Tank Rider: Into the Reich with the Red Army

THE BRIDGEHEAD AT THE RIVER STRYPA

The Commander in Chief expressed his gratitude for the liberation of Kamenets-Podolsk to the soldiers of the Brigade in his Order of the Day of 27 March, 1944. Our Brigade and some other units of the 4th Tank Army received the honorary title of ‘Kamenets-Podolsk’, the full of name of the Brigade becoming ‘49th Mechanized Kamenets-Podolsk Brigade’, while its commander, Petr Nikitich Turkin, was promoted to the rank of Colonel.

The Brigade again received an order to advance to the west, and drive out the enemy from our land. After a blizzard that lasted two days, there was deep snow on the roads and in the fields, sometimes with snowdrifts. The battalion again mounted tanks with the aim of chasing the enemy, to prevent the possibility of his consolidating positions on good defensible grounds. The weather improved, the sky cleared of clouds, the sun shone and snow melted away. It grew warmer. We encountered the enemy in some places, but the Brigade successfully defeated any German attempt to stop us. We did not have many tanks left, and even those that remained had already used up their engine lifetime and were constantly breaking down. The tank that I was on with my soldiers also broke down. After a day-long stop in a village (we were already in the Western Ukraine), our tank stopped and would not move on. The battalion commander ordered me to stay with the tank and wait for it to be repaired. A day passed by and in the morning the tank crew told us that the breakdown was serious and we were stuck for a long time. I decided not to wait for the completion of the repairs, but to catch up with the battalion on foot. I thought that I would fall under suspicion of deliberate avoidance of fighting. It took us a couple of days to catch up with the battalion. A huge mass of our troops from different units of the front marched westwards, and no one could tell me where our Brigade had gone. At a crossroads I saw a sign with an arrow saying ‘Turkin’s unit’. We followed the sign. Almost every unit used such signs in that period of time, in order to prevent soldiers from wandering around on the roads of the war looking for their units. One afternoon, I think, on 12 April, I found my battalion: it had been reduced almost to nothing. We had a mission to complete, and before my arrival the battalion only had the 2nd company with ten to fifteen men, or maybe fewer. Only battalion HQ remained more or less intact, but it also had some losses. Battalion commander Kozienko, and zampolit Gerstein and chief of battalion’s staff Belan were happy to see me – I had at least 20 or 25 soldiers with me, all that remained of 1st and 2nd companies. Company leader Chernyshov and his staff were not in the battalion and no one knew where he was. Having fallen behind with a broken tank, the company commander only showed up some three days later.

Once with the battalion we got a hot meal, which we had not had for a long time – we received both the first and the second course; I remember this quite well. Only two officers were present in the battalion at that time – Junior Lieutenant Alexei Belyakov with the 2nd company and me. The battalion had a total strength of 32 to 35 men, or as they would put it, bayonets. The battalion’s artillery battery and mortar company were missing, the submachine-gun platoon, machine-gun company, anti-tank rifle company, all were missing. All these units were lost in battle and destroyed by enemy air force. Officers of the artillery battery showed up a bit later – Senior Lieutenant Kashintsev, Lieutenants Harmakulov and Isaev, Lieutenant Zaitsev from the mortar company, Lieutenants Volkov and Karpenko from the machine-gun company. I think they all arrived without their equipment (45 mm guns, 82 mm mortars, heavy machine-guns) and with just a few soldiers. The 2nd and the 3rd battalions of our Brigade also suffered significant losses, also mainly from air raids.

The battalion was stationed in a village and stayed there for several days. Reinforcements arrived; these were soldiers drafted from liberated areas of Ukraine. The company received men well in their forties, who had only received basic training, and they were slow and timid. Besides that, they had never served in the army. Our company received twelve or fifteen such ‘warriors’.

