Tank Rider: Into the Reich with the Red Army

So, Lieutenant Malyutin came up and took the pistol, which he had apparently never seen before, and started to study it. Without thinking he put the bullet in the cartridge chamber, pulled the trigger and a shot sounded. The bullet hit Guschenkov in the left shoulder and went right through the muscles. At first Petr did not even understand what had happened, until Alexander told him: ‘Pete, you wounded me.’ Malyutin was scared to death, but all worked out more or less well – he did not kill him, just wounded Alex in the left shoulder. Guschenkov was quickly bandaged and sent to hospital, but his misadventures did not end with that and he had to avoid a deadly danger once more: as he told us later, the Germans, some retreating unit, rushed into the village where the hospital was stationed. They suddenly burst into the house where the wounded were, rushed into the rooms and slaughtered everyone who was there. Alexander Guschenkov jumped from the window of the second floor and ran away into the wheat fields, firing back at the Germans with his Parabellum. He was lucky that it grew dark quickly after the attack. He got into the army hospital several days later. Unfortunately, this was not the only case when the Germans executed wounded and medical personnel. I think that there is no justification for such atrocities.

I also had a case when I wounded a fellow officer, a machine-gun platoon leader. It happened like this: our battalion attacked the Fritzes and almost threw them back from the road, when my soldiers reported: ‘Comrade Lieutenant, the Germans are attacking from the left!’ I did not have binoculars – they only frustrated me in battle, but after looking attentively, I indeed saw Fritzes with their give-away helmets with ‘little horns’ running to the left flank of my company. One of them was especially annoying – he kept hiding and popping up again from the wheat. For some reason I had a rifle, in fact, a German carbine. I did not think long, aimed, and as soon as he showed up, I fired. All of a sudden I heard horrible obscene curses from his direction. It turned out that this was a Russian, and he had found a German helmet in action and put it on for safety. I did not kill him, but had shot his nose through. He immediately threw away the German helmet, they bandaged him and sent into the rear, as someone wounded by a German bullet. What else could I do? Well, the bullet was indeed German. How can one put on German equipment during an offensive! One can use them in defence, but with certain caution.

On the day Guschenkov was wounded our column marched forward unharmed for half a day, not encountering the enemy. The air force was not there either. However, this did not last long – in the afternoon the enemy threw their air force against us again. Given the lack of fighter escort (we did not always have anti-aircraft guns in the column either) the Germans merely taunted us without any disturbance. They strafed low over the column, and we suffered losses both in tanks and personnel. Why were our fighters not in the air? I think the only reason was that our Brigade was far away from the fighter bases, and fighters had limited range capacity. With the mission to liberate Lvov, our Tank Army, including our 49th Mechanized Brigade were deep in the enemy’s rear, almost 100 kilometres ahead of the general army units, that mostly advanced on foot and were engaged in constant fighting with the Germans.

THE BATTLE FOR LVOV

On 19 July we spotted German defences in front of a village. The battalion dispersed and formed a line; our company deployed and advanced towards the village, to the left of the road, while the 3rd company under Senior Lieutenant Kostenko advanced to the right of the road. We had learnt lessons in the battles at Bobrka and the 2nd company remained in battalion commander’s reserve. In a ravine we encountered two men in Soviet uniform. They said that they were Il-2 pilots, shot down by German fighters during a ground attack mission at the outskirts of Lvov and were trying to get back to the Russian lines. They asked for food, we gave them bread and canned food and advanced in attacking line. The pilots told us that there were no Germans in the trenches, and they were right. However, there was a barbed wire fence in front of the trench – Bruno’s coil, as it was called. This was a roll of barbed wire one metre high and one metre wide. We tried to jump it over, but it did not work out. I ordered several rain capes to be put over it, and we crawled over them to the other side of the obstacle. It was nice that the enemy was absent, otherwise we would have been stuck in front of that obstacle.