Chapter 11

One of the Very Few

Aleksandr Vasil’evich Rogachev

I was born into a working family on 21 March 1923 in the city of Efremov, which at the time was in Moscow Oblast, but since 1938, in Tula Oblast. I had an older brother Vladimir who was born in 1920, and a younger brother who was born in 1925. Both went through the war. My older brother was a mechanic in a bomber regiment, while my younger brother was a scout. Other mothers were envious: in our family three sons and a father went off to war and they all returned from it. However, my brothers passed away early, so I’m living out the final days for my entire family.

On the evening of 21 June, our School No. 1, in which I studied, was having its graduation ceremony, in which we were to receive our diplomas. I was the leader of a string band and I played the mandolin, balalaika and the guitar. My small orchestra of eight gave a good performance that evening. Our mood was happy, but the teachers and some of the invited parents seemed not to share our joy. Many of those who were present that evening felt trapped. The teachers were standing around with blank faces, lost in thought. Plainly they sensed that war was coming. My older brother Vladimir, who was called up for the army in 1939 from the second year of his study at the Moscow Hydro-meteorological Institute, wrote about this in his letters. He was serving as an aviation mechanic in a fighter regiment that was based right on the border close to Brest. Some of the statements in his letters were blacked out by censors, but I recall a letter from him that arrived in the first few days of June, in which he wrote: ‘Mama and Papa, don’t hope for a meeting soon. War, in which we will have to take part, is approaching.’ My parents, particularly my mother, of course, were distressed.

At 11:00 p.m. that evening I was already home and had gone to bed. But on the morning of 22 June, announcements came that war had started. On 24 June, I and other guys of the school went to the enlistment centre. There was pandemonium there! A huge crowd! Young men older than us had been called up. Women were accompanying them. Accordions were playing, and there were songs and tears. We somehow fought our way through to the sentry, and he told us, ‘Guys, don’t meddle, keep working, wait your turn. For now they’re calling up older ages.’ We returned empty-handed, but soon joined an armed battalion that was helping maintain order in the city. At the end of July, I received my draft notice.

When I had gone through the preliminary review commission in February 1941, I had been assigned to the Navy. I was proud of this! I really wanted to become a sailor! I was a good swimmer, I’d grown up next to a river, I skated and skied, and engaged in sports, but when I received the draft notice and reported to the enlistment centre, there they informed me, ‘No, dear fellow, the Navy doesn’t need anyone right now. The infantry needs men.’ Well, fine.

A detachment of conscripts formed up in the first days of August, which was headed by a lieutenant and Order wearer, who’d been wounded in the war with Finland. He was to lead us to a reserve rifle regiment, where we were to receive training and then join the ranks of the acting army. Only the lieutenant knew the location of this regiment and the route to it. So we moved out on foot from Efremov somewhere in the middle of August. We marched through Tula, Moscow and Riazan’ Oblasts; to put it briefly, this reserve rifle regiment was located in Ioshkar-Ola, the capital city of the Mari ASSR [Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic]. We covered this entire distance on foot! We marched 25–30 kilometres a day. We spent the nights in settlements and villages. Sometimes we were issued rations, but for the most part we were fed by residents of the places where we stopped. En route the detachment grew as draftees born in 1922 and 1923 joined our ranks. Yet it is characteristic that despite all the difficulties and hardship of this labourious trek, none of the detachment ran away. Everyone arrived at the destination!

We were quartered outside the city in the workshops of a ceramics factory. Our training began. Of course, the rations were meagre and the conditions were Spartan. We built two-level wooden bunk beds in the workshops where bricks were fired. We were still in our civilian clothing and footwear. But the training we received wasn’t bad. We went over tactics, the theory of gunnery, and target-range practice. They were preparing junior lieutenants, company commanders and soldiers out of us. We were told, ‘Your main training will be at the front. Here we’re just prepping you for it.’ I recall how he was always commanding us: ‘Let’s go, guys, be more cheerful, young men!’ But our mood wasn’t important: cities were being surrendered and the armies were retreating. Among ourselves we would say, ‘Well, is it that the old guys don’t know how to fight and can’t hold back the Germans?! We’ll get there and show them!’

Our training came to an end in the first days of November. In the middle of the month, we received a good-quality kit: flannel underclothing, a quilted jacket, a great coat, a camouflage cloak, a ski cap and felt boots. There were no helmets. Our 47th Separate Rifle Brigade formed up in Ioshkar-Ola and we loaded onto trains. We were told that the brigade would join the 1st Shock Army and would be defending Moscow. Somewhere around the 15th, the train pulled into Likhobory Station. On foot we marched along the Dmitrov highway in the direction of Iakhroma–Dmitrov. The march was difficult; we spent the nights in forests under the fir trees and campfires were prohibited. We would march 5 kilometres, a halt would be called for 10 minutes, and everyone would drop and immediately fall asleep. The command, ‘Get up!’ – and we’d struggle back to our feet. The winter kit was heavy, and we also had our rucksack and weapon. I was the No. 1 of a DP light machine-gun team. So I carried the machine gun, while my partner lugged two boxes that held four drums of ammunition each. We were sturdy guys, young – we marched 40 kilometres a day. We had bloody blisters on our feet. They would burst, dry up, and then you’d pull off your foot wraps to check them . .. that’s how we marched.

We deployed along the Moscow–Volga canal and took up a defence there. Then we launched a counteroffensive to liberate some villages. I no longer recall their names, of course. Of the larger towns and cities, I remember Solnechnogorsk, Klin and Shakhovskaia. There was very hard fighting for Klin. I recall entering Tchaikovsky’s home and museum. The fascists had turned everything upside down in it. We gathered sheets of musical compositions . . .

The fighting in the Moscow suburbs was very hard. There was deep snow and bone-chilling frosts. We would attack a village – as a rule it was on an elevation – after a weak preparatory artillery barrage. The platoon commander would give the order, ‘To the right, one by one, move by bounds; move out!’ What bounds?! There is snow! So we moved out. Bullets are whistling. You’d advance 6 metres, fall, find some more or less satisfactory cover, and start shooting. You’d wait for the remaining men to come up. They’re closing ranks, but it is still 500 metres to the German-held village. While we advanced 200 metres, the platoon would dwindle to fifteen or twenty men. An unsuccessful attack – what is to be done? The commander decides to fall back. We retreat under fire. When you look at these losses, there was no place on the field free of corpses; they lay there like bundles, with only narrow intervals between them, and you’d think: ‘Can such a battle last for long? Why have so many men fallen for this accursed village, and we can’t take it? Will we take it or not?’

We’d sit there, everyone begrimed with gunpowder, and we’d look at each other with the same thought: ‘Let them kill us; if only a leg or arm isn’t torn off. They can kill us all.’ In the evening, march companies would arrive, either of old guys or young lads. They would all ask, ‘What’s it like here, guys?’ We’d reply, ‘Why ask? We’ll make another attack and you’ll find out what it’s like.’ The new replacement might be 35 or 40 years old, while we were all just 18 or 19, but they’d look at us respectfully. We’d make two or three attacks in a day, and none of this batch of replacements would remain. In the evening a new march company would arrive and replacements would again flesh out the platoon to its authorized strength. Meanwhile, we, the bones of the platoon, kept fighting. There was more or less a core group of approximately ten men, and from it perhaps one or two men would get killed or wounded, so the composition of this group changed every day. I will talk later about my last battle, in which I was wounded. In this same battle, the deputy platoon commander Senior Sergeant Medvedchenko was wounded in the leg. In the medical-sanitary battalion they rolled me away and the nurse said, ‘Here are the platoon’s last veterans – deputy platoon commander Medvedchenko and machine-gunner Rogachev.’

In 1941 we heard that there were cases of self-inflicted wounds in neighbouring battalions, but in ours I don’t recall such a case. In a destroyer anti-tank artillery regiment or battery, this was strictly forbidden. Never!!! I recall the regiment commander dwelling on this point in front of a batch of replacements: ‘We are a destroyer anti-tank regiment. We combat against tanks and have little chance of surviving intact. Whoever has weak nerves or thinks it better to fight in a different place – step forward, nothing will happen. We’ll post you to different regiments.’ No one stepped forward.

Our meals only very rarely made it up to us at the front. Either we were isolated, or we were lying under heavy fire and it was impossible to reach us. The soldiers would crawl back with a Thermos while we would break off an attack. Somewhere, somehow there would be a lull, and at this moment, perhaps once a day, but sometimes not even then (that’s why we carried a dry ration of biscuits and sugar), the guys with the Thermos would come crawling in to our position: ‘Soldiers, come eat!’ In the Thermos would be split-pea soup with meat, but you couldn’t stick your spoon in it – it would be frozen, and there would be no campfire to melt it and warm it up. We went around hungry. On the Northwestern Front, all we had were three biscuits and five lumps of sugar a day! We’d hack up fallen horses with a sapper’s spade. We’d build a tiny fire and make a horseflesh stew – it was like rubber. That was nothing, we’d still chew it.

