Chapter 4
Mikhail Fedorovich Borisov
I was born in the Altai region in a village of the Mikhailovskoe Baevsky District. The village was small – around twenty homes nestled beneath the green crowns of birch trees. Next to our home was a small natural spring, around which nightingales nested. Hemp fields surrounded our village. At the time, nobody knew that you could smoke Cannabis. My grandfather, an old Siberian Cossack, sought to raise me in his own fashion. When I was 2 or 3 years old, he seated me in a saddle. When I had reached the age of 4, my father set up a dressing bureau in the middle of the room, upon which a target had been drawn, and loaded a cartridge with a light powder charge into a Berdan rifle. I fired, and he told me I had hit the target. I don’t know, maybe he wasn’t telling me the truth. I’m saying all this to show that from my early childhood, I was being prepared for military service. That was the accepted way.
Later we moved to the city of Kamen’-na-Obi. The local school had a fine military instructor, a veteran of the fighting at Lake Khasan who’d been decorated with the medal ‘For Combat Services’. Although he wasn’t a highly intelligent man, he loved both his job and us, the children. He literally spent days and nights with us, and we followed him around in a throng – he was the first decorated veteran we’d seen. In short, I became quite familiar with rifles, revolvers and machine guns.
On the night of 21/22 June, my father and I were fishing outside the town. We returned home after 4 o’clock in the morning. We had the only radio on our street. When they broadcast that there was going to be a government announcement, Mama opened the window and placed the squawk box on the window sill. Neighbours gathered around and we listened to Molotov’s statement. I recall that all the faces were gloomy. We’d just put the Finnish campaign behind us, and now once again . . . On the next morning, even before sunrise, I ran to the military enlistment centre. Almost all of my schoolmates who were a little bit older than me were there. Some of them had been called up; others had come of their own volition. The entire yard at the enlistment centre was crowded with people! There, naturally, they sent me on my way – I had just turned 17.
I ran next to the Komsomol’s district committee. There they also turned me away – go, they said, study; we’ll call you when you’re needed. But I couldn’t wait! At the time we were thinking that the war would be over in just two or three months. I went back to the enlistment centre. I was received by the military commissioner; he wasn’t going to take me under any circumstance. I begged him literally with tears in my eyes! Finally he said, ‘Okay, but I’m not going to send you to the front. You’re going to the Tomsk Artillery School.’ I was upset, of course, but I had no other choice. I had to agree, and already by the end of June or beginning of July, I found myself facing a credentials committee and received my assignment to the artillery school.
I remember the first time I fired a 76-mm anti-tank gun at a moving target. A truck was dragging a wooden mock-up of a tank behind it with a long cable. With my first round, I smashed the target. Captain Epifanov, the battery commander, said: ‘That can’t be. Let’s have another target.’ They dragged another one across my field of fire. Again, with my first shot I destroyed it. Epifanov swore: ‘Don’t give him any more shells, or else we’ll be left without targets.’ My firing at the ‘rifle artillery range’ was also successful. This was a target field lying in front of a little 37-mm gun. A pellet rifle barrel was inserted into the barrel of the anti-tank gun, and with the little lead pellets we learned to hit a target. For the sake of justice I should say that we in fact never learned to shoot a pistol or a rifle well. We mastered aiming the anti-tank gun, but although we were instructed in how to fire our personal weapon properly, we were not very successful in this.
Of course, the mood among the cadets was lousy. We couldn’t understand why our Red Army was retreating. After all, before the war they had kept blaring, ‘Victory with little cost won on someone else’s territory!’ Some of the cadets said the retreat was some sort of strategy. However, I will say that Stalin and the leadership couldn’t be blamed for this. No! God forbid!
That’s how we spent four months in training, but when a precarious situation arose at the gates of Moscow, I and another 150 cadets were loaded onto trains and sent to the front. We arrived in Moscow. There, ‘shoppers’ immediately snapped up twenty to twenty-five of us, including me, either because we were the youngest or the best trained. Again we were loaded into heated freight cars and sent to Krasnodar, to an infantry school that was there. We were en route for a month! We were all ragged and filthy, and those who were a bit older had grown some stubble on their faces. Our appearance was, to put it gently, not presentable. We fell into formation on a parade ground, and the commandant stepped out of the school – an elderly, tall, thin and well-groomed general. He passed down our assembled ranks, looked us over, and abruptly spat out, ‘I have no need for such cadets!’
The next day, ‘shoppers’ snapped us up for various units, and I became the direction layer of a 50-mm company mortar. I must say that our fate was unenviable – a mortar man served in the ranks of the infantry, but if an infantryman could fall prone behind a bit of cover or a fold in the ground, the mortar man had to work on his knees. The 50-mm shell had a range of only 400 metres and was feeble.
We spent a while in reforming and did a bit of gunnery practice, but at the end of December we went to Tiumriuk to load onto a fishing trawler for the Kerch landing. Back in my childhood I very much wanted to serve in the navy. I think it was because of their bell-bottomed trousers and sailor’s caps. But how seasick I was as we sailed from Tiumriuk to Kamysh-burun! The sailors told me, ‘Son, take a swig of alcohol and a bite of herring; you’ll feel better.’ I couldn’t even think about it! The trawler already reeked of this fish. I crawled up onto the deck and clutched the mast. I ‘fed the fish’ in a frightful manner. That’s when German aircraft appeared. One trawler disappeared beneath the waves, and then a second . . . altogether, they sank nine of the boats. I was standing there and imploring that one of the bombs would fall on me, in order to end my torments, because it seemed then that there was nothing in life more terrible than seasickness.
We hit the beach successfully. I jumped into the icy water and clambered up the bank, but we were taking almost no enemy fire. We liberated Kerch literally within a few hours. A couple of days later, only about half of the company’s personnel remained. All the rest had been killed or wounded. Our mortars had been destroyed. For around 48 hours we had nothing to do, but then our guys seized three or four German guns. Crews for them were hammered together. We quickly familiarized ourselves with the German guns, turned them around in the direction of the Germans, and for the next several hours fired at their positions. Fortunately, we had no problem finding shells. Piles of ammunition towered next to us. Then they scattered us among different units. I wound up in reconnaissance for one or two weeks, but it was apparent that I, a green youngster just 17 years of age, didn’t belong there. I was reassigned to an 82-mm mortar crew. I didn’t spend long with it, maybe two months. On 22 March, on the day of my 18th birthday, I was severely wounded and concussed not far from Vladislavovka.
