The last Ivan. Unpublished. Part 2

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

- Today, writer, vice-president of the International Slavic Academy Ivan Vladimirovich Drozdov is visiting the editorial office of the radio newspaper "Slovo". Ivan Vladimirovich, you also have a medal for the city of Budapest. Interestingly, you went from Stalingrad to Budapest, because in Budapest, in fact, you finished the campaign, right?

- Yes, there I met the end of the war, in Budapest.

- So, I wonder, is the battle for Budapest somehow different from other battles where you had to take part?

- Yes, this battle is different and, moreover, strongly. But, I’ll make a reservation for you right away, it seems to me so. I have read little literature about the Battle of Budapest. Well, somehow I didn’t come across it, and I didn’t deal with military history specially. Therefore, if I now begin to tell you about this battle, then keep in mind that this is my opinion. This is what I saw, what I heard, where I participated. Here, perhaps, historians or big commanders may disagree with something. I do not pretend to be absolute truth and will tell you about my impressions.

I came to this battle near Budapest as the commander of the front-line anti-aircraft artillery. On the way, first of all, they showed us where we were going, where the battery should stop. She had to stop on the right bank of the Danube right on the banks of the water and opposite the central location of the German troops. Moreover, the front line of the German troops was only 700-800 meters away from us. Opposite us is Mount Geller, and on Mount Geller is the royal palace. I must say that Budapest consists of two parts: Buda and Pest. We are in Pest, and the royal palace is in Buda. We drove along a country road at night, we drove along the outskirts and were in a great hurry to arrive at the place at night, because the battery had to be buried, and the night was dark, and that was good for us. But if we did not bury the battery, we were immediately aimed at, they could have destroyed us with the first volleys.

- Was it quiet when you were driving?

- Well, we drove when it was really quiet. There were no battles in this area at all. And in general, I must say, the peculiarity of this battle was that there were no continuous battles. Why? Because we surrounded the Germans near Budapest. They found themselves in a ring, moreover, the surrounded group counted, here again I am not giving scientific data, but what we were told is 170-190 thousand. So, that's why we were going to the place where everything was at gunpoint and we could be immediately destroyed. So, we arrived on time and managed to dig in, bury ourselves. We were buried in 2-3 hours, here. There were 137 of us, it was necessary to bury 3 guns and instruments, they hid cars behind houses, did not bury them. There was a hassle with the cars. Moreover, as soon as we got up, I see the Danube, I have a rangefinder next to my trench (by the way, it was made at the Leningrad plant "Svetlana"). And when it began to dawn, in this rangefinder I see not only the soldiers, but also the face, I can even see the eyes, because it had a 72-fold magnification. Therefore, I see everything, I look, they calmly accepted the appearance of a new battery. Yes, it made me happy. Then I go to the battalion commander's neighbors, everyone is buried in the trenches. By the way, our front lasts 50-70 km along the right bank and has a depth of 4-5 echelon locations, 4-5 echelons. If the first echelon dies, the second enters the battle, etc.

- You were in the first?

- I was not so much in the first, as in the Germans on the nose. So fate developed and, of course, I was a young man, I was only 20 years old. But I understood that this was such a battle, where, as soon as it boils, and we will not be, such a squall will go. This battle was special. Its peculiarity was that it was the penultimate one in the Great Patriotic War. This battle was followed by the Berlin operation. Behind the great battles near Leningrad, near Moscow, near Stalingrad, the Kursk Bulge … By the way, I was near Stalingrad, I was on the Kursk Bulge, but, frankly, I was not there in hell. The battery was placed on the road, and we had to protect from tanks so that they would not move towards our group, and from planes if they were flying towards us in the field. Therefore, for the battery, more or less these battles, so to speak, were happily managed. We had a minimum of losses, even in the Battle of Kursk. But here, I already think, here we will not be happy. Yes, another feature of this battle was that, in large headquarters, it seems to me, and as I observed, they made the following decision: not to rush, not to attack head-on, but to surround and hang over this group with a greater force and suppress it with this force., which was done.

- To give up?

- Yes, besides, since we surrounded them, there is no supply of ammunition, gasoline, or food. By the way, my battery was given the first task: not a single aircraft with food supplies to the location of the German group.

