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Hello Shurik!*

I received your postcard and I'm very happy that you're at home, because I thought that you got drafted. It turns out that that's where you've been, and with whom, that's deft, you have to be a master to attach yourself to Voyentorg (a network of shops in the army - trans.) like that. The Voyentorg sometimes also comes to us, they sell that, what's its name, chocolate for drinking, rolls, sometimes sushki, bubliki, baranki (Russian pastries - trans.). Describe this in more detail in the next letter. You ask how I live, I already wrote about this to Aunt Tonya, get the letter from her and read it, but for you I'll write in some more detail. I didn't write about this to Mom and Aunt Tonya; to Mom, because she would start crying, and to Aunt Tonya because she'd tell Mom, and the result would be the same. The thing is that not long ago I was sent on a mission with a small portable radio, obviously not alone, but with a group of soldiers, and on the way we got into a mess, my whole satchel is full of holes, it's a miracle I wasn't hit, I was about to say good-bye to life, although what happens to novices, as Erich Maria Remarque writes, didn't happen to me. They were plastering us with mortars, a fragment hit a notebook and got stuck there. Now they replaced my satchel with a knapsack.

But my mother thinks that since I am a radio operator I'll be sitting in some headquarters, but that's not always the case because now they always go into reconnaissance with radios, what for? - It's obvious. Basically, let her opinion remain the same. It is very probable that I'll go on another mission soon. Our main workplace is 10-15 km from the front line, sometimes you stand on guard and if the weather is quiet you can hear machine guns, but artillery can be heard well day and night.

I saw captured Germans - two of them (we've got Germans, not Finns, in our sector), there is nothing special about one of them, but the other is a portrait of you, tall, skinny, with a pointed nose. Back then it was still cold in these parts, so they gave him large fur gloves, he put them on and said: "oh, gut, gut", and didn't want to return them, devil, clasped them to himself and that's it, but he used to wear little children's gloves, the scumbag stole them somewhere. His boots are size 50, no less, with wooden soles, and he shook in his tunic. We gave them a smoked fish, and they gobbled it up bones and all, the hungry devils.

The guys in our team are cool, there is one who was also in combat, the battalion in which he served was completely destroyed, only 21 men left, including him with a radio set, and for several days he dragged the radio and managed to bring it back safely, although it's not light, designed for two. For saving military equipment he was recommended for a decoration. Well, I'll wrap up. Write to me about how you live, how you spend your time.

YuraK 22.08.42 (August 22, 1942)

P.S. What kind of an address did you write?! Some 1140th p/y.

Sometimes just 114-O.P.S. (Separate Signals Regiment)
389 Field Post Office
114 Signals Regiment Radio Company **

Comments by Yuri Koriakin

* My cousin, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Gusev, enrolled in the Physics department at the Moscow State University in 1941, then was drafted into the army and spent several months at the front near Voronezh, but then he was discharged since he had an ulcer of the duodenum, and continued his studies at the university.

** I served in the 114th Separate Signals Regiment, which was directly subordinated to the HQ of the 19th Army. This regiment serviced all radio communications of the army. Mobile sets like SRC-399 were used to communicate with the front HQ or Moscow, and the lower levels were serviced flexibly. The service men of the regiment, of which I was a part, were regularly drafted when conducting various reconnaissance and diversionary operations behind enemy lines to provide communications.

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