The 3rd company, at that time it was the 2nd company, received men of different ages, including former partisans, who could handle weapons, all in civilian clothes. The same company got a new commander to replace Gulik, who had been killed – Senior Lieutenant Shtokolov. Lieutenant Mochalov arrived as the machine-gun platoon leader to replace the wounded Kolosov. At that time the machine-gun company as such did not exist, it did not have machine-guns either. It was Mochalov’s first time at the front, he was not used to army service and commanding other people, so he had a hard time on active service. Sometimes he merely wept, as he could not control his men.

After a brief rest the battalion received an order to advance and set up defences on the bank of Strypa river in the village of Dobropolie. Further to the west was the town of Bulach, where German reinforcements were starting to arrive. The Brigade was not capable of executing offensive operations. Its personnel was almost gone, almost all equipment was out of action. Out of 450 to 500 tanks of the 4th Tank Army at the beginning of the operation, the entire army only had around 60 vehicles, all with some kind of breakdown. However, we could still hold defences against the enemy that was also weakened, and we had to hold out until the infantry units of the Front arrived. The Tank Armies lost contact with them and were at a significant distance from the front units (50 or 60 kilometres).

My company and I were transferred to the other, western, bank of the Strypa river; we dug in to the west of Dobropolie village. The village was small – no more than thirty houses, I believe. The terrain on this bank of the river was less defensible than on the eastern side, but that was the order. I sent an outpost to the nearest hill in order to get early warning in case the Germans appeared. When in a defensive position, I always appointed observers both during the day and during the night – that was necessary at the front. The bad thing was that I did not have binoculars: although I did not like having them with me as they were very uncomfortable, especially during assaults.

The company lived on food provided by villagers, as the battalion kitchen was not there. Many villagers abandoned their houses – the old people remembered the fighting of 1914–1916 – the Russian Army under General Brusilov had defended the area, so they said. Villagers took their cattle with them, leaving chicken and other poultry behind. This is why we mostly ate poultry – soldiers could cook very well and even baked doughnuts with sugar, as there was plenty of sugar in the village. We dug trenches on the edge of the village and had several days of quiet rest and sleep in the huts. The sun was already hot, by 12 or 14 April, 1944, it was already nice and warm weather, while we were still in our winter uniforms.

Somewhere is a small ravine where we would take off our shirts and fight ‘German submachine-gunners’, as soldiers at the front called body lice. We squashed the damned bugs with our fingernails, shook our shirts out above a fire, but it rarely helped – lice lived very well in the warmth. I had a sweater and in almost every stitch lived a parasite bug. I burned the sweater; lice snapped loudly in the fire. It is shameful to write about it with such sincerity, but what can you do – it was war and as a mobile unit, we did not have a chance to wash in the field bathhouse or change our underwear from January 1944. We slept and rested in warm clothes for at least four months, in wintertime anywhere at all: in foxholes, on tanks, in huts – all the time without taking our clothes off. This is why we could not maintain a good level of personal hygiene. I do not think that I should blame anyone for this, as we were all the time deep behind enemy lines. It was only after we disengaged, that we received new summer uniforms. It wasn’t a problem in any of our other operations.

On one of those days Captain Belan (after the war and graduation from a military academy, he served as chief of traffic police in Moscow), chief of staff of our battalion, arrived along with our company commander Lieutenant Chernyshov, who had been missing for over a week. Lieutenant Chernyshov right away started to give orders, saying that this and that was wrong. I answered him with ‘F**k off’. Captain Belan stopped our quarrel, but I said that Chernyshov was picking on me. I said that if he had not been missing for a week and had arrived on time, he could have given all kinds of orders. I said that I had marched 30 kilometres in one-and-a-half days just to catch up with our battalion, and hadn’t been living with a young village girl. Belan did not reply, but gave me an order – to take a squad of strong guys and reconnoitre the village that was some 3 or 4 kilometres from us (I think this place was Bulach). I was to find out the enemy’s strength and report back.

