Tank Rider: Into the Reich with the Red Army

My orderly Andrey Drozd and I slept in turns; not far from the riverbank we found concrete rings for facing wells and they served us as a good shelter from shell and bomb splinters. This is where we rested when Germans did not attack. Our rest was a couple of hours of sleep, all the other time we were awake. Apparently, the Germans suffered hellishly from Guschenkov’s machine-guns, which fired at them at point-blank range, cutting down the attacking soldiers. As a result, the Fritzes ceased their attacks on our company and it was quiet for a couple of days. Soldiers could calmly put themselves in order, at least, those who wanted to could shave or wash their faces. The battalion’s field kitchen would come to us across the bridge before dawn and in twilight in the evening, and all day long we had to eat the remains of captured German food. When the Germans had calmed down, company’s Sergeant Major Mikhail Bratchenko organized lunch during the day. They stayed in a small house together with company commander Grigori Vyunov not far from the front line, and set up kitchen there. The company’s medic, clerk and orderly also stayed there, Alexander Guschenkov sometimes also visited there. He already had four or five wounds and this was the first operation in which he was not wounded.

ON TO BERLIN

On 24 February, 1945, rifle units replaced us, while our Brigade headed towards the town of Ober (Oberau) for replacements. The officers that took over our defence sector, said to us, after they heard we were from the 4th Tank Army: ‘Aha, so you are the bandits of Lelyushenko’s Army!’ We did not get the joke. They had to explain to us. There had been a special broadcast to the German people on the German radio: ‘Germans, save yourselves, bandits are coming – the tank crews of General Lelyushenko.’ One can conclude that our 4th Tank Army, including our Brigade, had played an important role in destruction of the German troops, if we scared the Nazi top brass so much. We stayed in Ober until 11 or 12 April, 1945, when the Berlin operation, the last operation of the War, commenced. We were so exhausted that for the first two or three days we just slept and did not wake up. After breakfast we would sleep till lunch, and then sleep again till evening. In the evenings we would play cards or write letters home, and then sleep again till morning. It is interesting that the entire company stayed in one house. The soldiers took two rooms, while platoon leaders Guschenkov, Mikheev, Petr Shakulo, who had returned from the hospital, the company’s Sergeant Major Bratchenko and I stayed in the third room on the second floor. I had a separate bed, above which I hung a German submachine-gun; Vyunov and Shakulo also had beds, while Mikheev and Guschenkov had to share a large sofa. All of us, including the soldiers, had feather beds and pillows.

Many officers and men were awarded with orders and medals for the Vistula–Oder Operation, including me – I got the Order of the Patriotic War 2nd degree. That was my third order in the war. They promised to recommend me for the Hero of the Soviet Union for battles in Poland and destruction of the German column – Major A. D. Stolyarov personally told me about that. However, as I later learned from Brigade’s clerk Chulkin (he had been my soldier since 1943), the recommendation was later replaced with recommendation for the Order of the Red Banner. The staff of my 6th Guards Mechanized Corps in turn, returned the recommendation paper with instruction to recommend me for the Order of Great Patriotic War 2nd degree. Well, God is their judge. I personally tried to recommend as many soldiers of my platoon as possible for decoration, and most of my recommendations worked, especially given the fact that Brigade Commander was authorized to award medals and the Order of the Red Star.

After an Order of the People’s Commissar of Defence of the USSR of 17 March, 1945, our Tank Army became part of the Guards – it was renamed the 4th Guards Tank Army. Our 49th Mechanized Brigade was renamed into 35th Guards Kamenets-Podolsk Mechanized Brigade, and we started to get higher wages (my wage, for instance, from that time on was 1,200 roubles, out of them 600 roubles as Lieutenant’s wage, 300 roubles for service at the front, and 300 roubles for being part of Guards). Money was not the main thing, though. It is prestigious to be a part of the Guards. We were all young at that time and we all had human needs. We wanted to do many things – have a nice dinner, sometimes have a drink, have a talk and recall things that we had experienced in peacetime and during the war, pay our honour to the dead and wounded.