On 20 June 1941 school-leaving parties were held for the final-year students; the next day, Saturday, we packed up camping gear and food and headed to the bank of the Tulva to have some leisure time for a couple of days. Here we fished, picked strawberries, played football and lolled about on the grass, dreaming about the future. At night we couldn’t sleep, and practical jokes ensued: someone would wake up with his face smeared with some dubious substance, to the sound of the others guffawing; or you might be given ‘a hussar’, where we would grab some wool, set it on fire and put it under the nose of sleeping man – he would jump up, then immediately be bowled over. There was also the so-called ‘bicycle’: we stuck paper strips between the toes of someone when they were asleep and set fire to them – he would ‘pedal’ in mid-air and jump up. More laughter!
We were on our way back, approaching the outskirts of town, when we heard a terrible crying and wailing. Quickening our pace, we saw children running towards us, imitating horsemen with sticks between their legs and twigs in hands, slashing the air to the left and right: ‘The war! The war has begun!’ Giggling and joking ceased – we ran back, having growled out ‘goodbye’ to each other. I dropped my backpack at home and dashed to the voencomat.6 When I arrived, more than a half of our class was already there, and the rest turned up within the next hour.
As always, my dad worked at the farrier’s on Sundays, and my mum and a neighbour, Maria Kozlova, were at home, uneasily discussing the news about the break-out of war. Maria’s son was doing his service on the western border – she was crying and, through her tears, telling us her misgivings about the fate of her son. It was discovered later that he had died as a hero during the very first days of the war, not having let his machine gun slip out of his grip. He was a courageous guy, dashing and reckless.
My friends who had been born between 1921 and 1923 were summoned to the district voencomat during the first days of the war, given call-up papers and commandeered either to military schools or to draft companies of the combat troops. There were three of us who had been born in 1924, and we were not called up. People questioned our exasperation, saying, ‘Where are you off to? You’ll have your time there!’ But the idea that the war wouldn’t last long was firmly embedded in my head. The words of the song, ‘Don’t touch us – we won’t touch you, but if you do – we’ll give you no quarter’, and a declaration by the People’s Commissar Voroshilov that ‘we will fight the war only on foreign soil, enough blood has been spilled on ours’ had done the job. They had strengthened my faith in a quick victory, and I was afraid of being too late for action. My teenager’s imagination drew a colourful picture of a battlefield, and I was eager to head to the front. Day after day I would go to the voencomat and ask to be drafted. The voencomat men were experienced people – they chuckled at my impatience, calming me down: ‘You wait, your turn will come. You’ll see a lot of action.’ How right they would be!
In August the first wounded and evacuated men began to arrive in Osa from Odessa, then from Moscow and other westerly locations. Our school was converted into a hospital. Our troops, although putting up a fierce resistance to the enemy, kept retreating, leaving cities behind . . . the war dragged on. Day after day groups of young recruits, increasing in age, were leaving Osa. My father was summoned but then was allowed to stay. I kept kicking my heels every day on the threshold of the voencomat, but they wouldn’t accept me on account of my age.
In September 1941 I finally got a phone call from the voencomat: my call-up papers had arrived. I was summoned to the raikom7 and recommended to join a ski rifle battalion. I was upset: I had wanted to join a naval school, but didn’t dare tell them that. It certainly wasn’t customary to disagree back then – the war was on, and people went where they were most needed. Along with two others, I was commandeered to Kungur, where a ski rifle battalion was formed.
The field camp was still under construction, and for the first three months we were busy mostly with that – we set up a military township designed to accommodate a rifle brigade. We built half-dugouts for all personnel, a utility block, a dry mess, depots and training premises. Bunk beds were erected in the dugouts, we put mattresses stuffed with straw on them and set up stoves made of 200-litre drums. Initially we lived in four-man tents – there were twelve men in each. During October we had rain, followed by strong frosts, and it even snowed from time to time. We slept in our uniforms, with boots and puttees on. We would press ourselves against each other and dry our clothes by the warmth of our bodies; this way we might get dry by morning.
Instead of the morning exercises our Ukrainian starshina (sergeantmajor), a horrible martinet, rushed us to a nearby forest to carry back logs sawn for construction purposes. As the area of cleared forest increased, we had to make longer and longer runs. After three weeks, when we were marched for 10 kilometres to a bathhouse in Kungur, our foot wraps were falling apart in our hands when we took them off. We had just warmed up, getting everything neat and clean, when we had to march back down the same 10-kilometre track of mud.
Breakfast was tea and a piece of bread in the morning, maigre bortsch (beetroot soup) and buckwheat porridge for lunch, and for dinner we would have herrings and a piece of bread, about 300 grams. We saw no meat – but then at home we’d had meat only in the autumn and winter. We got some extra food from the kolkhoz potato fields: we would approach a night watchman (people back then were tender-hearted and no one would kick us out), dig out the potatoes and bake them in charcoal.
The work was relentless and done in silence – such was the strain. When younger guys arrived as reinforcements, they would at first be eager to carry logs, always be the first with jokes, but then they would become quieter and quieter, and eventually they would stop talking. Even though I was a strong fellow, in the end I began to realize that I wouldn’t last long this way. Many of us were falling ill and several were taken to a hospital, though I managed to endure this ordeal.
