Tank Rider: Into the Reich with the Red Army

THE END OF THE WAR

We were standing in a group by a house, such things happened in built-up areas, although one should never do that. Company commander Chernyshov and telephone or radio operators for communication with battalion commander were also there. I sent the company’s men forward – we should not have stood in such a big group. I was rescued by the fact that I had walked several steps from the house in order to follow the company’s men and had not hung around Chernyshov. In that very moment a random shell hit the house’s wall – whether German or Russian, its explosion cut many men down. I was wounded by its splinters along with several other men from signals platoon; several men were killed. Again, I believe that I was lucky, which happened time and again in that war. My belt buckle saved my life. The splinter went through it and got stuck in it, severely tearing the skin on my stomach. The blow was so strong that it bent me double. The other splinter hit my leg; the third one seriously damaged three fingers on my left hand, almost tearing them off. Some other smaller splinters hit me was well.

They bandaged me on the spot, and the battalion’s doctor Pankova sent me in a truck to a hospital along with the other wounded. First they sent me to a transit hospital in Luckenwalde, which was in the building of a former German hospital. I should say that we were lucky in our journey to the hospital, too: Germans, who were wandering in forests, abandoning Berlin in small groups, could have caught us. The Germans would merely execute the wounded; they were angry enough to do that. There was a rumour in Luckenwalde that some trucks with wounded were under fire or were even destroyed, but our vehicle made it safely either before Germans appeared on the highway or after they had left the highway and disappeared into the forest. There were many wounded in Luckenwalde and we all sat in an underground corridor, from which we were transported to the other hospitals by trucks. I sat on the floor with my back against the wall, sometimes sleeping or dozing off, as it was already almost morning. The medical inspection was under way; depending on the wound we were distributed among different hospitals and that set the order of evacuation. Several doctors walked up to me as well. A female doctor, a Major of the Medical Corps, asked me about my wound and how long I had been at the front. I answered her and she gave an instruction to another doctor to evacuate me immediately with the first truck available.

During the night of 26 April I was sent to the stationary hospital of the 4th Guards Tank Army in Sarau, also in Germany, but deep in our rear. We arrived there around noon. I met several soldiers from my company and my platoon; some of then had been in the hospital from the very first day of the offensive, 16 April, while others had arrived earlier. I gave my pistol and map case to one of the soldiers. I unclipped my decorations from my tunic and wrapped them in a handkerchief together with my party membership card and other papers. First the girls washed the others and me in a steam bath – it was hard to wash myself with one hand. They took my uniforms (tunic, trousers, field cap and probably greatcoat) for fumigation to kill all the insects and threw away all my underwear and foot wrappings, giving me new underwear after the steam bath.

They put me on a table in a dressing room. A surgeon, Major of Medical Corps, started to inspect me and gave nurses instructions about the bandages. One of the nurses asked my permission to have a look at my decorations in the handkerchief, and told the Major: ‘Look how many decorations he has.’ The Major asked me how long I had been at the front, and I answered that I started in 1943, was lightly wounded but never went further than the Brigade’s medical platoon. ‘Yeah, ‘ he said, ‘For the first time in this war I see a Lieutenant, a platoon leader and a company commander, also a tank rider, who was seriously wounded for the first time after two years at the front.’ They bandaged me and the Major said that I should again come and see him at lunch, and then they took me to my room. I put on my old uniform that had already been ‘fried’. They put me in a hospital room that had three beds. The hospital was located in a three- or four-storey building. I think that it had been an apartment house before, but the German inhabitants had abandoned it with the approach of the Soviet troops. The beds had linen, a pillow and a blanket. As Lieutenant Guschenkov would tell me, it would be good if I was lightly wounded, go into a hospital to sleep on a clean bed with clean sheets! This was exactly the place that he wished for me.

