Tank Rider: Into the Reich with the Red Army

Sergeant Major Blokhin introduced me to the assistant platoon leader Senior Sergeant Sabaev and the orderly in the company. On the evening of the same day we moved forward to our attack position in order to assault the Germans in the morning. During the night we three officers of the company were summoned by company commander Titov, who gave us our combat objectives for the attack. I did not recognize the platoon leaders in the darkness; they did not recognize me either. At dawn the company formed a line and together with two other companies of the battalion walked with a rapid step towards the hill, having no idea if the enemy was defending it. That was my baptism of fire. This was no longer training, it was war, and the enemy was in front of us. The enemy first opened up with machine-gun fire from the hill and then launched a concentrated mortar barrage on us. Just as I had in training, I ordered the soldiers: ‘Forward run’, and ran forward myself – just as I had in training. All of a sudden my soldiers were no longer in front of me. I heard voices from the side, from a ravine, where the soldiers from the company and from my platoon had already taken cover. They started to dig in. I did not even have an entrenching tool, let alone weapons – neither a pistol nor a submachine-gun; I only received weapons a couple of days later. To the right of me there was a soldier who had already dug his skirmisher’s trench, so I asked for an entrenching tool from him. I dug in and made a breastwork. I gave the entrenching tool back to the red-headed man and asked who he was. He answered that he was platoon leader from the 1st company, Lieutenant Petr Shakulo. I had only seen him once in the night and did not recognize him in daylight. This is how Petr Shakulo became my best friend for the whole war. Our friendship lasted until his very death in 1988.

After darkness fell, we left the ravine and dug in at an open spot right in front of the hill, trying our best to camouflage our narrow foxholes from the enemy’s air force and from observation. During the night we received an order to repeat the assault on the enemy forces defending the hill. A night assault is a special type of combat, it is complicated and requires the close co-operation of all battalion units, even between the individual soldiers of the company; it also requires bravery and fearlessness.

The assault began well until we reached a barbed wire entanglement and the company had to lie down in front of it. How could we overcome the obstacle? We did not have wirecutters. It might well be that several soldiers could sneak under the entanglement together with me. But what about the rest? Would they follow? It was impossible to see in the darkness. Would they help me or would I help them – that’s the main thing in night combat. I did not know what to do and I sneaked out to look for Shakulo and Gavrilov, the two other platoon leaders of the company. The Germans were lighting up the area intensively with missiles, and I managed to find them. Lieutenant Nikolai Konstantinovich Chernyshov, platoon leader from the 2nd company, was also there with them. We all decided to withdraw to our starting positions.

We reported that we had failed to complete the mission and received a repeated order to seize the enemy’s trench. To give spoken orders meant making myself and other soldiers a target for the Germans. Even without any noise from our side the Germans were delivering horrible flanking machine-gun fire with tracer bullets that shone brightly in the darkness. We prepared our soldiers for the new assault and discussed with the other platoon leaders how we could best fulfil the order. I noticed that two Kazakh soldiers from the platoon did not join the platoon during the assault and stayed in their foxhole. I warned them strictly that they could be severely punished for cowardice. Incidentally, during the daytime assault my assistant platoon leader Sabaev also fell behind, saying that he had stomach-ache. That was the only time in my life when I told another person: ‘If this happens again, I’ll shoot you.’ Sabaev got the message, and in the second night assault I ordered him to check the foxholes, see if anyone had stayed behind and then join the assaulting line with those that he found. He fulfilled the order and no longer had stomach-ache.

The second assault was also unsuccessful. However, the Germans only spotted us when we got right under the entanglement. They tossed hand-grenades at us and opened machine-gun fire. A handgrenade went off next to me, but in the heat of the battle I did not pay attention to it. After that the Germans opened fire with mortars, even though they knew they might hit their own troops. Again we had to withdraw with losses. My garrison cap was torn and I found out that I was wounded in my head by grenade splinters. Sabaev bandaged my head.