicated that Soviet T-34s and American medium tanks, along with some KVs camouflaged with thatch straw, were positioned in Tynovka. This man is asking whether you could be mistaken regarding the date. He indicates that a week earlier Tynovka was in fact in German hands. - It was quite possible. Keep in mind how confusing the situation was there! Fellows, there was such a mess! The situation changed not by the day, but by the hour. We encircled the Germans' Korsun-Shevchenkovskiy grouping. They began to break out at the same time Germans outside the ring were attacking us to help their comrades inside. These battles were so heavy that Tynovka changed hands several times in one day. - You write that on 29 January 5th Mechanized Corps advanced to the west to support units of 1st Ukrainian Front, which were holding back the German counterattack. Several days later the mechanized corps was in the Vinograd area. Subsequently, on 1 February the corps was in the path of the main attack of the German 16th and 17th Panzer Divisions, 3d Tank Corps. This attack was launched from the area of Rusakovka and Novay Greblya to the north and northeast. After several days the Germans captured Vinograd and Tynovka, forced the Gniloy Tikich River, and reached Antonovka. Could you describe the role of your mechanized corps in the unfolding battle? - We encircled the Germans and closed the pocket. They immediately threw us to the outer ring. The weather was terrible; the mud thawed during the day. I jumped down from my tank into the mud. It was easier to pull my feet out of my boots than to pull my boots out of the mud. At night the temperature dropped below freezing and the mud froze. We struggled against this mud on the external ring. We had just a few tanks left. In order to create the appearance of strength, at night we turned on our tank and truck headlights and moved forward. Our entire corps went into the defense. The Germans decided that our defenses were strongly dug in. In fact, the corps was at about 30 percent in tank strength. Combat had been so heavy that our guns were red hot. At times the bullets even melted. You fired and they plopped into the dirt a hundred meters in front of the tank. The Germans were fighting for their very lives

and regardless of the situation, had nothing to lose. Some did manage to break out in small groups. Page 4 of 7 - Did German aircraft inflict significant losses on your equipment? In particular, what can you say about the Henschel Hs-129? - Not every time, but it did happen. I don't remember the Henschel; perhaps there was such an airplane. Sometimes we were able to avoid bombs. You could see them coming at you, you know. We opened our hatches, stuck out our heads, and instructed our drivers over the intercom: "The bomb will fall in front of us". But in general there were cases when tanks were hit and set on fire. Losses from these attacks did not exceed 3-5 tanks in the battalion. It was more common for a single tank to be damaged or destroyed. We faced much greater danger from panzerfaust gunners in built-up areas. In Hungary I recall that I was so tired that I told my deputy to lead the battalion while I slept. I went to sleep right there in the fighting compartment of my Sherman. Around Beltsy they had dropped ammunition to us by parachute. We took one parachute for ourselves. I used this parachute for my pillow. The parachute was made from silk and didn't let the lice in. And I was sound asleep! Suddenly I woke up. Why? I awoke from the silence. Why the silence? It turns out that attacking aircraft had set two tanks on fire. During the march many things were piled up on the tanks: crates, tarpaulin. The battalion had halted, shut off engines, and it had become silent. And I woke up. - Did you lock your hatches during combat in built-up areas? - We absolutely locked our hatches from the inside. In my own experience, when we burst into Vienna, they were throwing grenades at us from the upper floors of buildings. I ordered all the tanks to be parked under the archways of buildings and bridges. From time to time I had to pull my tank out into the open to extend a whip antenna and send and receive communications from my higher commander. On one occasion, a radio operator and driver-mechanic were doing something inside their tank and left the hatch open. Someone dropped a grenade through the hatch from above. It struck the back of the radio operator and detonated. Both were killed. Thus we most certainly locked our hatches when we were in built-up areas. - The primary defeating mechanism of HEAT (hollow-charge) ammunition, of which the panzerfaust was one type, is the high pressure in the tank, which disables the crew. If the hatches were kept slightly open, would this not provide some degree of protection? A special order was issued before our forces entered Germany. - This is true, but just the same we kept our hatches locked. It might have been different in other units. The panzerfaust gunners most often fired at the engine compartment. If they were able to set the tank on fire, like it or not the crew had to get out. And then the Germans shot at the crew with a machine gun. - What were the chances of survival if your tank was hit?