But you know, we didn’t have a sharp appetite and we didn’t feel the cold, because we were under constant stress and frazzled both physically and mentally. Thoughts of food would arise only when coming out of a battle, but they also only added to our fatigue and the feeling of emptiness inside. That’s how much we suffered for our sense of mortal danger. True, with time our sense of fear subsided, but it seemingly left a void inside and only hatred alone would remain. We wanted to break through, to kill, to liberate, and only then it seemed there would be some relief. But here we fought and fought . .. and accomplished nothing. Even so, the thought of the uselessness of these terrible casualties never entered our heads. Yet in 1944, when we began to recall 1941, we’d think: ‘Lord, how were we fighting there?! For what purpose did we suffer such losses? How inexperienced we all were!’

When however we conducted a successful attack, it seemed kind of easy. It seemed our comrades had not been killed in vain; this time we showed them. The enemy is lying over there dead. Or else we’d assault a village, fighting our way into it. We’d take it, but it was like there would be no dead Germans in it. You’d find perhaps 30 or 40 of them, but our dead would be around 700. Our soldiers and officers often asked, ‘What is this? We take casualties, but it seems the Germans don’t.’ It was said that they always removed their dead and buried them.

The Germans fought very skillfully. They had a hardened, professional army with combat experience. The Germans had an excellent feel for the terrain and sited their positions carefully. Well, and their MG-34 machine gun was a terrifying weapon in a class by itself. One of our companies would try to attack, and they would have a squad with one machine gun that would stop it cold. The incoming fire was heavy, like a torrent. We’d take casualties and keep attacking and attacking, but until we destroyed them, we’d make no headway. In case of necessity, the Germans had vehicles at the ready. The garrison would load into them and head to the next village about 3 to 10 kilometres away. There it would stop and dig in again. In the winter the Germans never fought in an open field; they had bunkers and trenches, while we’d grab a bit of sleep in the woods before again going on the attack across the naked, snow-covered ground. That’s how it went from village to village, always on foot . . .

Yes, the MG-34 had a rapid rate of fire and was very accurate. It had a two-man crew. Usually they would choose a position very skilfully and camouflage it well. If I fired and they spotted me, I’d have immediately to change positions; you couldn’t stay for very long in any one place. We were also young and inexperienced.

The enemy would go on the attack. In order to take aim at one and hit him required 4 or 5 seconds. While you took aim, you held your breath to steady the rifle. While doing so, he would cover a certain amount of ground. If he was coming toward you, you had to aim at his legs in order to hit him in the chest. If he was running away from you, then it was just the opposite. If you aimed at his head first, then over the 5 seconds before you fired, he would recede and the bullet would miss high. These are the ABCs of marksmanship.

If you’re attacking, every 5 or 6 seconds you had to drop, and upon hitting the ground, it was necessary to roll to the right or to the left two or three times, and take cover behind a corpse or any sort of fold in the ground. When you rose again to attack, that German would be aiming at the place where he saw you drop, while you had shifted 1.5 to 2 metres. While he moved his rifle, you had another 5 or 6 seconds. But we didn’t know all this; we were young. If you weren’t killed right away, then with time of course such a method of advance would suggest itself to you, and you would figure out what you needed to do to survive. You quickly became experienced.

On 20 January 1942, we were withdrawn into some woods near the city of Klin. Our 1st Shock Army transferred to the Northwestern Front. At the end of January, we moved in trucks approximately 200 kilometres along the Leningrad highway, before disembarking and moving toward the front at night on foot. Our army was supposed to cooperate with the encirclement of the Germans’ Demiansk grouping. Fighting went on day and night. We had few tanks and aircraft and little artillery. The German Luftwaffe dominated the skies. Primarily 45-mm guns accompanied us. We would ask, ‘Why aren’t you firing?’ In response, we heard, ‘We only have three shells per gun each day.’ When we went on the attack, they’d pop off a couple of shots and that was it. There was no strong fire support. There’d be a brief mortar or artillery barrage, and then we’d rise to the attack. We always moved along forest roads. A tractor would tow a plow made of logs to clear the roads. Walls of snow about a metre and a half high were formed on both sides of the road. We would move along the road, under fire of course. Bullets buzzed through the air. We would assemble in some populated place. We’d resupply. Then we’d resume our advance. All the time we stuck to the forests. We never marched along good roads.

From the end of January to the end of February, we advanced as far as Ramushevo and we isolated the Demiansk grouping. Afterward we were switched to Staraia Russa and we were ordered to take it by 23 February, Red Army Day. We repeatedly attacked between 23 and 27 February, at times making three or four attacks a day, and then another one at night. The casualties were very heavy. I subsequently experienced very few battles as bloody as those on the Northwestern Front.

On 27 February, I was wounded in a night attack. That day we had gone on the attack – unsuccessfully. A second attack – and again heavy losses and we fell back to the jumping-off line. We drove back a German attack. Then we launched two more attacks, all without results. I went into these attacks robotically, thinking about nothing, but at midnight we were woken up for another attack and I felt apprehensive. I wasn’t thinking about death, but I didn’t feel right; I sensed that something would happen to me.

Immediately before the surge to the first German trench, I was firing a machine gun. Mortar shells began dropping around me. Two rounds exploded on either side of me and I realized that they had me bracketed. At the moment when I attempted to shift my position, there was another explosion. I only saw the flash before feeling such a strong blow to my side, it was as if someone behind me had struck me with a gun butt or a club. I lost consciousness. When I woke up, I was looking up into the starry night sky . . . and it was so quiet . . . only scattered fire was going on. I was lying right in front of a German position. We had gone on the attack just after midnight; around 0300, a lightly wounded Red Army soldier came crawling past me. I softly called to him. He crawled over. He said, ‘Brother, are you alive?’ I replied, ‘I’m alive. Help me, friend.’ He retrieved a towel from my haversack and wrapped it around the wound over my camouflage cloak. I was losing a lot of blood – the mortar fragment, as was determined later, had broken three of my ribs before embedding itself in the lower lung lobe.

He whispered, ‘Hang on.’ I wrapped my arms around his neck and we started crawling. We crawled for some distance. But there were so many dead bodies on this field that it was difficult to crawl. I told him, ‘Listen, why are we tormenting ourselves by crawling? Get me on my feet.’

‘They’ll kill us.’

‘They won’t kill anything. We’ll make better progress on our feet.’

He hoisted me up. I couldn’t straighten up because of the tremendous pain. We set off. He was older, somehow skittish. He’d immediately drop prone at the sound of firing. I said, ‘Quit falling, we won’t be able to get back up. Those bullets that you hear have already flown past you. We struggled forward another 500 metres to the Lovat’ River. I don’t know how we made it down the steep bank – I kept losing consciousness. On the riverbank the medic approached, gave me an injection and took a look: ‘O-o-o, from the 1st Battalion, 1st Company – Rogachev, the last veteran. Hardly anyone is left . . .’

They laid me on a sled and an Alsatian sheep dog pulled me across a snow-covered field to Lower Ramushevo. There they put me in the back of a truck and took me to a hospital. In the hospital they attempted to extract the shell fragment, but were unable to do so. I was sent on to a front hospital. To reach it at first we travelled through the woods over a plank road in a ZIS-5 high-sided truck. They loaded us, the wounded, covered us with warm blankets, placed chemical heating pads on our legs, and set off. The bumpy road rattled us terribly. Each jolt in the side caused terrible pain, yet we had to drive 50 to 60 kilometres to reach Akulovo Station. Guys were moaning and screaming .. . We arrived at the station at night. They laid us in a row on stretchers next to the railroad embankment. When they conducted the operation, they cut off all my uniform, and before sending me on they dressed me in some combat blouse. A captain came by with a flashlight, determining who was to go where. Our train had two passenger cars equipped with suspended net beds for the officers and four heated cattle cars for the sergeants and privates. When she came up to me, I was in a mental fog, and when she asked me a question, I didn’t hear anything or understand anything. She illuminated me with the flashlight, and the combat blouse that I was wearing had a little black cube on the collar. Obviously, the shirt was from some junior lieutenant. She said, ‘Place him in an officer’s car.’ Indeed, they placed me like an officer in the passenger car on an upper berth.

We pulled out of the station in the morning and within an hour to an hour and a half, Messerschmidt fighters dived on the train. They damaged the steam engine, killed or wounded the mechanic, and bombed the last two cars of the train, in which there were wounded men, doctors and nurses. The casualties were heavy. Then we had to wait until a new steam engine arrived to replace the damaged one.