I picked up my pistol and map case from the soldier. I went to my soldiers, we had a talk, and I was invited to celebrate our meeting in the evening at dinner. I went to lunch with the Major – the head of the hospital’s department, who had received me. We walked into a room, where the hospital’s doctors were eating, and he introduced me and said that I would eat there together with them and pointed me at my place at the table. Doctors in officers’ ranks, up to Lieutenant Colonel, mostly ladies, were sitting at the table. They were all much older than I was. The doctors did not object and started to ask questions. I had to briefly tell them my life story, it was quite brief – at that time I was not even 22 years old. This is how I started attending the doctors’ canteen, not the ordinary canteen for wounded men and officers. I do not know why they gave me such a privilege. The ladies were very friendly with me; they treated me as an equal and only called me by my first name. They were always busy – the war was still going on and wounded kept on coming in, thus we rarely met in the canteen. But when I met them, I was very embarrassed by their attention, I was not used to such things. I had become alien to people, especially ladies. I slept a lot, enjoying my soft bed. I would hang around the town of Sarau with my soldiers; the town was small, there were few German inhabitants, but there were many Russian women, who were gathered from the whole of Germany in order to go back to Motherland, to the Soviet Union. In the evenings we would watch films in the hospital’s cinema theatre, both Russian and German films. It is interesting that a few days later my wounded orderly Drozd arrived at the same hospital. He told me that if I got wounded, he would also be either killed or wounded by the Germans. He got off with a wound. I was glad to see him. I remembered Sarafanov, Ishmuhammetov and Chechin from the other company. Five to seven men from our battalion were there. Sometimes we would hang around the town together. On one of those days I met the Major, the one that had been wounded in his buttocks. He had recovered from the wound and was again leading the Army’s song and dance ensemble. The Major started to complain to me that some of the singers in the ensemble were giving him a hard time; he was afraid of being beaten up and asked for my help. We walked into a room where the ensemble stayed. Drozd, Chechin and some others were there with me. There was a scandal there again, artists were cursing the Major, I do not remember why, probably because of his affairs with women in the ensemble. The Major addressed me with a request to appease the men in the ensemble. I intimidated them and said that if they continued their disrespectful behaviour, they would have to face my guys and me. It became quiet and we left. I think they took our threats seriously and there were no more complaints.

I am paying so much attention to my stay in the hospital because I would like to emphasize the good care of doctors and nurses and how well they treated the wounded, regardless of their rank. For the first time after long years of military service and war I was in an environment that I had not seen for a long time – quiet, peaceful and slow-paced hospital life. No enemy air force. No bullets whistling in the air, no mines or shells were exploding around. You could sleep as much as you wanted; the only thing to remember was not to miss breakfast, lunch and dinner. You could watch films in the evenings. After a film I would come to my room, take off my jackboots and uniform and lie down on my bed with linen sheets, feather mattress and a pillow. I would receive a new bandage at a specially specified time from young and attentive nurses. It was bliss, real paradise. But I, a fool, wanted to go back to my unit as soon as possible, as if the war would not end without me. But the Major was not in a hurry to let me go, telling me that he would only discharge me when my wounds were fully healed. He would say: ‘Why are you in such a hurry, you have fought enough, the war would be over soon, and you deserve your rest.’ Actually, I do not know myself why I was in such a hurry. Later, when I arrived at the battalion and reported my arrival to Captain Grigoriev, battalion’s chief of staff, he was very amazed and said that they were not expecting me, as they thought I would be sent to another unit from the hospital. They had also deleted me from the personnel lists of the battalion. Battalion commander Major Kozienko and his deputy in political affairs Captain Gerstein also reacted to my return quite indifferently. I was not even recommended for a decoration for the Berlin operation; they either forgot it, or did it on purpose, I have no idea. It’s like that.

Berlin’s garrison surrendered on 2 May. The unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany was signed in Karlhorst, a suburb of Berlin, on 9 May. The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR declared the day of 9 May VICTORY DAY.

The Major of the Medical Corps, the head of one of the hospital’s departments, did release me from the hospital before the end of the war. Finally, on 12 May, I was officially discharged from the hospital along with several other soldiers from our company, including my orderly Drozd. On all kinds of transport, sometimes by train, sometimes on bicycles, or hitchhiking, we started our journey to Prague. In Dresden we stole a car. The cars were gathered in a square under guard of the local Soviet command, and we stole a car from under their noses. We did not enjoy the car ride for long, as we ran out of fuel, and we had to abandon it on the highway. We travelled, hitchhiking on a truck almost all the way to Prague and arrived at the battalion on 13 or 14 May, 1945.