Going on a scout mission in daytime in the open field, sinking in a muddy ploughed field, where bushes did not have leaves and wheat was not high, was a hard task. It was practically a suicide mission – Germans could merely shoot us down in the field or try to take us prisoners. Even without a reconnaissance we knew that the Germans occupied the village in front of us the day before – day and night we heard noise of the tank and truck engines from the village. But I had my orders and I had to fulfil them, as I did not receive any counterorders. I took two or three physically strong soldiers, and my binoculars, and off we went. It was fortunate that there was a ravine and we advanced 1 or 1.5 kilometres in it. It was a hard walk in the ravine, we could barely pull our feet out from the mud; we reached a hill, lay down on a dry spot and started to examine the surrounding area. Inspecting the terrain through the binoculars, I noticed a column of trucks and APCs advancing on the road to the right of us towards our defences, a little bit to the right of the battalion. To the left of us, less than a kilometre distant on the neighbouring hill, we spotted an armoured personnel carrier and several trucks, apparently carrying infantry. The Germans slowly advanced towards our village. It did not make any sense to stay there any longer and we went back secretly to our lines. At one place we had to abandon the ravine and we were in the sight of the Germans that marched to the left of us on the top of the hill. However, they did not open fire, although they could easily have cut us all down from the APC, even more so when a Tiger tank joined them later. We could not run – we did not have any energy left. Even now I do not understand, why they did not kill us, when we barely dragged our feet across the ploughed field in some 250 to 300 metres from them.

Upon my return I reported to Belan what I had seen and pointed at the German unit that was some 300 metres from our line of defence. The Germans quietly stood there, without opening fire. Captain Belan did not say anything, but it seemed to me that he was upset about something. But what? With me coming back alive with all soldiers? But we did make it back, and Captain Belan reported to the Brigade HQ about the large column of German troops that moved to the right from our battalion and a small group of Germans to the left of us. Captain Belan went off to the battalion HQ to the other side of the river, taking Chernyshov with him, ordering me to stay in the trenches with the untrained soldiers on the western bank of the river.

On the same day, late in the afternoon, Katyushas fired a salvo. It was good that we were in our foxholes, because when the Katyusha missiles started to explode to the right of the company and then closer to us, we were all able hide in them. Several missiles exploded on the company’s positions, but no one was hurt. When this nightmare was over and I peeped out from my foxhole, and saw a large piece of a missile that had not exploded lying just outside. The entire salvo had hit an empty spot and us, but they should have been firing on the neighbouring hill, where Germans were digging in – the Germans that I had fled from.

How can one explain this mistake in firing the salvo? Only by the fact that someone, apparently Belan, gave the wrong co-ordinates, confused two hills, or maybe just did not know how to read the map. The salvo could easily have knocked out the whole company, as at Skalat, when the 2nd and 3rd battalions suffered significant losses from Katyusha fire. The battalion HQ requested the results of the Katyusha salvo over the ’phone. I informed them that the salvo had hit an empty spot and the company, but no losses were inflicted and they should have shifted fire to the left. However, the Katyushas did not fire any more. Some time after the fire mission my soldiers reported to me that engineers wanted to blow up the only bridge across the river. The engineers confirmed that they had had such an order, while the battalion informed me over the ’phone that I was not to prevent them from blowing up the bridge. They also informed me that all communication with me was discontinued and that the ’phone operators were to leave me together with their ’phone and cable.

I was outraged, but they told me: ‘It is necessary’. I thought ‘Well, to hell with you all’, but was more precise in my description of the commanders, using some obscene words. In general, our company officers only used such obscenities in extreme cases, if ever. We did not curse in vain and did not use such words to get the soldiers up to attack. I walked up to the engineers and asked their senior to blow up only the part that touched the western bank, approximately half the bridge, leaving the eastern part intact just in case. The engineers took heed of my request and did everything as I asked them.

