Tank Rider: Into the Reich with the Red Army

THE ADVANCE TO THE ODER

We advanced quickly across Poland, the enemy put up resistance only sometimes, but I did not engage the enemy – this was the job of other units, the main body of the battalion or the Brigade. It was good that the enemy’s air force was not active owing to bad weather – clouds were hanging low, it was foggy and snowed sometimes. Breaks were short, mostly to give rest to the tank drivers and for small repairs, snacks, stretching our legs and urinating. We encountered rivers sometimes. As a rule, we were able to capture bridges intact and cross the rivers. If a bridge was destroyed and the ice was strong, tanks crossed the river on it. Sometimes the ice broke under the weight of the tanks and they had to ford. There were only one or two crossings like that, not more. Some tank riders did not dismount tanks in those cases and got really wet, and there was no time to dry clothes later on. Normally the tank riders would dismount the tank and cross a river on ice not far from the tank crossing.

On the night of 18 January, 1945, having overcome enemy resistance, we rushed into Petrokov. The Brigade did not stop in the city and quickly drove through it, shooting at the houses right from tanks. Having travelled through the city, we continued our lightning march to Lodz, and at dawn on 19 January we captured the city’s southern suburb.

We dismounted and got behind some houses, in an open field, and started to dig in just in case of a German air force attack or artillery or fire strike. The enemy was silent. Some soldiers did not follow my order and only dug skirmisher’s trenches, so I had to make them dig deeper. The soldiers did not like digging in – it took a lot of energy, and sometimes it was in vain – either the enemy did not open fire or we had to leave the area right after the trenches were ready. I ordered my soldiers to dig in for many reasons: first, we would have lower losses from enemy fire, but the main thing was that soldiers could panic under strong artillery or air strike, abandon their trenches and flee in the rear, and panic always meant higher losses. Front line experience had taught me this, and I enforced it strictly. Probably this is why we had lower losses compared with other companies. I was unrelenting on these matters, as I knew it could save the lives of the soldiers and NCOs who were my subordinates. They complained and were angry with me, but I always strictly followed my rules.

In front of us we could see a nice panoramic view of Lodz and the German defences with dug-in tanks. The enemy did not open fire, nor did we fire either. The whole of 19 January was quiet. However, there was a small exchange of fire between Russian tanks. A tank column appeared to the right of us at noon. Several tanks of our tank regiment opened fire on the column. Tanks from the column returned fire. The exchange of fire lasted for a short while and suddenly stopped. It turned out that those were the tanks of the 1st Tank Army of the Belorussian front approaching the city, while we, the 4th Tank Army, were part of the first Ukrainian front. Such things tended to happen at the front, but fortunately we soon realized that these were Russian tanks and I think no one had losses.

In the suburbs of Lodz, where we dug in, I was checking how well the soldiers had dug in and walked at my full height in front of foxholes in sight of German tanks, displaying my bravado. A Partorg, a Communist party secretary of our battalion, told me that I should not walk so openly, I could be killed – he was amazed by my bravery. I remember that I answered him that a tank would not bother to fire at me, while submachine-gun fire would not reach me. After that the party secretary started to respect me, and paid attention to me for the second time after the following incident.

We were supposed to leave – as it turned out, we were not intended to capture Lodz. The tanks formed a column on the road, and the ‘mount the tanks’ order came. Our tank stood between two houses. I walked up to the tank commander and told him to move the tank a bit further forward and park behind a house, so that the enemy would not see us mounting the tank. Why should we take risks? As a response some officers from the tank regiment and our battalion criticized me. No one understood the logic of my request; all kinds of shouting, obscene curses and insults about my person were flying through the air. The tanks did not hide behind the houses, as I requested, but remained where they were. While they were cursing me, two shots sounded in the air and both shells hit the tanks that stood between the houses. After this the tanks immediately moved forward and hid behind the houses. The great officers that had cursed me walked up to those tanks and saw a horrible picture. A high-explosive shell from German Tiger tank had hit the back part of the tank, when soldiers of our company had already mounted it. The explosion killed almost everyone, some soldiers were simply blown to pieces and nothing remained of them. Some seven or eight soldiers were killed. The other tank did not have soldiers on it. The Germans did not fire any more. Colonel Turkin, the Brigade’s commander, walked up to the scene, and when he realized what had happened, he told Stolyarov and Kozienko: ‘You know, Bessonov was right.’