I was taken to Iaroslavl’ and spent a month in the hospital there. The doctors tried again to conduct an operation, but nothing came of their attempts – I kept suppurating and bleeding. I was gradually losing my strength, so they, in order to make sure that they didn’t take any blame, sent me further to the rear, to Novosibirsk. I was assigned to the city hospital at No. 3 Red Prospect, which lay opposite the Party regional committee building. I stayed in this hospital until 15 August 1942. At first I lay in a common ward, in which there were approximately ten patients, but then when I had a setback and stopped eating, they transferred me to a tiny, separate room to die. Qualified surgeons from the Burdenko hospital were coming to this hospital to perform complex operations. So just then some surgeon arrived. He began to make his rounds. He stopped in my room and asked, ‘Who’s this here?’

‘A hopeless case.’

‘Show me his records.’

After examining them, he said, ‘Well, get him to the operating room.’ I recall the operating table, but I woke up and found myself in my tiny room again. The doctor had removed the lower portion of the left lung that contained the fragment. When I came around back to consciousness, I saw a plate holding cream of wheat on the table beside my bed. I was hungry, so I took a spoon and slowly started to eat. A senior nurse came in, saw me, and exclaimed, ‘Lord, he’s eating the cream of wheat. That means he’ll live.’ She went running to the doctor. A week later I was transferred back to the common ward. There they rejoiced: ‘A-a-a, Sashka has come back from the dead!’ Although I rather quickly turned the corner, I started to develop osteomyelitis and my wound continued to suppurate.

What was the mood among the patients? The older soldiers dreamed of being declared as invalids and going home, or at least being assigned to some purely administrative post; anything other than being sent back to the front. But the young artillerymen, tankers and infantrymen – all were ready to return to their units. Their desire was one and the same – to finish off the enemy. Such a feeling was held by everyone after what they’d done to us since 1941. We wanted to pay them back, take our revenge, drive them from our territory and finish the war on the foe’s turf. Well, of course there might have been someone who in fact thought that we might lose the war and that the losses might even grow, but he didn’t say this aloud. In the hospital, just as in every unit, there were appropriate agencies that tracked the mood and might summon you to ask, ‘Don’t you think you should keep your mouth shut?’

By an order, the recovering patients were sent to a rest home in the city of Berdsk. There we regained our strength, and I began to play volleyball and to swim in the river. At the end of August I found myself standing in front of a commission. Three men were sitting there: the director of the hospital, the deputy political leader, and someone else. They asked, ‘Rogachev, how’s it going?

‘I’m fine.’

‘Where do you want to go?’

‘To the front.’

‘Your wound still hasn’t closed. Show us.’

I showed them. The wound was covered by a crust, and puss was again oozing from my ribs.

‘We’ll hope that it will heal. Maybe we should send you somewhere else than the front? What is your education?’

‘Middle. Ten years of schooling.’

‘Maybe you’re exaggerating?’ Many would have added to themselves perhaps that I was lying in order to get a better assignment.

‘No. I’ve kept a copy of my diploma.’

‘Give it to us; let us take a look.’

I retrieved it. The paper was filthy, covered with yellowed blood spots. When I departed for the front, I took this sheet along, I don’t know why. I stuck it in the back pocket of my trousers in a bundle with some other documents, so it had passed through the entire war along with me. I don’t know how it remained intact.

They checked it: Algebra – excellent; Trigonometry – excellent; Literature and Russian – excellent. I had only one ‘3’; the rest were ‘4s’ and ‘5s’. They talked to each other for a moment, before announcing, ‘OK, Rogachev, Team 65.’

I went out into the corridor. Other recovering patients were coming out. Some had been given ‘Team 70’, some ‘Team 71’. Meanwhile I sat there and waited for someone else who would come out with ‘Team 65’. No one did. The other guys were being grouped and getting their orders, while I just sat and sat. Soon there were just a few people left. I began to get worried and asked, ‘Is someone else ‘‘Team 65’’?’ No one. Then someone came out and handed me instructions to go to Tomsk, to Nikitin Street, Building 23.

I gathered my things. But there was nothing in particular to gather: the worn-out front-line uniform I was wearing, my little tobacco pouch, a little tobacco and a small rucksack. I arrived in Tomsk early in the morning. I decided to look around the city first. I went to the university. I admired the Tom’ River. Then I came out onto Lenin Street. The city was full of people going about their daily lives. I could see people selling sodas. Suddenly from behind me I heard, ‘Comrade Soldier!’ A patrol was standing there, an officer and two soldiers. ‘What are you doing here? Your documents, now.’ They inspected them. ‘Why are you walking here? Nikitin Street is that way.’ There was nothing I could do, so I had to go. I found the street and approached a high stone palisade, beyond which I could see guns, 152-mm howitzers and older ones from 1937, plus a beautiful white building. On the parade ground, soldiers were going through close-order drills. I wanted to go to the front, but here I faced more training and additional close-order drilling. This I didn’t want, but what could I do? I lingered a bit in front of the gates.

A sentry asked, ‘Why are you here, soldier?’

‘I’ve been sent’ – and I showed him my papers.

‘What are you afraid of? Come in.’

That’s how I wound up in the 1st Tomsk Artillery School. It was an accelerated ten-month course to create 152-mm and 122-mm howitzer platoon commanders. They placed me in quarantine, and then began intensive training through 13.5 hours of daily arduous lessons and drills. But I longed for the front. At one point a group came by to select men for the paratroops. Back in Efremov I had gone to the flying club, but I didn’t finish its lessons, while the group chose only those who had completed them and had made jumps with a parachute. A lot of guys went to the screening; everyone said they had made jumps, but the panel didn’t take our word for it – they chose only those who had documents that confirmed they were experienced parachutists. There was a longing to return to the front, to continue to fight and to win. But I had to train – close-order drills, theory, practice, gunnery.

On 20 April at the graduation exam, I commanded a live-firing exercise – I calculated the data and directed the firing. We graded out at the top. I acquired the rank of lieutenant, while those who had passed with a ‘Good’ mark or a ‘Satisfactory’ were made junior lieutenants. Five days later we were posted to the Red Army’s Commander of Artillery in the city of Kolomna, Moscow Oblast. We were given a monetary bonus – 700 rubles, which we spent literally over the course of a week.

We arrived in Kolomna. We again were placed behind a high palisade in barracks with wooden bunks. The food was bad. Some kind of gruel . . . thin, so that guys didn’t linger, but longed for the front. Every day representatives of units would arrive and select recruits from our reserve pool. Those needed by some unit who agreed to go departed. Representatives often came from the destroyer anti-tank artillery regiments. The older guys, the front-line officers now in the reserve, sought every possible way to avoid serving in these units. They were accustomed to being with the howitzers 1.5 to 2 kilometres behind the front-lines. But to wind up in an anti-tank regiment, God forbid with 45-mm anti-tank guns! ... Although it was hard sitting in the rear, they wouldn’t go: ‘We’re not prepared.’ However, such a semi-famished existence had lit a fire under us, six young guys from the Tomsk school, so we decided, ‘Enough sitting around here in the reserve, let’s go, guys, and join the destroyer antitank artillery regiment.’

We were taken by truck to Korobcheevo, 7 kilometres away from Kolomna. There, the 1513th Destroyer Anti-tank Artillery Regiment was forming up. Actually, several such anti-tank artillery regiments were then forming in the environs of Kolomna. Major Vasilii Konstantinovich Zyl’, who subsequently became a Hero of the Soviet Union, was the acting commander of our regiment. The regiment received its equipment – 45-mm Model 1942 anti-tank guns – and we began training.

In March 1943, the Urals Volunteer Tank Corps was forming in the Urals. According to its TO&E, each tank brigade in this corps was to have a destroyer anti-tank artillery regiment. However, the 62nd Tank Brigade in Cheliabinsk didn’t have one. The corps commander Lieutenant General Georgii Semenovich Rodin came to visit us near Kolomna. We were raised on a combat alert. We were led out onto a field and given an order – to hit an embrasure at a range of 800 metres. With our third shell we hit it. Our battery graded out as ‘Excellent’, as did the other four batteries. Based on these results, our regiment joined the 30th Urals Volunteer Tank Corps.

Now let me talk about the ‘45’ for a bit. In the regiment there were five batteries, each with four guns. They were towed by American Willys jeeps, to which first the trailer was hitched, and then the gun to the trailer. The Willys was a marvellous machine – mobile, powerful and with a low profile. You could drive it right up to the firing position. The gun itself was a very good one. Its sight had a 4 × scope. It fired very accurately, like a rifle. At 500 metres it was almost impossible to miss an embrasure. If the aim was accurate, the shell would fly true with a flat trajectory. Of course, in combat much depends on the gunner. He had to have strong nerves. There would be explosions around him, bullets would be whistling past, a comrade next to him would be wounded and fall on the gun trails, and he had to lay the gun coolly. The platoon commander would be located 1.5 metres to the right of the gun during a battle, the gun commander – to the left. I would give a command, and the gun commander would repeat it: ‘To the left of landmark such and such. Sight, such and such. Shell, such and such. Fire!’ But when you fire, you hear your shot; it is deafening, especially the armour-piercing rounds. In fact it isn’t frightening to you – you can no longer hear the enemy fire; only watch as someone falls wounded or dead. Then you become so absorbed in the battle: you make corrections, give commands, fire again, and you forget that the other side is firing back at you. You’re thinking only about hitting the target.

