Chapter 7
Vladimir Matveevich Zimakov
I learned that the war had started only when German aircraft began bombing Smolensk, where we were living at the time. It was either on 22 or 23 June. Our family was evacuated, but in 1943, upon reaching 18 years of age, I was called up into the Red Army.
We were first taken to Morshansk, which was in the Tambovsk region, and then, having loaded us onto trains, we were sent to the Melikessa camps in Ul’ianovsk Oblast for training. We were given new underwear, but an old uniform, which had apparently been removed from our dead – neatly mended bullet holes and shell-fragment tears were visible. But how cold it was there! We still had nothing, no greatcoat, no warm cotton underclothing, and no ankle boots with warm puttees. Yet we were sent Uzbeks – oh, such unfortunates! They were allowed to wear smocks under their coats. Even so, there was no real danger that you’d freeze to death – rehearsed attacks, runs, and forced marches of up to 20 kilometres once every ten days. They’d pour 16 kilograms of sand into the rucksacks, you’d grab a rifle – and off you’d go. That’s how it went from January to March. In March they called us into formation and said, ‘Those here with seven grades of education or higher – take three steps forward.’ I stepped forward, since I had eight years of schooling. Primarily, we had peasant fellows with five or six years of schooling, or else even men with no education at all. A hundred of us were selected and sent to an officers’ school.
We grabbed our things and off we went. Well, what sorts of items did we have?! A pair of underwear, black household soap and a towel. No one even had a toothbrush: it wasn’t routine. You could look in a German’s rucksack and see a toothbrush, powder, and ersatz soap – for the German, everything was neatly done. Even this ersatz soap was kind of abrasive: it seemed to have sand in it. Before long you were clean.
From Melikessa, it required three days of travel to the town of Kinel’, which was near Samara. We were assigned to the 3rd Kuibyshev Infantry School, the barracks of which were located 140 kilometres from the Volga. Our uniforms were just like those that cadets wore prior to the war – calfskin riding boots, wool tunics and twill trousers. After a six-month period of training, we were to be sent to the front, and once there, acquire the rank of junior lieutenant. Oh, how many of these lieutenants fell at the front! Few were those that survived! As soon as he arrived at the front, he’d wind up in the sights of a sniper. We couldn’t protect the man: officers wore a different tunic and service caps with visors, not garrison caps. The German snipers were superb marksmen.
So, for two months we studied, and then suddenly an order arrived to send the senior class to the front. No problem, except that their uniforms hadn’t arrived yet. So we were told to take off our uniforms and turn them over to the senior class. We were given back our old civilian clothes, but instead of boots, which for some reason were missing, they gave us bast shoes1 and white puttees.
So we were going around in bast shoes for two months, until uniforms arrived for us. We had trained for a total of three months in this school, when it was disbanded and we were sent to a ‘production mill’ for junior command staff in Inza, where sergeants were being trained. It amounted to an enormous camp in a pine forest. There we found three-level bunks and rats the size of horses! The camp had a training brigade, which consisted of a machine-gun regiment, an artillery regiment, an anti-tank rifle regiment and a tank regiment. So I wound up in the anti-tank rifle regiment. The training we received wasn’t bad: we did a lot of firing from rifles, submachine guns and, of course, Degtiarev and Simonov anti-tank rifles. The Degtiarev anti-tank rifle would give your shoulder a strong kick, while you could hardly feel the Simonov’s recoil; moreover, the Simonov PTRS-41 had a clip of five 14.55-mm rounds with a semi-automatic action. We fired the anti-tank rifles at moving plywood mock-ups of tanks.
There wasn’t such a thing as a telescopic sight for our anti-tank rifles. Moreover, the rifle was ineffective at long ranges. For example, at 200–300 metres, perhaps out to 500 metres, the lack of an optical sight presented no problem; the tank was visible: you just let fly and immediately you’d see the slug’s impact! But any further out, it couldn’t penetrate the armour.