- My tank was hit on 19 April 1945 in Austria. A Tiger put a round straight through us. The projectile passed through the entire fighting compartment and then the engine compartment. There were three officers in the tank: I as the battalion commander, the company commander Sasha Ionov (whose own tank had already been hit), and the tank commander. Three officers, a driver-mechanic, and a radio operator. When the Tiger hit us, the driver-mechanic was killed outright. My entire left leg was wounded; to my right, Sasha Ionov suffered a traumatic amputation of his right leg. The tank commander was wounded, and below me sat the gunner, Lesha Romashkin. Both of his legs were blown off. A short time before this battle, we were sitting around at a meal and Lesha said to me, "If I lose my legs I will shoot myself. Who will need me?" He was an orphan and had no known relatives. In a strange twist of fate, this is what happened to him. We pulled Sasha out of the tank and then Lesha, and were beginning to assist in the evacuation of the others. At this moment Lesha shot himself. In general, one or two men were always wounded or killed. It depended where the shell struck. - Did soldiers or junior commanders receive any pocket money? Pay, monetary allowance? - In comparison with regular (not guards) units, privates and sergeants up to senior sergeant received double pay, and officers one and one-half times normal pay in guards units. For example, my company commander received 800 rubles. When I became a battalion commander, I received either 1200 or 1500 rubles. I don't remember the exact amount. In any case, we did not receive all of our pay. It was kept in a field savings bank against a personal account. We could store money or send them to our family. We did not carry money around in our pocket. The government was smart in this regard. For what did we need money in battle? - What could you purchase with the money you had? - Well, for example, when we were forming up in Gorkiy, I went down to the market with my friend Kolya Averkiev. He was a good fellow, but died literally in his first battles! We were down there walking around and came upon a speculator selling rye bread. He was holding one loaf in his hands and had another two loaves in his satchel. Kolya asked him, "How much for the loaf?" He replied, "Three kosykh" (Kosaya -is a Russian slang, it means 100 rubles; therefore the speculator asked for 300 rubles Valeri). Kolya not understanding what a "kosaya" was, pulled out three rubles and held it out. The man said, "What, are you crazy?" Kolya shot back, "What's the matter? You asked for three kosykh and I gave you three rubles!" The speculator said, "Three kosykh is three hundred rubles!" Kolya responded, "You are a pestilence! You are back here speculating and we are shedding blood for you at the front line!" As officers, we always had our personal weapons. Kolya pulled out his pistol. The man grabbed the three rubles and beat a hasty retreat. In addition to money, once a month officers were issued a supplementary packet. It contained 200 grams of butter, a carton of biscuits, a package of cookies, and, I believe, some cheese. It happened that a few days after this incident at the market, we received our parcels. We cut up the loaf of bread, sliced the butter onto it, and smothered it in cheese. What a feast it was!

- What kind of food did you receive in your supplementary packets? Soviet or American? - Both. Sometimes one and sometimes the other. - Did soldiers and junior officers receive anything for being wounded? Money, food, leave, or other forms of compensation? - No special provision was made. - What kind of compensation was specified for the destruction of a tank, cannon, and so on? Who determined this or were there strict rules for incentives and awards? Was the entire crew rewarded for the destruction of a tank or just individual members? - The money was given to the crew and divided equally among the crewmembers. In Hungary, in mid-1944, at one of our meetings we decided that we would collect in a general "pot" all the money that was awarded to us for destroyed equipment, and later send this money to the families of our dead comrades. After the war, working in the archives, I ran across lists that I had personally signed regarding the transmittal of monies to the families of our friends: three thousand rubles, five thousand rubles, and so on. Page 5 of 7 In the Lake Balaton area we broke into the German rear and it turned out that we fired up a German tank column, destroying 19 tanks, 11 of which were heavy tanks. Many wheeled vehicles. Altogether we counted 29 destroyed combat vehicles. We received 1000 rubles for each destroyed AFV. In our brigade were a large number of tank crewmen from Moscow, since our brigade had been formed in Naro-Fominsk (a small town near Moscow - Valeri), and our replacements came from the Moscow draft boards. Therefore, when after the war I went to study at the Frunze Military Academy, I tried as much as possible to meet with the families of our fallen soldiers. Of course, the conversation was sad, but it was so necessary for them because here was a person who knew how their son, father, or brother had died. Frequently I was able to recount to them the details, even the date. They recalled the day that they were notified, and how it changed their lives forever. Then they received the money. Sometimes we were able to send them not just money, but parcels containing trophies (captured items). - So, a destroyed tank was counted to the personal score of each member of the crew. - Yes. - Who kept track of enemy losses? - The staff, and the battalion and company commanders. The deputy commander for maintenance also kept track. In addition, we had created a group for the evacuation of damaged tanks. Don't confuse them with rear area units! This group normally