During a battle, we never had it so that only the gunner and loader were at the gun – there, all the crew is needed and everyone works. The gun crew consisted of six men. I’ve already mentioned that the gun commander stood to the left of the gun. The position for the No. 1 man – the gunner – was to the left of the gun’s breech. The breech operator, the crew’s No. 2, stood to the right of the gun. The loader, the No. 3 of the crew, stood behind the gun layer. Behind him were the No. 4 and No. 5 men, the trail handlers who stood side by side. The crew had no machine gun. The personnel were armed with submachine guns, both ours and German. I myself carried a PPSh, a TT and a German Walther. There were always a lot of weapons.

In a standard ammunition load, we had ten armour-piercing discarding sabot shells, ten canister shells, and thirty high-explosive and armour piercing shells. We knew no limits on our ammunition in 1943 or later. The velocity of the high-explosive shell was 800 metres/second. It was clearly visible in the binoculars as it flew toward the target. The armour piercing shell’s velocity was 1,200 metres/second, while the armour-piercing discarding sabot reached 1,300 metres/second. The latter could penetrate 90-mm of armour. We easily dealt with Pz-III tanks. Of course, the shell couldn’t penetrate the frontal armour of heavy tanks, but nevertheless we still had the task to fire at it from the front facing. We fired at its side armour when it showed it to us, otherwise we’d aim at the tracks – a hit would break the track, the tank would pivot in place, which would then allow you to fire at its flank.

In the first place it is important just to hit a tank, which is difficult when it is moving. If your shell hit and penetrated, you considered it shocked or knocked out. Normally the crew wouldn’t wait for a second shell and they’d leap out of the tank. What was important was that it stopped and ceased firing. When the tank stopped, it was now easy prey.

The high-explosive shell was quite effective against infantry. Of course, its explosive force was small; therefore we more often relied on the fragmentation setting. The crater left by such a shell was tiny – only 10 centimetres – but the fragmentation damage was quite large. Moreover we fired at the infantry at a very rapid rate. As soon as they raised their heads, a second shell would be on its way.

We did have occasion to fire canister. I will talk about this later. Here the gunner aims the gun through its barrel at the legs of the attacking infantry. The canister cuts down the attacking line of infantry like a scythe. It is terrible fire. As the first wave is cut down, the second wave is already crawling away. Therefore we weren’t given many of these shells – ten per gun.

When driving up to the firing position, we immediately tossed the ammunition cases from the Willys and unhitched the gun. I would indicate where to place the vehicle so that it wouldn’t be too far from the firing position, but at the same time it would be sheltered by folds in the terrain or screened by vegetation. The drivers would drive them away and construct revetments. The battery’s guns were placed at a distance no greater than 20–30 metres from each other. If you placed them farther apart, it became impossible to control them – commands were given by voice. Sometimes, like at Korsun-Shevchenkosky, the guns stood at a distance of just 5 or 6 metres from each other.

As soon as we arrived, we checked the aim point. For this the gun’s muzzle had four notches, vertical and horizontal. Through these notches we would extend threads and use them to line up the barrel at some cross-shaped target no nearer than 500 metres from the gun. Then we would align the sight with this target. If there was time, we would always without fail grease the wheel bearings, because if you forgot, a wheel might jam. We rigorously adhered to this. Otherwise, the gun required no special care. We’d grease the breech mechanism, but never dismantle it, because this was a complicated procedure. Sometimes the artillery mechanic would take away guns with worn-out barrels and bring back new ones. That was all.

So, we arrived at a firing position. I as the battery commander (I became a battery commander at the end of July 1943) would choose a position for the guns. This was a holy cause. The lives of my subordinates and their opinion of me as a commander depended upon how I selected positions. Of course, the fact that I had passed through the infantry in 1941 helped me quite a bit. The men of the battery would say, ‘Our battery commander has come over from the infantry!’ Before the gun would take its firing position, I would order, ‘Gun commander, follow me.’ He would creep behind me by about 5 metres, and my orderly would be on my right. I myself would crawl out, choose a position, and say to the gun commander, for example to Chichigin, ‘Put your gun right here.’ When I myself personally crawled around and pointed out to each where to deploy his gun, then the gun commander would say with confidence, ‘Our battery commander has selected the firing position, now everything depends upon us.’

I was considered lucky and the soldiers greatly respected me. At the same time, in the regiment I was known as the Shtrafnik– a man who is serving in a penal battalion or company. All the batteries and personnel would be knocked out, so they would then form a single battery from the remnants of the five and I would be appointed as its commander. The remaining battery commanders now got something like a rest, while I continued to fight. Later, when the Germans destroyed all my guns, only then would the entire regiment be withdrawn into the reserve for re-forming. My peers had already rested up, while I would get only a week before the equipment arrived.

Once we chose a position, we would dig an emplacement for the gun, but it often happened that we didn’t have time to do this. Then with the sappers’ spades we would dig channels the width of the gun’s wheels, so that the gun would rest directly on its lower shield. We camouflaged the guns. We concealed the positions as far as possible with whatever we could find.

On the attack, when supporting an attack the gun was always loaded with armour-piercing shells with the trigger locked. The forward shield would be removed in order to reduce the height of the gun. In that way the gun’s height was lowered to just over 50 centimetres. We’d stop, dig the wheels in, and the gun would settle even lower. We’d quickly cut several branches of a bush or maybe stalks of corn, if in or around corn fields. Everything was done to ensure the tanker didn’t see you prior to your first shot. You’d let the tank approach to within 400, 300 or 250 metres and open fire – we couldn’t hit it out to a kilometre, or even 500 metres. If we were supporting infantry, we’d manhandle the gun forward, keeping it faced toward the enemy. The command would be, ‘The gun with the barrel forward, march!’ The crew would grab the gun trail from the left and the right and start rolling it – on wheels it moved quickly. The gun would already be loaded with an armour-piercing round, in order to fire immediately at a tank or a machine gun. Even if you don’t hit it, when a fireball goes flying right past you, your hands start shaking. At first we’d give the machine gun an armour-piercing shell, and then we’d set the range on the high-explosive shell and quickly blanket the target.

How did we aim at tanks? The Model 1942 gun had a direct fire range of 800 metres. We usually opened fire at around 400 metres. If the tank was moving laterally to you, you’d look in the binoculars, approximately determine its speed and calculate the lead. You’d command the gunner, ‘Aim at the base of the turret, aiming offset one tank.’ If I guessed the speed wrongly, the shell would fly in front of or behind the tank. Then you’d make a correction and fire again. At Kursk there were a lot of tanks, and they came straight at us. We primarily fired at the tracks, to make the tank pivot. While the tankers tried to figure out where the fire was coming from, in order to turn the turret, we give it a second shell in the flank; but normally they didn’t wait and they’d leap out of the immobilized tank.

We remained at Kolomna until the middle of June 1943. Over this time we were given new uniforms, and all the officers received Finnish puukko knives with a decorated handle, while the soldiers received ones with black handles.¹ We also had a motorized rifle brigade, in which the men wore bulletproof vests. It was heavy – it weighed around 12 kilograms.

In the middle of June an order was announced that made our regiment part of the 4th Tank Army. Under our own power we drove to Naro-Fominsk, and from there on to the town of Kozel’sk. We arrived in Kozel’sk on 23 July. Just a few days later, we entered the fighting as part of the Briansk Front. What can I say? It was hot. The temperature rose to 25–27° C. It was arduous. You understand, if a man gets killed, his corpse is already reeking within 2 hours. Such a stench, and then they’d bring up a meal – you couldn’t force down any food, so we drank water. There were constant attacks. There was a lot of aircraft overhead, both ours and those of the Germans. Air battles were going on constantly in the sky. We became so enraged by the constant air attacks that I deployed our guns on a hill and fired armour-piercing shells at them. My commander later let me have it: ‘Look, you’re not an anti-aircraft gunner; don’t waste your shells firing at aeroplanes.’

On 7 August 1943, I happened to take part in a ferocious battle. I was ordered to support an attack by a tank company and infantry toward the village of Zuevskaia. I appeared before the commander of the tank company and reported that I was at his disposal. During battles the regiment headquarters often assigned separate batteries to infantry or tank companies and in essence turned over the command of us – we’d have no communications with it. The senior lieutenant tank commander told me:

The infantry will start out now, and I’ll advance behind it by around 50–100 metres, with a 20–40 metre interval between the tanks. You advance not more than 50–80 metres behind my tanks. You have a better field of vision, so your job is to silence anti-tank guns and tanks.