I recovered in a hospital in Essentuki. From there, at the end of summer 1942, I was assigned to the 14th Guards Rifle Division’s 36th Guards Rifle Regiment. There I finally began to fight in the role for which I had been trained – I became a 45-mm anti-tank gunner. The infantry, indeed as we did too, called our guns ‘Farewell, Motherland’ or the ‘Crew’s death’. Over those four months that I spent at Stalingrad, everyone else on my crew was replaced five times over, while I wasn’t even grazed by a fragment or a bullet. That’s fate for you. Whatever was written for you at your birth – that’s preordained and you can’t change it.
What can I say about the fighting for Stalingrad? In the course of it, once we seized part of a village. That night, infantry were passing our position, heading for the rear. We were asking them, ‘What, are you retreating?’ They would answer, ‘No, we’re being replaced’ – probably they were just lying to us. Soon a group of soldiers appeared. The sentry shouted, ‘Stop, who goes there?’ Silence. ‘Stop, or I’ll shoot!’ and raised his submachine gun, but it didn’t fire! How was the PPSh bad? If just a speck of sand or bit of corrosion got into it, it would refuse to fire. The sentry came running down into the basement where we were resting: ‘Get up! Germans!’ Another order wasn’t necessary.
I got up in my stocking feet – I left my boots behind, but grabbed the dial sight. The Germans were quite close, their submachine guns blazing, crying ‘Allez, Rus, charge!’ At the time they were feeling their superiority over us, mocking us, but we ran. They were sending up flares, and it became bright as day . .. Then a flare came down onto the road next to me and continued to burn. In its light I became a superb target. I dropped and hugged the earth. The flare burned out. Just as soon as it became dark again, I was on my feet and making a dash for the opposite bank of the Donets across the frozen river.
But I was holding the dial sight! I’d left my boots behind, but brought out the sight. In the morning we were sent to the Special Department. They had no accusations against me – I had the dial sight with me – but they told platoon commander Lieutenant Kuznetsov: ‘If you don’t bring back the guns, you’ll go before a tribunal.’
We went back to get them that night. We tied thick cords to them and hauled them back to the banks of the Donets without a shot being fired. From the top of the high bank, we lowered them down the steep slope onto the ice. That’s when the Germans opened fire, but it was too late – we already had the cover of the high bank and so we hauled the guns back into friendly lines.
I remember an incident with armour-piercing discarding sabot shells that took place in the village of Petrovka. These shells first reached us at the end of 1942. We were given two of these shells per gun and warned that they were still classified. But somehow we managed to lose them. The point was that local residents or partisans had offered to lead us that night into the enemy rear, so that with a simultaneous attack from the front and rear we could take this village. So that night the battalion, reinforced with our platoon of 45-mm guns, a mortar platoon and an anti-tank rifle platoon, set off into the German rear through ravines and deep gullies. At sunrise we went on the attack and easily seized half of the village. However, those that were attacking from the front were thrown back, and we wound up in a pocket. True, at the time we didn’t realize this. The men scattered into the different huts, some to shave, some to wash up. Meanwhile, I and this guy with the last name of Podkorytov stayed with the gun. We looked, and about 2 kilometres away spotted German vehicles. At that range, they were visible, but you couldn’t do anything to them.
They approached to within about 800 metres and infantry spilled out of them, and started to rush in our direction. The whistle of bullets kept growing and growing. We jumped into a little trench. Bullets began to snap along the breastwork. We were sitting there, feeling that if we stayed there, the Germans would come and grab us with their bare hands. We leaped out of the trench and took cover behind the gun shield. The Germans were close. Our soldiers were running out of all the huts, including our platoon commander, who was pale: ‘Men, do we have time to hitch up the gun?’ We had to try, whether we had the time or not. We brought up the horses, limbered up the gun, hitched it to the horse team and immediately drove them into a ravine that began directly next to our position. The Germans would shoot us in the back! Then there was a burst of machine-gun fire – the horses were falling while we were running, so we continued to run. I had the dial sight clenched in my fist. I never parted with it, day or night. Then a Messerschmidt appeared and went into a strafing run along the length of this ravine. At some moment I realized that I was trying to burrow beneath a dead soldier, even though I knew perfectly well that this body would be no defence. In such situations, very many reflex actions are in no way connected with reality.
We were able to break out into the German rear. From our platoon, there remained around seven men, several mortars and some riflemen; altogether, perhaps seventeen men. We were exhausted and frozen. We came across a haystack and crawled into it to warm up. I lay there and thought, ‘The Germans are coming for us. If not now, then they’ll be here in a half-hour. They’ll take us with their bare hands.’ I crawled out. The others also started to clamber out, and then we ran a bit further.
In one village we asked the villagers if they had anything to eat. The response: ‘Fellows, we have nothing. So we can only feed you linseed cake.’
‘Give us some.’
They gave each of us a piece of the cake. Do you know how tasty it can be, when you’re famished?
The group then split up – the infantrymen and mortar men took a direction a little more to the right, while we climbed a low rise, dug a shallow, crescent-shaped trench in order to get some shelter from the wind, and lay down in it. One of the guys said, ‘Let’s hide our documents.’ We began to dig holes to conceal our papers. I also hid mine.
We waited until darkness fell. The platoon commander spoke up: ‘What will we do?’ We had to get back to our own lines. Down below was a road, along which from time to time small groups of enemy moved. How to cross it? It was frightening; we might suddenly run smack into one. Then to our misfortune or blessing, God only knows, a very long column of wagons appeared. The Germans or Romanians were shifting their position. We waited and waited; there seemed no end to it. We decided we had to go, before it grew light and we remained stuck in the German rear, waiting to be taken prisoner at any moment.
Very stealthily we descended the slope and crept up to the side of the road. Spreading out, we separately waited for a gap to appear in the column before dashing across the road into some sagebrush on the other side. Now alone, I kept moving to put some distance between the road and me. I’d gone about a kilometre and was thinking I needed to stop. I looked around and spotted a comrade. A short time later we saw the rest of the guys and linked up with them.
One soldier said, ‘I groped around in one of the wagons and pilfered a flask. Let’s take a swig, perhaps there’s wine or water in it.’ I was thirsty, so I took a swallow. Yuk! Screw it – it was vegetable oil! We all nevertheless took a swig, but in my opinion, it was simply out of hunger. We made our way to the Donets and somehow crawled our way across the thin ice to the opposite bank. Literally within a half-hour, we encountered the remnants of our battery. We asked for something to eat. The guys said, ‘We don’t have anything but flour.’
‘Give us some.’