We had to aim at any tiny vulnerable spot on a German tank in order for our round to be effective. If the tank was approaching directly toward you, then you had to hit a vision slit or just under the turret, in the hope of jamming it. But just try to hit a vision slit at a range of 500 metres! A few cadets were able to do it, but I wasn’t. Yes, it was also possible to break a track if you managed to hit it. That would immobilize the tank, and either the anti-tank riflemen or the anti-tank artillerymen would finish it off. If a tank showed its flank to you, if you managed to hit its ammunition, you could obtain a splendid sight – a huge explosion and great fireworks. The tank would blow into pieces and the turret would go flying off . . . it was beautiful! The soldiers would start shouting, ‘Hurrah!’ and fling their caps into the air. Indeed, that’s how we destroyed our ‘Ferdinand’, but more about that later.2
They literally gave us three months of training. Upon completing it, we became sergeants and were dispatched to the front by train. It took us around two months to reach it. While we made our way to the front, approximately twenty to thirty of us were killed by mines. The route was heavily mined. One idiot of a sailor triggered a ‘Bouncing Betty’ mine. Like a fool, he had gathered some of the young, green soldiers around him and said, ‘Watch how it jumps; I’ll catch it and it won’t explode.’ Of course, the mine bounded into the air and exploded. The sailor’s arm was blown off and he was disemboweled. One of the onlookers was killed and several more were wounded.
Some guys were superstitious and carried good-luck charms, but I didn’t have one. However, whenever I was extremely stressed or in danger, I would consciously appeal to God: ‘God, let this pass! God protect me! God, deliver me!’ That was all.
We reached a point near Staryi Oskol, but there we came upon a blown-up bridge and we became stuck. The Battle of Kursk had ended just a couple of weeks before, so while the train was blocked, they unloaded us and forced us to find and bury the dead. We removed the corpses from knocked-out tanks, both German and ours. The stench was terrible! Later we became accustomed to it, but at first we were nauseous. But we had no choice. Oh, there were a lot of burned-out, derelict tanks there. Some had collided directly into one another and were standing on end. Whose knocked-out tanks were more? We didn’t count them .. . perhaps the Germans had left a few more. We buried the corpses in fraternal graves. First, of course, we searched their pockets for documents. If we found some money or a locket on one of the Soviet dead, we sent them back to their families. Sometimes we found notes in case of death. But many of the dead had no papers, nothing. Of the tankers, only charred effigies remained. How could we identify them? It was surprising, but they didn’t smell. We buried the Germans and our own guys together. We simply wrote on the grave markers, ‘So many Russians and so many Germans have been buried here.’ As one political worker said, ‘Even though they were indeed fascists, they were still people.’
Our 202nd Rifle Division of the 53rd Army remained in the reserve and didn’t take part in the fighting prior to the beginning of 1944. Then we were transferred to Korsun-Shevchenkivsky. We spent likely a week en route to there, marching about 70 kilometres over each long January night. We badly wanted sleep. But the January weather was warm and the roads had dissolved into mud. You’d march, and seemingly pounds of the black Ukrainian soil would stick to your boots and puttees. You’d scrape it off, take ten paces, and again find the same enormous clod of mud clinging to your boots. Oh, did we trample the land there!
As I recall, in the winter we didn’t wash our clothes at all. In the summer, yes; we’d set up saunas. Once when I was with the recon, the Jijia River was flowing past our position. The river itself was muddy, but it had a clear tributary. Our guys would dam up the tributary to create a pool, and there we would bathe. We didn’t so much wash our clothes as steam-treat them. For this we would pour three or four buckets of water into a drum, place a grating across it, lay our uniforms and underwear on the grating, and then light a fire beneath the drum. Not a louse or flea survived that heat! Then you could walk around in your uniform for a couple of months.
We got sick, of course, but not seriously. Occasionally someone would get a sore throat or something. Well, a guy would lay around in his dugout for three or four days, regain his health, and then he’d emerge, good as new. Occasionally a medic would come around and ask, ‘Any sick men?’ That was it – we were all young and healthy.
