Tank Rider: Into the Reich with the Red Army

We had travelled on tanks almost the whole night, with lights on. Before dawn, as the sky grew grey, the column stopped in front of a small hill for a short break. That was in front of small town Bobrka, south of Lvov. I decided to leave the first tank and stay behind the turret of the third tank – a more usual place for me and my soldiers. I just wanted to take a nap, if that was possible. Apparently, my intuition helped me, not for the first time. As soon as the column moved forward and the first tank reached the top of the hill, the Fritzes opened fire, the first tank was knocked out and caught fire and then exploded. Two or three soldiers who were on that tank died, the rest, some eight of them, survived. The men were lucky, they jumped off the tank in time, ran away from it and took cover in a roadside ditch. The company also dismounted the tanks and dispersed in a line. We lay down and started to dig in just in case. We could not lift our heads, so heavy was the German machine-gun fire, artillery also fired on us (later we learned that this was in fact German tanks – Panthers).

The order ‘Forward!’ came from the company commander. I got my platoon up to attack, other platoons of the company also stood up. We reached the top of the hill, where our knocked-out tank was, and could not advance any further because of the storm of fire coming from the Fritzes. The platoon suffered casualties – both dead and wounded. The soldiers went to ground, as they could not stand the machine-gun and artillery fire of the enemy, as well as the sniper fire. With the assistance of the squad leaders I managed to spot a couple of German machine-gun nests that were dug-in some 150 to 200 metres from our line. I pointed them out to a runner and sent him to an artillery observer and to the battalion’s mortar company; by that time they themselves had already seen the targets. Brigade artillery and our 82 mm mortars opened fire but failed to suppress the German gun emplacements. As soon as we got up from the ground, the Fritzes pinned us down again; the Brigade’s command did not send tanks to support us, apparently sparing them for further battles. We, tank riders, also could not attack without tank support, and we lay down and tried to wait for the tanks to arrive.

Another ‘Forward!’ order came, that time with the addition of ‘or you will be executed.’ I think that it was the company commander himself, Nikolai Chernyshov, who thought up this addition. I very much doubt that the battalion or brigade commander would have come up with such an order; I never heard anything like that from them either in this and or in the following battles. No one ever scared me with threats of execution, there were no reasons to do so, I always followed my orders without question. We would have to attack the Fritzes and die for the sake of others’ lives. However, it took us a long time to organize the attack, almost the entire day. Yes, we were afraid to charge against tanks, we were simply afraid. The company did not have anti-tank weapons (anti-tank grenades, petrol bombs, were already becoming obsolete). It was not only me who was afraid, other company commanders and platoon leaders were also afraid. The enemy’s fire was heavy and deadly, no one wanted to die, regardless of how brave or dashing you were. The worst thing is to become a cripple, it is better to die right away. When you attack and feel that your comrades are falling next to you, you are horrified – ‘It must be me next.’ But on the other hand, one had such a huge anger against the Germans: ‘just wait for me to get there’, that one was ready to crush everything around and no longer thought of death.