The sergeant major gave each of us a half of a mess tin of this flour. We mixed it with water, gave it a stir and drank it up. It was our breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The platoon commander Kuznetsov and us were again hauled before officers of the Special Department. They summoned me and asked where my documents were. I told him that I’d buried them. ‘Fine, we’ll check.’ they said, ‘Where’s your dial sight?’ I showed it to them.
‘We have no other questions for you. Go.’
There were also no questions for the rest of the men. The other gun layer in the platoon had also returned with his dial sight. But the platoon commander, for the loss of the guns and the armour-piercing discarding sabot shells, as well as the preceding episode, was sent before a tribunal.
Later, in 1945 I was crossing a bridge over the Oder River and a one-and-a-half-ton truck overtook me. In the back of the truck, some captain was pounding on the back of the cab with all his might. The truck came to a stop. The captain leaped out of the back and came running up to me: ‘My boy!’
‘Greetings, Comrade Captain.’
‘You don’t recognize me? You don’t know your own commander?’
‘Oh, Lieutenant Kuznetsov!’
I learned that in the penal battalion, he’d been wounded in the first battle, and thereby had erased his guilt with his blood. By the end of the war, he was now the chief of staff of an artillery regiment. We spoke for about 5 minutes, before the driver started shouting and hurrying him. We didn’t even have time to exchange addresses. We embraced upon parting, he climbed back aboard the truck, and I hurried to catch up with my unit.
I recall that at Morozovskaia Station, we seized German army depots. Both us and the local residents stuffed ourselves on the food we found. As we marched down the street, citizens grabbed soldiers out of the column and took them home as guests. An old woman came up to me with tears in her eyes: ‘Son, everyone else has guests, but no one is coming to my place. Come with me.’ I went with her.
In one room there was a kettle with hot water, in another – a washtub with some clean underwear next to it. She spoke: ‘Sonny, you wash up, change your underwear and toss the dirty pair into the corner; I’ll wash it later.’
‘I don’t need the underwear.’
‘No, change; this is my son’s underwear; perhaps someone is warming him up wherever he is now.’
I washed and redressed. I went into the next room. On the table, there was already a frying pan with potatoes and tinned stew meat. Their potatoes, naturally, were Russian; but the stew meat was German. For the first time during my service at the front to this point, I ate my fill!
‘Thank you, thank you,’ I said.
‘No, thank you, that you came by and could stomach it.’
I departed to search for the rest of my crew. I stopped by a hut, took a look, and found them sitting there inside it. They’d already eaten and were now lounging about. The driver Il’ia Belikov was sitting at a table – a strapping fellow, approximately 180 centimetres [6 feet] tall and 100 kilograms [220 pounds] in weight. If the soldier’s rations were inadequate to us ‘small-calibre’ men, it was even more so for him! He had a large frying pan in front of him. It had also been full of potatoes and tinned stew meat, but no longer – everything had been gobbled up; he was still scraping the pan and had a droplet of sweat on his brow, from the diligence of his effort. Then he stepped outside, and I followed him soon after. I looked, and he was sitting on a gun caisson with a large cask of captured marmalade in front of him, and he was digging at this delicacy with a sapper’s spade. We roared with laughter together.
That winter there was nothing to feed the horses. Forage was supplied only rarely. We had to take apart thatch roofs for fodder. But really, if the straw is half-full of clay, can it really be fodder? The horses could barely move themselves, much less a gun. At the foot of one low hill, this Belikov had unharnessed the horses, walked them up it, and then returned for the gun. Having placed the trails of the 45-mm gun on his shoulder, he alone manhandled it up the hill! Later, when I wound up in a mechanized brigade, I sighed with relief. I love horses, but in war a horse is the wrong type of transport.
There is another episode involving Belikov. Once we sent him to the field kitchen. He loaded his ruck sack with little loaves. As he told us later, ‘I’m walking and I think that if I don’t eat a piece now, I’d drop.’ He cut a piece off one loaf and ate it, then another and another. Soon he’d wolfed down the entire loaf. It made him drowsy and he wanted to sleep. He thought he’d doze for just a half-hour, then make up the lost time at a run. He woke up and the sun was already setting. He thought, ‘The guys are going to cut my head off. They’ve been sitting without their bread.’ He started off at a run, but felt pain. He checked and saw that the heel of his boot was torn up and bloody. As he was sleeping, a shell had exploded nearby, a fragment had wounded him in the heel, and he hadn’t even woken up! We bandaged his foot and he never went to the medical and sanitary battalion. We were young – everything healed quickly.
At the beginning of 1943, the division redeployed to a different sector. I was ill and apparently had a high temperature. We were marching at night as snow fell. I grabbed hold of a wagon and dozed on the march. My hand lost its grip, I fell, and I didn’t wake up! The other guys noticed this, shook me awake and picked me up. I again took a tight grip on the wagon, marched a bit further, and again fell. This time nobody noticed, and when I woke up, there was no one around. I was sprawled on the road. I tried to figure out the direction I should take, but then I simply snuggled up on the shoulder of the road and started to fall asleep. At this time a vehicle came by, in which as I later learned Major Shchukin was seated. He was the chief of the 2nd Tank Corps’ 58th Mechanized Brigade’s Political Department. He spotted me, placed me in the vehicle, and drove on.
A short time later I was back on my feet and learned that I’d been assigned to be the gun layer of a ZIS-3 gun in a separate destroyer anti-tank artillery battalion. Many, many years later, now as a member of the Union of Writers, I decided to write my memoirs. For more than two months I was sitting in the Ministry of Defence’s archives in Podolsk, leafing through the documents of the 14th Guards Rifle Division. I came across a report from the Division’s Political Department that the very next morning after that night, when I’d fallen behind, the division was standing on the defence. The 45-mm gun battery was in its firing positions. During an enemy air raid, a crew was killed that was under the command of Sergeant Il’chenko. It was my gun crew. Had I not gotten sick and collapsed, I would have been together with them . . .
I’d like to say a few words here about the ZIS-3 anti-tank gun. It was light. If I pulled my socks up, I alone could pivot it, while for two men this presented no problem at all. Two men could also roll it to a new position, while five men could manhandle it across sand. It had a large angle of traverse, both horizontally and vertically. It was rare when we had to turn the gun. It had only one shortcoming – its range of direct fire was only 600 metres.