consisted of 3-5 men with one recovery vehicle (usually a turretless tank - Valeri), commanded by the deputy commander for maintenance. They moved behind the combat formations, keeping track of both our and the Germans' losses and recording both. - By what method was it determined who destroyed which tank or gun? What happened if several crews simultaneously claimed to have destroyed the same German tank? - This did happen on occasion, though not frequently. Normally, they credited both crews and made an annotation, "jointly". It went down in the report as a single destroyed tank. The money was divided in half: 500 rubles to each crew. - What were the actions of the crew of a tank damaged in combat? - To save the tank, to attempt to repair it. If the crew lacked sufficient resources to repair the tank, they set up a defense around their tank. It was categorically forbidden to abandon a tank. I have already mentioned that we had a SMERSH officer in each battalion. God forbid that you abandon a tank! We had a few cases where before an attack a crewmember loosened the track on his tank. It didn't take much effort by the driver-mechanic to throw the loose track. But our SMERSH officer took note of this and rounded up the guilty parties. Of course, it was brazen cowardice! - Could it happen that if by carelessness the crew did not tighten the track, the crew could be charged with cowardice? - Yes, it could happen. The crew had to look after their tank. Otherwise they could simply wake up one morning in a penal battalion. Therefore it was the obligation of tank commanders and company commanders to check track tension before each battle. - Did you ever have to fire on our own soldiers or tanks? - Fellows, anything could happen in war. Such an occurrence took place west of Yukhnov. Our brigade had reached that location and stopped in a forest. A battle was being fought three kilometers in front of us. The Germans had captured a bridgehead across some stream and had begun to expand it. Our corps command ordered the company of Matildas from our neighboring brigade to counterattack the Germans. The Germans had no tanks; the Matildas managed to liquidate the bridgehead, and the Germans retreated across the stream. Now our Matildas were returning from the fight. A bit earlier, fearing a breakthrough by the Germans, our command had moved up and deployed an antitank artillery battalion. They deployed 300 meters in front of us and were digging in. Our artillerymen did not know that our tanks were here, or that they were foreign vehicles. Therefore, having never seen Matildas, they opened fire on them and destroyed three or four tanks. The remaining tanks quickly turned and sought cover. The battalion commander, an artilleryman, ran over to one of the destroyed tanks, looked inside, and there saw our own soldiers. One of them had a chest full of medals. The artilleryman was beside himself.

On another occasion, when 1st and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts linked up in Zvenigorodka and closed the encirclement ring around the Korsun-Shevchenkovskiy pocket, the 5th Army equipped with T-34s approached from the south and our Shermans came in from the north. Our troops on the T-34s had not been warned that there were Shermans in the area, and they shot at the tank of my battalion commander, Nikolay Nikolaevich Malyukov. He died in his tank. - Did they punish anyone for this? - I don't know. Perhaps they punished someone. Each case was investigated by reararea organizations. - How did you co-operate with the infantry during combat? - By TOE the tank brigade had three tank battalions of 21 tanks each and a battalion of submachine gunners. A submachine gun battalion had three companies, one for each tank battalion. We had this three-battalion structure only in late 1943 and early 1944. All the rest of the time we had two tank battalions in the brigade. Our submachine gunners were like brothers to us. On the march they sat on our tanks. They kept warm there, dried their things, and slept. We drove along and then stopped somewhere. The tankers could sleep and our submachine gunners protected our tanks and us. Over the course of time many submachine gunners became members of our crews, initially as loaders and later as radio operators. We divided our trophies equally: they with us and we with them. Therefore they had an easier time of it than ordinary infantrymen. During combat they sat on the tanks until the firing started. As soon as the Germans opened fire on our tanks, they jumped off and ran behind the tanks, frequently protected by its armor from enemy light machine gun fire. - If it happened that the tanks were limited in maneuver and speed, did you maneuver your infantry or halt them? - Nothing like that. We did not pay any attention to them. We maneuvered and they maneuvered themselves behind us. There were no problems. It would have been worse for them if we had been knocked out, so let them run behind us. Page 6 of 7 - Was the tank's speed limited in the attack? By what? - Of course! We must been fire! - How did you fire, from short halts or on the move? - Both ways. If we fired on the move, the speed of the tank did not exceed 12 km/h. But we rarely fired on the move, only in order to incite panic in the enemy ranks. Primarily we fired from short halts. We rushed into a position, stopped for a second, fired, and moved ahead.

