Tank Rider: Into the Reich with the Red Army

EPILOGUE

In May of 1945 we were stationed near Prague, and in June the Brigade relocated to the Hungarian and Austrian border. I do not remember the name of the village. We built some temporary dwellings out of wooden planks for all the personnel of the battalion. Tsikanovski and I got the boards from a timber mill, we paid for it, but it was still cheap. Guschenkov, Shakulo, Mikheev and I also managed to get beds for ourselves, the company’s officers. Besides that, Drozd also got a feather bed, pillow, blanket and even sheets for me. Many officers envied me because of this. We went through medical inspection there, apparently, there was an order to check the health of the officers. My height was 182 cm, weight 76 kg, age 22. They said I was healthy.

We stayed there for about a month. We did sports, such as crosscountry running, climbing ropes, we even organized the Brigade’s soccer championship. I was in the battalion’s team. Later we were ordered to move out from that place and on to Vienna. On the way, during one of the breaks the battalion stayed for several days, while I was resting in a house on a feather bed with a pillow. The owners of the house were not there. Battalion commander Kozienko, his deputy, Gerstein, deputy chief of staff Romanov and machine-gun platoon leader Tsikanovski walked in. They woke me up. The battalion commander told me: ‘You’ve had enough sleep. You and Tsikanovski are to get some wine. Take a car and go.’ Someone added: ‘Do not come back without wine.’ We brought a decent barrel of some 600 litres of wine. All personnel got this dry wine during lunch in normal doses. No one was drunk.

Several days later the battalion reached Vienna. We were stationed near Wiener-Neustadt in Hitenberg village some 30 km from Vienna. I went on vacation to Moscow from there on 15 August, 1945.

In November we left Austria and moved to Vesprem in Hungary. My wife also arrived there. I had married my classmate on 5 September, 1945, during my vacation in Moscow. The barracks were large, there were several storeys, and all personnel of the Brigade stayed there. Officers lived in separate houses, some two or four men in a room. My wife and I stayed in Vesprem in the town’s outskirts, with a Hungarian. We stayed in one room with a small stove, on which we cooked food and warmed tea.

We regularly held tactical training, but it was more for show. Everyone was tired of this tactical stuff, assaults of dummy enemy and so on. Older soldiers started to retire. Then the officers started to retire as well.

Between June and November Dr. Pankova, Guschenkov, Kashintsev, Mikheev, Oplesnin, Tsikanovski, Kes, Kostenko and a few other officers retired.

A military school had been established, which had two companies: one for training sergeants and the second for training officers. There were approximately 200 to 250 men in that school. I was appointed commander of this motley crew in late October 1945. Battalion commander Kozienko was against my appointment and was all the time demanding my return to the battalion, in which I was a company commander after the end of the war. Finally, after his recommendation I was relieved of my command of this school. The training was almost complete – cadets were promoted to sergeants, while drivers were still in the process of examination for driving licences. This all happened in Bernau, where the 4th Guards Tank Army, including our Brigade, was relocated in June 1946.

My wife and I received a two-room apartment in Bernau. The apartment was heated with stoves. The German stoves with tiling were really good! The stoves were heated with briquette coal. Gas, running water and a bathtub and gas heating were also there. Some furniture was also provided: a metal bed, table, sofa, wardrobe, a Telefunken radio set, silverware and even an iron. We lived in the city, next to some former barracks. The Brigade commander, his deputies and battalion commanders all lived in mansions for one or two families. All officers were there with families, children and wives.

They issued food rations both for me and for my wife, and when our son was born, they also provided rations for him, except for the cigarettes! In Hungary it was possible to exchange ‘stuff’ for food, but in Germany it was quite a problem, as the local population did not have any food. It was only in Berlin on the black market that one could exchange cigarettes for food, or rather delicacies – sausage, smoked fish and other things that were not available in the rations. In principle, the rations were sufficient, so we even fed the orderly, when he did not go to the canteen.

After I came back to the battalion, I was sent with my company to Friedrichagen to guard the former German centre for development of V missiles. At that time we did not know what kind of centre it was. We only knew that our experts were working there, some of them were Colonels and were holders of Stalin’s Award (they had those small Stalin Award badges). We stayed there for three or four months, and then, in late November I think, we came back to our base.

In October 1946 they introduced wages depending on the military rank and office. Because of this my wage grew from 1200 roubles to 1500 or even 1700 roubles, I do not remember exactly. Besides that, we were issued German marks. However, one could not buy anything with them, and there was actually nothing to buy. One could go to a barber’s shop – they had already opened again. One could pay with just cigarettes.

By 1947 there were only three veterans left in the battalion – commander T. G. Kozienko, his deputy, Gerstein, and me. By that time the battalion consisted of just eight officers and five soldiers. We prepared guns for long-term storage and helped the tank crews to prepare tanks for long-term storage. We did not do anything else, except for going on guard duty in the city, as there were almost no soldiers left in our Brigade.

In late December 1947 I went to the USSR, to Tbilisi. This was the end of my service in the 1st motor rifle company, 1st motor rifle battalion, 35th Guards Mechanized Kamenets-Podolsk Brigade.