We went on the offensive. In Voroshilovgrad Oblast, for the first and only time in the war I saw a German human wave attack. Not like in the film Chapaev, where the infantry is advancing shoulder to shoulder, but here they came at us in three waves, with just about a half-metre of distance between the soldiers. It was wild . . . They told us back then that this division had just arrived from France and hadn’t yet taken part in combat actions. We allowed them to approach to within 400 metres and then we fired at will. It was fearsome – there were a lot of them. Then two more machine-gun crews came running up to our assistance and things became a bit easier. I was firing at the Germans, when platoon commander Lieutenant Volodia Krasnonosov called out to me, ‘Misha, look, a truck is moving along that crest with a gun behind it, with soldiers sitting in the back of it.’ I gave it one shell – the vehicle flew into the air, the gun went into a somersault, and then I switched back to firing at the lines of attacking infantry. We cut them all down. Later the guys walked across the field, searching for canteens with cognac in them. Since they were from France, shouldn’t they be holding cognac?! There were a lot of canteens, but nothing was in them, because not one of them was intact. They were all riddled with shrapnel. That’s how devastating our fire had been. When we had been firing from the German guns back in the Crimea, no one had bothered even to thank us, but here for the first time I heard the platoon commander say, ‘Thanks, you shot well.’
Two or three days later, around the 11th or 12th of February, we entered the Cheliuskinets State Farm. The platoon now had only one gun, ours; where the second gun was, I don’t know, but the platoon commander was with our gun. We deployed the gun next to a hut on the edge of the residential complex, beyond which a ravine began. We had none of our infantry around, and indeed, we didn’t know where the enemy was. We spotted a tank moving beyond the ravine. It had a cross on the turret. I gave the command, ‘Armour-piercing.’ The gun was loaded. I turned the thumb screw until I had it directly in my sights. Just as I was about to fire, a man in a greatcoat with colonel’s epaulets on the shoulders and holding a pistol came running out of the ravine toward the farm. He came running up to me: ‘Don’t fire, it’s our tank!’
‘What do you mean? I asked. ‘It has crosses on it.’
He again shouted, ‘Don’t fire!’
The platoon issued the order, ‘Belay that!’
The colonel ducked around a hut and we didn’t see him again. The tank moved behind some bushes as it fired a round at us. The shell flew literally just several centimetres above the shield and collapsed a wall of the hut. But it was too late for us to return fire. We later among ourselves said that the man had been a German scout. I cannot confirm this, but even today I can’t forgive myself for obeying him and the platoon commander. We only had to detain him, and then let them find out who he was. The panzer fired only one shot and then gained concealment behind cover.
As we were talking over what had happened, bullets began whistling past us and rattling against the gun shield. I looked and saw a line of German infantry advancing at full height toward us from the right flank across the deep snow. The range to it was only about 100 metres. We pivoted our gun and let them have it! We cut down many of them. I fired fifteen to twenty shells. Those who remained alive were pinned down in the snow. I began to fire at the crowns of solitary trees that were growing nearby the prone Germans. I fired five rounds and they could no longer withstand it – they jumped up and dashed into the ravine. Not more than ten of them were left. We pivoted the gun again, and if any of them had appeared on the opposite slope of the ravine, we would have blasted them. At that moment our scouts came running up with submachine guns. We said to them, ‘Guys, there are Germans in the ravine.’ They lined up along the ravine and began to pick them off, killing them one by one. Only one made it across to the opposite slope, and with his last remaining strength he was clambering up it. The submachine gun fire could no longer reach him. Volodia Krasnonosov grabbed a carbine, rested it on the gun shield, took aim, and bang! The German dropped face-first to the ground and didn’t move.
Then Volodia and I walked across this field. Out of curiosity we began to count the number of dead Germans. I counted up to 140; we spat and stopped counting. Putting it briefly, I had to my credit approximately 100 German dead during their human-wave attack and around 150 for this one, plus an armoured vehicle I had destroyed in one of the battles, so I was recommended for the Order of the Red Banner. Two days prior the commander had expressed his gratitude, and now an Order! For the next several months, I walked around not sensing my feet on the ground! But I never received the decoration. It was like it vanished without a trace. Our 2nd Tank Corps was in the command reserve, and sometimes they reassigned us to a different army two or three times a day. Since only an army commander could bestow such an honour, we might be recommended for an Order in one army, but as the recommendation made its way up the channels of command we would already be reassigned to a different army. Indeed, in general we were always like strangers, so what could they award us? I survived.
Now when our veterans say that we weren’t fighting for an Order . .. Of course, not for an Order! However, I don’t know a single one who would have said, ‘No, I don’t need one! I’m not fighting for an Order!’ Everyone wanted to be noticed, somehow mentioned or distinguished . ..
Then there was the campaign to liberate Khar’kov and the inglorious flight from there. On my birthday on 22 March 1943, just as in 1942, I received a severe concussion. I spent days, it seems, in the medical-sanitation battalion, then left it. Back at the battery they gave me a little purgative, I was listless for another week, but attempted to keep working like everyone else. We rolled back to the Northern Donets River. There we had to do a lot of firing. The situation with ammunition wasn’t bad, not like it had been at Stalingrad, when we had only two shells a day.
Soon we were withdrawn for rest and refitting to the Staryi Oskol area. Our brigade was re-designated as the 58th Motorized Rifle Brigade. In the month of March I was summoned to the Political Department and was invited to become the Komsomol organizer (Komsorg) of the battalion, even though I was only a senior sergeant. The fact that I had a rather high education apparently made the difference. For example, the battalion’s deputy commander for political matters had just a 5th-grade education, but when later he was transferred into the Political Department, he replaced a captain, a Kirghiz by nationality, who had only four years of schooling and in a Kirghiz school at that.
I agreed and threw myself into Komsomol work. I began to write verses. In truth, I was only attempting to do so, because either there was no paper or no pencil available, or then when you did jot down a few lines, some other duties called you away. I’d stick the paper in my pocket, and within several days only a tattered, washed out remnant would remain of it. Thus, I never wrote a single poem in that time. Of course, the battalion’s Komsorg was a part-time duty, but in fact I was giving all of my time to it, which neither my battery commander nor the battalion commander liked. However, they couldn’t do anything about it – it was an order from the chief of the Political Department that I dedicate myself fully to Komsomol work. Here I should say that 80 per cent of the battalion’s personnel were Komsomol members. They in fact bore the war on their shoulders. Older men over the age of 35 comprised not more than 10 per cent of the personnel, and the other 10 per cent were men between the ages of 21 and 35. Much had to be done with the youth, since they were of different backgrounds, different nationalities, different education levels, yet it was necessary to forge a soldierly collective from them, ready to fight through common effort. More than half the replacements had no prior combat experience.