I was left there as a condemned man, with a company of 25 or 30 soldiers, of whom half had not seen battle and were untrained – they had not even been sworn in. We had neither heavy nor light machine-guns. The bridge did not have a strategic significance, as its capacity was low. Dobropolie village also did not have any military significance, as it was located in a depression between the high banks of Strypa river. Even now I do not understand what the battalion leadership had on their mind when they left the company on the western bank of the river, holding literally a patch of soil. The battalion and the Brigade had no reinforcing units left after the heavy fighting before we reached Strypa, but we all knew that the enemy brought up fresh reserves, which were superior to our Brigade.

The engineers said that they hoped we would survive as they withdrew, expressed their sympathy and said that they were not guilty. They looked as if they were saying their last good-bye to us – apparently, they thought that we were already dead. I had to follow the order, what else could I do – an order is always an order.

I do not want to praise myself, but by that time I was already an old hand and was not planning to give up my life or the lives of my soldiers yet; I did not hope for luck either. I thought that it was impossible for me to hold the bridgehead anyway, and ordered my soldiers to join our bank with the remains of the bridge on the other bank using wooden beams, thus creating some kind of bridge across the river. Besides this, I transferred soldiers from the southern part of the village to the northern side, where the earth road to the bridge was located. I thought that the Germans would not attack across the ploughed field, where we initially had our defences, but would advance on some sort of a solid road. In each foxhole on both sides of the road I placed two soldiers, to make each other braver through mutual support.

A dark night fell. I was at the right side of the road with several soldiers. Everything was quiet so far. I checked the positions of the soldiers. The men couldn’t sleep, but some were sleepy and I warned them to be at full alert, as we could overlook the moment of German assault. Personally I, fearing a German assault, was also awake. The Fritzes rarely attacked at night, but anything could happen, the possibility of a night assault could not be excluded, and I did not have much faith in my new soldiers. It all happened just as I thought it would. Just as dawn broke and the sky started to grow lighter, the Germans assaulted the company. It was a surprise attack, but some soldiers opened fire. Some, especially the rookies, left their foxholes and ran to the bridge. Some of them were wounded; we bandaged them and sent them into the rear. The veterans were not hurt, as they fired on the enemy and did not run without a backward glance. We had to retreat.

I gathered all the soldiers at the bridge, and we opened fire from submachine-guns at the Germans, stopping them at the line of our foxholes. It was hard to see either the Fritzes or our own men in the gloom. I wanted to regain the positions, but assistant platoon leader Savkin talked me out of it, pointing at the green soldiers, who, putting it mildly, did not feel well, shivering with fear. They received several boxes on the ears from the more experienced soldiers for their behaviour. Such a ‘teaching method’ was rarely used, but in that case I did not object and did not stop the men. Wooden beams were carefully placed on the bridge, and we safely crossed to the other bank, digging in at the bridge. Day came and I informed the battalion commander that we had had to abandon the western bank of the river. As an answer I received an order: ‘Come back to the other bank the same way that you ran away from there, immediately recapture the positions.’ Why on earth did they need that bridgehead?

I had to fulfil the order, and for the successful completion of it I studied the enemy’s positions, noting his weapon emplacements. I got some understanding of where the enemy was, how many Germans were there and what they were doing. It was quiet and calm, except sometimes the Fritzes fired single shots at us; we did not return fire. Preparing for assault on the lost positions, some soldiers cooked food – one still had to eat. I talked personally to every green soldier, debriefing his behaviour in battle. I told them that fear was natural for everyone, but one should never lose control over fear and let it grow into horror of the enemy. I gathered the squad leaders separately and shared the object of the assault among them.

