Tank Rider: Into the Reich with the Red Army

We inspected several other houses, in a brick one we found the locals, who had gathered in that house from other buildings, more vulnerable to shelling. Our scout party came back, reporting the absence of Germans in the nearest houses. Other soldiers, who volunteered to examine the surrounding area, also came back. They spotted a German airfield close to us, but the enemy had abandoned it. The soldiers brought some food staples – mostly all kinds of canned food.

Night passed well; on the next day we did not receive any instructions from the battalion commander, and we were happy. Of course, we should have entered the city instead of having a rest, but we were exhausted and did not know anything about the enemy. We were all tired from our march to Lvov and especially tired of the enemy’s air force. German pilots strafed low, almost at ground level, firing their machine-guns and raining their bombs on us. They did all they could to prevent our advance, while we could only repel the aircraft with small arms fire. The effectiveness of this fire was the same as the effectiveness of medicine given to the dead. And all of a sudden we were in a quiet place: no shooting, no bombing, no hunger either. It was nice and warm, summer time. It seemed like a resort to us, at least a nice holiday house for us.

The next day a sniper opened fire on us. As soon as someone appeared in an open place, a shot sounded. We could not spot his firing position for a long time. Finally, through binoculars we found out that a sniper had fired from the attic of a five-storey building. Late one afternoon volunteers secretly approached the building and went up to the attic, but the sniper was off and away, while neither I nor my soldiers were quick-witted enough to leave an ambush there. Most likely, he was not even a German, but a Ukrainian or Polish independence fighter on his own. He never reappeared.

Two or three days passed like this, and we were still hanging around in the city’s outskirts. Tsikanovski, Kashintsev and I were not brave enough to assault a huge city with half a company of soldiers – 30 or 35 people. The battalion commander did not bother us and we did not bother him, but all of a sudden company commander Senior Lieutenant Chernyshov arrived. It would have been better if he had never shown up. All he did was cause confusion and mess; later he again disappeared. Chernyshov made a decision to advance to the city centre; we advanced along one of the streets. At that instant a person in civilian dress appeared, who showed a Soviet passport and started to convince Chernyshov to advance faster to the city centre. Despite my admonitions not to trust the guy, he did not agree with me and ordered us to advance. An order is always an order, we had to comply, and we cautiously continued our advance along the street.

Before we could cross many streets, German infantry with two armoured personnel carriers showed up in our rear. It was as if they were waiting for us to go deeper into the city and then cut us off from the battalion staff. There was not much infantry, but the Germans were armed with machine-guns, the worst being the APCs with machine-guns; we did not have a weapon to combat them. The civilian disappeared, soldiers later told me that he ran to the Germans. The Germans opened a storm of fire from all types of weapons, mainly from machine-guns. We were not ready to strike back, but many soldiers kept their heads and returned fire. I do not remember how I ended up with a submachine-gun in my hands, but I also opened fire on a machine-gun crew from behind the fence.

However, we could not deliver a single attack, as we were separated by the street. Some soldiers fired individually, others ran away behind the houses, almost to our previous positions. Chernyshov ran back to the platoon, which was in defence in the rear of the battalion HQ. He told me: ‘You manage things here yourself, while I go to see the battalion commander,’ and then disappeared. Somehow I organized the defence and calmed the soldiers down, suppressing the confusion.

It was amazing that we did not have losses, because there was no shelter except for the houses, and the doors were locked as a rule.

Sergeant Savkin showed stoicism and courage in that fight. This man was never at a loss and was always acting as platoon leader for Lieutenant Shakulo, when the latter was wounded, and he was trusted as an officer. In that fight Savkin with several soldiers had to keep the Germans at bay all day long. It was good that they hid behind a high metal mesh fence and the Germans could not overcome it under fire of our soldiers. The German APCs were also helpless.