Tank Rider: Into the Reich with the Red Army

Berlin’s garrison surrendered on 2 May. The unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany was signed in Karlhorst, a suburb of Berlin, on 9 May. The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR declared the day of 9 May VICTORY DAY.

The Major of the Medical Corps, the head of one of the hospital’s departments, did release me from the hospital before the end of the war. Finally, on 12 May, I was officially discharged from the hospital along with several other soldiers from our company, including my orderly Drozd. On all kinds of transport, sometimes by train, sometimes on bicycles, or hitchhiking, we started our journey to Prague. In Dresden we stole a car. The cars were gathered in a square under guard of the local Soviet command, and we stole a car from under their noses. We did not enjoy the car ride for long, as we ran out of fuel, and we had to abandon it on the highway. We travelled, hitchhiking on a truck almost all the way to Prague and arrived at the battalion on 13 or 14 May, 1945.

Most of the battalion’s officers were happy to see me, except for the battalion’s command, as if I had not fought under their command for almost two years. I managed to obtain by request spirits from the logistics platoon leader and we organized a small party to celebrate both Victory and my return. Lieutenants Guschenkov, Mikheev, Tsikanovski, Popov, Kes, Zemtsev, Senior Lieutenants Chernyshov and Kashintsev, platoon leader Lieutenant Ivan Akazin (he arrived in the company after I was wounded) and others, including the company’s Sergeant Major Mikhail Bratchenko, were present. Lieutenant Petr Shakulo was still recovering from his wounds in a hospital. By the way, the first ones to be transferred to the reserve because of wounds in September and October 1945, were Alexander Guschenkov and Ivan Akazin. Alexander was already 31 years old in 1945 and he had some seven or eight wounds, so he tried his best to leave the army, while Ivan’s right wrist did not function properly again after his wound.

We partied for a long time; someone made a trip to a Czech village and brought more wine, vodka and snacks. I think we partied till dawn – some people were coming, some were leaving, while some were sobering up and coming back to the table. For some reason they had not had a party without me, they were always busy in battles. The war for the battalion was over on 11 May – they had to finish some Germans off after 9 May. Most of the battalion’s soldiers were liberated prisoners of war, Soviet people from concentration camps that abounded around Berlin. We were all happy that we survived, but at the same time we grieved about the dead. As they told me, after my wound at Ketzin the battalion had an order to capture Potsdam; on 27 April, together with the 2nd and the 3rd battalions, they took part in capturing Brandenburg and then had to repel attacks of German units, that were trying to break out of Berlin. Besides that, they also had to repel attacks from the west, from Wenck’s 12th Army, which abandoned its positions against the English and American forces and had been ordered to break through to Berlin to relieve its garrison. After capturing Brandenburg on 6 May, 1945, the Brigade as a part of the 4th Guards Tank Army, carried out a forced march to Czechoslovakia, to Prague, which our Army liberated on 9 May. It was there, in a forest in vicinity of Prague that I found my battalion after my return from hospital.

Our Brigade travelled 450 kilometres during the Berlin operation in the nine days of the offensive, from 16 to 24 April from the Neisse to the western outskirts of Berlin, at an average speed of 40 or 50 kilometres a day. We suffered significant casualties in those battles, but destroyed the German units that stood in our way. Many Soviet prisoners of war that we liberated took an active part in those last battles, replacing our casualties. My cousin, the son of my father’s sister, Alexander Georgievich Fedorov, was in the prisoner-of-war camp at Luckenwalde. In early spring of 1941 he was drafted into the Red Army as a construction officer in the rank of a Technical-Intendant, a rank equivalent to Lieutenant. In autumn of 1941 he was taken prisoner at Vyazma, where three Soviet armies, around 300,000 men, were surrounded. I have already mentioned that we, our battalion, rushed through Luckenwalde at night and did not stop there. After the war he served for some time in the 16th Guards Mechanized Brigade of our 6th Guards Corps, and in June he visited our battalion, but did not meet me, as I was away doing something on the battalion commander’s order. I also went to visit him in his unit, but did not find him there – he had already been sent to the USSR. There were no complaints about Alexander’s behaviour in German captivity, and in September 1945 he went back home to Smolensk, where he had lived before the war.