We left the suburbs of Lodz, and again my platoon on three tanks was ahead of the Brigade. I had already mentioned that the Army’s, Corps’ and Brigade’s task was to advance to the Oder as quickly as possible and establish a bridgehead on its western bank, in area next to Keben (northwards from Wroclaw). Having travelled some 50 kilometres from Lodz, we stopped for a rest, in order to refuel tanks, replenish ammo and have a nap, if the situation allowed it. After all, in seven days, from 12 to 18 January, we had travelled over 200 kilometres in heavy fighting. In 24 hours we would travel up to 50 kilometres almost without any sleep. We were quite exhausted. Penetrating deep into the enemy’s rear, we were supposed to capture good river crossings and destroy enemy reserves, if we could not bypass them. Our rest was short and on the night of 21 January we moved on. The Poles did not meet our warriors with the same attitude everywhere. Some met us with joy, others with distrust. Sometimes villages did not have a single living soul – all the villagers would escape as soon as they heard the news of approaching Russian tanks.

Once, when the battalions stopped for a break after a day-long march, I was ordered to move forward with five tanks in the night and capture an important road junction. The commander of the tank regiment Stolyarov personally led the task force, and I was on his tank. Suddenly we spotted Fritzes, and Stolyarov asked me: ‘What should we do?’ ‘Crush them!’ I answered. He dispatched this order to all the tanks over radio. It was actually clear that we did not have any other choice. The Germans were superior to us in numbers, but owing to the element of surprise, we smashed the well-armed unit into pieces. My soldiers displayed miracles of bravery, decisiveness and fearlessness in the running battle. Some stayed on tanks, while others dismounted. Trucks and APCs were burning, their crews abandoned some of them, dead bodies of German soldiers were all around. We even managed to burn two Tiger tanks, while all the surviving German infantry fled. For some reason we did not manage to take any prisoners, all the surviving Germans ran off. The remains of the column managed to disappear in the darkness, and we did not pursue them. The way forward for the Brigade was open.

My soldiers were coming up to me, excited and happy with their victory. We captured some war booty, but it was not the main thing, the main thing was our success. This shows the importance of the element of surprise in a night attack. The Germans did not expect such boldness from us, and did not organize the security of the column as they usually did. They paid dearly for this. For some reason I remember that battle very well, probably because of our success and the absence of losses on our side.

In our joy we even had a bit of a drink and drank a symbolic toast to Stolyarov and his tank crews. We slaughtered so many Germans in that battle, that even Stolyarov, an experienced front line commander, got sick, but alcohol got him back into shape. Until dawn we moved forward, fulfilling the order given to us. We stopped in a village to get ourselves warm and stayed there till evening, waiting for the main body of the Brigade.

During the night of 22 January the Brigade moved on. From that time on our company was riding on JS-2 tanks instead of T-34 in front of the Brigade. The Brigade was reinforced with three such vehicles.

We moved at high speed, overtaking the German units that were retreating on other roads; we were also travelling at a significant distance from our infantry units. The situation called for a lightning speed advance, in order to deprive the Germans of the chance to man the defendable and sometimes already fortified areas, especially the ones along the Oder. On the night of 23 January we rushed into Ostruv and after a short but stubborn battle we captured the town. It was in that town that the Germans used Panzerfausts for the first time against our tanks, but they missed. We did not stay in that city for long, although the city had warehouses stuffed full of food, while we were already out of it and we should have picked it up from there – our field kitchen fell behind, as usual. Having quickly left the city, we moved on. I made myself very comfortable behind the turret of a JS tank, as the space over the tank’s engine was much larger than that of a T-34, and fell asleep. I slept so well that I did not even notice that our column had stopped.

As it happened, the Brigade commander with his staff had travelled with our battalion that night. They woke me up, and I jumped off the tank and walked forward. There I saw a JS-2 tank lying on its side on the ice of the frozen river. One could hear groaning and desperate pleas from under the tank. For some reason no one was brave enough to assist the suffering men. I did not think long, and crawled under the tank and pulled four soldiers one by one from under the tank. It turned out that they were safe and sound, but a bit squashed and really scared. There were three or four soldiers more under the tank, but they had been crushed by the tank. As it turned out, the first JS-2 tank safely drove across the bridge, but the bridge could not stand the weight of the second tank and it fell on its right side, pressing against the ice those who sat on the right side, as well as the tank commander. Those soldiers who sat on the left side of the tank, were thrown to the sides and they got off with some bruises. I was on the third tank. One of the soldiers that I pulled out later became my orderly – it was Andrey Ulianovich Drozd. I went through the rest of the war with him.

