Tank Rider: Into the Reich with the Red Army

ON GERMAN SOIL

We were now on German territory and everything there was different from what we saw in Poland. Highways were covered with asphalt; roads to fields and barns were covered with cobblestone. We saw clean pine woods without any brushwood, rich houses and mansions, small roadside villages and farms with peaked red-tile roofs. However, there was not a single living soul in the city. The population had been evacuated westwards, far across the Oder, leaving all their belongings in the houses, including cattle and poultry. Some guys found two really old women in Keben when searching for German soldiers, but they did not find anyone else.

Our rest at the ‘resort’ did not last long. One day Colonel Koretski called me and ordered the battalion to depart, giving me a truck and explaining the route to me. We left the ‘resort’ with sadness. I found the battalion in a village, where it had stopped for a mid-day rest, and reported my arrival to both battalion commander Kozienko and company commander Chernyshov. I accommodated my soldiers and went to the house where some officers gathered for lunch. They greeted me with joy, almost shouting ‘Hurrah’ – the officers were a bit tipsy and were fooling around. They made me sit down at the table, and poured a shtrafnaya or punishment glass for me (a punishment glass is an extra glass of wine or vodka that a person has to drink if he or she is late for a party – translator’s comment). I noticed that besides Vyunov, Kes, Guschenkov, Belyakov, Tsikanovski and Mochalov there was a strange Lieutenant in the house. I was introduced to him – this was Fedor Popov, with whom we fought till the end of the war. A brave, middle-sized, physically fit and modest person, he became a good comrade to me. Besides him, Lieutenant Grigori Mikheev arrived in the company in those days to replace wounded Petr Shakulo as a platoon leader. A native of Siberia, he was a big and physically strong guy; later we became good friends. He came to us from the signal platoon. He was dismissed from that office for drunk driving, when he lost control over the truck of the signals platoon and the truck capsized. However, they put it back on wheels later, no one was hurt, but Mikheev was punished and appointed platoon leader in a motor rifle company.

On the evening of 4 February we started our tank raid. The battles that followed were bitter; the Germans resisted stubbornly, holding on to every village and hill. The enemy threw Vlasov’s soldiers against us – we would defeat them as well, but I should say they fought better than the Germans. The Germans deployed Panzerfaust anti-tank missiles en masse against our tanks. It was a dreadful close-range weapon against our tanks and other vehicles. A Panzerfaust easily penetrated a T-34 tank, its explosive energy was enormous, and it could even penetrate a JS-2, if it hit the side.

As usual, I travelled on tanks with my platoon far ahead of the battalion. Once, before we could reach a small village at the road, we came under heavy fire. The soldiers quickly dismounted, while the tanks drove back a bit. I moved forward a little with my platoon, but had to lie down in a ditch because of heavy fire. Snipers were firing. Besides that, I saw anti-personnel ‘spring-mines’ and anti-tank mines. If you touched the wire from a ‘spring-mine’, it would jump up to 2 metres and explode, killing men with its contents. Anti-tank mines were placed on the highway.

Vyunov arrived with his platoon, but he acted smarter – he did not move along the asphalt highway, but moved a bit to the right and advanced through a young forest. Eventually his soldiers also had to lie down in front of the village. Chernyshov came running; I had not seen him for a long time. As always, he started to shout: ‘Forward, Bessonov, forward!’ I told him: ‘Wait, Nikolai, look around. Can’t you see the mines on the road and snipers firing? Vyunov’s position is better now, he should attack the village.’

We shouted ‘Forward!’ to Vyunov, but either he did not hear us or was also pinned down by snipers, but at all events his soldiers remained on the ground. Chernyshov wanted to run there, and I tried to talk him out of it, putting it bluntly: ‘They will kill you.’ I recommended he go back and bring up the heavy JS-2 tanks, but Chernyshov did not listen to my advice: he jumped up and before he made two steps from the ditch, a shot sounded in the air and Nikolai fell down. We pulled him into the ditch and bandaged him. He was wounded in his chest. After that we carried him at the rear. All this time Chernyshov was unconscious. This incident happened around 8 or 10 February and he had to stay in hospital until 18 April, 1945.

