Tank Rider: Into the Reich with the Red Army

The roads were covered with mines, blocked with barricades and heaps of rubbish, especially in built up areas and in front of them, as well as under railway and road bridges, which had high embankments. They used Panzerfausts against our tanks. Battles raged during day and night without any break and this was seriously exhausting.

The Germans were afraid of us Russian soldiers. Sometimes we saw unfinished hot meals in houses, cattle was abandoned in barns. There were cases when entire families – two or three persons – would commit suicide and hang themselves, afraid of Russian revenge. Most of the villages that we captured were empty; we swept through some of them without combat, as the Germans had quickly abandoned them, but sometimes they would leave Panzerfaust teams behind to destroy our tanks. I prohibited my soldiers from eating the food that was left on the tables, as I was afraid that it had been poisoned. Whenever possible, we cooked our food ourselves – there was enough food left in German houses, or we ate pickled and preserved food that we found in cellars – one could find a lot of food there. In general, we didn’t starve. We were quite cautious with wine, vodka and other spirits; for a joke we first asked Alexander Guschenkov to drink it, and when we saw that he was all right, we would drink it too. My orderly Drozd always had alcohol in his canteen instead of water – I tried to prevent him many times, but it was useless. Both Petr Shakulo and I were not big fans of alcohol, and generally there were few hard drinkers in the battalion, but there were some – Alexander Guschenkov, Yuri Grigoriev and Grigori Shtokolov.

Alexander Guschenkov was a good comrade of mine, he was almost ten years older than me. He did not have a better attitude than anyone else, but he always shared all things he had with me and never forgot about me. He was just the right type of comrade. It was he who hoped I would be lightly wounded – to stay for some time in a hospital on a bed with white linen, not in trenches on the ground next to the fire.

Despite the German resistance, our battalion’s and the Brigade’s advance was successful. The newcomers fought well, although their training had been short. I did not have anything to complain about. Pre-empting the events that followed, I note that from 16 to 25 April, 1945, we advanced some 450 kilometres through Germany in nine days. The Germans definitely had fewer tanks – they must have lost them in previous heated battles against our troops. However, their shortage of tanks was to some extent compensated for by Panzerfausts and assault guns – the self-propelled artillery pieces with weak armour. However, the enemy’s air force was active, and it remained so for some time and we were hit hard many times.

On 18 April my platoon, three tanks and Lieutenant Fedor Popov with his machine-gun platoon were in the Brigade’s vanguard and were crossing the Spree river in a narrow and shallow place. The other shore was very steep and the tanks stopped at the shore, unable to drive further. I walked up the steep bank with my soldiers and walked forward a bit, but we were pinned down by intensive machine-gun fire from Fritzes. All of a sudden I heard a rude commanding voice from a ditch or a trench: ‘Lieutenant, why the hell are you lying here, go forward, get the men to assault!’ I looked and saw that it was Colonel Koretski – at that time he was commander of the 6th Mechanized Corps. How on earth did he end up in front of our troops? He must have just got lost. Apparently, I was more scared of Vasily Ignatievich Koretski than the Germans – I jumped up like crazy and literally threw myself forward with a cry ‘Get up, follow me, assault, forward!’ The platoon’s soldiers opened fire; all stood up like one and assaulted the enemy.