- What would you like to say about the German Tiger? - It was an extremely heavy vehicle. The Sherman could never defeat a Tiger with a frontal shot. We had to force the Tiger to expose its flank. If we were defending and the Germans were attacking, we had a special tactic. Two Shermans were designated for each Tiger. The first Sherman fired at the track and broke it. For a brief space of time the heavy vehicle still moved forward on one track, which caused it to turn. At this moment the second Sherman shot it in the side, trying to hit the fuel cell. This is how we did it. One German tank was defeated by two of ours, therefore the victory was credited to both crews. There is a story about this entitled "Hunting With Borzois" in my book. - The muzzle brake has one significant shortcoming: a cloud of dust is raised during firing from a weapon thus equipped, giving away one's position. Some artillerymen attempted to counter this, for example, by wetting down the ground in front of their cannons. What countermeasures did you employ? - You're correct! We might have packed the ground and covered it with our tarpaulins. I don't recall any special problems. - Were your tank sights blinded by dust, dirt, or snow? - There were no special difficulties. Snow, of course, could blind us. But not dust. The sight on the Sherman did not protrude. On the contrary, it was recessed into the turret. Therefore it was well protected against the elements. - Dmitriy Fedorovich, our tankers who fought on the British Churchills pointed out the weak heater in the crew compartment as a deficiency. The standard electric heater was inadequate for the conditions of the Russian winter. How was the Sherman equipped in this regard? - The Sherman had two engines connected by a coupling joint. This was both good and bad. There were cases when one of these motors was disabled in battle. Then the coupling joint could be disengaged from the crew compartment and the tank could crawl away from the fight on one engine. On the other hand, there were powerful fans located above both engines. We used to say, "Open your mouth and the wind came out your ass!" How the hell could we get warm? There were such strong drafts of air! Perhaps there was heat coming from the engines, but I will not tell you that it was warm. When we halted, we immediately covered the engine compartment with our tarpaulin. Then it stayed warm in the tank for several hours; we slept in the tank. Not for nothing did the Americans give us fleece-lined coveralls. - Were there norms of ammunition consumption for the tank? - Yes there were. In the first place, we took one basic load (BK -boekomplekt -a full set of ammo. For example the IS-2's BK = 28 shells. -Valeri) with us going into battle. We took an additional BK on the outside of our tanks during long raids. When I raced into Vienna, for example, my commander personally ordered us to take two BK: the normal load inside and the second on the armor. In addition, we carried up to two cases of trophy chocolate on each tank and found additional provisions for ourselves.

We were "on our own", so to speak. This meant that if we had to conduct a raid somewhere deep in the rear, we offloaded rations and in their place took ammunition. All of our wheeled supply vehicles were American 2 ?-ton Studebakers. They always brought the ammunition forward to the battalion. There is one other thing I want to say. How did we preserve our (Soviet) ammunition? Several rounds covered by a thin layer of grease, in wooden crates. One had to sit for hours and clean this grease off the rounds. American ammunition was packed in cardboard tube containers, three rounds banded together. The rounds were shiny clean inside their protective tubes! We took them out and immediately stowed them in the tank. - What kind of rounds did you carry in the tank? - Armor-piercing and high explosive. There was nothing else. The ratio was approximately one-third HE and two-thirds AP. - In general this depended on the tank, perhaps. We say that on our JS heavy tanks it was the other way around. - You are correct. But the solid-shot on the JS was so powerful that one hit was sufficient for anything. When we went into Vienna, they gave us a battery of heavy JSU-152s, three of them (In his book Loza called them SAU-152, I specially asked him about these vehicles, he said they were based on JS chassis, therefore they were JSU-152. -Valeri). How they held us back! On the highway we could make 70 km/h with our Shermans and the JSUs barely moved. When we got into Vienna there was an incident that I described in my book. The Germans counterattacked us with several Panthers. The Panther was a heavy tank. I ordered an JSU to move forward and engage the German tanks. "Well, take a shot!" And oh, did it shoot! I must say that the streets in Vienna were narrow, the buildings tall, and many wanted to watch this engagement between a Panther and an JSU. They remained in the street. The JSU let loose and the impact knocked the Panther backward (from the distance of 400-500 meters). Its turret separated from the hull and landed some meters away. But as a result of the shot broken glass fell from above. Vienna had many leaded-in windows and all of these fell on our heads. To this day I blame myself that I did not foresee this! We had so many injured! It was a good thing that we were wearing helmets, but our arms and shoulders were all cut up. This, my first, experience of fighting in a large city was sad indeed. We still say, "A clever man does not go into a city, but bypasses it." But in this case I had specific orders to go into the city. - In general, was Vienna heavily destroyed? - No, not terribly. Not in comparison with, say, Warsaw. My basic mission was to capture the center of Vienna and the bank. There we captured eighteen tons of gold, which was not considered "chump change". My men joked with me, "If only you could take just one bag!" And I responded, "Men, how many years would I break rocks for this sack?" Page 7 of 7