A JS-2 tank drove up to us at that moment. The soldiers indicated targets to the tank commander and the tank fired its 122 mm gun. All of a sudden I saw three German self-propelled guns (we also called them assault guns) rushing out one by one from behind the houses several metres from us. Our tank opened fire on them, but they quickly disappeared behind a bend of the highway. I got my soldiers to attack, and shouting ‘Forward, follow me, forward!’ I ran along the ditch, jumping across the detonation wires of spring-mines (what an idiot!). The soldiers were smarter than me and ran on the field to the right and left from the highway, there were no mines there. We rushed into the village; Vyunov and his platoon also broke into the houses on the outskirts of the village. The enemy fled. My men searched the houses, but they were abandoned – not a single human soul was there. We waited for the battalion commander with his staff. He already knew about Chernyshov’s wound. After that T-34 tanks with Major Stolyarov, commander of the tank regiment, arrived.

Battalion commander Major Kozienko called me up – political officer Gerstein and the battalion’s chief of staff, Captain Grigoriev, were also there. Kozienko told me that they had decided to appoint Senior Lieutenant Grigori Vyunov the company commander in place of the wounded Chernyshov.Vyunov had arrived at the battalion as late as October 1944 and was five or six years older than me. I replied to Kozienko that I had been in the battalion from August 1943, that it was my fourth operation, and I was always the last officer to remain in the company, de facto leading the company and did not I deserve to become the company’s commander? Major Kozienko told me that he made the decision jointly with Gerstein and Grigoriev and that it was not just his decision. So, I again remained platoon leader. Somehow I was not very lucky when it came to promotion.

The following battles were very hard for us and we were losing a lot of men. The Germans threw Volkssturm (the German Home Guard – translator’s note) against us – old guys and young boys armed with Panzerfausts, who resisted most stubbornly. Sometimes they fought to the last man. Every day we had losses in men and equipment. We could achieve almost no deep penetration into the German rear, as we had in the Ukraine and Poland. Battles took place day and night, and this really exhausted us. The battalion attacked as a concentrated task force with all three companies, or all that remained of them. The Germans, in turn, only retreated to consolidate their positions at another place that was prepared for defence.

The population fled from us. Traces of panic flight were everywhere – we saw cases, bicycles, pillows and other things in the ditches. All villages, both small and large, were abandoned, no one stayed behind. Cattle, poultry and other things were left behind, so we did not stay hungry. On the contrary, we ate as much as we could cook during short breaks. Once our column caught up with fleeing local civilians. It was a column of stiff old men, children and women of different ages. Some travelled on carts, some walked and pushed carriages with their belongings that they could carry, some had back-packs on their backs. We stopped all those people and in our broken German explained to them that they should go back to their homes. The battalion travelled on in order to complete the mission, and we do not know where the Germans went – we had other things on our minds.

We never harassed German civilians. We did not rob them, did not search them and did not take anything away. To be honest, I was very strict about this with my soldiers, and I think that other officers were also of the same opinion. We did not rape women, or at least, such things never happened in our company or battalion. The senior officers were also very strict about such things both in the battalion and the Brigade. Besides that, I personally warned many soldiers about my strictness in this respect. Not only in my company, but also in the other companies of the battalion they knew about my attitudes and even the most notorious soldiers were afraid of me. Why? I was the veteran of the battalion, I had been through it all, and there had been a lot of rumours, known as ‘soldier’s radio’, about my strictness. Even the most undisciplined and impudent soldiers didn’t mess with me. Many times I heard: ‘Bessonov is coming!’ – especially after a rumour that I almost executed a soldier for disgraceful behaviour. This thing did not take place in reality, but there was a rumour, and some believed it.