At long last the construction was completed. Combat and political drilling now began – the so-called ‘young fighter course’. Several hours each day of square-bashing and tactical drill training. We were taught to shoot and studied firearms intensely – we had competitions to see how fast we could assemble and dismantle submachine guns and rifles. All drilling was run in the town and its outskirts, and only the two-hour political classes were held in warm dugouts. We liked those most of all – we could warm ourselves up and have a bit of a snooze.
In spite of the strenuous labour and the drilling, the half-starved existence and gloomy news from the fronts, there was no panic as such. There was only one thought: to get to the front line as quickly as possible, to be in action! That was why I took the drilling very seriously, and the results began to tell immediately – the commanders held me up as an example to other soldiers. The older guys joked over my enthusiasm, accusing me of trying to gain favours, to please the commanders, but I simply liked to learn the craft of a soldier and wanted to fight. I didn’t think I would be killed; on the contrary, I thought I was invulnerable.
The winter came. It was an early one and quite cold. The cross-country ski training began, and I was in my element: I was good at three-step skiing style, double-poling and even ski-skating, although there was no proper ski path. Specially built ski-jumps, from which one could leap up to 5 metres, were no problem for me. My skiing skills were noticed, and soon I became a ski instructor, working with the battalion head of physical education. I showed people how to snake between trees and how to ski-jump. Many soldiers were almost 40 years old, and some of them were not good at skiing at all, but they still had to jump – if a man couldn’t make a jump, he had to climb up the hill and do it again – they had to master the technique and would often become exhausted before they managed it.
In November our battalion was sent to the Moscow outskirts. When we were on the road, silence was critical. The men were not battle-seasoned, and hence nervous. Everyone was worrying about their first action and the chances of surviving it. The suspense was depressing and we would distract ourselves from these thoughts by singing, as each of us knew lots of songs back then. The train ran without stopovers – we didn’t even stop to have food and ate the dry rations provided for three days.
By the end of the second day we realized that we were approaching the front line – we saw smashed and burned-out carriages torn off the rails and ruined station buildings. Suddenly the train stopped. We heard the command: ‘Get off and line up.’ Just as we managed to jump out of the carriages, two Messerschmitts howled over our heads in contour flight, strafing the train with guns and machine guns. They turned around and made another run, having dropped a couple of bombs. One of them exploded not far away from me, and I felt pain in my leg and shoulder. Having done one more run, the planes flew away. Kolkhozniks from the nearby villages rushed up in their sleighs to help us. Wounded men, including me, were transported to a nearby railway junction, where an ambulance train was stationed. We were put in a carriage and transported back east. It turned out that I had been wounded by bomb splinters: a long thin piece of steel stuck out of my right knee joint; a second, smaller one was stuck in the soft tissues of my right shoulder. A surgeon came up to me and examined the wounds:
‘Aha! Well, old chap, the splinter in your knee doesn’t sit that deeply. We’ll just . . . grab it . . . and pull it out!’ Having said that, he abruptly jerked it out. I roared with pain.
‘That’s it. Now we will treat the wound, dress it. Take a walking stick, and in two weeks you will be running. As for the splinter in your shoulder, we will think it over. Um, old chap, you are shell-shocked as well – your nose is bleeding. Not a drama, the shock is mild.’
The splinter healed over and later only proved irritating during parallel-skiing exercises.
We were transported to Perm. I recuperated in a local hospital, enjoying being warm and well-fed. Soon a voencomat representative came to the hospital. Having summoned me, he asked:
‘Are you fit?’
‘Certainly!’
‘I recommend you to study in a naval air-force technical school. Agreed?’
‘Sure!’
I was so happy that I wanted to jump up and down. My dream to serve in the navy had come true – at last I would wear the marvellous naval uniform.
Training began. The cadets were lodged in quarters, with four men in each. We were still in army uniform, but soon we heard rumours that by the New Year we would have our new uniforms. I was outraged when the new uniform we were issued with was still the land army one. I was so upset that I went to complain to the commanding officers, right up to the level of the head of political department. The latter received me in his office and listened to me.
‘What is it about this uniform for you? Wear the stuff you’ve got – you’ve been wearing it for months.’
‘I don’t want to! Send me to a flying school instead, then.’
‘Why should I send you to a flying school? You are a soldier! You have to serve wherever you’re ordered,’ he said in a harsh voice.
I could understand it with my mind, but not with my heart. ‘Then send me to any officer school! Infantry, artillery, tanks – no difference!’
‘You’ve got to be kidding! Listen up – an aviation engineer is a person held high in everyone’s esteem. At the front you will be provided with flyer’s rations in a ground service battalion, 70 to 100 kilometres away from the battle line.’
‘Comrade captain second rank,8 I don’t want to be far away from the front line. I want to fight. I want to be an officer.’
I tried to convince him, but my argument failed and I returned to my quarters quite subdued. My mates were laughing at me.
‘What a fool you are. This is the best school. In three years you will get a profession which is needed both at the front and in civilian life. Don’t be stupid!’
But I couldn’t get over it. My studying deteriorated; I had no drive. Some time later I was summoned to the commander.
‘What’s wrong with your hearing?’ he asked me straight away.
‘It’s all right, no complaints,’ I replied, surprised.
‘But the chief engineer reports that you can’t make a sound reading of a change in the engine mode.’
‘That’s great!’ I rejoiced. ‘Comrade captain second rank, send me to an officers’ school.’
‘All right, as you are so adamant . . .’