Tank Rider: Into the Reich with the Red Army

Near Sambor we dismounted the tanks at a forest edge. We received an order and the direction of advance; our companies deployed in a line and quickly walked forward. The enemy was not seen, no one fired on us – apparently, the Germans did not expect our assault in this area. We reached a village. Behind the village was a wheat field, on the river Dniester, and on the other bank of the river we saw a city. From my point of view, the offensive was poorly organized. Even now, recalling those fights, I cannot understand why it was so. No one knew where the enemy was, there was no reconnaissance done by the Brigade or its battalions. ‘Forward!’ – and that was it, we were supposed to hope for the best after that. Oh, this hoping for the best! The entire battalion, or to be more precise, what remained of it, almost got slaughtered.

The company reached the village, which only had one street, and we had to check the houses just in case. A threatening silence hung in the air. I was used to relying on intuition, and I did not believe that there weren’t any Fritzes in the houses. Machine-gun platoon leader Lieutenant Petr Malyutin from our MG company, however, did not agree with me, saying: ‘There are no Fritzes in the village, because it is quiet.’ It was this very quietness that scared me. I was about to send a squad of soldiers to check what was going on in the village, when Malyutin went out to the middle of the road and started to inspect the village through binoculars. A shot sounded – the bullet hit him right between the eyes and the binoculars fell apart into two pieces. Lieutenant Petr Nikolaevich Malyutin was killed on the spot. He was older than we were – he was around 36 years old; we dubbed him either ‘grandfather’ or ‘old man’.

There were no more shots; soldiers hid behind the huts, not daring to go out in the street. We did not attack the village at all. The battalion commander sent an order to advance towards the river in order to capture the bridge across the Dniester and further towards the city, leaving the village alone. We said, to hell with those Germans in the village, they would have had to retreat anyway when we captured the bridge. An order is an order, so I left the village with my soldiers and we quickly advanced across a field to the river. As soon as we got 100 to 150 metres away from that ill-fated village, we saw a line of Germans attacking us from the rear. The Germans walked openly and fired submachine-guns at our line. To be honest, we were lost when we saw the German attacking line behind us. Despite of all soldiers being experienced and having been in all kinds of troubles, we were taken aback.

I did not lose self-control and shouted to my soldiers: ‘Fire on the Fritzes, fire!’ I also shouted to the Maxim machine-gun crew: ‘Turn the machine-gun and fire on the Fritzes!’ I was not even shouting, I was yelling at the top of my lungs. Many soldiers opened fire, while the others ran from the enemy’s line, retreated and thus frustrated Tsikanovski’s machine-guns – they could not fire on our soldiers, of course.

Neither I nor the other officers managed to bring order and organize resistance, no matter how hard we tried – soldiers dispersed, at least it was good that many fired on the Fritzes. When no more soldiers were left in front of me, I also ran along the hillside to the road and lay in a ditch. I saw a light DP machine-gun, some soldier dropped it in panic, so that he could run faster – I grabbed it and opened fire on the line of German soldiers, as there was ammo in the drum.

As I fired, my garrison cap fell from my head, I put it back on and continued to fire, before I ran out of ammo. I did not have my own submachine-gun with me, although it would have been nice to have it in that moment. When I ran out of ammo, I withdrew, sometimes sneaking and sometimes in short rushes to the rear, where the fighters ran, or rather, frightened soldiers, one could not call them fighters – they had got scared by a bunch of 40 or 50 Germans! Later they said that there was also an APC, but they must have lied – the eyes of fear see danger everywhere.

Our group was not larger than the German one, though, but we had Maxim heavy machine-guns, although they ceased fire quite soon. It was either due to my fire or that of some stoic soldiers, but the Germans did not pursue us and quickly left towards the bridge, carrying their dead and wounded – apparently, our fire on them had been successful.