We sneaked across the bridge and suddenly stormed their positions. The Fritzes were about to have their lunch and did not notice our rush, as we approached quietly without any shouting. I did not really think that the Germans would be so scared and shocked by our assault that they would flee from their foxholes without a single shot, leaving weapons and unfinished lunch behind. Sergeant Poddubny scared the German machine-gunner so much by popping up some 10 to 15 metres in front of them that the guy ran away, leaving a battleready MG34 and his lunch in the canteen. His first course was in the canteen and the second course – pasta with a piece of meat – was in the canteen lid. Many of my soldiers did not even fire a shot, so rapidly did the Germans make their escape. Then the 2nd company commander, Shtokolov, with a dozen former partisans arrived on the scene. All those men were quite drunk and all of them, except for recently appointed 2nd company commander Senior Lieutenant Grigori Andreevich Shtokolov and Lieutenant Alexei Belyakov, were dressed in civilian clothes. Shouting ‘Hurrah!’ they threw themselves behind the fleeing Germans, but were stopped by fire from a nearby forest. If they had appeared a bit earlier, they would have spoiled our quiet surprise assault. When they reached our foxholes, Shtokolov asked for the MG34 from Poddubny, the guy who captured it. I permitted him to give it away – we did not need it anyway, it was quite hard to operate – in fact, I did not know how to use it myself.

Shtokolov, in turn, went to the battalion commander and exclaimed: ‘This is how you should fight the war! I just went there and captured the German trenches, the Germans fled and as a proof here is the machine-gun that I personally captured in battle. This is how partisans fight!’

When I reported to the battalion commander about the completion of his order, he rebuked me for cowardice as a reply!

The day was quiet; the Germans did not show up or open fire at us.

As darkness descended, I inspected the foxholes, cheering the soldiers up, especially the green ones, and warned them that they should not leave their positions without orders, otherwise the Germans would slaughter us all. As soon as I walked away from the left flank of the company, the Germans sent a strong artillery and mortar barrage against us, making use of six-barrelled mortars. The Germans rarely used them; they did not have many. It was a strong weapon, but could not be compared with the Katyusha. We called that mortar ‘Vanyusha’, in other places they called it something different, a donkey, for example. Sergeant Savkin, my orderly, and I had nowhere to hide, there was firing all around us, and we lay down under the steep riverbank. Shells and mines from the six-barrelled mortar exploded, red-hot splinters were flying in the air – it was all shining against the background of a night sky. It was sheer hell. It is incomprehensible how we survived. The horrible crash and noise of the guns that must have been stationed close to us filled the air. I had not experienced such heavy bombardment for a long time, not since fighting at Kursk in 1943. All this fire descended on a single company, 25 or 30 soldiers. Apparently, the Germans were very angry and upset because we drove them away from the village with losses in soldiers and weapons in the daytime, when they did not expect the attack and while they were having their nice lunch. Losing a weapon is infamy for a soldier.

The barrage lasted 20 or 25 minutes, although how could I check my watch at that time? Not only the green soldiers, but also the old hands, were very scared as well. I can’t lie, I was scared too, especially given the fact that there was no shelter to hide in. After the barrage was over, the Fritzes attacked with superior forces. The soldiers of the company could not take the fire, and fled again. The experienced soldiers put up some resistance, but then they also withdrew to the bridge with the fleeing green soldiers. I could not stop the retreat from the trenches, even less now that some soldiers were wounded and we had to carry them on rain capes. I decided to leave the western bank, reported this decision to the battalion commander and received the order to leave the bridgehead and take position to the left of Shtokolov’s 2nd company.

It is interesting that several days later Shtokolov with his company (without our participation) wanted to drive the Germans out of their positions on the western bank of the river, but got almost completely wiped out. Only a small group of partisans, including Shtokolov himself, survived. The Germans were finishing them off as they ran in the open to their foxholes on our (eastern) bank of the river.

The battalion commander saw the hurricane of fire that descended on the company and apparently realized that it was impossible to hold the other bank, and there was no point in that. Half of the newcomers were out of action, mostly wounded, and again I had almost no soldiers left.

From my point of view, one cannot send untrained soldiers, who are not used to army and front line discipline, straight into battle. As our company’s Sergeant Nikolai Chulkin told me after the war, many of those recruits hid in their trenches, put their guns on breastworks and fired without aiming. I never saw anything like that. Two or three soldiers were picked off by the Germans at point-blank range, but still managed to jump out of the trenches and dropped unconscious only after they reached the bridge. The battalion’s medic told me that one of those recruits had fourteen bullet wounds, but survived. In the very first German attack two soldiers, Chaschin and Khalilov, went missing in action, as they got scared and ran off in the wrong direction. One of them, Chaschin, came back after almost a month, while the second guy joined another unit.

