The beginning of the Great Patriotic War caught me with my mother and sister near the city of Rybinsk on the Volga, where we went on summer school holidays. And although we wanted to return to Leningrad immediately, my father assured us that this was not necessary. Like many people of that time, he hoped that in the coming months the war would end victoriously and that by the beginning of the school year we could return home.
But, as the events unfolding at the front showed, these hopes were not destined to come true. As a result, our family, like many others, turned out to be disunited - our father was in Leningrad, and we were with relatives in Rybinsk.
PROMOTE VICTORY OVER THE ENEMY
As a 15-year-old boy, like many of my peers, I wanted to take a direct part in the battles with the fascist hordes that had invaded our country as soon as possible. When I applied to the military registration and enlistment office with a request to send me to some military unit that was going to the front, I received the answer that I was still small for military service, but I was advised to take an active part in other activities that contribute to the achievement of success at the front. In this regard, I graduated from the courses of tractor drivers, combining them with studies at school, at the same time believing that in the future this will give me the opportunity to become a tanker. In the spring, summer and autumn of 1942, I worked in one of the MTSs, worked at the Varegof peat extraction sites, participated in the harvesting of vegetables and potatoes on the collective farm fields, and in October continued my studies at school, regularly visiting the city military registration and enlistment office with a request to be sent to the ranks of the Red Army.
Finally, on the eve of the new 1943 year, I received the long-awaited military summons with a referral to study at the 3rd Leningrad Artillery School, located in Kostroma, after successfully graduating with the rank of junior lieutenant, I was sent to the Leningrad Front, where my military service began.
Soon after the end of hostilities directly near Leningrad, our 7th corps artillery brigade was reorganized and already as the 180th heavy howitzer artillery brigade as part of the 24th artillery breakthrough division of the RGVK in February 1945 was sent to the 4th Ukrainian front.
If we talk about any significant or especially memorable events of the life of the front, I will be honest: every day spent at the front is an event. Even if there are no active actions, it is all the same - shelling, bombing, a local skirmish with the enemy, participation in a reconnaissance operation or some other military clash. In short, there is no quiet life on the front line, and since I was the commander of a battery control platoon, my place was permanently in the infantry trenches or at the command post located near the front edge.
And yet there was one striking event that engraved itself in the memory of participation in military affairs.
LOST WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES
This happened at the end of February 1945, when we arrived at the 4th Ukrainian Front and began to occupy certain areas of combat positions.
The site on which it was to act was the foothills of the Carpathians and was a hilly, forested, indented ravine and divided by small fields area. There was no clear front edge, constantly stretching in the form of trenches or trenches, as such, which allowed reconnaissance to penetrate relatively freely into the depths of the enemy's defenses to collect the necessary data.
In order to determine the locations of the command posts of the batteries and divisions, the brigade command with the appropriate officers conducted a reconnaissance of the area during the day. Each participant in this operation knew where he was going to organize his command post. From our battery, battalion commander Captain Koval took part in this reconnaissance, taking with him the commander of the reconnaissance squad, Sergeant Kovtun. Thus, both of them knew where to equip the battery command post, which I had to do as a command platoon commander.
Upon my return, the battalion commander ordered me with a platoon to start moving to the front line for occupation and equipping the command post, saying that Sergeant Kovtun knew the road and location, and he himself would be delayed a little, taking up the equipment of the firing positions of the battery guns.
Having familiarized myself with the upcoming advance route on the map, I established that the distance that was required to go to the place of the future checkpoint was approximately 2–2.5 km. Simultaneously with moving to the indicated location of the command post, we had to lay a wire communication line. For this purpose, we had coils of wire.
The length of the wire on each coil was 500 m, which made it possible to control the distance traveled. Taking into account the unevenness of the terrain, and in the order of usual thrift, I ordered to take 8 coils, that is, about 4 km of wire, or almost double its rate required for the forthcoming organization of the communication line.
At about 18 o'clock we began to advance. I must say that the weather at that time in the foothills of the Carpathians was extremely unstable - either damp snow fell, then the sun peeped out, a nasty wet wind howled, plus soggy, chomping ground underfoot. About half an hour after the start of our movement, twilight fell, and then darkness fell (this is usually the case in mountainous areas), so we determined the direction of movement by a compass, and even a lone tree, standing in the middle of the field, with Sergeant Kovtun served as a reference point for us confidently turned us to the left.
To determine the distance traveled, which we measured by the length of the wire being pulled, the soldier whose coil ran out reported it. While there was a report on the end of the wire on the first coils, we did not have much concern. But when there was a report about the end of the wire on the fifth coil, and in front there was a continuous haze and the outlines of the forest were barely visible, to which we had to approach according to the calculation on the map after 1-1, 5 km, I was worried: are we going there according to direction indicated by the sergeant?
After the received report on the end of the wire on the sixth coil - and by this time we were already continuing our way along the edge of the forest that we met - I ordered the platoon to stop and observe complete silence, and myself with Sergeant Kovtun and a signalman with another coil of wire, slowly and as quietly as possible treading, went ahead.