Our dry rations were pea concentrate. They were in little bricks, and when you added boiling water, you’d get pea soup. We also had buckwheat bricks that contained a little fat or margarine. You’d just add boiling water and have a meal. Some of the guys simply chewed on the dry bricks – they didn’t bother to dissolve it into boiling water. When we had dry rations, it wasn’t so bad; otherwise we had nothing to eat and it would be impossible for the field kitchens to get food to us – it seemed artillery barrages were always dropping around us. If the sergeant major was a bit cowardly, you’d always be hungry. Actually, we’d always get something to eat at night. When we were in the front line, they’d deliver a hot meal at least once a day.
I was in an anti-tank rifle company. Together with my team member Malyshev, a tall Siberian who was born in 1925, we had a Simonov PTRS-41 anti-tank rifle. At first we carried it assembled, but then the company commander permitted us to remove the gun barrel and carry the components separately. Just imagine, the weapon weighed 22 kilograms, while the forty clips of five-round cartridges weighed another 28 kilograms. In addition, I had a Nagant revolver (the No. 1 of the team was armed with a Nagant, while the No. 2 had a submachine gun), while Malyshev was armed with a PPSh submachine gun and three drums of ammunition for it. In addition we lugged the rest of our gear, our rations and a change of underclothes.
There was a halt. Scouts reported that Germans were nearby. We received an order to dig in on the outskirts of the village of Komarovka, or in Ukrainian, Komarivka. We were directed to construct the trenches so that they extended toward the village. Our regimental headquarters was located there, as well as the regimental reconnaissance. We started to dig in. We created a horseshoe-shaped trench beneath a windmill and set up our anti-tank rifle. Then we waited for further orders – for 3 hours. In the meantime we continued digging – water was seeping into the trenches.
Well, did the Germans really give it to us then! This was the only time over my entire war that this happened. It turned out that the Germans were concealed in a nearby ravine on the other side of the village, and once our infantry had completed their work on the trenches extending to the village and things had more or less quieted down, they began mortaring the village. Unbeknown to us, there was also a German heavy machine gun positioned in the windmill right above us, and it began to pour fire down into the village. Our trench was just 5 metres away! Why didn’t they think to toss a grenade down into our position? Perhaps they didn’t have any? Malyshev waited a bit before saying, ‘Volodka, I’m going to climb up there and shoot them. Give me your Nagant.’ I gave him my pistol and he still had his submachine gun. He crawled away. Within a short time I heard an exchange of fire. The Germans were firing, and I could hear Malyshev returning fire.
‘Well,’ I thought, ‘that’s the end of Malyshev.’ Nothing like it! I see him crawling out of there. He had killed both of the Germans that had been there.
‘That’s it,’ he says, ‘I’ve finished them off.’
Then such a nightmare began! I didn’t see an officer again that night. We opened fire from our anti-tank rifles. But we didn’t know where to fire – we couldn’t see anything! It was pitch black, damn it! We fired at gun flashes. Malyshev and I expended twenty or thirty rounds.
As it became clear later, there had been only around 500 Germans. We had two battalions confronting them, sitting in trenches, and one more in reserve. Most of us were still untested in battle, but even the seasoned veterans that were among us lost their composure.
A senior lieutenant, I don’t know from which company, came running by, shouting, ‘We’re retreating, guys! Get the hell away from the anti-tank rifle, just remove the breech.’ That’s just what we did. We dismantled the antitank rifle and tossed it into a trench, while Malyshev covered it with his quilted jacket and stuck the breech into his pocket. We saw this officer fall, wounded in both legs. We grabbed his arms and we started hurrying away as best we could. The Germans were raining mortar shells down on us. The other guys were also running, and men were falling, falling. The Germans were firing. Most of our retreating men turned off into a swale to take cover from the bullets. Our officer said, ‘Run straight toward that hill! Run toward that hill! Don’t even think to enter that swale – there will now be a slaughter there.’