- How did you refuel? - Each battalion had several fuel trucks. Before a battle the tanks had to be topped off. If we were going on a march or raid, then spare fuel cells were mounted on the tanks and we dropped them before combat. The fuel trucks went to the battalion rear and brought fuel forward to us. Not all fuel trucks were forward at the same time. As soon as one fuel truck was emptied the next was brought forward, and so on. As a fuel truck was emptied it immediately turned around and went back to brigade to fill up. In Ukraine we had to tow these fuel trucks with our tanks because of the mud. The mud was horrible. In Romania it happened that we broke into the German rear with our tanks and they cut us off from our own logistics. We made a cocktail, a mixture of gasoline and kerosene (the M4A2 Shermans were diesel-powered), in what proportions I do not recall. The tanks ran on this cocktail, but the engines overheated. - Did you have "horseless" tankers in your unit, i.e. tankers without a tank? What did you do with them? - Absolutely we did. Normally one-third of the total number of personnel. They did everything. They helped with maintenance, ammunition resupply, refueling, and anything that needed doing. They did it. - Did you have camouflaged vehicles in your unit? - There were some, but I do not recall them. We had everything. In the winter we painted our tanks white in a mandatory scheme, either with whitewash or paint. - Was permission required for installing camouflage? Did you need someone's authorization for painting any kind of slogans on the tank, for example, "Za rodinu" (For the Motherland), and so on? - No, no kind of permission was required. This was your choice -you want to paint, you paint. If you didn't want to paint camouflage, you didn't paint. As far as the inscriptions are concerned, I believe that they had to be approved by the political representative. It was a sort of propaganda, a political statement. - The Germans made widespread use of camouflage. Did it help them? - Yes, it did help them. Sometimes it was crucial to them! - Then why did you not do it? - We lacked the materials. We did not have a large choice of colors. There was a protective color and we painted it. It took a lot of paint to cover a tank! If we had been able to obtain other colors, then perhaps we would have camouflaged our tanks. In general, there were many other tasks at hand, like repair, refueling, and so on. The Germans were richer that we were. They not only had camouflage but they used zimmerit on their heavy tanks.

In addition, they hung track blocks on their heavy tanks. Sometimes it was quite effective! A round struck the track block and ricocheted off. - Did the crew receive a concussion when a round hit the tank, even if it did not penetrate the armor? - Generally, no. It depended on where the round hit. Let's say that I was sitting in the left side of the turret and a round struck near me. I heard this hit but it did not harm me. If it struck somewhere on the hull, I might not hear it at all. This happened several times. We would come out of an engagement and inspect the tank. In several places the armor would show an impact, like a hot knife that had cut through butter. But I did not hear the round impacts. Sometimes the driver would shout, "They're shooting from the left!" But there was no overwhelming sound. Of course, if such a powerful gun as the JSU-152 hit you, you heard it! And it would take off your head along with the turret. I want also to add that the Sherman's armor was tough. There were cases on our T-34 when a round struck and did not penetrate. But the crew was wounded because pieces of armor flew off the inside wall and struck the crewmen in the hands and eyes. This never happened on the Sherman. - What did you consider the most dangerous opponent? A cannon? A tank? An airplane? - They were all dangerous until the first round was fired. But in general, the antitank cannons were the most dangerous. They were very difficult to distinguish and defeat. The artillerymen dug them in so that their barrels literally were laying on the ground. You could see only several centimeters of their gun shield. The cannon fired. It was a good thing if it had a muzzle brake and dust was kicked up! But if it was winter or raining, what then? - Were there cases when you did not see from your tank where the fire was coming from, but your SMG infantry did see? How did they guide you to the source of the fire? - Sometimes they pounded on the turret and shouted. Sometimes they began to fire in the direction with tracer bullets or fired a signal rocket in that direction. And then, you know, when we went into the attack, the commander often looked around from the turret. None of the periscopes, even in the commander's cupola, gave us good visibility. - How did you maintain communications with your commander and other tanks? - By radio. The Sherman had two radio sets, HF and UHF [high frequency and ultra high frequency], of very good quality. We used the HF for communications with our higher commander, with brigade, and the UHF for communications within the company and battalion. For conversation inside the tank we used the tank intercom system. It worked great! But as soon as the tank was hit, the tankers first action was to throw off his helmet and throat microphone. If he forgot and began to jump out of the tank, he would get hung up.