My soldiers wandered off to the huts in order to warm themselves and have a snack. An orderly found me at the capsized tank and informed me that Brigade commander Turkin had called me. I ran up to the Colonel and reported with all due ceremony. Majors Skryago, Kozienko, Stolyarov and someone else was there. Turkin told me: ‘Bessonov, order your soldiers not to execute any of the Germans who are in the village houses.’ I said, ‘Yes’ and ran to fulfil the order.

There were indeed Germans in the village. My guys were kicking them out of the houses, taking away their weapons. If a German resisted, they would finish him off, but in other cases they did not harm them at all. However, they confiscated all the Germans’ watches. I ordered them to draw all the German soldiers up in column of two, but not to harm them. ‘We were not going to execute them,’ squad leaders told me, ‘we just took their weapons.’ I came back to the Brigade commander and reported that his order had been fulfilled: all prisoners had been gathered from the huts and formed up. No one was planning to execute them. I noticed that in front of Turkin there was a tall guy standing at ‘attention’ in German uniform. The guy was holding a garrison cap on the bend of his arm and was reporting to Turkin clearly in Russian. It turned out that the man was an Uzbek. According to him, in 1941 he had graduated from Tashkent infantry academy as a Lieutenant and was taken prisoner by the Germans in 1942. Then he was a commander of a construction or security company with a rank of Ober-Leutenant (A Senior Lieutenant in our rank system). His company included almost every nationality of Europe: Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Belorussians, Frenchmen, Czech and others, some 60 to 80 men. According to him, there was a German battalion staff and two companies of German soldiers in the nearby village. That village was not on the main route of our advance and we did not go there.

Colonel Turkin ordered the Ober-Leutenant to lead all his soldiers eastwards, into captivity, but did not order any security to escort them. I have no idea where they went. In my opinion they most likely just scattered.

No matter how hard the tank crews tried, they could not put the tank back on its tracks, and we had to leave it there. The Brigade in the meantime moved on, sometimes engaging the enemy in short clashes. We were held up with the capsized tank anyway.

Anything could happen at the front. One day those of us on the three tanks travelled too far during the night and they ordered us by radio to stop and wait for the main body of the Brigade. Some soldiers went to look for food in the village and they found some. I had excellent men, they could find anything anywhere! They brought two or three containers of milk and white bread that was still warm. We had not seen white bread and milk for a long time, and had an enjoyable meal. We were sitting in the house, enjoying the warmth. All of a sudden the door opened and a Senior Lieutenant walked in. I looked at him and saw something familiar in his face. The guy was smiling with a broad smile and asked us: ‘You have something to eat, Slavs? I said: ‘Sit down, Muscovite, but we have nothing except bread and milk.’ He replied: ‘How do you know that I am from Moscow?’ I did not want to tease him and answered that he was a teacher of craftsmanship in the 1st Soviet School, which was later renamed in the 341st school, and used to be the school’s Komsorg. I studied in that school from 1931. He said that everything was right and we even recalled common acquaintances. Everyone was amazed. Could it really happen that, so far from Moscow, two men who knew each other met in the fourth year of the war. Such things also happen generally in life, not just in war. And again we could not stay there for long – we had to move forward, only forward.

In the night of 24 January we attacked the town of Kratoshin straight off from the march. We travelled through the town quickly, and there was no serious opposition from the Germans; they just fired on us at several places. They were afraid to face our tanks with tank riders. In Poland we would often travel through small settlements quickly, without dismounting tanks, firing from the tanks and throwing the enemy out of our way. On 25 January we captured the town of Gernstadt in a battle.

It was good that the enemy’s air force was not there, and we could march both during day and night. As a rule, during the night we would stop once for two or three hours. We tried to get into houses, into a warm place. There were almost no stops during the day, and even if we had them, breaks were short, no more than one hour. It was rare that we stopped for a long time to warm the soldiers. We only had food twice a day – morning and evening; if the kitchen was there, the food was hot. Thus, in order not to be hungry during the day, we made do with trophies – mostly German tinned meat and hard tack. Sometimes we saw small loaves of black bread in plastic; the bread was not too hard, but it was tasteless. We did not really like it, but we ate it anyway. Our Russian bread would also freeze in our back-packs in the frost, if you did not eat it on time.