It was true – the Germans shifted their mortar fire to the swale and concentrated their fire on it – body parts of men went flying. Can you imagine? Meanwhile we crossed over the hilltop and sat to take a rest. The officer spoke up, ‘Wait a bit, I can’t go on – my heart is in my throat.’ He looked young, but he’d been wounded in both legs. Fortunately no bones had been hit; the bullets had passed completely through the fleshy parts.
So there we were, sitting in tall grass. It was getting light. Two Germans were moving below us. The lieutenant was the first to spot them: ‘Quiet, Germans! Get down and I’ll kill them; you might miss.’ He cocked his pistol – he had a TT – and took aim. The pistol fired. Immediately, the second German fired a burst from his submachine gun in the direction of the shot. Their reaction to the sound of a gunshot was nearly instantaneous and accurate! The lieutenant killed the second one with a single shot. He did it so calmly – he was a real warrior! We were scared nearly to death. We were thinking it was already the end for us. Nevertheless, it was our baptism of fire.
Well, we fell back. But the reserve battalion came up, drove out the Germans, mopped up the village and proceeded on its way. In contrast, we – two battalions – had taken to our heels. In fact half of those who had taken shelter in the swale were now lying dead there. So they consolidated the remnants of our two battalions into one composite one. A battalion had approximately 500 men. A company consisted of 125 men. We had three companies, plus a machine gun, a submachine gun and a mortar platoon.
In the morning, we arrived at division headquarters. We turned the lieutenant over to the medical-sanitary battalion. We reported to the command about what had happened in the swale, and they promised to send men with horses there to bring out the survivors. The lieutenant spoke up, ‘The boys should get a medal – they saved my life.’ We said in response, ‘We didn’t save him – he saved us!’ Everyone was laughing – we were totally unseasoned men.
They immediately placed the senior lieutenant on an operating table. They operated on him. They cleaned his wounds out, and the lieutenant endured it without any anaesthetic. Brave fellow!
Then came the questions:
‘Where is your sidearm?’
‘Here.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Anti-tank riflemen.’
‘And where’s your anti-tank rifle?’
‘We left it there.’
‘Go back and get it!’
We went back for it. There’d been a frost overnight and we had firmer footing beneath us. As we passed the swale, we heard moans! We kept moving – we were afraid. Devil take it! There was no one else around – we were moving down the road alone. Well, great. We arrived at the place where we had abandoned the anti-tank rifle and found it was still there. We entered the village – there seemed to be not a living soul there. Then an old man emerged from a shed. I asked, ‘Old man, how did you manage to stay alive?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, boys,’ the old man replied. ‘Your guys were shooting back at the Germans from that hut over there all night long.’
We walked over to it and peered inside – they were our scouts. They’d all been killed. There you have it. That was our first battle.
A bombing was the most frightening thing at the front, because you didn’t know where the bomb would explode. Even if you were huddled in a slit trench, you might get blown to pieces – your arms, legs and guts would go flying in every direction. They bombed us a lot! They would also choose a moment when our fighters were absent. You’d think, ‘Where are ours? Where have they gone?’ In the meantime the Germans are diving, releasing their bombs, and pulling out over and over again – the earth would shake. This would go on for 10 to 15 minutes – and then they’d all at once make their getaway. Well, our own ground-attack aircraft would also give them a taste of their own medicine. Once at an observation post, I watched as our aircraft came in just above ground level, and then saw explosions and explosions – they’d accurately plastered the German trenches with rockets. There was also this ‘Vaniusha’ – the German six-barrelled rocket launcher. As it howled, ‘Oo, oo, oo’, everyone knew what was coming! You’d look – and all the guys were burrowing more deeply into their foxholes or trenches.