Mikhail Borodin When the Stalingrad offensive started, I also happened to take part in it. There was one battle, when we supported the infantry. We had tanks in our tank scout company dug in, we guarded the headquarters. The brigade chief of staff approached us and said that the station had to be captured. There was a dominant hill and the infantry couldnt take it without tank support. He said: Give us a couple of tanks. There are some of them standing camouflaged, guarding the HQ. The commander cursed for a while, yet gave him two tanks, including that of ours. We got loaded with ammo and drove on. There was a little house on the hill, it was on the opposite slope, hardly visible. The Germans had a firing position equipped there. The task was to blow the house to smithereens. We blasted it with two shots. Then we went up the hill along with the infantry. Behind the hill the Germans had trenches and a mortar battery. Well, what helped me back then T-34 is deaf and blind in battle, you close the hatch the triplex is tiny, you just cant see anything. If you fear death well, you can close the hatch. I thought that only a stray bullet would fly into an open hatch, or a German would bayonet me if he could get close enough. Thats why I always drove my tank with an open hatch. So, we blasted this little house, and there below, from behind the hill, their mortars were firing. And I dont know whether it was a mine or a shell, it exploded on frontal armor. There was a flash, I was dazzled. My face was burnt a bit. I felt neither pain, nor anything at all. I hopped on the top of the hill, and there I saw there were German mortars down there. It was the first time I saw them like that, close up. And the Germans seemed to encounter a Soviet tank for the first time, obviously. I had a course machinegun at hand, I opened fire from it. Its quite close to the place of driver-mechanic, its easy to reach. At the same time I turned the tank left-right, for I could get so carried away that I could miss a hit in the side. The commander yells: Go forward! I shoot, shoot more. I also had a SMG. I drove over the trench, rode over the mortars, squishing them, the Germans were fleeing. I pressed on the gas, stuck out of the hatch showing half of my body and fired a whole ammo clip from my SMG. The commander shouted to me: Mishka, turn away, the tasks accomplished, lets drive home. I start pushing friction pedal with my left foot, for turning around I cant press it a shell fragment hit my leg. I push friction pedal with my right foot, start turning around, and there I saw my hands were bloodied. It was that shell that exploded on the armor. Its fragments got stuck into my face. I wiped my face, for it was hot so my hands got bloodied. And I didnt feel anything for the first time, it was such a fever! It was the first time I had such a battle! I didnt fear death, didnt even think about it. The commander of our scout company always taught us that way: Dont fear death. If its destined for you from birth, itll find you, and you wont hide from it in a ninefold covered dugout. So I had no fear and never closed my hatch. That was why my tank was always fast the hatch was open, everything could be seen. I noticed anti-tank guns immediately as they started firing, and started maneuvering at once. You just linger one bit and get hit in the side. Its quite bad to be hit in the side, a frontal hit isnt so dangerous. We returned, the commander got out of the tank, and said: Mishka, all of your face is broken down. They pulled me from the tank, I fell, there was a fragment in my leg too. They brought me to medical batallion, right on the table. Everythings covered with blood. And the lighting was a hollow 45 mm shell, theres a piece of foot

wrapping inserted into it, some benzine was poured, and so it burned. They pulled out all the fragments, bandaged everything, and, propped by my commander, I went away from there. Everything was broken in my mouth, I couldnt chew anything. I only gargled my mouth with vodka, and then went to bed. Thats how this battle episode finished for me. Interview: Bair Irincheev Translated by: Alexander Shmidke