Tank Rider: Into the Reich with the Red Army

We continued to survive on ‘grandmother’s rations’ – that is, on the food provided by the villagers. After the town of Skalat the brigade left the Western Ukraine and again marched in the eastern part of Ukraine, where the local population was happy to see us, often meeting us with tears of joy in their eyes. If we rushed through a village without stopping, villagers would throw loaves of bread and lard to us; we always shared this food with the tank crews. Several times in good weather we were bombed, but all worked out fine: in such cases we would quickly jump down from the tanks, scattering in all directions from the road. Tanks would also leave the road, trying to find some natural shelter – in a ravine, a depression, even stopping in the shade of a tree, as it was harder to be spotted under a tree. In daytime, during short halts, we normally parked tanks in the shade of a house or a barn. We camouflaged not only the tanks, but also trucks and other vehicles, and soldiers tried not to wander too much around the village. Sometimes we even asked the villagers not to stoke their stoves, as smoke from chimneys could draw the attention of the German air force. Germans had an all-weather scout plane that we called a ‘frame’ (this is the German Focke Wulf FW 189 artillery observer’s and scout plane; some Russians also called it a ‘crutch’ – translator’s note). It was a two-fuselage aircraft, which would normally fly at high altitudes and had good optics. When a frame appeared, every activity froze on our territory, otherwise, if the frame spotted anything, the bombers of the enemy arrived. Soviet fighters would rarely engage the frame, because at its altitude and with its speed the frame would quickly disappear.

Our Tank Army, including our 49th Mechanized Brigade, was deep in the rear of the enemy. The Germans put up resistance only in isolated points along the line of our advance. There would be days when we saw no Germans at all, or they would try to stop our advance with hastily set-up defences, which we broke without any difficulties. They put up significant resistance in the fight for town of Gusyatin, on 22 and 23 March, 1944. Our 1st motor rifle battalion, and of course our company, took part in the town’s liberation. During the night of 23 March, when the enemy was driven out of the city, Petr Shakulo and I stopped at the town’s outskirts, where we settled in several huts to give some rest to the soldiers.

We could barely stand on our feet from exhaustion, as all day long we had walked on foot, eliminating separate pockets of resistance. Tanks did not always help us in those encounters, as they supported other battalions of our brigade. In darkness and in action we lost communication with company commander Titov and battalion commander Kozienko, as well as other companies of the battalion. Communication and co-ordination is the cornerstone in every action and one should never lose communication, but we were happy to have some rest after driving Germans out of the city. We decided that we would gain understanding of the situation at dawn, so we did not look for the company commander. Just in case, we put guards at the hut and arranged shifts. Night came, we managed to heat up the stove, took off our wet greatcoats and boots in order to dry our puttees and fell fast asleep. Late at night the guard, who went into the hut to warm up a bit, heard a knocking on the door. The guard opened the door, and heard German language, shouted ‘Germans! Germans!’ and opened submachine-gun fire.

Other soldiers woke up; many of them made it outside the hut and also opened fire. However, the Germans managed to disappear, shouting ‘Ivanen! Ivanen!’ – this is what they called us, the Red Army soldiers.