We sometimes fired at infantry, but in general we sought to save our ammunition in case tanks appeared. True, there was such an incident. It happened just three days after we arrived at the front. It seemed that the Germans had detected our arrival and had decided to test us under fire, so they really let us have it. The barrage was heavy. Artillery shells and mortar rounds were exploding, while we lay prone in the bottom of the trench. Apparently one shell landed on a neighbouring fighting position: someone was killed, but one Uzbek received a concussion; he leapt out of the position, spun around a couple of times, and then headed straight toward the Germans. At that point, our battalion commander came running, yelling ‘Shoot him! Shoot him!’ He ran up to us, shoved Malyshev aside, took aim with our anti-tank rifle and shot him, hitting him right in the back of the head. Later we went on the counterattack; we stopped and turned his corpse over and his face was gone. The shell had blown it away. What else could you expect? The 14.55-mm bullet weighed 70 grams and hit with devastating force.
There, at Korsun, we spent another week in the trenches. That’s where Malyshev and I knocked out that ‘Ferdinand’ self-propelled gun.
Our position was quite poor – the Germans were holding the high ground and we were in a small hollow. The distance between our two lines was approximately 300 metres. There was a village atop the slope. We could see a self-propelled gun was concealed behind one of the buildings – its long barrel was sticking out. Apparently, they also had an observer there, because one could see the evidence of their work. Our 45-mm anti-tank guns had been standing on a hill behind us, but obviously the main thing was the position they’d selected – wide open ground! Not a single artilleryman survived. When we arrived, we looked and saw two guns standing there with their dead crewmen surrounding them, already covered with snow. No one had collected their bodies.
Even after we moved into our position, we saw how the self-propelled gun would roll out from behind the house, fire an accurate shot, and pull back behind cover. Right in front of our eyes, five T-34 tanks erupted in flames. One shot – and done. One shot – and done. Then another and another. The Germans, the swine, were clever and strong warriors. There was no one in the world stronger than them, except for us Russian fools. We’ve always fought with our fists. We constantly ram our heads into brick walls.
The company commander had already sent up three pairs of anti-tank riflemen – and they had all been killed there. Whether a sniper had got them, or other tanks had killed them, I don’t know. He says to us, ‘Let’s go, guys. Crawl under the first knocked-out tank, don’t be afraid.’ My Malyshev – he’s a young devil. Hoo-boy! He was a hunter, a Siberian. I was a bit more gutless; even though I’m the No. 1 in the pair, he always did the firing. So he says to me: ‘Come on, Volod’, don’t be afraid. We’ll knock it out.’ So that night we made it to the most advanced knocked-out tank, the one closest to the German-held village, and crawled beneath it. It was about 150 metres to the hut.
Just as it began to grow light, we started firing. We were aiming at the barrel or a track, because only parts of those were visible. It noticed us and fired a round at the turret. My God, what a noise! The turret was blown off of our tank! It is good that the shell didn’t hit underneath the tank, or else we would have been finished! I couldn’t hear anything. I was deafened. This self-propelled gun crawled out from behind the hut in order to finish us off. ‘Well,’ I think, ‘that’s the end of us.’ Any moment it’s going to kill us. But Malyshev didn’t lose his cool – he pointed the anti-tank rifle at the exposed flank of the German vehicle and planted five heavy calibre bullets into it, one after another, resulting in a tremendous explosion. Our ‘Ferdinand’ blew into pieces.
On our way back, the Germans blanketed us with mortar shells. We were already close to our trenches as the rounds started dropping. I see the shells are exploding nearby: one lands a bit short, the other goes long. We’re bracketed! I urged, ‘Malyshev, let’s go, run!’ Why was he tarrying? I didn’t know; perhaps he’d been wounded or had lost his hearing too. I gave his leg a yank, ‘Let’s go, come on!’ That’s the last thing I recall. I regained consciousness in a trench – the firing had already ceased. The guys told me, ‘A shell almost made a direct hit on you both.’ I was wearing a cuirass and a quilted jacket under my greatcoat. The back of my coat was now tattered, but I didn’t have a scratch on me. However, Malyshev’s right leg had been torn off.
