Tank Rider: Into the Reich with the Red Army

The Brigade again received an order to advance to the west, and drive out the enemy from our land. After a blizzard that lasted two days, there was deep snow on the roads and in the fields, sometimes with snowdrifts. The battalion again mounted tanks with the aim of chasing the enemy, to prevent the possibility of his consolidating positions on good defensible grounds. The weather improved, the sky cleared of clouds, the sun shone and snow melted away. It grew warmer. We encountered the enemy in some places, but the Brigade successfully defeated any German attempt to stop us. We did not have many tanks left, and even those that remained had already used up their engine lifetime and were constantly breaking down. The tank that I was on with my soldiers also broke down. After a day-long stop in a village (we were already in the Western Ukraine), our tank stopped and would not move on. The battalion commander ordered me to stay with the tank and wait for it to be repaired. A day passed by and in the morning the tank crew told us that the breakdown was serious and we were stuck for a long time. I decided not to wait for the completion of the repairs, but to catch up with the battalion on foot. I thought that I would fall under suspicion of deliberate avoidance of fighting. It took us a couple of days to catch up with the battalion. A huge mass of our troops from different units of the front marched westwards, and no one could tell me where our Brigade had gone. At a crossroads I saw a sign with an arrow saying ‘Turkin’s unit’. We followed the sign. Almost every unit used such signs in that period of time, in order to prevent soldiers from wandering around on the roads of the war looking for their units. One afternoon, I think, on 12 April, I found my battalion: it had been reduced almost to nothing. We had a mission to complete, and before my arrival the battalion only had the 2nd company with ten to fifteen men, or maybe fewer. Only battalion HQ remained more or less intact, but it also had some losses. Battalion commander Kozienko, and zampolit Gerstein and chief of battalion’s staff Belan were happy to see me – I had at least 20 or 25 soldiers with me, all that remained of 1st and 2nd companies. Company leader Chernyshov and his staff were not in the battalion and no one knew where he was. Having fallen behind with a broken tank, the company commander only showed up some three days later.

Once with the battalion we got a hot meal, which we had not had for a long time – we received both the first and the second course; I remember this quite well. Only two officers were present in the battalion at that time – Junior Lieutenant Alexei Belyakov with the 2nd company and me. The battalion had a total strength of 32 to 35 men, or as they would put it, bayonets. The battalion’s artillery battery and mortar company were missing, the submachine-gun platoon, machine-gun company, anti-tank rifle company, all were missing. All these units were lost in battle and destroyed by enemy air force. Officers of the artillery battery showed up a bit later – Senior Lieutenant Kashintsev, Lieutenants Harmakulov and Isaev, Lieutenant Zaitsev from the mortar company, Lieutenants Volkov and Karpenko from the machine-gun company. I think they all arrived without their equipment (45 mm guns, 82 mm mortars, heavy machine-guns) and with just a few soldiers. The 2nd and the 3rd battalions of our Brigade also suffered significant losses, also mainly from air raids.

The battalion was stationed in a village and stayed there for several days. Reinforcements arrived; these were soldiers drafted from liberated areas of Ukraine. The company received men well in their forties, who had only received basic training, and they were slow and timid. Besides that, they had never served in the army. Our company received twelve or fifteen such ‘warriors’.

The 3rd company, at that time it was the 2nd company, received men of different ages, including former partisans, who could handle weapons, all in civilian clothes. The same company got a new commander to replace Gulik, who had been killed – Senior Lieutenant Shtokolov. Lieutenant Mochalov arrived as the machine-gun platoon leader to replace the wounded Kolosov. At that time the machine-gun company as such did not exist, it did not have machine-guns either. It was Mochalov’s first time at the front, he was not used to army service and commanding other people, so he had a hard time on active service. Sometimes he merely wept, as he could not control his men.