Tank Rider: Into the Reich with the Red Army

Captain Burkov asked me: ‘What do you think, will we make it alive from here or Germans will crush us here?’ What could I, a 21-year-old Lieutenant, answer to this? As far as I remember, in order to calm both of us down, I said: ‘Let’s sit under the tank till dawn, it is not much time left, and we will see then! We will complete the mission. We will retreat to the hill which is behind us.’ After that we had a smoke. Officers at the front received Kazbek (Russian brand name – translator’s note) cigarettes or light tobacco in packs. I rarely smoked, but in hard situations I normally smoked mahorka (tobacco for handrolling issued to enlisted men – translator’s note), giving my good tobacco away to those who preferred good tobacco and cigarettes.

We were just a handful of soldiers at the crossing, while the enemy concentrated both tanks and infantry against us. Of course, we could not put up stubborn resistance. But the tanks did not attack us, and we with Mochalov’s machine-guns were able to throw attacking German infantry back all night long. Germans, as a rule, would not attack during the night, they only attacked at dawn or in daytime, so I thought (and I shared this with Burkov), that the Germans would attack en masse at dawn. Apparently, the enemy simply did not yet know what forces he was facing, it was impossible to see at nighttime, but with the coming of dawn the Germans would attack with all their strength. They had to capture the road crossing in order to retreat to the west and avoid destruction by other Red Army units. Our infantry was not a problem for German tanks, 76 mm guns were also too weak, while our two broken-down tanks could not fire and would be knocked out right away by the Tigers.

Before morning Captain Burkov made a decision to withdraw to the hill which was behind us, behind the road. ‘Let’s say good bye to each other: apparently the Germans will not let us leave this road crossing alive. The dawn will come and Fritzes’ tanks will crush us.’ This he said to me. Before it grew lighter we withdrew our artillery and then ourselves went to the hill, following our guns. Having completed this manoeuvre, we wanted to dig in at the hill, but the soil there was also too hard, and we just lay down on the ground. It was growing light, and we had to watch out. Our two tanks also arrived – they safely hid behind the hill, as the reverse slope of the hill was steeper than the one facing the Germans.

At dawn the Germans started their attacks on the hill. At least ten German tanks impudently attacked our positions. Yes, things looked bad for us. A line of attacking German infantry was walking across the field on our left flank, on our right flank there was also a battle – we could hear machine-gun bursts and gunfire. It was hard to understand what was going on over there. The Germans destroyed one of our tanks, the one that could not rotate the turret, on that hill. The second tank was firing on the Tigers and even made them stop half way up the slope. The battle intensified. We thought that reinforcements had arrived, but everything was mixed up and we could not tell where the enemy and where the friendly troops were. Then Burkov ordered us to withdraw the artillery into the forest, while we stayed on the hill, which did not have any place to hide in. Then he gave us an order to retreat as well. It was only later that I understood that Burkov ordered us to retreat to the forest in order to save soldiers’ lives, to save them for future battles… Before we reached the forest edge, Burkov was heavily wounded – he was standing on the step of a truck, and was hurt when the driver accidentally passed too close to a tree. We laid him on a rain cape and carried him along forest edge toward Bobzha village, from which Kozienko sent me to the road crossing and ordered to hold it till dawn. I fulfilled the order – it was already morning.