Why hadn’t we waited for nightfall? Because the company commander himself had said to us, ‘Once you’ve finished your job, get back right away. Otherwise, it will be curtains. The Germans will creep up and kill you.’ We had with us the anti-tank rifle, my Nagant revolver and a submachine gun with one drum of ammunition. Malyshev didn’t take anything more – he was hoping everything would go smoothly.
For knocking-out this self-propelled gun, at the end of the war we received the medal ‘For Courage’. For destroying an armoured vehicle, we were supposed to receive 500 rubles and the Order of the Red Star. Well, the first and best medal was the ‘For Courage’, and after that the Order of Glory.
When all the dust had settled, we didn’t have much left of the company. There had been sixty men – thirty anti-tank rifles, a regiment’s full-strength anti-tank rifle company, but now there remained, God forbid, only ten pairs. A platoon commander had been killed. Well, approximately a week went by, and we received a small batch of replacements from the local population – men born in 1926 and 1927. They were all rounded up and sent to the front. We called them ‘Blackshirts’, because they were all wearing dark shirts, as well as grey coats. They hadn’t been given uniforms.
Then we marched onward and arrived at fine dugouts that had been prepared by sappers. It was here one day that I was knocked unconscious. When I came to, there was no one else in the dugout and one of the corners of it had collapsed. Good heavens! I couldn’t figure out what had happened. Had there been an artillery barrage? Supposedly, the Germans had no shells. Perhaps a bomb had fallen? I didn’t report to the medical and sanitary battalion.
We set out on a new march. Again, we moved only at night. On this particular night, the moon was shining brightly. The German reconnaissance planes were in the air, and we were marching. Whenever a ‘Rama’ appeared, the command would ring out: ‘Company, halt!’ The entire regiment would stop and remain still. Once it had passed overhead, we’d resume the march. I was marching alongside my team mate – I had a different partner after Malyshev’s wounding – when suddenly, splash! He and I had fallen into a water-filled crater. The water in it was at ground level and its depth was over our heads. We didn’t know whether to laugh or cry! We barely managed to scramble out and we were sent straight to the medical and sanitary battalion. They checked my partner; he had no temperature and showed no other problem, so they returned him to the front. I had a concussion. I had an earache and it had become difficult to speak.
I was hospitalized and I remained there for two weeks. Then some of the other patients were saying, ‘Let’s head back to our unit. What can we do sticking around here? It is merrier there!’ We tricked the nurse into giving us our uniforms, and we told her, ‘Masha, goodbye!’
‘Where are you guys going?’
‘We’re bound for the front. We’re going to catch up with our unit.’
‘I’ll write you up!’
‘Go ahead, write, write.’
It was close to Passover. We walked and walked and came upon a village. The female owner of the hut where we stopped spread quite a table for us on the occasion of the holiday: fried potatoes, boiled grits, ham, salted lard, and pickled cucumbers and tomatoes. She also procured some moonshine. My Lord! We hadn’t seen such a feast for years! Now that was a holiday! We drank down so much of their Ukrainian distilled spirit that we spent the next two days sleeping it off.
The time came to move on. Four of our group came up with a little scheme and said, ‘You go on ahead and we’ll catch up. We won’t be long.’ So I and another guy started off, but we didn’t know which way to go. We waited and waited, but our fellow travellers never showed up. Then a man came along who was wearing German boots and carrying a German submachine gun. He came up to us: ‘Well, boys, from which division are you?’
‘We’re with the 202nd.’
‘Oooooh, the ‘Turn-tail Division’! You’re better off joining us, the 180th Division’s reconnaissance.’
‘How so? We’re anti-tank riflemen.’
‘The devil you say! Enough banging away at those tanks with your pop guns! Join the reconnaissance – its better there!’
That’s how I wound up in the 180th Rifle Division’s 90th Separate Reconnaissance Company.
Notes
1. Bast shoes were a traditional Russian and Ukrainian style of footwear made from the woven bark of linden or birch trees.
2. Red Army soldiers routinely called any German self-propelled gun a ‘Ferdinand’. It should not be taken literally that the term refers to the German Elefant heavy tank destroyer.