Tank Rider: Into the Reich with the Red Army

Our company had just ten or fifteen soldiers when it arrived at the bridgehead at Neisse. Guschenkov had probably just three or five soldiers with one Maxim machine-gun left. Besides this, the company had company commander Vyunov, platoon leaders Guschenkov and me, Sergeant Major Bratchenko, medic ‘Brotherly Heart’, clerk Chulkin and a company commander’s orderly. The company’s total strength was just 22 or 23 men: at the beginning of the operation on 12 January, 1945, the company had had up to 100 men. Our company’s losses were up to 80% of personnel. The other companies were not in a better position. Company commander Nikolai Chernyshov was heavily wounded, platoon leaders Shakulo and Mikheev were lightly wounded. We earned our victory at a high price, a very high price. It was not only our battalion that suffered significant losses, but also the other two battalions of the Brigade, as well as the tank regiment. All tanks were out of action, just three or four tanks could still move, but they could not fire – their main guns were broken. However, even these tanks could make it to our bridgehead on the Neisse river, in order to make a show of armour. This contained the Germans to a certain extent – tanks are still tanks. Brigade commander Colonel Turkin was at that time recovering from a wound in a hospital. The Brigade was under the brigade chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel Arkadi Arkhipov. Turkin was wounded in the following incident: in front of a village we were caught by German fire; tanks stopped, tank riders dismounted, and we moved forward a bit and lay down. I had to clarify the situation, find out where the enemy was and what forces opposed us. Some other officers were with me at that point. I sent several men to find out what was going on – I did not like to attack without knowing anything about the enemy. The scout party returned and reported that they did not see the enemy, but Germans had fired on them from basements and house windows. My three tanks bluntly refused to continue the attack, but the main body of the Brigade was about to arrive. While I was thinking whether I should attack the enemy, it drove up. Brigade commander Colonel Turkin and the Brigade’s tank regiment commander, Major Stolyarov, arrived at the scene. I reported the reason for our stop, but they did not believe me. Turkin told me: ‘You got scared by a single Fritz, there is no one there! You just thought you saw someone. Forward, Bessonov!’ They got into their APC and as soon as they had driven some 100 metres, a Panzerfaust team knocked out their APC. Both Turkin and Stolyarov were wounded, while the APC crew was killed. Our tanks arrived and opened fire from main guns; the company went forward, firing on the move. The enemy fled.

The bridgehead at the Neisse river was very small; it was exposed even to machine-gun fire, while German artillery fired at us day and night. Soldiers talked about an armoured train firing at us, but I was not sure about that. We did not have sufficient force to extend the bridgehead, and although the Germans brought up reinforcements, their infantry was not numerous either. They did not bring any tanks, as they must have suffered too heavy losses. We stayed for some five or six days at the bridgehead, and the Germans gave us no respite day or night. The Germans were in bushes not more than 50 metres from our company, and threw themselves at us several times, day and night. But the soldiers of my platoon opened heavy fire every time, while Lieutenant Guschenkov’s machine-gun cut them down without mercy and they had to fall back with losses. The air force bombed us during the day, dropping bombs at the bridge, but fortunately for us they all missed. The Germans even launched torpedoes down the river to hit the bridge. The torpedoes were quite powerful, but they all missed the bridge, hit the banks of the river and exploded not far from the bridge. The Germans used a new weapon against our infantry, at least I had not seen such a weapon before. They dropped boxes or containers from the planes: in mid-air the boxes opened into two halves and small bombs that resembled Russian F-1 grenades rained on us from there. They could cover quite a vast area. Again, fortunately for us they missed us, apparently they did not know exactly where we were. We could not dig in, as the the water table was too high, we only dug skirmisher’s trenches, not deeper. Eventually, everything worked out fine and we did not have losses.