Tank Rider: Into the Reich with the Red Army

At dawn, or rather, early in the morning, we ran into the Germans – infantry and two or three tanks (Tigers and Panthers). A battle commenced. Tanks opened fire from both sides. The 76-mm guns of our Brigade’s artillery battalion also opened fire, some guns were set to fire with open sights. Lieutenant Shakulo and I led our platoons in assault. We both commanded our platoons: ‘Get up, for the Motherland, forward, run!’ We picked ourselves up for the Motherland and ran forward together with everyone. It was good that we did not have to run far – the enemy was less than 100 metres from us.

We rushed into the outskirts of the village, some of the German soldiers were killed, the rest fled. Artillery knocked out one German tank; the second one left the village together with the infantry, while the third one stayed where it was, abandoned by its crew. Its front armour plate had the marks of our shells and its armour was cracked on the side. Apparently it had run out of fuel. Such was the attack.

Every soldier’s action in assault can be considered an heroic deed: it is heroism to attack under machine-gun and artillery and mortar fire from the enemy, not knowing whether you will survive or not. One had to have a lot of stoicism, bravery and courage to overcome all this and drive the Fritzes out of their positions. Kill or be killed – this is the only law of war. It is a scary thing to assault the enemy, you have to overcome your fear, overcome yourself, get up from the ground, get up and make at least the first step to get as close as possible, in short rushes or sneaking on the ground. It is very hard, and then you rush towards the enemy, who concentrates his fire on you. First you run, but sometimes you do not have enough breath to run all the way to the enemy’s trenches, especially across a ploughed field. Then not only can’t you run, but it is hard even to walk, especially in springtime, when your feet sink deep in wet soil. As a rule, though, attacking soldiers will always try to run and at the same time fire at the enemy from submachine-guns, even if they cannot see him. This has a psychological impact on the enemy, so I always ordered my soldiers to fire on the move.

After we had rushed into the village under enemy fire and halted for a short break, I learnt that my friend Lieutenant Petr Shakulo was wounded. Petr was not very lucky: in every operation he would get wounded. Our tanks arrived – they managed to knock out another tank, which was burning in the village, and we moved on with our mission. It was the morning of 24 March, 1944. Besides company commander Titov and I, the company had only one officer left – machine-gun platoon leader, Lieutenant Kolosov.

In the second half of that day, the German air force delivered a strong raid against our battalion and tanks. I rarely saw our fighter planes. The Germans bombed us very often, but the fighters never covered us. The anti-aircraft machine-guns of the brigade were a futile weapon against the German air force; they were simply afraid of opening fire on the Germans, as they feared they would be destroyed. Ground-attack aircraft would support us, bombers would do so more rarely, but I only saw our fighter planes during the Orel operation. A lot has been written and said about there being no fighters in 1941 and 1942, but they were not even there in 1944, when the Germans were strafing at 50 metres altitude, massacring people and tanks. They said that there were no airfields for our fighters. Maybe this was so, but the explanation did not make our life easier. At that time we did not think anything bad about our air force, we were proud of them, we were happy to see them ‘working’ on the enemy. Only at the end of my life did I start to ask questions: why hadn’t our fighters protected us from the enemy’s air force during our marches?