Tank Rider: Into the Reich with the Red Army

What could I do? I could not carry the pig 70 kilometres back! I called Savkin and shook my fist at him. He just said: ‘I’m sorry!’ Anyway, we were all hungry. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘Fry the pig, and do it fast, the order to move on can come any time.’ To be short, we fried a lot of pork on a stove in a house (the owners were not there). We ate all we could eat and fed the battalion commander with his staff, as well as the tank crews. We finished the pig and fed everyone that walked up to us. My soldier Shamrai cooked the food – he was a partisan from the Lvov area and a cook in civilian life. It is a pity that he was killed in Potsdam. At that moment a ‘mount the tanks’ order came, and we again moved ahead at high speed.

There were cases when I slept so well during the night that I did not even wake up during the small night clashes with the Germans that occurred in some villages. The soldiers sympathized with me and did not wake me up; the squad leaders could manage by themselves – if necessary, they fired on the move. During the day we sometimes ran into horse-drawn supply columns. All the personnel and their escorts were dressed in German uniforms. Among them there were all nationalities except for the Russians – Kalmyks, Uzbeks, Tatars, Kazakhs, people from the Caucasus and Poles. Apparently, the Germans did not trust the Russians and did not allow them to serve in supply units. We had different attitudes towards those men, but we did not show cruelty, did not abuse them and did not execute them. I think once we fought a supply column of Kalmyks and soldiers of other nationalities, as they tried to resist – they lost their heads and opened fire on us, and my soldiers did not like it. War is war. I never saw Russians or Ukrainians in supply columns, but met Vlasov’s men in battle many times. They always put up stubborn resistance and besides that shouted all kinds of offensive curses at us. They knew that there would be no mercy, and we did not give it – we never took them prisoners. Besides, they never surrendered, unlike the Germans.

Sometimes tanks broke down and had to stop for small repairs. In such cases the tank riders would as a rule stay with the tank. But if a tank needed more serious repair, the tank riders would travel along on another tank. One of our tanks broke down, and Sergeant Nikolai Savkin with his squad stayed in that village. Retreating Fritzes entered the village after we left and burnt the tank in battle. Savkin himself was killed, along with his men, among them Bespalyuk, Polischuk and others… That’s how it was, there were no major engagements, but platoons had fewer and fewer soldiers left…

We went through the whole of Poland fighting constantly. Sometimes the enemy put up stubborn resistance, while sometimes our arrival in a city or a village was totally unexpected for the Germans. One village still had electric lights and even a policeman on a street crossing when we drove in. At first he did not understand which tanks these were, but as soon as we drove closer, he realized who we were and ran away from his post, he was off like a flash. I have already mentioned that Germans run very fast.

I also remember the following incident. We stopped after a march at a detached house, and the soldiers decided to go into one of them to get warm. It was dark and quiet in the house. As soon as some five men walked into the house, several shots sounded in the air. The soldiers ran out of the house, one of them was lightly wounded, there was blood all over his face. I was standing at the house next to a tank, and my soldiers reported to me what had happened. I ordered them to toss hand-grenades through the windows, but then we changed our mind – we might also kill our own soldiers. We rushed into the house and opened fire with submachine-guns and illuminated it with flashlights. We found two men and a woman in the house: they were Poles, and we asked them who had fired. They answered that those were Schwabs, i.e., Germans, and pointed at the attic. We found two Germans there, they had both been killed in the exchange of fire. The Poles informed us that one of them was Lieutenant Colonel and the second was a Captain. The Lieutenant Colonel was the city’s commandant, while the Captain was his deputy. The Poles told me that they were afraid to warn us, as the Germans threatened to execute them. The soldiers stayed in the house, while I went away and left them alone, especially as a ‘mount the tanks’ order came and we again moved on forward to the west.

In general, our battalion’s and the Brigade’s actions deep in German rear in winter 1945 were a military success. I do not know about the other companies, but our company did not have high casualties. The Brigade was moving forward at high speed and as a result we were at a significant distance from the Field Army’s infantry units. We had certain difficulties because of this – in particular, it was harder to supply tanks with fuel and ammo.