Tank Rider: Into the Reich with the Red Army

It was a cloudy day, sleet was falling, and it was quite chilly on the tanks. Everyone was trying to get closer to the tank’s radiator – bad weather for infantry. During 9 and 10 February the enemy put up stubborn resistance, throwing armour, infantry and Volkssturm into action, raining shot and shell on us. We had a hard time, but the enemy’s resistance was broken and after taking losses the Germans had to withdraw, leaving heavy equipment and weapons behind – tanks without fuel, artillery and mortars. We were in the middle of a forest; sometimes one could not see where Fritzes’ fire came from. Tanks moved forward carefully, following the tank riders – our task was to destroy German Panzerfaust teams with small arms or indicate Fritz targets to the tanks, so that they could destroy them with main guns. The enemy tried to stop our advance by all means, laying ambushes – sometimes with very small groups, which was almost a suicide mission with its only goal being to stop us and inflict casualties on us. One evening, just when it started to get dark, the three vanguard tanks approached the edge of a forest. My platoon and I were in the middle of the advancing tank column, while a group of soldiers from another company was in forward security. All of a sudden several artillery shots shook the air and the column stopped. I jumped off the tank and ran forward to find out what had happened. It got completely dark, but I saw a group of commanding officers, among them the commander of the tank regiment, Stolyarov, battalion commander Kozienko and others. Soldiers from the three first tanks ran back from the forest edge and brought a heavily wounded soldier on rain cape. The soldier died soon after the incident. According to the soldiers, at the forest edge they came under fire from German assault guns. One of our tanks was knocked out, almost an entire escorting tank rider squad died, and only a few wounded survived. Two other tanks tried to evade fire. One crew abandoned their vehicle, but the driver went into reverse, and the tank rolled backwards without the crew. The regiment commander ordered the tank to be stopped and brought back to the column. The order was carried out.

The commanders did not dare to mount a night attack, so the attack was shifted to the next morning. At dawn the battalion – all that was left of its three companies – started to advance through the forest to the left of the road. We did not know anything about the enemy. At first everything was nice and quiet, no shots were fired at us, the enemy did not see us, and we did not see the enemy. However, this did not last for long, as the enemy spotted us and opened rifle and machine-gun fire. We returned fire and advanced forward in short rushes.

The outnumbered German infantry retreated, or rather fled from our attack. However, we came under fire from three German assault guns, which turned out to be some 50 metres from us. We had to take cover behind trees, as the assault guns fired at almost every single soldier. My orderly and I were lying under a tree, which was hit by a shell, a metre from the ground. We were shell-shocked, the tree was cut down, but we remained unharmed and sneaked to another tree. We were lucky again, not for the first time. We did not know what to do, as the tanks did not support us, staying far behind, but the 3rd company commander, Kostenko, quickly came up with a solution. He brought a heavy JS-2 tank almost to our line and indicated targets – the assault guns – to the crew. The tank fired two shots from its heavy gun (122 mm), and one assault gun literally fell apart, while the second round penetrated two assault guns at once. I had never seen such a ‘miracle’ before. Our way was free. The battalion advanced a bit further through the forest and the enemy was nowhere to be seen. Our tanks caught up with us, we were ordered to mount the tanks, and we drove on.

Overcoming the stubborn resistance of the enemy, during the night of 11 February our battalion with the other battalions of the Brigade crossed the Bober river and then crossed the Neisse river on 16 February. We were already some 105 or 110 kilometres from Berlin. The Neisse was deep and wide in the place where we crossed it. There was a good multi-ton bridge across the river, but it was boobytrapped, and German battle engineers were waiting for the order to blow the bridge up. However, guys from the Brigade’s scout company captured the bridge and killed all the battle engineers – they received help from a Russian girl that the Germans must have known – she worked at the farm next to the bridge. Thus we were able to cross the river on the bridge and set up defences on the left flank of the Brigade, no more than 100 metres from the river. The 2nd and the 3rd battalions of the Brigade were in defence to the right of us, some 250 metres from the river. We did not have enough forces to advance any further.