Tank Rider: Into the Reich with the Red Army

A heavy thunderstorm started in the afternoon of the next day, and rain poured down. The company posted observers and soldiers hid in their shallow trenches, covered with rain capes. The night was pitch dark, nothing could be seen even at short distances. It was on that night that the Germans quietly attacked the battalion. It was quite untypical of the Germans, they rarely attacked at night, especially in such bad weather. Apparently, the battalion position was also important for the Fritzes. In flashes of lightning our observers spotted the Germans and opened fire, but it was too late, the Germans were already among the trenches and they rushed into the battalion defences. The soldiers could not put up proper resistance – they jumped out of the trenches and ran back towards the rear, but the Germans ran together with them. All the soldiers were mixed up, you could only see who was who in the lightning. The battalion’s soldiers (two companies, 20 to 30 men each), reached the initial lines in their ‘cross country race’ and stopped there. The Germans did not advance further, digging in almost at the forest edge. With the end of the thunderstorm and dawn, our company put itself in order and counted losses. We did have losses, but they were amazingly low.

An order to recapture the positions that we fled from came from the Brigade’s commander. A Katyusha battery (four vehicles) arrived to support the battalion. Soldiers had a chance to dry themselves after a horrible rain shower and prepare for an offensive during the day. The battalion commander ordered everyone from the battalion’s support units into the attacking line. As he said: ‘Send everyone, except for Bessonov.’ Junior Lieutenant Burkov, deputy battalion commander arrived to see that the order was fulfilled. Those support unit men that did not have weapons received them and some 25 or 30 of them were sent to the battalion companies.

I had a chance to see the Katyusha rocket launchers, their equipment for launching and aiming. As I have written before, they did not aim very accurately, twice I saw them hitting friendly troops, not the enemy. One time, at Dobropolie village, they hit positions of my platoon. It was a horrible weapon. If I am not mistaken, each vehicle (rocket launcher) carried 16 rockets (1.8 metres long), that made 64 rockets per battery, and they were all fired in one instance. The sound of their launch was quite loud.

In the afternoon Katyushas fired on the Germans; after the completion of the salvo the battalion launched the attack and quickly captured the trenches that it had had to abandon in the evening, during the thunderstorm. As some participants of the assault told me, the Katyusha salvo destroyed almost all the Germans. There was no resistance from the German side – there was simply no one left to fight. The positions were regained. That was it.

After several days the Germans calmed down, stopped their attacks and went on the defensive. In mid-September (15 to 17) we handed over our sector to a general army unit. We were transferred to the second echelon of the first Ukrainian front for replenishments in personnel, military hardware and equipment. During the operation that had lasted around two months, we had travelled 600 kilometres, in many cases we had to fight our way through. We liberated many settlements, including the cities of Lvov, Bobrka, Zolochev, Peremyshlyany and others. Our 6th Guards Mechanized Corps was awarded for the Lvov-Sandomir operation, mostly for liberation of Lvov – the Corps received an honorary title of ‘Lvov’, while our 49th Mechanized Brigade was awarded with the Order of Bogdan Khmelnitski. The Lvov-Sandomir operation was over for us.

PREPARATIONS FOR THE PUSH WEST