Tank Rider: Into the Reich with the Red Army

Our company commander was Senior Lieutenant Suleimenov, a Kazakh, physically strong and an excellent training officer. The company had four platoons, 30 cadets in each platoon. The academy had a total of 20 companies (5 battalions). Lieutenant Khrapovitski was leader of my platoon, the 1st, and Lieutenant Ilyin led the 2nd platoon. I forget the names of the other two platoon leaders. The majority of cadets in the 1st and the 2nd platoons were Muscovites, while the 3rd and the 4th platoons mostly had local men from the Urals and adjacent areas.

The head of the academy was the kombrig (pre-war and early war Red Army rank that corresponds to Major-General – translator’s comment) (he had one diamond on his collar tab), though the army had already introduced general ranks. We saw him quite rarely, mostly during parades, which we only had two or three times during our stay in the academy. They said that he was just recently released from jail. He had been arrested as a former officer of the Tsar’s Army, as had happened with Rokossovski, Marshal of Soviet Union, and General Gorbatov.

In mid-December, 1941, our company was sent to a winter camp outside the city, where we lived in dugouts and slept on two-level plank-beds. There was no running water there, we had to wash ourselves with snow after the physical exercises, which we had to do outside in any frost, and by morning temperatures dropped to as low as minus 30–35 degrees Celsius! We skied 18 kilometres to banya three times a month (a banya is a traditional Russian steam bath – translator’s note). We also studied drill and ceremonies: ceremonial step, turning to left, right, around and saluting (at that time they called it greeting each other and the commanders). We studied weapons, service and field manuals. We also studied tactics – we rehearsed attacks on the enemy, as well as platoon and company action in defence. Sometimes we had range practice. After a month or a month and a half we returned to barracks in the city.