It was a cloudy day, sleet was falling, and it was quite chilly on the tanks. Everyone was trying to get closer to the tank’s radiator – bad weather for infantry. During 9 and 10 February the enemy put up stubborn resistance, throwing armour, infantry and Volkssturm into action, raining shot and shell on us. We had a hard time, but the enemy’s resistance was broken and after taking losses the Germans had to withdraw, leaving heavy equipment and weapons behind – tanks without fuel, artillery and mortars. We were in the middle of a forest; sometimes one could not see where Fritzes’ fire came from. Tanks moved forward carefully, following the tank riders – our task was to destroy German Panzerfaust teams with small arms or indicate Fritz targets to the tanks, so that they could destroy them with main guns. The enemy tried to stop our advance by all means, laying ambushes – sometimes with very small groups, which was almost a suicide mission with its only goal being to stop us and inflict casualties on us. One evening, just when it started to get dark, the three vanguard tanks approached the edge of a forest. My platoon and I were in the middle of the advancing tank column, while a group of soldiers from another company was in forward security. All of a sudden several artillery shots shook the air and the column stopped. I jumped off the tank and ran forward to find out what had happened. It got completely dark, but I saw a group of commanding officers, among them the commander of the tank regiment, Stolyarov, battalion commander Kozienko and others. Soldiers from the three first tanks ran back from the forest edge and brought a heavily wounded soldier on rain cape. The soldier died soon after the incident. According to the soldiers, at the forest edge they came under fire from German assault guns. One of our tanks was knocked out, almost an entire escorting tank rider squad died, and only a few wounded survived. Two other tanks tried to evade fire. One crew abandoned their vehicle, but the driver went into reverse, and the tank rolled backwards without the crew. The regiment commander ordered the tank to be stopped and brought back to the column. The order was carried out.

The commanders did not dare to mount a night attack, so the attack was shifted to the next morning. At dawn the battalion – all that was left of its three companies – started to advance through the forest to the left of the road. We did not know anything about the enemy. At first everything was nice and quiet, no shots were fired at us, the enemy did not see us, and we did not see the enemy. However, this did not last for long, as the enemy spotted us and opened rifle and machine-gun fire. We returned fire and advanced forward in short rushes.

The outnumbered German infantry retreated, or rather fled from our attack. However, we came under fire from three German assault guns, which turned out to be some 50 metres from us. We had to take cover behind trees, as the assault guns fired at almost every single soldier. My orderly and I were lying under a tree, which was hit by a shell, a metre from the ground. We were shell-shocked, the tree was cut down, but we remained unharmed and sneaked to another tree. We were lucky again, not for the first time. We did not know what to do, as the tanks did not support us, staying far behind, but the 3rd company commander, Kostenko, quickly came up with a solution. He brought a heavy JS-2 tank almost to our line and indicated targets – the assault guns – to the crew. The tank fired two shots from its heavy gun (122 mm), and one assault gun literally fell apart, while the second round penetrated two assault guns at once. I had never seen such a ‘miracle’ before. Our way was free. The battalion advanced a bit further through the forest and the enemy was nowhere to be seen. Our tanks caught up with us, we were ordered to mount the tanks, and we drove on.

Overcoming the stubborn resistance of the enemy, during the night of 11 February our battalion with the other battalions of the Brigade crossed the Bober river and then crossed the Neisse river on 16 February. We were already some 105 or 110 kilometres from Berlin. The Neisse was deep and wide in the place where we crossed it. There was a good multi-ton bridge across the river, but it was boobytrapped, and German battle engineers were waiting for the order to blow the bridge up. However, guys from the Brigade’s scout company captured the bridge and killed all the battle engineers – they received help from a Russian girl that the Germans must have known – she worked at the farm next to the bridge. Thus we were able to cross the river on the bridge and set up defences on the left flank of the Brigade, no more than 100 metres from the river. The 2nd and the 3rd battalions of the Brigade were in defence to the right of us, some 250 metres from the river. We did not have enough forces to advance any further.