We stayed in a large village almost the whole night. Our company was housed in the former village school. According to practice, we appointed guards and dropped to the floor. I was not even hungry, like most other soldiers – we were almost dead from exhaustion. In the morning, after breakfast (our field kitchen was still with us) we walked up to the tanks to mount them, and I saw a carcass of a pig on our tank. I asked Savkin: ‘What is this, are you looting the civilians?’ He swore by God that it was not our pig, but the tankers’. To hell with that pig, I thought, if the tankers took it. There were no owners anyway.

Almost all day long we moved on without a battle. Although we were in the German rear, there were no German troops, and we did not hear a single shot during the day. Such days were rare and we were happy, especially given the fact that the enemy’s air force was not there either. We had suffered losses in previous battles from the German air force, and although the losses were insignificant, the air force had delayed our advance. Finally we stopped, and parked our tanks by the walls of houses so that they would look like parts of huts and would not be so visible from the air. A tank crew officer walked up to me and said: ‘Bessonov, the spirit is mine, the pig is yours!’ And he pointed at the water tank that was filled with spirit. I answered: ‘Isn’t it your pig, as Savkin told me?’ The tanker replied: ‘Don’t be angry with the men. They know you and they know that you would not allow this, so they said that the pig belonged to us.’

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.

We arrived at the Oder on 23 or 24 January, 1945, with only our company and the battalion commander with his deputies. Other companies of the battalion were at that time engaged in battles with German reserves that had arrived. By that time other units of our Corps – the 17th Guards Mechanized Brigade with some units of the 16th Guards Mechanized Brigade had already crossed the river after heavy fighting. As for us, we crossed the river relatively safely, on a small ferry, although under German bombs – finally, the German air force appeared again. The Germans were still putting up resistance on the other side, and the company, assaulting the German strongpoint jointly with units of the 17th Guards Mechanized Brigade, managed to throw the Germans back. By the way, the commander of our 4th Tank Army, General Lelyushenko, was already there at the crossing, and that was just two days after the 15th Guards Brigade had crossed the Oder!

We captured the German town of Keben together with a company from another Brigade. Having reached its western outskirts, we stopped. For some reason battalion commander Kozienko was also there. He was receiving orders for attack first from the commander of the 17th Guards Mechanized Brigade and several days later from the Chief of Staff of the 6th Guards Mechanized Corps, Colonel Koretski. Our company was defending the crossing and other dangerous approaches. We put ourselves in order in Keben, even getting our hair cut by the medic (they never shaved soldiers’ heads at the front), somehow washed ourselves, mostly the upper parts of our bodies. It was a pity that from time to time we were disturbed by the German air force, but apart from that, it was almost paradise, even our kitchen drove up. Both our bodies and souls rested and we could even sleep in warm houses.

The main body of the Brigade caught up with us several days later; the 2nd and the 3rd companies of the battalion also joined us. They arrived quite depleted, but they were immediately thrown into battle to assist the 17th Guards Brigade that was trying to extend the bridgehead before strong German reinforcements arrived.

The battalion commander ordered me to report to the Corps Chief of Staff Colonel Koretski. When I arrived and reported, he looked at me and said: ‘You know what, Bessonov, you have been in the Brigade for a long time. Kozienko sent you here on my order. Your task is to guard the crossing, the Corps staff as well as put out fires in the city. You take the mansion across the street from my Staff, and always be there at hand. Do not let any other units into the mansion.’ This is how I got the mansion for my platoon and the 2nd platoon of the company, a total of not more than 30 men.Vyunov’s and Guschenkov’s platoons, in turn, followed the battalion together with the company commander.

The mansion was rich; it had everything one could imagine! There was enough food and the soldiers cooked it themselves. Soldiers would be cooking all day long, grilling something and drinking tea. We did not drink alcohol, except for some weak wine – anything could be found in the mansion’s cellar. We slept on beds. I had a wide bed with rich linen and a satin blanket. I could take off my clothes before going to bed! We threw away our underwear and replaced it with German silk underwear. Everything would have been just perfect, if only Koretski did not send us to put out fires and on guard duty during air raids against the crossing. Soldiers of our arriving infantry units set the houses on fire as revenge for their houses burnt down by the Germans in the Soviet Union. We did not have any equipment to extinguish the fire, so we would just come and stand at a burning house, watching until it burnt to ashes. That’s why the most effective measure was to send patrols and catch the arsonists. It helped, but not in all cases. Sometimes we were just pretending to be extinguishing the fire, so that Koretski did not rebuke us. I should say that that period was a rest for the platoon. Before that we had travelled at least 600 kilometres in 12 or 13 days from 12 to 25 January, 1945.