Well, soon the Battle of Kursk began. Although in fact we were positioned about 100 kilometres behind the front lines, you can’t fool a soldier; we could sense that something big was about to begin. I remember how one night we could see flashes on the western horizon and a rumble like thunder carried to our ears. I thought, ‘It has started.’ The alarm was raised. Everyone ran to their places, the tank brigades received an order, and they departed for the front. Soon the motorized riflemen followed them, but for some reason we weren’t disturbed until dawn on 11 July. Two batteries received an order to assemble in one place, while ours, the 3rd Battery, was ordered to cover the road running from Iakovlevo to a village that was totally unknown to anyone at the time, Prokhorovka. We moved up in vehicles that were loaded with cases of ammunition. Prokhorovka and the Oktiabr’skii State Farm, which was situated to our right, were burning. Smoke crept across the ground. Suddenly someone began to bawl, ‘Tanks in front!’, and after it, ‘Ready the guns!’
We leaped out of the vehicles. We looked – wide, squat tanks were moving about 1 kilometre away on a tangent to us. We’d never seen such tanks before. Then we counted them – nineteen. We unhitched the guns and deployed them in an open field. We only had time to dig in the trail spades, unload and stack the boxes of ammunition from the vehicle, and drive the vehicles away. We prepared for battle. The Germans didn’t notice us – the same smoke from the burning buildings that was drifting across the ground concealed the battery’s deployment and saved us. If they had spotted us, not even a damp spot would have remained of us.
The battery commander Senior Lieutenant Pavel Ivanovich Azhippo was running from gun to gun: ‘Fellows, don’t fire! Fellows, don’t fire! Let them approach.’ We let them close to within about 500 metres, and when they drew even with the battery, and having exposed their flanks to us, we opened fire. After the first salvo, two of them burst into flames, and we already felt a sense of relief – we had proof that these tanks too would burn. There had been nineteen of them, and now there were seventeen! They detected our position and opened fire. From somewhere to the right, a mortar battery started lobbing shells at us. Two Messerschmidts appeared overhead. That little patch of ground was literally shaking like in an earthquake – explosion followed explosion. Again we were lucky. If just one enemy shell had struck the stack of ammunition, we would have been blown to pieces. Their shells were striking around the guns as they were targeting the firing positions, but they didn’t hit the stack of ammunition. What was I doing? At first I was carrying shells to the loaders, but then wounded began to appear. I hastily bandaged them and dragged them off to the side, to what seemed to be a safer location.
Guns began to fall silent. At first the gun on the left flank was knocked-out, and then a neighbouring gun. Within a short time, only Senior Sergeant Ivan Grigor’ev’s gun continued to fire. I was assisting the crew. I dragged the wounded loader Private Supoldiiarov a metre or two away and was crudely bandaging him, when suddenly there was something like a clap of thunder. I regained consciousness quickly. The entire gun crew had been killed or wounded. I ran over to the gun and found a shell was in the breech. I grabbed the deflection and elevation knob . . . then fired. My target burst into flames. I ran and picked up another shell, carried it back to the gun, loaded it and fired – another hit. I made another run for a shell. Then I heard some sort of commotion, turned my head, and saw the battery commander with two shells running toward me, followed by Krasnonosov with another shell. Two shells were discharged at the third tank. I fired several more times, and three tanks were left burning. A tanker leaped out of the turret of one of them. I can still remember him – a lean man in black overalls, his face angular and gaunt, standing there and shaking his fist in our direction. I immediately roared, ‘Fragmentation!’ The two men loaded a fragmentation shell. I fired at the turret and hit it. My action was totally needless, but I was in a state of combat frenzy . . .
Azhippo cried, ‘Tanks on the left!’ We rapidly pivoted the gun. Quickly turning the knobs, I caught the lead tank in the cross hairs of my sight and pressed the trigger – nothing! I shouted, ‘Shell!’ Again I pressed the trigger – no shot! I hollered, ‘Shell!’ and pressed the trigger a third time – silence!! I turned; a couple of metres away, the severely wounded Azhippo was lying there, still gripping a shell; the badly concussed Krasnonosov was doubled over by the ammunition pile. I grabbed the shell from Azhippo, loaded it and fired – the tank erupted in flames. While I ran for the next shell, one of the panzers broke through to within a distance of just 60–70 metres of the gun. Several more seconds and it would be crushing me beneath its track. Here I had no thoughts whatsoever; I waited until he would expose a vulnerable spot to me. I very roughly pointed the barrel at its front and fired – there was a splash of sparks. Of course, it did no damage to it. But it stopped and fired. I remember seeing a patch of blue sky and a wheel from my gun twirling in it.
This was my eighth tank, but they didn’t credit it to me. I receive credit and was compensated monetarily for only seven. Back then, you know, they paid 500 rubles for each knocked-out tank. Altogether in this action, the battery destroyed sixteen of the nineteen tanks. Three got away in the heat of the fight, retreating in the direction of Iakovlevo. The battery had carried out its assignment in a shining fashion. Yes, it cost lives, but had those panzers seized Prokhorovka, even more blood would have been spilled.1
I was again lucky. Not far from our position was the command post of General Aleksei Fedorovich Popov, the commander of the 2nd Tank Corps, who witnessed this entire fight. I’m still grateful to him that he, as I later learned from the chief of the Political Department Shchukin, demanded that ‘this fellow’ be saved. Shchukin hopped into a vehicle and literally extracted me out from under fire. I was sent to a hospital with wounds in my leg, back and head. There they immediately operated on me. As I later found out, General Popov ordered my brigade command to find me, so I could be treated in the 2nd Tank Corps’ medical-sanitation battalion. Three groups spent several days searching for me, but there were a lot of hospitals, and to find a Senior Sergeant Borisov in the flood of wounded that was coming from the front was very difficult.
After the operation they transferred to me to a large hall, apparently in some school. There was a layer of straw on the floor, covered by burlap. The wounded were lying side by side. Soon they moved me to the attic. There was the same straw and burlap, but nevertheless the conditions were more comfortable. I was rather quickly back on my feet. About five days later, I began saving the army biscuits that they passed out in the mess hall, and once I had accumulated around ten of them, I hit the road back to my unit. In general, I never once stayed in the hospital until my official discharge; I was always running away to get back to the front lines.
There were a lot of men like that, and their motivations varied. Some wanted to get back to their unit; others wanted without fail to be at the front at that very moment. I, for example, was wounded the last time prior to the assault on Berlin. Indeed, I once again ran away so I could take part in the final offensive.
