Tank Rider: Into the Reich with the Red Army

This was the manner in which we started our slow advance towards the enemy. We reached a fruit garden, the fruit trees were in full blossom – it was late April and the weather in Germany was warm. Behind the garden there was an open field, which continued all the way to a village. Popov’s platoon and our company did not go further but lay down in the orchard. The enemy’s snipers were delivering aimed rifle fire. The tanks also stopped, fearing Panzerfaust attack. They did not want to die, but did we, the infantry, want to? As it turned out later, there were no Panzerfausts there, just eight or twelve snipers. Popov’s machine-gun platoon opened fire on the forest edge, and half of the company, some twelve or fourteen soldiers rushed to assault on my command, while approximately the same number of men gave them fire support. There was an open field up to the forest. The soldiers ran into the German trenches, and killed some of them; others fled, while one Fritz was taken prisoner. The Fritz was a stubborn one; when my soldier ran up to his trench, he fired at him at point-blank range, but luckily, only lightly wounded him in his forearm. They pulled the Fritz out of his foxhole and brought him to me; he was armed with a sniper rifle. I was stressed and angry after the assault and shouted at the German, mostly in Russian, and then hit him twice on his ear. They bandaged our wounded soldier. This was a strong and brave soldier, a former Ukrainian partisan. He would normally fire from his RPD (the Degtyarev infantry machine-gun) on the move during an assault. Normally we fired from that machinegun lying on the ground, as it weighed 12.5 kilograms with the ammo drum. It is a pity that I forgot the name of the guy.

I started to interrogate the Fritz, as I knew a bit of German. He had fourteen decorations, and had received one decoration, the Iron Cross, personally from the hands of Adolf Hitler. He had been fighting against the Red Army for a long time – a pure Nazi, member of the German Nazi party. He got another box on the ears from me. In general, I never beat up or harmed prisoners, but in this case I lost my self-control.

The main body of the Brigade arrived, including our battalion. I reported the results of the battle and the captured Fritz to the company and battalion commanders. Guys from the Brigade’s intelligence section came running to take the prisoner away, I told them to go to hell, but the battalion commander ordered me to give the prisoner to the intelligence officers, saying that it was Turkin’s order.

The Brigade did not go deeper into the forest, as it received a new order – to continue its attack in a different direction. As soon as the Brigade’s column formed on the road, Il-2 Shturmoviks appeared in the air. Apparently, they mistook us for Germans and started to deploy for attack, and they were at least 20 to 25 planes. Soldiers ran out into the field from the highway, waved their hats, hands and even shouted. We did not have recognition flares to show them that we were Russian. Finally, someone fired a green flare, then some more, and this saved us from big trouble. The group leader realized that we were friendly troops and stopped its dive, followed by other pilots. They formed their group, waved their wingtips at us and flew away. All is well that ends well.

The Brigade also moved on. It was probably the other battalion of the Brigade that was in the vanguard, not us. I do not know anything about the combat operations of the other two battalions of the Brigade, which is why I do not write about them. I had the impression that our battalion was always the first in battles, as well as my company. The only thing I know about the other battalions is that they also had losses. In the following battles we went into battle in turns: one battalion was in action, the second would be in reserve, while the third one would be resting, waiting for its turn to go into battle.