Tank Rider: Into the Reich with the Red Army

They bandaged me on the spot, and the battalion’s doctor Pankova sent me in a truck to a hospital along with the other wounded. First they sent me to a transit hospital in Luckenwalde, which was in the building of a former German hospital. I should say that we were lucky in our journey to the hospital, too: Germans, who were wandering in forests, abandoning Berlin in small groups, could have caught us. The Germans would merely execute the wounded; they were angry enough to do that. There was a rumour in Luckenwalde that some trucks with wounded were under fire or were even destroyed, but our vehicle made it safely either before Germans appeared on the highway or after they had left the highway and disappeared into the forest. There were many wounded in Luckenwalde and we all sat in an underground corridor, from which we were transported to the other hospitals by trucks. I sat on the floor with my back against the wall, sometimes sleeping or dozing off, as it was already almost morning. The medical inspection was under way; depending on the wound we were distributed among different hospitals and that set the order of evacuation. Several doctors walked up to me as well. A female doctor, a Major of the Medical Corps, asked me about my wound and how long I had been at the front. I answered her and she gave an instruction to another doctor to evacuate me immediately with the first truck available.

During the night of 26 April I was sent to the stationary hospital of the 4th Guards Tank Army in Sarau, also in Germany, but deep in our rear. We arrived there around noon. I met several soldiers from my company and my platoon; some of then had been in the hospital from the very first day of the offensive, 16 April, while others had arrived earlier. I gave my pistol and map case to one of the soldiers. I unclipped my decorations from my tunic and wrapped them in a handkerchief together with my party membership card and other papers. First the girls washed the others and me in a steam bath – it was hard to wash myself with one hand. They took my uniforms (tunic, trousers, field cap and probably greatcoat) for fumigation to kill all the insects and threw away all my underwear and foot wrappings, giving me new underwear after the steam bath.

They put me on a table in a dressing room. A surgeon, Major of Medical Corps, started to inspect me and gave nurses instructions about the bandages. One of the nurses asked my permission to have a look at my decorations in the handkerchief, and told the Major: ‘Look how many decorations he has.’ The Major asked me how long I had been at the front, and I answered that I started in 1943, was lightly wounded but never went further than the Brigade’s medical platoon. ‘Yeah, ‘ he said, ‘For the first time in this war I see a Lieutenant, a platoon leader and a company commander, also a tank rider, who was seriously wounded for the first time after two years at the front.’ They bandaged me and the Major said that I should again come and see him at lunch, and then they took me to my room. I put on my old uniform that had already been ‘fried’. They put me in a hospital room that had three beds. The hospital was located in a three- or four-storey building. I think that it had been an apartment house before, but the German inhabitants had abandoned it with the approach of the Soviet troops. The beds had linen, a pillow and a blanket. As Lieutenant Guschenkov would tell me, it would be good if I was lightly wounded, go into a hospital to sleep on a clean bed with clean sheets! This was exactly the place that he wished for me.