The sensations that I experienced with this further movement have been preserved in the depths of my soul until now, and, to be honest, they were not particularly pleasant. Darkness, wet snow is falling, the wind, howling and swaying the trees, causes some kind of incomprehensible crackle of branches, and all around is darkness and tense, oppressive silence. An inner understanding appeared that we had wandered somewhere in the wrong place.
Quietly and slowly stepping forward, trying not to create any noise, we walked on and suddenly suddenly heard human voices, as if from the ground. A few moments later, a bright light suddenly flashed in front of us at a distance of 8-10 m - it was a man who jumped upstairs to throw back the curtain covering the entrance to the dugout. But the most important thing that we saw was that the man was in German uniform. Apparently, leaving the lighted room, he did not see us in the dark and, having finished his affairs, dived down again, closing the curtain behind him.
It so happened that we ended up in the location of the front edge of the German defense, and if the Germans found us, it is not known how our raid behind enemy lines would have ended. Observing complete silence and secrecy of movement, reeling in our wires, we moved back, trying to understand what happened and how we were able to get into the enemy's location, where we turned in the wrong direction or went in the wrong direction. And what turned out to be - going up to the ill-fated tree in the field, the sergeant suddenly remembered that he had indicated the wrong direction - instead of turning to the right, he directed us in the opposite direction. Of course, the incident was also my fault as the commander, who did not check the direction of our movement on the map and compass, but I was confident in the actions of the sergeant, with whom we had been serving for more than a year, and there was no case that he failed in anything. … But, as they say, it’s good that ends well, and after a fight, they don’t wave their fists.
As a result, turning in the right direction and unwinding only two coils of wire, we found ourselves on our front line, where the battalion commander had been waiting for us for a long time. We received an assessment of our wandering in appropriate terms, for more than three hours had passed since the beginning of our advance, and the command platoon headed by its commander was not in place. Having dealt with all that had happened, we proceeded to equip the battery command post. The conclusion drawn from recent events was that we either would have been captured or perished due to ill-considered actions. We were just lucky. I understand that the incident I have described is not typical of what was happening at the front. Indeed, the war itself is not a characteristic event in a person's life. But what was, it was.
WOUND
Other episodes of frontline life have also been preserved in my memory.
For example, once, according to the order, it was required to penetrate into the rear of the enemy and, after sitting for three days in a shed on the outskirts of a village occupied by the enemy, to adjust the artillery fire of our brigade in order to prevent the enemy's organized withdrawal from the attacked settlement.
For the rest of my life, the last day of my front-line life, March 24, 1945, remained in my memory. On this day, during the fighting of the Moravian-Ostrava offensive operation during the liberation of the city of Zorau in Upper Silesia (now it is the city of Zory in Poland), while moving to a new command post, our group came under artillery fire from the enemy, who was in the forest 300 m from the road, along which we moved after the infantry units. During the shelling, the commander of our brigade, Lieutenant Colonel G. I. Kurnosov, the deputy chief of staff of the brigade, Major M. Lankevich, and 12 other people, and several people were wounded, including myself, who received serious wounds, from which I recovered and left the hospital only in October 1945.
THE TRUTH CANNOT BE KILLED
Looking back at the past events, one involuntarily thinks about what tremendous power our Soviet people possessed, which endured colossal trials and difficulties during the Great Patriotic War and won a victory over obscurantism, violence, evil, hatred of people and attempts to make them slaves.
Countless examples of the heroic labor of people in the rear, great courage and exploits at the front, examples of the ability to endure enormous human sacrifices can be cited. And, trying to find an answer to the question, what was the source and was the organizer of our Great Victory, I found the following answer for myself.
The source of victory was our people, a working people, a creative people, ready to sacrifice and give everything for the sake of their freedom, independence, well-being and prosperity. At the same time, it should be noted that the people themselves are a mass of people, roughly speaking - a crowd. But if this mass is organized and united, moves in the name of achieving a common goal, then it becomes an invincible force that can defend and defend the country, win.
The organizing force capable of achieving this great goal, which managed to unite all the forces and capabilities of the country in the name of victory over fascism, was the Communist Party, which had loyal assistants - the Komsomol and the trade unions. And no matter what dirt, lies, various falsifications poured on our Victory and the people of today's false historians and pseudo-researchers, it is impossible to silence and slander the truth.
Sitting in the quiet of offices and taking advantage of all the benefits of a peaceful, calm life, it is easy to talk about the methods of warfare and the achievement of successful results in solving a particular problem that arose during military operations, or about how to correctly ensure that the necessary results are obtained, while putting forward “new "views and giving" objective "assessments of past events.
The Georgian poet Shota Rustaveli said very well about such people:
Everyone imagines himself to be a strategist
Seeing the fight from the side.
But if these figures try to plunge into the real conditions of what is happening, when bullets whistle overhead every minute, shells, mines and bombs explode, and you need to immediately find the best solution with a minimum of casualties in order to achieve victory, little will remain of them. Real life and armchair life are antipodes.