This time I fled the hospital before dawn, and later that same day the chief of the Special Department from the 2nd Tank Corps’ headquarters drove up to the hospital, while I at the time was on the road, walking and hungry. I’d already eaten all of my biscuits. In one village I asked a resident to give me something to eat. She said to me, ‘Son, I have nothing but cornmeal mush.’ What a delicacy! Especially with milk! I, like a calf, scarfed down everything I was given. I expressed my thanks and went on my way.
A vehicle came my way. I hailed it and it stopped. I told the driver that I was making my way back to my unit.
‘Climb into the back!’ he replied.
I climbed aboard. The truck was carrying bread; the loaves were laid out in rows and they were covered by a tarp. There were already two soldiers seated on the tarp. The motion of the truck made me drowsy, and as I was falling asleep, I heard the soldiers talking about some sergeant who had ‘raked the Tigers over the coals’. Only later did I understand who they were talking about. It turned out that this truck belonged to one of the tank brigades of the 2nd Tank Corps. When we reached their brigade, I approached one of the officers with a request to point me towards the location of the 58th Motorized Rifle Brigade. He was alert and immediately reported my arrival to the chief of the Political Department. The latter phoned the chief of my brigade’s Special Department and announced that a certain sergeant was searching for the 58th Brigade. He was told, ‘Hold him until my arrival.’ The chief of the Political Department followed him to the letter. I glanced, and a submachine gunner suddenly materialized not far from me. At first I couldn’t understand why, but then I saw that I couldn’t leave – he stayed behind me, but remained at a discrete distance.
The chief of the Special Department drove up on a motorcycle with a sidecar: ‘Take a seat.’ I did so. We drove about a hundred metres, and then he said, ‘Misha, I congratulate you.’
‘Why?’
‘You don’t know anything? They’ve put you up for the title ‘Hero of the Soviet Union’!’
I gave the appearance that I was happy. In my heart I knew that this nomination wasn’t even worth mentioning.
He took me back to the 58th Motorized Rifle Brigade’s position. They sent me to the rear, to the medical-sanitation battalion, where they kept me for another week and fattened me up.
A month passed. General Popov was taking me around to all of his combat units, compelling me to address the young soldiers. I spoke to the groups about one thing or another.
One day a car pulled up. The General had sent a car for me at the front. The chauffeur reported, ‘The General is summoning Borisov.’ The battery commander and battalion commander both had dead-pan expressions on their faces. Well, what?! But I had to carry out an order.
We drove to headquarters. I went to see General Popov and reported that I had arrived. Together we walked to the house where he was staying for lunch; he was living there together with his campaign wife, and they’d already had a daughter together, Polina. We sat down to eat. Wine glasses were filled. I said, ‘Comrade General, what’s the occasion?’
‘Are things bad for you here?’ he replied.
‘No, not bad.’
‘Then have a chat with my wife, while I return to work.’
I stayed with the General for two or three days. Then a car pulled up and took me back to the front lines. I couldn’t understand what the point of my sojourn there had been. Now I think he just wanted a son. He was around 50 years old, while I looked about 15, probably. Maybe so; or perhaps he simply wanted to pluck me out of the trenches and give me a respite.
A month went by, then another two or three; there was not a rumour or even a hint about my nomination. I was thinking that was all there’d been to the matter. However, Ivan Ivanovich Shchukin sat down at a table and wrote a letter to Shcherbakov, the head of the Red Army’s Political Department. Plainly, this letter worked, and on 10 January 1944, the decree came out that awarded me the title Hero of the Soviet Union. The corps commander and I climbed in a car to drive to Front headquarters in order to receive our Orders; I, the Order of Lenin with a star, and he – the Order of Lenin. We drove a little way and the General spoke up, ‘It’s become a bit chilly.’ The chauffeur had been well coached; he immediately stepped on the brake, pulled over, spread a table cloth out on the road’s shoulder, and pulled out a flask and a simple snack. We had a drink. We drove another 25 kilometres, and again Popov spoke up: ‘Oh, for some reason I’m freezing.’ Again, the same scene unfolded. I had a second drink. The third time, I said, ‘Comrade General, I can’t.’
‘What has happened to the young?! They can’t even hold their liquor.’
We arrived at Front headquarters. A member of the Military Council handed us the medals, and we drove back.
Those fellows of my battery that survived were also decorated, but not all of them. You understand, it was some sort of joke. When firing over open sights, the gun commander has nothing to do. Two men do all the work – the gun layer and the loader. But when it came to medals, the gun layer and loader were sometimes overlooked, while the gun commander got the medal. Or he and the gunner would be honoured, but not the loader. This was unjust. Well, and then, for example, there was my case; if General Popov hadn’t witnessed this stand against the tanks, no one would have nominated me for the title. In the best case, I might have been given some sort of medal. When I was sitting in the archives in Podolsk, I saw the commendation lists: a man would be nominated for the title Hero of the Soviet Union, but someone higher up writes, ‘I think an Order of the Patriotic War is sufficient.’ That would be that. Or on the contrary, someone would be nominated for the Order of the Red Banner, but someone higher up writes, ‘In my opinion, he’s worthy of the Hero.’ It was a lottery, in general.
It was 22 March 1944. The guys came by to congratulate me on my birthday. In 1942 I had been wounded on this day. In 1943, I had received a concussion. The chemical section’s chief came by, as well as someone else: ‘Misha, we congratulate you on your birthday!’
‘Thanks, guys.’
‘You should at least get hold of a little something to drink.’
‘Go on! Where am I going to get something?’
I was so naïve back then.
One guy said to me, ‘Can’t you go to the brigade commander? He can give you something?’
Thinking it over briefly, I went to the commander: ‘Comrade Colonel, can I have a bottle of vodka?’
‘What, you want something to drink? We’ll fix you up right away.’
I explained to him that the fellows had congratulated me on my birthday and would like to have a drink. He replied with a question, ‘How old are you?’
‘20 years old.’
Then he turned to his adjutant and said, ‘Summon Shchukin.’
Shchukin arrived. The Colonel told him, ‘You know that today Misha is 20 years old? Now then, go arrange something.’
Putting it briefly, they did some arranging. A choir was brought in from the Kiev Philharmonic. A table at the forester’s home, where I was staying, was spread. By dawn I was rolling on the floor and fell dead asleep. While I was sleeping, the Luftwaffe attacked and plastered us with bombs. One of the bombs fell just 2 metres away from my window, the blast wave blew out the window frame and it fell on me, while plaster rained down from the ceiling. When I woke up the next morning, for a long time I couldn’t understand what had happened. I came away from it with a light scare.