I returned to my platoon commanders, explained our assignment, and ordered the guns to be loaded and hitched to the jeeps.

The attack on the village began around noon after a short artillery preparation. The infantry moved out, and behind it the tanks. We were moving across a field of tall, ripe grain. Allowing our tanks to approach to within 300– 400 metres, the Germans opened up with heavy fire. Several of the tanks burst into flames. We unhitched the guns approximately 300 metres from the outskirts of the village and returned fire. The infantry at first had become pinned down, but then came running back. The tanks began manoeuvring and were gradually drifting to our left, and we remained alone out in the open. We managed to dig little trenches for the wheels and threw off the gun shield. The guns practically sank into the rye. I ordered the commander of the 2nd Platoon to concentrate his fire on a mortar battery that was dropping a lot of shells around us, while I directed the fire of the No. 1 and No. 2 guns at tanks and anti-tank guns. The rye caught fire from the shell explosions. The smoke hindered our aim, but it partially screened us from the Germans. Then another tank started burning about 20 metres to my right. The Germans launched a counterattack with tank support, but all I was thinking about was the 100 shells inside that burning tank. Which way would it jump from the explosion and where would the turret land? I was continuing to fire, but I was keeping my right eye on the burning tank, waiting for it to explode. When the onboard ammunition did ignite, the turret was blown off, but thank God it didn’t land on the gun. Gunfire, smoke and flames .. . Oh, it was terrible!

We let the German infantry approach to within 50 or 60 metres and opened fire with canister. Of course, we also supplemented it with submachine-gun fire. They went rolling back to the village. That’s when our infantry went back on the attack with the support of the remaining four tanks and seized the village. In this battle the battery destroyed two medium tanks, three assault guns, four mortars and around two platoons of infantry. In the process we lost two guns together with their crews, and one more gun was damaged. Only the No. 1 gun and crew, with which I was positioned, took no losses. Two of the Willys drivers were killed when their jeeps were destroyed. We lay there enfeebled by the heat and this combat near the gun.

Suddenly I felt clapping on my shoulder, and I opened my eyes. The regiment commander was standing there: ‘You’re alive?! Rogachev! Drink up!’ From somewhere there appeared a bottle of water. I and the No. 1 gunner Mikhailichenko pounced on it together. I don’t recall how much water we guzzled down . . . For this battle I was decorated with the Order of the Red Star.

How many in all did I have to my credit? I wasn’t counting, but over the entire war my battery destroyed more than twenty tanks and armoured halftracks.

The guys from the Urals were heroic men. They advanced, regardless of anything. There was a lot of courage and bravery, but little combat experience, so the losses the corps took were quite large. Of those five guys from the reserve that together with me took command of anti-tank gun platoons in the 30th Urals Volunteer Tank Corps’ anti-tank artillery regiment, none of them survived the war.

In August 1943, the 4th Tank Army was withdrawn for rest and refitting. Before this, however, there was an episode I still recall. The Germans had fallen back behind the Nugr’ River. We moved forward and began to dig in, taking positions along a scarcely perceptible road that was marked on the map. We were digging emplacements in the rye about 5 metres from the edge of the field. Everyone was digging, from the battery commander down to the gun trail handlers. The Willys drivers were also digging protective shelters. Beyond the tall rye nothing was visible to us, so we fired a shot with an armour-piercing shell and the stalks of grain fell down – we could fire high-explosive shells. Suddenly we saw a Willys driving past us directly towards the Germans. It stopped and a major jumped out: ‘Hey, soldiers, who’s your commander?’ We were all sunburned, the platoon commanders were hurrying the soldiers and swearing; it looked like the Germans were about to launch a counterattack, because we could see infantry gathering and an armoured halftrack had come up.

Senior Sergeant Chichikhin, a Vologda bogatyr’ [an epic hero of Russian folk legends] irritably replied, ‘What are you shouting? Who do you need?’

‘You speak like that to an officer?! Who is your commander?’

‘Lieutenant Rogachev.’

‘Bring him here!’

‘Comrade Battery Commander, some major over there is calling for you.’

‘What sort of major? Does he have artillery or infantry shoulder straps?’ I replied.

The major was now shouting, ‘Come here immediately!’

So I ran over to the road, sweating profusely in the heat, my shoulder belt, map case and binoculars swinging: ‘Battery commander Lieutenant Rogachev!’

‘Which regiment?’

‘The 1513th Destroyer.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘Setting up a firing position. The Germans are preparing to attack.’

‘Who’s in front of you?’

‘Nobody.’

‘What do you mean, nobody? Where’s Rodin’s headquarters?’

‘You missed a turn. About 1.5 kilometres back down the road, you had to turn right.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘Well, climb into the jeep.’

He turned the Willys around and we drove back about 500 metres toward the rear, where several vehicles were waiting for him. Some men in camouflaged jumpsuits without any signs of rank were sitting in them. I walked up to them and saw Front commander Zhukov sitting in one of them. Zhukov asked, ‘Who are you?’

‘Lieutenant Rogachev, commander of the 1513th Destroyer Regiment’s 3rd Battery.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘Setting up firing positions.’

‘Where’s the headquarters of the 30th Urals Corps?’

‘You missed a turn.’

He scowled at them: ‘Come on, let’s go.’ Addressing me, he warned, ‘Serve well, don’t let them pass through you.’

‘We’ll stand to our death!’

They rushed off, while I rejoined my battery. Soon a messenger arrived on a motorcycle with an order to assemble in some area – we were withdrawn for reforming.

When Zhukov fell into disgrace after the war and it was being said about him that he was at times bad, and that he didn’t spare his men, around New Year 1972 I wrote him a congratulatory postcard. I wished him good health and wrote that we, his former officers, appreciated him and would always remember him. I mentioned the incident back in August 1943. I asked him for an autographed copy of his memoirs.

Soon I was summoned and they handed me a signed copy. Back then, many generals unsuccessfully sought autographs, but I got one . . .

You must remember – war doesn’t happen without losses, and he was given orders that were impossible to carry out without the loss of a certain regiment or division. So I always admired Zhukov.

During our rest and refitting, we began to revive a little. A batch of replacements arrived – new crews and new guns. The regiment received the Guards honourific title, and it was re-designated as the 357th Guards Destroyer Antitank Artillery Regiment.

Approximately in the beginning of October 1943, the officers were gathered and informed that the regiment was going to be re-formed into a destroyer anti-tank artillery regiment that would be equipped with SU-76s. Its officers thus had to go through three months of additional training. We were told that those officers who wanted to be re-trained should give their agreement, while the rest would be assigned to the reserve of the Red Army’s Artillery Commander-in-Chief. I gave it a little thought, talked with the other guys who had survived thus far, and decided that I wouldn’t fight in these self-propelled guns. We had seen with our own eyes what this SU-76 was worth back in the Battle of Kursk. Its ZIS-3 gun was ineffective, its armour was thin, and it had no top armour to protect the crew from mortar fire. They easily burned . .. so they were nicknamed ‘Gor’ky’s candles.’ With the 45-mm on the ground, you can find a place to hide, but if a SU-76 was hit, you had no chance to get out of it alive.

At the end of November 1943 I was removed from my post and sent to Moscow into the pool of reserve cadres. I was thinking that I’d get an assignment to a battery of 152-mm guns, or at least to an SU-152 self-propelled gun battery. I had been trained on this weapon. But that didn’t happen! It turns out that when the destroyer anti-tank artillery regiments were being formed, an order was issued that established a salary for us one and a half times the regular salary for an anti-tank crew member, awarded us cash bonuses for each destroyed enemy tank (500 rubles for the gun commander, 300 rubles for the gunner, and so forth), but also prohibited the use of destroyer anti-tank artillerymen in other types of artillery. Even after being discharged from hospitals, they were to be returned only to destroyer anti-tank artillery units, and nowhere else. We didn’t know about this latter article of the order. I was given an assignment to report to the 5th Mechanized Corps’ artillery commander, and there I was again placed in command of a destroyer anti-tank artillery battery of 45-mm guns in the 2nd Mechanized Brigade’s 1st Motorized Rifle Battalion. The difference between the destroyer anti-tank artillery regiment and a destroyer anti-tank artillery battery of a motorized rifle brigade existed not in terms of the functions it carried out, but in terms of its subordination. The destroyer anti-tank artillery regiment was subordinate to the corps’ artillery commander. He gave the orders, while the regiment commander allocated the batteries in order to carry out the orders. Here the battery was directly subordinate to the motorized rifle battalion commander, who attached the battery to one company or another. But this officer wasn’t an artilleryman! He both protects and awards his own kind, while you must clear the road for them and you can’t even think about withdrawing.

The brigade also had a battalion of 76-mm guns, but it had no vacancies. True, they promised to transfer me into it if a posting became available, but this never happened.

