Crossing

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

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This story, told by 90-year-old Vladimir Ivanovich Trunin, a representative of the golden generation of front-line soldiers, amazes with the natural and ingenuous courage of the Russian people. A simple incident at the winter crossing eloquently demonstrates the qualities of the Victorious people.

After the battle in Russko-Vysotsky, our tank reached Krasnoe Selo. The renovation took seven days.

On January 26, 1944, our KV tank # 642 rushed to catch up with the regiment, which went to Volosovo in order to bypass Luga from the west. The 30th Tank Brigade T34 of Colonel Khrustitsky, the hero of the battles during the breakthrough of the blockade of Leningrad on January 12-18, 1943, was ahead of us. His brigade was armed with new T34 tanks that came from the Urals.

Khrustitsky's thirty-fours overtook us and were the first to break into Volosov, the regional center of the Leningrad Region. There they ran into a German Panzer Division armed with new Tiger heavy tanks and Panther medium tanks. The fight dragged on. I had to call the Katyusha division. Some of the German tanks were destroyed, some of the Katyusha rockets were laid near the Volosovskoye cemetery. There were German PAK 40 anti-tank guns. The temperature in the zone of the missile's explosion was so high that the paint on the German guns burned out. The bodies of the German artillerymen and their uniforms burned down. A terrible picture. Even the stones of the graveyard fence turned black. All German resistance ceased. However, with the victory, the brigade suffered an irreparable loss: during the battle, its commander, Colonel V. V. Khrustitsky. And our HFs drove on. It was necessary to find a crossing over the Luga River.

From the map, we knew that the settlement (near the village) Bolshoy Sabsk has a bridge. The regiment rolls along the banks of the Luga River. The crossing is a dangerous and unclear matter. The headquarters of the 42nd Army gave the regiment a detachment of sappers, eight people, They put them at the stern of our tank.

I looked at them - old men of forty-five years old.

We go along the right (eastern) bank of the Luga. The meadows are frozen, end of February. Frost minus fifteen. The width of the river is twenty meters. The depth, judging by its size, is three or four meters. You cannot cross the Luga directly on the ice. You will drown the tanks. The weight of the KV tank is forty-six tons, and with ammunition - under fifty.

We need a bridge. We go up the Luga. The banks of the river are overgrown with alder, there is no timber. We went to Bolshoi Sabsk. One-story wooden houses. People - not a soul, no movement. We went to the bridge. But the Germans burned the bridge, only black charred piles sticking out from under the ice. The tank commanders examined the remains of the bridge and the western bank through the PTK (tank commanders' panoramas). From the western bank of the Luga, a machine gun hit our tanks from the bunker. A machine-gun burst for a tank is like pellet to an elephant. But the sappers hid behind the towers. All right.

What to do? The regiment commander decided to look for a ford. The column of tanks passed about 500 meters. We look: there is no ice on the section of the river for ten meters. And the water runs fast. Understood: it's shallow. And no one knows what depth.

The regiment commander ordered the sappers to examine the river bed. Can tanks wade.

The sappers cut down the poles in the coastal alder. And they entered the fast-flowing river. They were in felt boots, in greatcoats with wadded quilted jackets. On the heads - hats with earflaps tied under the chins, on the hands - mittens.

The current is fast. It was good at first. The water was knee-deep. The width of the river is twenty meters, the width of the ford, the section of the river with a fast current without ice is fifteen meters. The eastern part of the channel is shallow from the gentle bank. And then it went deeper to the steep western bank.

I got out of the tank and looked at this terrible crossing. The further the sappers went into the river, the deeper the water became. There were three sappers. They carefully probed the bottom of the river with poles, held on to them so that they would not be swept away by the current. And we went deeper and deeper into the water. First, knee-deep. Then to the waist. They clung to the bottom with poles. The bottom was rocky, as always on the rifts. And the poles didn't dig into him well.

I stood on the tank and looked at the sappers. The water was icy. And the sappers were no longer young men. But they walked and walked forward into the icy water. They walked in line, as the regiment commander ordered them. The distance between them was three meters.

We had to hurry. The Germans could pull up the guns or call in the air force. Then it would be very bad for us without infantry cover, without the support of artillery.

Even now I have a frost on my skin when I remember these terrible minutes. And the sappers went deeper and deeper into the icy water. Already up to the waist. The tanks, without waiting for the survey of the entire bottom of the river, went in three columns after the sappers. Our tank was going two meters from the back of the right sapper. A strong current beat into the left side of the tank. At the bottom of the river there was a round, large pebble rolled by a strong current.

And the tank began to drift downstream, right under the ice edge. If you drown a tank, then your fate will be unknown.

The water near the western bank of the river was getting deeper … I looked, and the sapper who was driving our tank, the water had already reached his chin. The pole did not hold him back. The pieces of ice hit him on the left side of his neck and chin. The current tore him off the bottom and carried him away. Both he and I realized one thing: now they will drag him under the ice. And no one will ever find him.

I froze. The current began to turn him around. I saw his eyes filled with horror. They begged me for help. He was so numb from the cold water that he could not even scream. A chill gripped his body. And I could do nothing to help him. Throw yourself in one overalls into a fast river and go under the ice? I was thinking feverishly, looking for a way out.

And then the sapper caught the bottom of the pole. Resisted. And the shore went up. By some miracle, he resisted and literally escaped from the embrace of death. He climbed onto the steep slope of the west bank and fell to the ground. He could not even get out on the river bank itself.

And the tank was blown away on pebbles into a pool under the ice. The water has already reached the driver's hatch. She began to fill the compartment with the control of the tank. The driver-mechanic, technician-lieutenant Lyonya Shevchenko understood: now the tank will slide into the pool, under the ice, and we are all finished. He pressed the gas pedal so that the diesel (engine) roared, the caterpillars grabbed the bottom of the river, the bulk of the tank rushed to the shore. Water poured into the driver's hatch and began to fill the front of the tank.

Lyonya was in ice water. But the water did not have time to fill the engine compartment. As it flooded it, the engine roared and pushed the tank onto the slope of the west bank. As soon as the tank flew to the dry shore, water flooded the engine, it stalled, and the tank stood up, flooded with water.

And the sapper lay motionless on the shore. Cold chained his body, he did not move. The other two sappers got ashore and also lay.

Tanks literally flew out of the river. And, without stopping, they rushed to the forest, away from the bunker and from the river. The crossing lasted only half an hour, no more, not counting the preparation. The regiment rushed off, and we were left with a stalled engine and a tank covered in ice water. It was necessary to release the water faster, before it froze, while the control mechanisms were still operating.

I took out a wrench, unscrewed the landing hatch bolts (I found the bolt heads in the water). He pushed the hatch open, released the water. Then he put the hatch back in place, tightened the bolts. Lyonya Shevchenko was sitting wet. Diesel has not yet had time to freeze. We managed to launch it right away. And we rushed to catch up with the regiment's column.

And the sappers remained lying on the river bank, motionless, in the frost. We already could not help them, three selfless Russian fighters. Where to get them? Do not shove it into the control compartment of the tank. There are three tankers in the tower. There is no turning around. Put it on the stern? The tank rushes, not disassembling bumps and stones, trees … The Germans are all around. There is no infantry cover.

This is what happens in war. Do I feel sorry for these fighters? It’s a pity, a pity! Crossing the river is the most difficult type of combat. Usually, in their memoirs, the commanders of the crossings and events on the crossings do not describe …

25.12.2012.

Trunin Vladimir Ivanovich, tanker from the Leningrad front