- So they ended up in the cauldron?

- Yes, they ended up in the cauldron. Many in other places are also in the cauldron. But, in other battles, it somehow happened that all the time the formations collided and huge losses … Here I go to the neighboring battalion commander, I ask: “What, how is it? Have you been standing for a long time? " Says: "Yes, it's been a week already." I say: "So how?" "Yes, they have already twice," he says, "have pushed in with an artillery raid, but received such a return from us that they were frightened." “Now it’s 2 days,” he says, “silence.” I was glad that maybe the third day there will be silence. But, there was no silence for us, because the planes with food were going and going intensively. And we hit and hit these planes. Five heavy planes, transport, four-engine, were shot down by the battery so that they fell nearby. It was credited to us. I had the opportunity to present all the batteries for the award. All were awarded orders and medals. Well, then more or less a break in the afternoon. At night they fly again. Hot time, hot battles, while battalions are sitting nearby, field artillery dug in. They are resting. Those do not shoot, from our side too. Well, our batteries are burning all the time. The battle lasted more than two months. I watched their lives, how they starved, how they shared what they had left, miniature pieces of bread.

- How is the blockade in Leningrad?

- Yes, well, I don’t know, I was not on the blockade. Yes, they were losing strength. When the time came, Hitler came to command this group, but nothing came of it either. They tried to break through in the area of Lake Balaton.

- That is, Hitler set some goal for himself?

- Naturally, this is the same task - to detain our army on the Danube, on a natural barrier. If we break through the Danube, then Budapest is 13 first-class bridges and roads to Europe.

- That is, it was some kind of turning point in the war, right?

- The turning point was in Moscow at the beginning, in Stalingrad, and then at the Kursk Bulge. We thought that we had completely broken the back of the German army, but here was Hitler's last attempt to linger on the Danube and stop our army. And when, nevertheless, they understood: there was nothing to resist further, because they already could not get up, and could not walk, they threw out the white flags. Well, there was a ferry nearby, and soldiers walked across the ferry day and night in a continuous stream …

- German?

- The Germans … We approached them, they are unarmed. We approached them, they stretched out their hand, asked: "Give me bread." Our guys said: "Yes, we will give bread, but you can't, you already …". They haven't eaten anything for a month, you know … The stomach is not ready … This is how the Battle of Budapest ended. She is around the end of February. Victory was close …

- So I know that you met victory in Budapest …

- Yes. I remember this moment, of course. As a preliminary, I will say, as soon as we finished this battle near Budapest, the unit commanders, I was the unit commander, were summoned and told, so to speak, a secret conversation that we would prepare an artillery regiment to be sent to the east. Nobody should know that we are preparing shells, preparing guns, preparing soldiers. I realized then that we were talking about a war with Japan, and I paid great attention to the preparation of the battery. It has been repaired, oiled, and so on. The fighting was over, nothing was demanded of us, and for the first time in the whole war we slept. The soldiers made a small dugout for me, with a view directly on the water, on the enemy. Well, I slept, of course, dead. And then one morning, at dawn, I heard a terrible noise, and the ground began to move beneath me. My battery fires at a rate of 3 seconds.

- And what is this tempo?

- This is the pace, when tanks are already falling on you from all sides, and you must fight them off or die. At this rate, the battery can withstand only 7-8 minutes, or even less. But I was preparing her for sending to the east. I got scared, jumped out, shouting: "Stop fire." And all around me there is a fire, you know, the sky is burning. And the sky burns in a real way, because the shells, then these bullets, igniting - all of this caught fire suddenly. Ours, and not only ours, but the entire Budapest front was being prepared to be sent to the east.

- And suddenly…

- Yes, and suddenly he was all in combat, so to speak, weapons and, when the war ended - salute.

- So it was a fireworks?

- When I began to order a ceasefire: "You burn the barrels!"

- Great!

- Yes, the war is over. We stopped, of course, this firing. Then I checked the guns, I got scared: I had to go east. Fortunately, we were not sent east.

Read about the national composition of the battery, Jews at the front, attitude towards the enemy in the following articles …

Ivan Drozdov's website