Tank Rider: Into the Reich with the Red Army

The march was quiet, we did not participate in any action on the way from Sambor to Sandomir bridgehead. Even the Luftwaffe did not disturb us. We completed our 200 kilometres’ march, reached the Vistula by 15 August and safely crossed the river on a bridge of boats. The German air force constantly bombed the bridge, but at the time when we were crossing, the Luftwaffe was not there. We were lucky.

Our Brigade’s task, as well as task of the entire Tank Army, was to assist the units holding the Sandomir bridgehead. However, the heavy fighting companies of all battalions of the Brigade had suffered significant losses in personnel, and the tank regiment had lost many tanks and other equipment. Our company had fifteen or twenty men left, and other companies did not fare better, some even had less. After crossing the Vistula we advanced into the bridgehead and stopped in a young forest, setting up tents. We did not have anything to go into action with – neither tanks nor soldiers.

Several days later we received insignificant replacement personnel from hospitals and rear units. The men that joined the company were of different ages, most of them were older, the bulk of them had never seen battle, and some of them did not know how to handle a submachine-gun. It was not a nice gift, as the saying goes. But we had to go into battle with them, so we trained them a lot. Chernyshov appeared, on 20 August he took over the company, while I returned to my second platoon. Two companies were formed in the battalion. There were not enough men to form the 3rd company. All in all, we were given no more than a week to form the units.

For the first time at the front they screened a film for us – Two soldiers. However, we did not have a chance to finish watching it - a kukuruznik, or corn plane (this is what we called a U-2 plane) (the name probably comes from the joke that those planes could not fly higher than corn – translator’s comment), flew by, the pilot turned off the engine and shouted to us through loudspeaker: ‘Slavs, turn off the film! The Germans are about to deliver an artillery strike!’ Everyone dispersed very quickly. The pilot was right, after some time the Germans hit the place with artillery fire. We finished watching that film after the war, in the autumn of 1945 in Vesprem, Hungary. They did not show any more movies to us at the front. I rarely saw artists or war correspondents or mobile shops during my time at the front. Just once, in June 1944 when we were at Kopychintsy, an army ensemble came to visit us, that was about it for cultural activities in our 49th Mechanized Brigade. All of a sudden a military shop appeared on Sandomir bridgehead. Once squad leaders, led by Sergeant Pavel Poddubny, walked up to me and asked me if I had money. I gave them some money, but I do not remember how much. I could not have had a lot of money, as my salary was 900 roubles, out of which 700 I sent to my parents through bank transfer, and I had to pay party membership fees and do some other payments, leaving around 100 roubles for myself. So, when the military shop arrived, it turned out that those guys bought a couple of Troinoi (brand name – translator’s note) eau-de-colognes and some other small things. They invited me to their tent and proposed drinking the eau-de-cologne. It would have been nice to have a drink, but my stomach would not take eaude-cologne, and the men drank it themselves.

In late August, about the 26th, the Brigade was transferred to the front sector where the Germans were pressurizing the infantry units of the army. We had to stop the enemy and throw him back to the initial positions. Our battalion, as well as the Brigade in general, was seriously weakened; other units of our army also suffered significant losses, but a tank army is a tank army, it is not a needle in a stack of needles, so our arrival was not left unnoticed by the Germans. The very fact of our arrival deterred the enemy. We were happy that the German air force was almost not present – they either were exhausted or transferred from Sandomir bridgehead to another front sector. However, German artillery was very active instead, and the worst part was that they opened more or less accurate fire with largecalibre shells. However, we successfully camouflaged our positions, made to dig in and did not have losses from that barrage.

On an evening in late August 1944 the company received an order to move to the attack position, closer to the German lines and wait for the order to assault the nearest hill. As far as I remember, another platoon leader in the company was Lieutenant Gavrilov. I led the first platoon, Sergeant Savkin led the second and Gavrilov led the third one. The company that was supposed to have 100 men had not more than 40 soldiers.