The guns and crews arrived. I remember a lot of Georgians – feisty guys. Gun commander Kakabadze, gunner Barbakadze, loader Saradze. There were also a lot of Slavs. We’d spend the evening together after our training was done for the day. I’d order, ‘Sing a song!’ First there’d be a Georgian song, then a Belorussian, then a Ukrainian. It was international.

At first the replacements feared the 45-mm gun, the ‘Farewell, Motherland’. I told them, ‘What are you afraid of? The 45 – that’s still artillery and not the infantry!’

Around New Year we were urgently loaded aboard trains and we went to the Ukraine. We unloaded in the vicinity of Fastov-Kazatin, and from there conducted a night march of approximately 30 kilometres on foot to the town of Skvir. There we boarded trucks and travelled to Belaia Tserkov’.

At the beginning of January 1944 we were informed that the corps was joining the 6th Tank Army, which was then in the process of forming. Together with it we took part in the Korsun-Shevchenkovsky operation. We began the offensive from the large village of Tynovka. However, I quickly developed personal problems with the rifle battalion commander Ivan Rykov. Before the war, he had been a major of police in Saratov, but he’d been called up and somehow found himself appointed to the position of battalion commander, even though he didn’t have the requisite training. He was somewhat cowardly and he always located his headquarters at least 1 to 1.5 kilometres behind the front line. The communications men didn’t have enough cable! He also knew only one order: ‘Battery, forward!!!’ He issued directions without knowing the situation. I was always telling him, ‘Why are you directing me where to position the guns?! On the spot I can see better than you. Do you want me to get killed in battle? I won’t be any use to you then.’ He’d reply, ‘How dare you contradict me?!’ We’d go back and forth like that.

So at Tynovka we went on the offensive. In front of us, there was hill that had piles of hay on it, under which the Germans had created machine-gun nests. It was about 1.5 kilometres to their positions, but my scouts spotted them. We also detected a platoon of 75-mm guns, and before the start of the artillery preparation, we had opened fire on them, forcing the crews to scatter. I told the battalion commander that he shouldn’t hurl our infantry at the hill; machine guns would mow them down. But he refused to listen to me and gave the order, ‘Battalion, forward!’ The German machine gunners allowed them to approach to within 50–100 metres and then shot them down at point-blank range. The battalion lost almost 400 men killed and wounded. We took the hill. We walked past them – the young and the older guys, now lying dead on the ground.

I was boiling with anger inside. I turned the air blue at his address. He found out that I, a battery commander, considered him guilty for the needless death of men. Neither I nor any of the other battery men were decorated for this operation. He tore up twelve commendation lists! When the fighting subsided, an officer from the corps’ Special Department drove up to see me:

‘Aleksandr Vasil’evich, I want to speak a bit with you. Were you in the battle?’

‘I was.’

‘And what’s your opinion?’

‘My opinion was what it was, and it hasn’t changed. No one can change it. The battalion was senselessly thrown right into machine guns.’

‘Who’s guilty?’

‘The battalion commander!’

We had already reached the Prut River, when an order arrived to form up the battalion’s personnel to witness a session of a military tribunal. We lined up in a field between some buildings. There was a table covered with broadcloth. They came out and announced, ‘For such a case, an investigation has been conducted and this and that has been established. We’ve been informed about how he conducted himself, how he abused alcohol, and how he brought a battalion to its destruction’ and so on. They ripped off his shoulder straps and Orders, which he had pinned on his own uniform just three or four days ago. The sentence: ‘Battalion commander Major Rykov is to be cashiered and sentenced to the highest measure of punishment – execution by firing squad.’ We were dumbfounded. Well, he of course spoke up: ‘Give me the possibility to redeem myself; I’ll make amends for my guilt in combat with my blood.’ The tribunal went into one of the buildings for a conference. They then came back out and announced, ‘The tribunal has decided to demote Major Rykov to private, strip him of his decorations, and replace the highest measure of punishment with three months in a penal battalion.’ They appointed a sensible battalion commander to replace Rykov.

Well, let’s return to Tynovka. On the first day we nevertheless managed to advance around 12 kilometres. The next few days also went well. The corps created a forward detachment consisting of the 233rd Tank Brigade, the self-propelled artillery regiment, the 1st Motorized Rifle Battalion and my destroyer anti-tank artillery battery, all under the command of the 6th Tank Corps’ deputy commander Major General Mikhail Ivanovich Savel’ev. This detachment was to go forward and reach Zvenigorodka and link-up with a tank corps there, thus closing a ring around the Germans’ Korsun-Shevchenkovsky grouping. We went on the offensive through the German rear areas. Having successfully fulfilled our mission, we were instructed to hold the inner ring of encirclement. The fighting was very hard. Lysianka, Dushakivka, Buzhanka, Bosivka – I’ve never forgotten these villages . . .

I especially recall the village of Malyi Vinograd. We took it on 10 or 11 February. Through it ran the road to Dushakivka and Buzhanka, and there was a bridge there across the Gniloi Tikich River. The command directed the forward detachment’s main forces toward the village of Bosivka, which was located about 5 kilometres away, while I was ordered to halt and take up a defensive position. In addition to my battery, there were about fifty to sixty men from the remnants of some rifle division, two tanks and two 122-mm howitzers. We took positions around the outskirts of the village. We camouflaged the guns on the top of a hill that was covered with apple trees. Just below us was a building and the road running to the bridge across the river, beyond which were the Germans. To the left of my position was a mound, which blocked the view of my guns’ positions from the opposite side of the bank. Prior to this there had been fighting in these places; plainly our guys had been retreating and they had abandoned a lot of guns and equipment, including a pile of boxes of shells for the 45-mm gun. We lugged five or six cases to each gun position. We also gathered up several machine guns and an anti-tank rifle. We were armed to the teeth.

The Germans didn’t make us wait long. When they were crossing the bridge, we blew it up. The banks of the river were marshy and the tanks couldn’t make it across. We knocked out one that got bogged down. They launched a salvo of rockets at us from their six-barrelled rocket launchers, but the shells exploded some distance away from the battery. They hadn’t been able to detect our positions accurately. They attempted to cross at a different point along the river and enter the town along our bank, but they had to skirt around a hill that covered our left, after which they came under fire from our tanks and my guns. I remember that the German infantry approached quite closely. Our infantry couldn’t hold out and started to run. And you know, when they’re running, but you can’t run because you have no right to abandon a gun, you begin to laugh in spite of your inclination: ‘Look how they’re running! Look! Go on! Go on! Don’t be slow! Quicker to the rear!’ So we mocked them: ‘Why are you running? Why are you abandoning us and taking to your heels?’ Then when the Germans appeared on a rise about 250 metres away, I ordered, ‘Armour-piercing!’ When fired, the gun’s report is ringing and powerful, and when the flaming, fiercely howling slug perhaps flies past you, it seems that it is coming right for you. It is terrifying . . . That’s how we held out in this position for seven days.

I didn’t have any religion and my attitude didn’t change during the war. You see, we were raised as atheists. Until the fifth grade, my mother took me to church for Easter. She would say, ‘Everything is holy there; kiss the knuckle.’ I approached, kissing the partition. Later, when I became a Young Pioneer member, I became a non-believer. At the front it didn’t even come into my head to resort to an appeal for God’s protection; for example, during a barrage or an air raid, I never prayed for help. Although we in fact were being bombed, and we went around at a whisker’s width from death ten to fifteen times a day, no one prayed. Indeed, I didn’t even know any prayers. Maybe someone of an older generation, but we younger soldiers – no.

I wasn’t superstitious either. I’ve already talked about how I didn’t feel well at Staraia Russa before I was wounded there. I didn’t have any other premonitions. But gradually I developed an acute sense of danger. For example, after one battle I said to a platoon commander, ‘Let’s go wash up in the stream.’ He replied, ‘Let’s go.’ I walked rather quickly and he was trailing me. We were walking across a forest clearing: there was grass and some fallen birch trees lying around. I looked, and an alarm bell went off in my head: ‘Why are birch trees lying like that in a clearing?’ The closer we approached these birch trees, my legs began to move more slowly, as if they had lead in them. At some moment I raised a foot and something held me back from completing my step. At the toe of my suspended foot, I saw a trip wire. I glanced to the left – there it was, a booby trap that looked like a champagne bottle with its neck sheared off. I stood like a stork and waited. One . . . two . . . three . . . There was no explosion. I carefully lowered my foot. Then I looked it over. The Germans had apparently set it several days before, and since the morning dew had been heavy, the ring had become a bit rusty. When I gently pulled on it, the cotter pin didn’t budge and there was no explosion.

The platoon leader asked, ‘Battery commander, why have you stopped.’

I replied, ‘Valia, come here.’

He approached more closely and glanced: ‘Oh, a booby trap! Get back!’