Our company had just ten or fifteen soldiers when it arrived at the bridgehead at Neisse. Guschenkov had probably just three or five soldiers with one Maxim machine-gun left. Besides this, the company had company commander Vyunov, platoon leaders Guschenkov and me, Sergeant Major Bratchenko, medic ‘Brotherly Heart’, clerk Chulkin and a company commander’s orderly. The company’s total strength was just 22 or 23 men: at the beginning of the operation on 12 January, 1945, the company had had up to 100 men. Our company’s losses were up to 80% of personnel. The other companies were not in a better position. Company commander Nikolai Chernyshov was heavily wounded, platoon leaders Shakulo and Mikheev were lightly wounded. We earned our victory at a high price, a very high price. It was not only our battalion that suffered significant losses, but also the other two battalions of the Brigade, as well as the tank regiment. All tanks were out of action, just three or four tanks could still move, but they could not fire – their main guns were broken. However, even these tanks could make it to our bridgehead on the Neisse river, in order to make a show of armour. This contained the Germans to a certain extent – tanks are still tanks. Brigade commander Colonel Turkin was at that time recovering from a wound in a hospital. The Brigade was under the brigade chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel Arkadi Arkhipov. Turkin was wounded in the following incident: in front of a village we were caught by German fire; tanks stopped, tank riders dismounted, and we moved forward a bit and lay down. I had to clarify the situation, find out where the enemy was and what forces opposed us. Some other officers were with me at that point. I sent several men to find out what was going on – I did not like to attack without knowing anything about the enemy. The scout party returned and reported that they did not see the enemy, but Germans had fired on them from basements and house windows. My three tanks bluntly refused to continue the attack, but the main body of the Brigade was about to arrive. While I was thinking whether I should attack the enemy, it drove up. Brigade commander Colonel Turkin and the Brigade’s tank regiment commander, Major Stolyarov, arrived at the scene. I reported the reason for our stop, but they did not believe me. Turkin told me: ‘You got scared by a single Fritz, there is no one there! You just thought you saw someone. Forward, Bessonov!’ They got into their APC and as soon as they had driven some 100 metres, a Panzerfaust team knocked out their APC. Both Turkin and Stolyarov were wounded, while the APC crew was killed. Our tanks arrived and opened fire from main guns; the company went forward, firing on the move. The enemy fled.

The bridgehead at the Neisse river was very small; it was exposed even to machine-gun fire, while German artillery fired at us day and night. Soldiers talked about an armoured train firing at us, but I was not sure about that. We did not have sufficient force to extend the bridgehead, and although the Germans brought up reinforcements, their infantry was not numerous either. They did not bring any tanks, as they must have suffered too heavy losses. We stayed for some five or six days at the bridgehead, and the Germans gave us no respite day or night. The Germans were in bushes not more than 50 metres from our company, and threw themselves at us several times, day and night. But the soldiers of my platoon opened heavy fire every time, while Lieutenant Guschenkov’s machine-gun cut them down without mercy and they had to fall back with losses. The air force bombed us during the day, dropping bombs at the bridge, but fortunately for us they all missed. The Germans even launched torpedoes down the river to hit the bridge. The torpedoes were quite powerful, but they all missed the bridge, hit the banks of the river and exploded not far from the bridge. The Germans used a new weapon against our infantry, at least I had not seen such a weapon before. They dropped boxes or containers from the planes: in mid-air the boxes opened into two halves and small bombs that resembled Russian F-1 grenades rained on us from there. They could cover quite a vast area. Again, fortunately for us they missed us, apparently they did not know exactly where we were. We could not dig in, as the the water table was too high, we only dug skirmisher’s trenches, not deeper. Eventually, everything worked out fine and we did not have losses.

My orderly Andrey Drozd and I slept in turns; not far from the riverbank we found concrete rings for facing wells and they served us as a good shelter from shell and bomb splinters. This is where we rested when Germans did not attack. Our rest was a couple of hours of sleep, all the other time we were awake. Apparently, the Germans suffered hellishly from Guschenkov’s machine-guns, which fired at them at point-blank range, cutting down the attacking soldiers. As a result, the Fritzes ceased their attacks on our company and it was quiet for a couple of days. Soldiers could calmly put themselves in order, at least, those who wanted to could shave or wash their faces. The battalion’s field kitchen would come to us across the bridge before dawn and in twilight in the evening, and all day long we had to eat the remains of captured German food. When the Germans had calmed down, company’s Sergeant Major Mikhail Bratchenko organized lunch during the day. They stayed in a small house together with company commander Grigori Vyunov not far from the front line, and set up kitchen there. The company’s medic, clerk and orderly also stayed there, Alexander Guschenkov sometimes also visited there. He already had four or five wounds and this was the first operation in which he was not wounded.