I continued to serve as the battalion’s Komsorg until August 1944. On 1 September, an order from Rokossovsky came out to send all the artillerymen of the 1st Belorussian Front who were Heroes of the Soviet Union to front-line classes to make junior lieutenants out of all of us. The classes were easy – after the artillery school, they were a piece of cake. On 23 February 1945, I was conferred the rank of junior lieutenant. They put me in charge of a student platoon of Heroes of the Soviet Union. Oh, I really had my work cut out with them! They were all to a certain extent pampered and spoilt. They were going around to all the isolated farmsteads and bringing back moonshine.
I once detained two of them. They were each carrying two pails hanging from the ends of walking sticks. I said, ‘You what? You’ve again gone out for moonshine?’
‘No, Comrade Lieutenant,’ they replied, ‘for milk.’
I took a look and actually saw white milk. Within half an hour, the platoon was rip-roaring drunk. They had mixed milk into the moonshine – there was no need for a snack. The weather was splendid, their duties were child’s play – relax! I filed a report with the commandant of the courses, with a request to send me to the front. He refused me. A short time later, I made another request to return me to the front. I received another rejection. A third request – again a refusal. A fourth request – yet another denial. The fifth time, he summoned me: ‘Fool, I wanted to protect your life, but you didn’t understand this!’
‘You needn’t,’ I replied. ‘My place is there.’
I don’t think I was star struck because I’d been made a Hero of the Soviet Union. Perhaps some of the guys envied me. I don’t know. I continued to do my duties. In the battalion, no one did me favours. The Political Department watched over me a little bit, because I was a Komsomol worker. Well, the corps commander did too. But I didn’t receive any special attention. I was fed like everyone else – I received soldier’s rations. Only when the command invited me to see them, there they fed me a bit better. The command always lived a little better. Almost all of them had a campaign wife. Our artillery battalion commander didn’t, but all of the rifle battalion commanders had one. Each female hygienist served faithfully and with obedience . . . When we arrived at the classes for junior lieutenants, I went to Front headquarters together with my comrade from a tank brigade; he was an artilleryman just like I was, but a gun commander. He was a braggart. He said, ‘I’ve destroyed more tanks than you.’
‘You didn’t destroy them; it was your gunner’s doing.’
‘I was in command!’
‘Just so, you were commanding.’
Well, God take him.
At the Front headquarters we became acquainted with girls from the communications centre. They told us where they were living, and we dropped by to visit them unannounced around 5 o’clock that afternoon. They were all well groomed and well dressed, not in simple cotton stockings, but in imitation silk stockings. After just 15 minutes, they told us, ‘Guys, scram.’
‘Why? We have time, and you’re also off-duty.’
‘What, don’t you understand? We’re all already claimed. Now the working day is finished and they’ll be coming for us . . .’
At first I didn’t have anything but hostility and hatred toward the Germans. I had seen what they had done in our territory. But already somewhere in 1944, my attitude started to change a bit. I recall that once we captured several Germans and sent three of them immediately to the rear, but I kept one youngster, who was around my age and was just as green as I’d been in 1941, in one of our batteries. I said, ‘Let him feel at home for a bit.’ He also could play the harmonica well. On the next day, the battery commander spotted him. He immediately came to me and asked, ‘Komsorg, what are you doing? Why do you have a German here?’
‘But he’s just a whippersnapper . . .’
‘It’s against the rules. Send him off to the rear immediately.’
We sent him away and felt sorry for him.
Nevertheless, there was a desire for revenge when we entered German territory. The guys would sometimes enter a home and fire a burst from their submachine guns at the various portraits hanging on the walls and at the cupboards with the dishware. Yet at the same time I saw with my own eyes how the field kitchens would give something to local citizens.
But I wouldn’t say that I had such favourable attitudes toward the Germans. Even today, I have no desire to travel to Germany. There is still bitterness. My best years were lost in the war with them. Not long after crossing the German border, an order was issued that put a damper on improper conduct on occupied territory. Prior to this order, though, we knew only one thing: kill the German, and for four years we lived by this. So this sudden shift didn’t come easily. A lot of men were put on trial. Well, how can one judge a man, for example, whose entire family had been shot by the Germans? Of course, he marched with a feeling of vengeance! As the Komsorg, I was explaining to the soldiers how they had to behave, though in my heart I often agreed with them.
I’m convinced that someone was watching over me during the war. How many occasions were there, when I should have been killed, but wasn’t? Here’s another one. Once I strayed from the road by about 15 metres, not more, and I grazed some barbed wire. A metre away from me, a ‘Bullfrog’ [the Red Army soldier’s nickname for the ‘Bouncing Betty’] – a German mine – bounded into the air and exploded. By all the rules, I should have been killed or in the best case badly wounded. Not a scratch! Not even my uniform was torn! I became frightened only later . . . As concerns a belief in God . . . we were raised in a different spirit. Before the war I never once swore – in my family this was considered a sin. We had icons. We were all baptized. When we were in a tight situation at the front, not only I, but many, many of the men would whisper, ‘God, let this pass!’ Was this faith? After all, in a fine, good minute we never gave it any thought.
In 1945 replacements were sent to us from Central Asia. I had one Armenian, one Georgian and a Ukrainian. Later there were also Uzbeks and Tadzhiks in the artillery battalion. Let’s say straight out that as fighters, they weren’t much. For example, in winter, we were always running, clapping our hands and pounding each other in order to keep warm. But he’s standing like a post with his arms by his side. I tried to explain to him that he needed to run. He doesn’t understand why. I give him a prod, just to stir him up somehow. He says to me, ‘Why, Russian, are you treating me badly?’ I tell him, ‘I’m not wronging you; I just don’t want you to freeze to death. You need to run, move around.’ They grew up in a different climate, had a different attitude toward life, a different mentality. We were fed whatever was available; for example, borsch with a bit of pork in it. They only spat it out. They wouldn’t eat it. I don’t think that they all refused it; one or two would eat it. The Muslims also shunned alcohol, which was laudable.
It did happen that we took plunder during the war. We seized the army dumps in Morozovskaia. All the local citizens made use of the spoils. When we entered Germany, there were a lot of different types of food in the warehouses. Once there was the following case: A soldier walks up to a cook:
‘What’s for our lunch today?’
‘Chicken soup.’
‘Again chicken soup, can’t you prepare some pirozhki [Russian meat-filled dumplings]?!’
That’s all he could say? They were full of themselves! Before 1943, he would have gladly gone for any bit of soup!