‘Back where? Give me a branch.’

We had some cord. When I was tying it around the trip wire, my hands were shaking a little. We backed away and I gave it a jerk and there was an explosion.

Later I was summoned to headquarters and the chief of staff Guards Major Zyl’ upbraided me: ‘What are you, a sapper?! Just who do you think you are? You’re a battery commander! You should have immediately sent for sappers!’ Well, back in the specialist school, we had gone over demolition techniques, so I decided to make use of the knowledge I had gained.

The most frightening was when the infantry abandoned you. They run, and you’re left all alone, and you have no contact with other elements. You are feverishly trying to figure out what you should do next, how to act. Here now all hope is on your own experience – run like everyone else, or stay where you are. Some soldiers grumbled, ‘Our commander, he sees how tough we are. He doesn’t want to flee.’ Later they understood that you can’t abandon a gun. If we left behind a gun, that meant an execution by firing squad for the battery commander and platoon commander. It happened that you’d abandon a gun, but the commanders would order you to go back and get it. But where could you find it? If located, it might be partially smashed, or partially dismantled by those who did remain in order to obtain spare parts. I remember once mortar men running away in retreat, and they had tossed their mortars into a stream; later they came back and dived into the icy water to retrieve them. We all laughed.

Then we resumed the offensive. The spring muddy season was so bad that we couldn’t keep up with our own infantry in our Willys jeeps. There was a sea in every low-lying area. We would get the guns across them by hitching them to tanks, while we would stand on the gun trails. We dragged the Willys jeeps across the same way. As a result, the infantry took seats on the tanks and Studebakers, while we were ordered to stop until the roads dried out.

In April we set off to catch up with our own. We crossed the Prut and took up a defence in the area between the Prut and Jijia [Zhizhia] Rivers. We set up firing positions in a corn field on the outskirts of some little village not far from the banks of the Jijia River. In front and to the left of our positions, 150 metres away, there was a hill, on top of which stood a monastery, which was occupied by Germans. The battery had been attached to the penal battalion. I was summoned by a lieutenant colonel, the commander of this battalion:

Look, a road runs across that hill. It is the only axis that tanks can take. Your task is to hold this road at any cost and don’t let them pass. Otherwise they’ll crush us. Until tanks appear, I advise you not to fire from your main positions. If you want to strike the Germans, do so from alternate positions.

We attempted to dig in deeply, but just 70 centimetres below the ground, water began to fill our positions. The heat was terrible, the humidity, a cloud of mosquitoes, and as I just mentioned, it was only 150 metres to the Germans in the monastery. So you spend all day lying in your little pit, on the lookout for targets. You’re also constantly smoking in order to keep the mosquitoes away (we were given a pack of Suvorov tobacco every day; we rolled it into cigarettes). Meanwhile the Germans on this hill were walking about, running from one place to another, and firing their machine guns. The men of the penal battalion had fallen into the habit of going around and shaking peach trees. The Germans would chase them away with shellfire. I remember one guy came running up to me: ‘Listen, Battery Commander, help me! There’s a machine gun firing over there!’

We set up alternate, covered firing positions for our guns about 50 metres to our right among some buildings. At night we moved our guns into them. As soon as it became light, we opened fire at already disclosed targets. Once the Germans realized that they had a battery right under their nose, we ceased fire and returned at a run to our main positions. They hit the alternate position with a mortar barrage. The guns are covered, so only a direct hit might destroy one. The mortar fire ceased and I sent scouts back to the alternate position to find out how the guns were. They came back: ‘All in order, Battery Commander. The guns are intact.’ That night, we brought them back to the main position. The battalion commander said, ‘You know, Rogachev, enough with your pranks. The Germans are getting angry. You hold the road.’

There my soldiers began to develop night-blindness. I had to send them back to the rear at night, where they’d be given vitamins. Everything was normal for me, perhaps because we were given the officer’s supplementary rations. In the evening, when it grew dark, they’d bring dinner in Thermoses, but no one had much appetite. You’d drink a bottle of wine and nibble on something. There were American canned ham slices. You’d eat a couple of slices and only sip a bit of vodka. For the fighting in this bridgehead, I was awarded the Order of the Red Star.

Before the next offensive, we were withdrawn into the reserve to receive replacements. On 20 August 1944, as part of the 6th Tank Army we entered a breakthrough. Iasi [Iassy, Jassy], Barlad, Bacau, Berzunti, Foksani, Urziceni, Bucharest. The local population at first greeted us cautiously, smiling servilely. We responded with our kindliness. They were surprised; after all, they had heard propaganda that the Russians were coming and they’d be pillaging, raping and murdering as they came. But we had an order when crossing the border with Romania not to offend the civilian population and not to plunder. Then they started bringing us tomatoes, corn – we endured their mamaliga [cornmeal porridge] – eat up! Jugs full of wine. In contrast, our relations with the Hungarians were poor. The Hungarians are very treacherous and vindictive. They had fought ferociously until the end, until we reached their territory. But when we pressed them back to the border, they began to surrender.

In Bucharest, King Michael greeted us from a balcony. For that reason we had been ordered to discard the captured German duds we were wearing, because our own uniforms were quickly becoming threadbare, and to wear only our own combat tunics. We stopped in Bucharest. City life was going on as if in peacetime – shops were open, restaurants. We were given Romanian leu. The exchange rate at the time was 1 ruble per 100 leu. I was being paid a monthly salary of something around 2,000 rubles. For this amount of money you could buy a villa. However, little money ever reached our hands. A chunk of it was turned over to the Defence Fund, another portion went to mandatory bond subscriptions, and I was sending another portion of my salary back home to my mother. So with the money I had left, I bought myself a wristwatch. Some of the guys painted the town red. Our command, sensing that the Russian soul was on the loose in a peaceful setting, God forbid, ordered us to leave Bucharest and advance in the direction of Hungary.

That was when a battle occurred that I can call my own most unsuccessful combat. We were attacking a Romanian village. The infantry was pinned down by the fire of a machine gun that was positioned on the upper floor of a two-story building that stood around 250–300 metres closer to our positions than the other buildings. A gravel road ran in front of this building, and our infantry was taking cover from the fire in the roadside ditches. I was ordered by the battalion commander to move up my gun and to destroy this machine gun with direct fire. Before rolling out the gun, my orderly, the mortar battery commander Senior Lieutenant Sergei Verkholashin (he always stuck close to me, believing that I was lucky and that he wouldn’t be killed next to me) and I moved toward the road in dashes. Of course, we couldn’t go a bit to the left, where there was a cornfield and we could find concealment among the stalks. No, we started running across an open field with scraggly grass and sparse, scrawny bushes. We hadn’t managed to reach the roadside ditch, when the machine gun concentrated its fire on us. We dropped. There were little fountains of dust right in front of us. We were lying there and waiting, realizing that at any moment we’d be killed or wounded. Sergei was lying on my left, and a bullet struck him in the eye. He started to scream.

I sent back my orderly with an order for the No. 1 and No. 2 guns to move up to me. When the guys began rolling up the already loaded guns, the machine gunner killed one and wounded two of the No. 1 crew. At this moment I was already making a dash for the ditch, and from there I began to issue commands. With our third shell, we struck the window from which the machine gun was firing. The firing ceased, and behind the building, Germans started running toward the village across a field – a barren field. These two guns opened fire at them, while I ordered the remaining guns to be brought up. Shells were exploding, Germans were running and falling . . . I don’t know how many of them we killed there.

I didn’t have to run to that ditch – I held up the moving up of the first two guns, Sergei had been wounded, and there were casualties in the crew. In general, I had screwed up.

In 1943 we normally buried the dead. We made transfers from a map that indicated the place of burial and who was buried there. We buried them in their uniforms. After the grave was covered, we’d erect a tablet to mark the gravesite. We adhered to this procedure rather strictly. Well, in 1941, it all depended. We discarded our identification medallions designed to identify us if we were killed. We were supposed to write all of our information on it, but there was a widely held superstition that if you filled it out and wore it, you’d be killed (probably because they were called death medallions). It often happened that a corpse would be found without any documents or identification tag – they’d be buried, while someone would be sent a notice: missing-in-action.

I remember we were moving through the Transylvanian Alps. Their peaks rose to 2,000–2,500 metres. The road, about 6 metres wide, crept around precipices every 100–150 metres. The Luftwaffe kept working us over. Although we had anti-aircraft guns in the column, we suffered large losses from the air attacks. Nevertheless, we broke through the thin German defences and advanced in the direction of Turda. Near this city I was wounded in street fighting. I was searching for targets through my binoculars, and a rifleman or a sniper fired from a rooftop and hit me in the right thigh. Fortunately, it missed the bone and a month later I was reporting for duty.