That was the end of my adventures on the bridgehead at the Strypa river in April 1944. The company dug in at the high bank of the river. Days quietly passed by, the Germans did not bother us, and we did not fire on them much. Sometimes our Brigade artillery fired on the targets that they spotted, but that was quite rare. We did not see our company commander, Lieutenant Chernyshov, I think he was sent to receive additional personnel in the rear or somewhere else. To the right of us were defences of the 2nd company, where I had a friend – platoon leader Alexei Belyakov, while Senior Lieutenant Shtokolov was appointed the 2nd company’s commander. He had arrived shortly before from the reserve and had already caused a stir. Lieutenant V. K. Mochalov arrived in late March or early April to fill the position of the machine-gun platoon leader of a machine-gun company. He stayed in our company, as there were no machine-guns or machine-gun crews. We continued to feed on the poultry of the villagers from the village that the Germans had driven us out of, Dobropolie. In the mornings two or three soldiers would go to that village, bring chicken or something else and we would boil this in canteens over the fire. By that time the Germans had abandoned the village and dug in on the hill behind the village.

On 27 April, 1944, an infantry unit replaced the Brigade, and we went into reserve. The battalion was transferred into rear area, and we stationed ourselves at a forest edge in vicinity of Kopychintsy town.

During the two months of action in the Kamenets-Podolsk operation of March and April of 1944 we suffered significant losses in personnel and military hardware, especially tanks. We had travelled over 350 kilometres in action during this period. Our Brigade liberated the towns of Manachin, Podvolochisk, Volochisk, Skalat, Gusyatin and Kamenets-Podolsk. Writing about losses in the battalion is the hard part, but I am obliged to show to our descendants how hard it was to achieve victory, and how much blood we shed to achieve it.

The three motor rifle companies of our 1st motor rifle battalion had at least 300 soldiers at the beginning of Kamenets-Podolsk operation (3 March, 1944), 100 soldiers in a company. When we disengaged, the 1st and the 2nd company that was combined with the 1st had no more than 20 or 25 men including me. The 2nd company (former 3rd company) had even less, 10 or 12 men, together with Junior Lieutenant Belyakov, which put the total strength of the battalion at just 30 or 35 men. I cite the numbers excluding the new soldiers that were recruited in early and mid-April, but they also suffered losses in action at Dobropolie village. Losses in the three companies were almost 90%.

The machine-gun company of the battalion also suffered significant losses – all the Maxim machine-guns, the main support weapon of our motor rifle companies, were knocked out together with their crews. Before the operation the company had 40 or 50 soldiers. The anti-tank rifle company, which also had some 40 or 50 men, merely ceased to exist. The mortar company lost its mortars and most of its men – before the battle it had 30 or 35 soldiers, out of whom only platoon commander Lieutenant M. P. Zaitsev was left. The artillery battery (45 mm guns) lost all its guns, and the majority of the battery men were killed or wounded. Before the operation the battery had 25 or 30 men.

The rest of the matériel, as well as most of the transport vehicles of the battalion was destroyed. The 4th Tank Army had no more than 60 tanks left out of 450, the tank regiment of the Brigade had just few tanks left of the initial 33 tanks. Out of those that remained, all were damaged.

No more than 50 or 55 men remained out of 550 soldiers and NCOs of our battalion. Losses among officers were also high. Out of 45 officers no more than 50% remained, the rest were killed or wounded and sent to hospitals. Just six out of 22 platoon leaders were left. Young soldiers, 18 or 19 years old, the cream of our country, died for the liberation of their Motherland from the German Nazi invaders. Officers, platoon leaders and company commanders, also died, often being just little older than their soldiers – they were 20 to 22 years old. One can always replace losses in military hardware, tanks and equipment, but one can never replace losses in personnel…