For a long time I had no watch. Then one of my soldiers brought in some Swiss watches. I personally didn’t send packages back home.2 Even when I got my first leave of absence in 1945, the only thing I did was to buy a couple of kilograms of candy somewhere. It was very tasty candy. I had a sweet tooth myself, so there was some sense in my purchase. I brought this candy home with me. When I was travelling through Poland, at one of the stations where we stopped I purchased ten bars of chocolate at a kiosk. There wrappers were brightly coloured. They cost an incredible amount. But we had money, so I bought them. I was thinking that I’d take home both the couple of kilograms of candy and the ten chocolate bars. They would make fine gifts for my family and friends.
At first I was riding on the roof of a freight car, but when we reached Brest some guys called me down into the car. They told me that a luggage rack was free – a very narrow one. I laid on it for a half-day, with my belt tied to a pipe so that I wouldn’t fall out. At some point I could no longer stand it and I thought I’d try one of the chocolate bars. I attempted to break off a piece, but it wouldn’t break. When I licked the chocolate, I discovered that there was only a very thin coating of it over a piece of plywood. What, this respectable elderly woman, the vendor in the kiosk, wasn’t afraid? Back then, an entire people lived in fear; you could have been shot without any ceremony for this.
22 March 1945, my fourth birthday of the war. Our command post was located beyond the Oder River, south of Küstrin in an isolated cottage with a tile roof. We removed a couple of the tiles, stuck our scissors telescope up through the opening, and observed the enemy, pinpointing targets. In honour of my birthday they spread a small table, having set out a bottle of alcohol and something to nibble. We prepared to drink. Suddenly, the vehicle of the regiment commander Colonel Shapovalov drove up. He strode into the cottage: ‘What kind of outrage is this?! Why is no one manning the scissors telescope?’
It wasn’t my turn; it was the turn of Lieutenant Letvinenko, who was also a Hero of the Soviet Union. He was dawdling. I was thinking that the regiment commander was only going to stay about 5 minutes, not more, and then he’d leave. I got up and clambered up into the attic to the stereoscope. Just as I reached it – a German shell! I was hurled down from the attic by the force of the explosion. I still recall Colonel Shapovalov’s pale face. He was thinking that it was his fault that I’d been wounded. They carried me in their arms down to an amphibious vehicle and sent me back across the Oder into a hospital.
In the hospital I lolled around in splendid style. I didn’t have to share my room. One of the guys visited, bringing with him a keg of brandy, and placed it under my bed. The other patients sniffed it out, and they would timidly drop by before lunch: ‘Do you have a little left there? Can you pour me a little?’ I kept giving them a taste as long as I had some left. They fed us well. There were a lot of captured foodstuffs. In the evening the clinical nurse manager would come by and ask, ‘What will you have for breakfast? What will you have for lunch? And for dinner?’ Why? Because I couldn’t at the time eat normal food. I’d been wounded in the jaw. In general, the hospital was a paradise, but it wasn’t for me. Again, I longed to return to the front, because the final offensive was being prepared, this I knew.
So again I slipped away from the hospital prior to my discharge, returned to my unit and resumed my duties. On 16 April, we went on the offensive.
In front of Berlin one evening, I was walking to the observation post with a battery commander. While I dropped into a trench and moved along it, he remained up top and walked along the surface. He said to me, ‘Climb out of there.’ I climbed out.
He explained to me, ‘Don’t you know that the German in the evenings and at night sweeps our line with grazing fire? If you walk along the surface, the bullet will hit your leg, but if you walk along the trench line, it will hit you in the head.’
Just as he finished saying this, there was a burst of fire and I was wounded in the leg. At this point I wasn’t going to go anywhere. I spent three days in the medical-sanitation battalion, and then returned to my battery on crutches. My bone hadn’t been hit; the bullet had drilled through some soft tissue. They patched me up and I was back on my feet quickly, but on crutches.
On 1 May I couldn’t take it any longer. I was now the commander of the fire-control platoon, and it was no longer my job to be at a firing position. Itching to fire a gun again, I walked up to one of the guns, asked the guys to load it, and out in front of me (I could see it well) was the Reich Chancellery. I fired ten rounds into the Reich Chancellery and gave vent to my feelings. Two days later, perhaps, I also went to the Reichstag with the guys, and our banner was already there. All around was lime and soot; everything was burned and the buildings were half in rubble. There were a lot of scrawled signatures everywhere. I couldn’t resist, and I also grabbed a lump of charcoal and wrote, ‘I’m from Siberia.’ Beneath it, I signed, ‘Mikhail Borisov’. This was the first autograph in my life. I decided that with this act my war was over. Only later did I understand that it would remain with me for the rest of my life.
Later they pulled us out of Berlin and into some woods, because the city was jammed with troops. Somewhere around the evening of 9 May, wild firing erupted beyond our camp. I was sleeping in the cab of a truck. I grabbed my submachine gun and jumped out of the truck. I thought the Germans had dropped paratroopers somewhere. From all directions, guys came running, some with a submachine gun, and others with a pistol. We didn’t know what was going on. The regiment commander came running. He was smiling from ear to ear: ‘Guys, the war is over! The Nazis have surrendered!’ Everyone around began firing into the air. Then that didn’t seem to be enough, so we deployed our guns and blasted a clearing with our shells. We each fired ten rounds. Then we opened the doors of all the storage depots. Some guys knocked together tables out of loose boards, while others carried everything out of the storage sites that they could. We took seats around the tables and celebrated Victory Day. Toasts were made freely and some drank to each and every one; others drank to as many as they were able. The peaceful, not at all easy post-war life then ensued.
Notes
1. The afternoon attack by the 1st S.S. Panzergrenadier Regiment on 11 July 1943 toward Prokhorovka from Oktiabr’skii State Farm encountered strong artillery and anti-tank fire, some of which was flanking fire from units north of the Psel River. Naturally, multiple guns were often firing at the same target, and thus it is impossible to determine how many tanks a crew knocked out with any accuracy. However, as a positive reflection on their own command and leadership skills, Soviet commanders were interested in generating highly decorated subordinate soldiers and officers. Thus, knocked-out tanks would often be attributed to a single battery, crew or even individual to enhance the prospects that a combat Order would result – especially if the individual or men involved were Komsomol or Party members. This likely happened in Borisov’s case, though this doesn’t diminish in the least the heroism of his actions.
2. Red Army officers were allowed to send occasional packages back home from Germany, up to 10 kg a month; soldiers were limited to 5 kg a month. These usually contained plundered items like clothing, clocks and watches, fountain pens, and other items that were abundant in Germany but scarce in the Soviet Union.