Then there was the fight for Budapest. We moved behind the infantry, which had been formed into assault groups, helping them with our fire. I was ordered to move to join some rifle company. It was advancing, but then a messenger arrived from the commander: ‘Battery commander, a machine gun is firing over there.’ I went running up to the battalion commander. Together we looked to see how to deal with this machine gun, how to move the guns into position, and who I should assign to fire. Street fighting is the most terrible combat. You don’t know where the fire will be coming from. Here the German was firing from the second or third floor. We wouldn’t place our guns in the middle of the street. On the contrary, for example, we’d set up in a store shop window. We’d smash the glass and roll the gun into the store. We’d be firing at the opposite side of the street. We would fire a couple of high-explosive rounds ‘with a nose cap’ on the detonator, so that the shell would explode inside the building, and then just for its psychological effect, we would give the spot an armour-piercing round. The fire would cease, but the Germans knew all the passageways. We would wait for him, but he’d appear in a completely different place and unexpectedly open fire.

In the last days of March 1945, we crossed the Austrian border in the vicinity of the city of Keszeg, after which our corps broke through the woods in the direction of Wiener Neustadt. We entered the city on Easter Day. The Germans were completely unready for the appearance of our units. Only the Vlasovites offered resistance. In a word, we hated them worse than the Germans. They could not count on any mercy in fighting, where a soldier is simultaneously the judge, prosecutor, and executioner. If that was the case – that was it. Some would emerge and come running with their hands up in the air, but from our position we would greet them with fire. If one was taken prisoner, he’d be led away somewhere . . . In this city, I personally killed seven men in combat with my submachine gun. We were rolling the gun, and they had dug into a cellar and were firing back. I and two other guys entered the building. We broke into the cellar and picked them off there.

I fought against Germans, Hungarians and Romanians. If I compare them as adversaries, the strongest, of course were the Germans. In second place, for their cruelty and stubbornness in battle, I would select the Hungarians. All the rest were weak, and the Romanians were in general ... mamalizhniki [a mocking reference to the national dish of Romania, mamaliga]. When in 1944 they came over to our side, they would be sent forward first. We would stand in readiness. We watched as they launched their attack. Then the Hungarians and Germans would counterattack – and the Romanians would turn tail and run. We already knew that now we’d be given the command to charge. They’d run away while we were now attacking. In addition, we never left a Romanian in a security outpost overnight.

Having seized the city of Wiener Neustadt, we moved on Vienna. We broke into the outskirts of Vienna and became tied up in street fighting. Our battalion commander was Ivan Timofeevich Goncharov, who was only 20 years old. He was always saying, ‘Don’t straggle! Artillerymen, follow me! Onward and onward!’ Our vehicles couldn’t negotiate the narrow back alleys. The infantry would slip through via courtyards and front gardens, while we had to drive down the streets. But there, such a fire would open up from the windows that you dared not even lift your nose. We lagged behind. But the battalion carried out its mission and seized the Central Railway Station. For this, Goncharov was deemed worthy of the title Hero of the Soviet Union. Subsequently, he was killed right before my eyes. After Vienna, we were attacking some mountain village. After the artillery preparation and an attack by light bombers, we broke into its outskirts. The infantry was pinned down. A sniper was firing at us from a church, and panzers appeared from behind some homes. We deployed our guns behind some wine vaults and opened fire at the sources of incoming fire, and then at the German tanks as well. At this time, Goncharov with his battalion headquarters was running between one piece of cover and another a bit behind my battery – he was a brave man. Literally within just 3 metres of me, the sniper killed him.

After Vienna we moved to liberate Czechoslovakia. On the night of 2 May, I was severely wounded in a night fight for the city of Vishkov. We were repelling a counterattack. I was standing with binoculars and directing the fire. A sniper fired from a nearby building, and plainly, he wanted to hit me in the head, but he struck my arm. The bullet smashed a bone. I thought the wound was insignificant, but it proved to be quite serious. I was sent first to an army hospital in Vienna, and then to Budapest. There the doctors performed several operations in the effort to save my arm. An infection set in that almost reached my shoulder. The doctors told me that if it progressed any further, they’d have to amputate my arm, but thank God, this didn’t happen. I remained in the hospital until the middle of August 1945. That month, I was invalidated out of the army, assigned to the 3rd Category of invalidity for six months with a subsequent re-examination of my case, and then I was sent to Moscow.

I decided to enroll in the Moscow Highway Institute. Two times I went to see the rector about admission, because the entrance exams had already been given. I persuaded him and as an exception, I was accepted on the condition of taking the exams. It was difficult to study, especially because the returning veterans, though still young, were still quite a bit older than the other students. I was 22 years old when the war ended. I’d been awarded the rank of senior lieutenant in March 1945, but prior to my discharge from the hospital I wasn’t aware of this. We really weren’t interested in this, nor in the honours and decorations. We didn’t fight for medals, but instead to defeat the foe. When we were firing at the Germans we didn’t see them as individuals but as the enemy. Let’s say a machine gun is firing at you from a location. We hit it, and it falls silent. Advancing, we dropped by to look at the result. There they are, lying there dead, and the machine gun is smashed. Our work! We had a sense of satisfaction. We hadn’t fired in vain.

I had perhaps a bad habit about writing letters. The first letter home I wrote in September 1942, when I wound up in the specialist school. I believed when I was in combat, it was totally wrong to write home, because if you wrote a letter and sent it, a day later you might be killed or badly wounded. At home, they’d receive the letter saying that you were alive and well, fighting on the axis of N-city, but now you were no longer. I made a pact with myself that I would only write when I was coming out of battle. Thus I sent a letter home once every six months or so, not more. For my parents, of course, this was hard. I began to write more frequently, perhaps every month or so, only at the end of the war when things were going much better. There were no longer any particularly fierce battles, and indeed, a certain confidence had appeared that we were approaching the end of the war, fighting our way to victory. Did it become harder to fight near the end of the war? Of course, such thoughts started to visit like, ‘It would be great to live to see the victory.’ But this had no effect on my conduct – I didn’t become more cautious, or more cowardly, anything like that. It was the same with the platoon commanders and gun commanders – each one was thinking that way, but kept their thoughts to themselves. Indeed, these thoughts didn’t manifest themselves in any way, and everyone behaved as they always had. No one asked for any indulgences and begin to fight any worse.

But I did send a few packages home from the front. When we crossed the border, it was permitted to send 10 kilograms home. In Romania, of course there was no time for this, when we were advancing 50 kilometres a day. But when I was lying in the hospital in Budapest, we were given forints, or as we called them, pengi. I received 1,500 pengi. An individual mug of beer cost 3 or 4 pengi. I went around to the shops. I purchased material for a suit and sent it home. I had a leather coat sewn for myself for 300 or 400 pengi. I also had an accordion. The soldiers had given it to me when I’d been wounded. It was battery operated; they’d picked it up in Vienna. I didn’t know how to play it, but later I learned how – I had an ear for music.

We were received with great joy and with open arms after the war. There was no detachment or indifference. At the same time, we didn’t make any attempt to stand out or show off. Well, I had been fighting and fighting. I arrived home, and now I had to return to peaceful living. Oh, I quickly became so bored! I was so eager to begin my studies. Such an ambition was good; despite all the difficulties, there was always optimism and high spirits.

However, for example, at the front we didn’t get sick. No cold, no sores, nothing bothered us. Some thought, ‘If I could only get sick! Then I could loll around a bit in the medical-sanitation battalion while I recovered.’ But we never contracted any illnesses. As soon as we arrived home from the front, however, then immediately we came down with all sorts of medical problems. Either a stomach ulcer would appear, or the formation of pus in a wounded lung . . . In general, the health we had at the front was strongly disrupted.

But when you’re lying in bed and can’t fall asleep, you think back on combat episodes. I see distinctly each hill, each valley. Here’s that forest fringe, the villages where guys were killed; here’s where we moved out . . . I recall the faces of soldiers with whom I spent these four years. They’re standing there alive in front of me, although now almost sixty years have passed. But I don’t want to go back. Such a thought never visits me. But I often ponder, ‘Did I correctly choose the position in that battle and properly deploy the guns? Three of the men in a crew were killed. Perhaps if I had deployed the guns in a different place, then perhaps they wouldn’t have been killed?’ Such analysis continues to the present day. I feel morally responsible for each wounded, killed and lost soldier. And you think, ‘Wasn’t it your fault here?’

Note

1. The 30th Urals Volunteer Tank Corps was renowned in both the Wehrmacht and the Red Army for the black-handled ‘Finnish’ knives the men carried. This was actually the Russian-produced NR-40 knife, based on the Finnish puukko knife and manufactured in a factory in the Urals. In fact, a modified version of the Finnish knives had been popular in the world of Russian criminals and they were banned in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. The Winter War, however, had revealed that the Red Army soldiers lacked a good knife, so the Soviet Union began mass-producing the NR-40, a knife once popular among Russian criminals!