Tank Rider: Into the Reich with the Red Army

Of course we could stay at the road crossing, but we could no longer contain the enemy – the Germans needed ways of retreat, and they would have merely squashed us with tanks, as we could not dig proper trenches. Nevertheless, we fulfilled the order of the battalion commander and held the positions almost till noon withdrawing only on Burkov’s order. It was hard to carry Maxim Tarasovich: the soldiers had to take turns very often. Soldiers drew my attention to footprints of Germans jackboots on the snow – the soles of their jackboots were covered with large nails. The footprints went deep into the forest. We sent out a squad to find a further road to Bobzha and followed the squad at some distance, but did not encounter any Germans. Then we reached the well-rolled road that went to that village and curved to the right along forest edge. We were planning to check who was in the village, when a truck appeared on the road. The driver of the truck was an officer whom I knew. He told us that the village was occupied by our forces – the 2nd and the 3rd battalions of the Brigade, while behind a hill, in another village he had seen 1st battalion commander Kozienko.

I asked him to drive Burkov to the medical platoon, as the driver knew Burkov as well. We put Burkov into the back of the truck, and I sent some soldiers as escort, and the truck left, while Lieutenant Mochalov, the machine-gun platoon leader and I went on to the battalion with our men. The soldiers, as well as Vasily Mochalov and I, were happy to have survived that hellish merry-go-round. We were walking on the road in a crowd, laughing and making jokes with each other. I lost my feeling of alertness, which happened to me quite rarely; if there had been an ambush, they would have slaughtered us all in no time. Several soldiers even drove on abandoned German motorcycles without fuel – they rolled down the hill very well even without the engine working.

The battalion met us fully armed, it turned out they mistook us for Germans. As they told me, they were about to open fire on us, but saw two tall guys – me and especially Mochalov – we called him a ‘beanpole’ because of his height. They were happy to see us, as they thought we had been killed at the road crossing.

I started my report about the battle at that road crossing and the entire situation to the battalion commander. I also reported that I had fulfilled his order to hold the road crossing till dawn. First of all I reported Captain Burkov’s wound and where they had sent him on a vehicle. The battalion’s political officer, Gerstein, and the battalion’s doctor, Senior Lieutenant Pankova, who was Burkov’s wife, immediately went to the medical platoon. They came back after some time and informed us that Captain Maxim Tarasovich Burkov had passed away. He was 25 years old. It was a big loss for the battalion. A warrior, an officer, who had been in the war from its very first day, a decent person, a brave and good comrade and commander, was dead. In my memory he will remain as a tall, physically strong and cheerful person that never lost heart. His wife, Praskovia Pankova was expecting a baby at that time, and Maxim Burkov’s son was only born after his death…

The 2nd company commander Senior Lieutenant Shtokolov, being drunk, was heavily wounded in that village. He liked to drink and he drank a lot. He was wounded because of his own stupidity. As Alexander Guschenkov told me, the drunken Shtokolov grabbed a submachine-gun and started to fire on an abandoned German APC, and the APC just exploded. Shtokolov was seriously wounded along with several others. This is how it was at the front – bravery was sometimes next to stupidity. Besides that, eyewitnesses told that in Bobzha village the ‘Slavs’ overslept the arrival of retreating German units that broke into the village at night. The battle lasted all night till dawn. The 3rd battalion of our Brigade under command of Major Alexander Grigorievich Chuyah as well as the tanks of our Brigade’s tank regiment saved the situation. The enemy forces were thrown back with heavy casualties and the situation was restored, but our losses were also high. The only conclusion is that you can sleep, but one eye has to stay open and one ear should still hear. It was war. Our battalion had been sent to another village from Bobzha and did not have losses.