Most of the battalion’s officers were happy to see me, except for the battalion’s command, as if I had not fought under their command for almost two years. I managed to obtain by request spirits from the logistics platoon leader and we organized a small party to celebrate both Victory and my return. Lieutenants Guschenkov, Mikheev, Tsikanovski, Popov, Kes, Zemtsev, Senior Lieutenants Chernyshov and Kashintsev, platoon leader Lieutenant Ivan Akazin (he arrived in the company after I was wounded) and others, including the company’s Sergeant Major Mikhail Bratchenko, were present. Lieutenant Petr Shakulo was still recovering from his wounds in a hospital. By the way, the first ones to be transferred to the reserve because of wounds in September and October 1945, were Alexander Guschenkov and Ivan Akazin. Alexander was already 31 years old in 1945 and he had some seven or eight wounds, so he tried his best to leave the army, while Ivan’s right wrist did not function properly again after his wound.

We partied for a long time; someone made a trip to a Czech village and brought more wine, vodka and snacks. I think we partied till dawn – some people were coming, some were leaving, while some were sobering up and coming back to the table. For some reason they had not had a party without me, they were always busy in battles. The war for the battalion was over on 11 May – they had to finish some Germans off after 9 May. Most of the battalion’s soldiers were liberated prisoners of war, Soviet people from concentration camps that abounded around Berlin. We were all happy that we survived, but at the same time we grieved about the dead. As they told me, after my wound at Ketzin the battalion had an order to capture Potsdam; on 27 April, together with the 2nd and the 3rd battalions, they took part in capturing Brandenburg and then had to repel attacks of German units, that were trying to break out of Berlin. Besides that, they also had to repel attacks from the west, from Wenck’s 12th Army, which abandoned its positions against the English and American forces and had been ordered to break through to Berlin to relieve its garrison. After capturing Brandenburg on 6 May, 1945, the Brigade as a part of the 4th Guards Tank Army, carried out a forced march to Czechoslovakia, to Prague, which our Army liberated on 9 May. It was there, in a forest in vicinity of Prague that I found my battalion after my return from hospital.

Our Brigade travelled 450 kilometres during the Berlin operation in the nine days of the offensive, from 16 to 24 April from the Neisse to the western outskirts of Berlin, at an average speed of 40 or 50 kilometres a day. We suffered significant casualties in those battles, but destroyed the German units that stood in our way. Many Soviet prisoners of war that we liberated took an active part in those last battles, replacing our casualties. My cousin, the son of my father’s sister, Alexander Georgievich Fedorov, was in the prisoner-of-war camp at Luckenwalde. In early spring of 1941 he was drafted into the Red Army as a construction officer in the rank of a Technical-Intendant, a rank equivalent to Lieutenant. In autumn of 1941 he was taken prisoner at Vyazma, where three Soviet armies, around 300,000 men, were surrounded. I have already mentioned that we, our battalion, rushed through Luckenwalde at night and did not stop there. After the war he served for some time in the 16th Guards Mechanized Brigade of our 6th Guards Corps, and in June he visited our battalion, but did not meet me, as I was away doing something on the battalion commander’s order. I also went to visit him in his unit, but did not find him there – he had already been sent to the USSR. There were no complaints about Alexander’s behaviour in German captivity, and in September 1945 he went back home to Smolensk, where he had lived before the war.

The war was over. My unending session of active service at the front, officially as a motor rifle platoon leader, and in reality mostly as a company commander, lasted from August 1943 to May 1945 – a total of 650 days or 22 months, which makes it almost two years. Every day the Germans fired at me, not only with small arms, but also with their artillery, mortars, tanks, air force and anti-tank teams with Panzerfausts, snipers and flame-throwers. They missed. They planted anti-personnel and anti-tank mines in my way. All these things were designed to kill me, wound me, hurt me and make me a cripple. The enemy was professionally trained, possessed modern military equipment and was expert in using it. The enemy was harsh, mean and brave. The enemy had the typical German punctual discipline. However, I survived. They could not kill me during daytime or night time, in winter or summer, in good or bad weather, in field or forest, in villages or cities. They did not manage to kill me or make me a cripple, but they did with many others. What helped me to survive? It is hard to answer this question. It was not just me who survived. Take, for example, my soldier Nikolai Chulkin – he did not even get wounded. But how many good, young and healthy men were killed in battle! Some were my subordinates, many others were just my brothers in arms. So many died when liberating our Motherland – the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics – from Nazi invasion, and later when crushing the enemy in Poland, Germany and Czechoslovakia… From the summer of 1943, when I came to the battalion, to May 1945, only one third of the officers remained – just 14 out of 45. The rest were wounded and never came back to the battalion or were killed. I bow my head before all those who died and I bow my head before their heroic deeds. May eternal glory be with them! Their heroic deeds will live for centuries and the memory of them will stay with me till the last day of my life.