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I rode to Vistula's left bank over a just laid pontoon bridge, to that piece of ground which would later become known as the Sandomierz bridgehead. Rode, not walked, because, out of some mysterious considerations, they didn't let pedestrians onto the bridge, and loaded them into passing cars, even if they had to get off right past the bridge on the other side.

Not having a slightest idea of what was going on there, knowing only the name of the little farm or an estate that was my destination, I decided to get a bite to eat. I tried to find out in a local village where I could boil some kasha from my own supplies, for which I needed a pot and a stove. A scared elderly woman who, naturally, didn't understand Russian, couldn't understand my explanations with getstures either, and kept mumbling something I couldn't understand as well. Only when a tank with its hatches sealed drove past us and, after climbing the neareast hillock, fired its gun, I realized that it would've been more judicious to wait with dinner.

I managed to find the command post of the 1645th Regiment by certain signs pointed out to me at the crossing and was immediately handed from one person to another and finally to the battery commander Senior Lieutenant Yatsuk. After brief introductions, he wouldn't even look at my papers, which I tried to pull out of my field bag, he sent me, escorted by his messenger, to take charge of the second fire platoon deployed in its position.

My predecessor had been killed in recent fighting, and the platoon was commanded by a gun commander Sergeant Shahbazian under supervision of the first platoon's commander, a lieutenant whose name I forgot. Only the names of the regiment commander Guards Major Zatserkovny, the previously mentioned Yatsuk and Shahbazian, and also a gunner of one of my guns Kochetkov remained in my memory from this, first in my life, fighting regiment. Probably, first impressions of the combat environment, of what was going on in the bridgehead at that time, were not conductive to memorization of last names.

The guns, to which I was led by the runner, stood on the gently sloping side of a hill facing the enemy to the west, and were so well camouflaged that I couldn't immediately figure out where they were. The guns stood in shallow circular ditches in a harvested wheat field covered by rows of large haystacks. Similar haystacks covered each gun's shield and carriage. The barrels, lowered to ground level, and mounts were covered with layers of straw.

A firing position at the Sandomierz bridgehead. Moments of calm before battle. Drawing based on a 1944 sketch. In reality, a gun would be camouflaged more thoroughly, but if you show how it really was, there would be nothing but straw in the picture.

It became immediately apparent that the ditch differed significantly from those we traced and dug during practices at school. My new comrades in arms soon explained to me the nature and purpose of these differences. Making use of the hours of calm, Shahbazian showed me the German positions, the positions of our infantry (as much as could be seen from the artillery ditch), and also the positions of the neiboring guns of our battery and the entire regiment. As I found out from him, our IPTAP (Anti-Tank Artillery Regiment) did not have battalions, but consisted of six batteries directly subordinated to the regiment commander. I can't say if it was a typical organization of all IPTAPs, but that's the way it was in the 1645th. One battery out of six was deployed in relative depth around the regiment's command post and HQ, but the other five, 20 guns, were in the forward positions, almost behind the backs of our own infantry. There was only one task - hold the bridgehead, don't let the Germans throw our forces into the Vistula. There was non-stop fighting from the moment we forced it because the Germans understood the threat that was posed to them by our bridgehead. They attacked almost uninterruptedly, with large quantities of tanks, so there was enough work for IPTAPs. The commander of the first platoon, who had been informed about my arrival by phone, ran over to intorduce himself, hastily explained the situation that Shahbazian had just been talking about, and gave a practical piece of advice - don't shoot until the last moment, until the attacking tanks come really close. Very soon I understood the sense in this advice.

Fortunately, the guns turned out to be 76mm ZIS-3, familiar from school. An excellent gun, but in 1944 it was becoming somewhat weak to fight the new German armor. It's armor piercing shell couldn't penetrate the Pz.VI tank (Tiger) even at almost point blank range. Only the scarce subcaliber shell could help there. And even subcaliber shells couldn't penetrate the Ferdinand self-propelled gun from the front. We were left to hope that there would be less Tigers than main German AFVs, Pz.IV's. Out of thirty cases of ammunition, only two were with subcaliber shells, eight - armor piercing, and the rest - fragmentation/high explosive grenades. There was also a certain quantity of grape-shot, for self-defense against infanty, which gave us a feeling of confidence, but, fortunately, I never had to fire it. (For those unfamiliar with artillery I have to explain that, if a medium machine gun, when beating back an attack, fires practically around 250 rounds per minute, a single gun, firing grape-shot, can create a density 25-50 times greater, and a four gun battery - 100-200 times; moreover, the bullets spread evenly across the front, not leaving any dead ground. Attacking such battery is a hopeless proposition.) The Germans didn't give me any time to get acquainted with my new regiment. Unbroken attacks continued through the entire month of August, and only in the beginning of September, after realizing their attacks' futility and having spent all their strength, the Germans slackened their onslaught. The bridgehead remained in our hands and played a very important role later.

Of course, not only artillery participated in the fighting for the bridgehead, and representatives of other branches of military service, other military specializations, saw everything that went on differently, from different points of view. To me and, as I can judge from converstaions with comrades, to the soldiers of my regiment the scheme of the fighting was the following: After short but powerful artillery raids the Germans would attack with their armor. Heavy AFVs, Tigers and Ferdinands, ascended hills deep inside the German positions and stopped 1-1.5 kilometers from our own positions. The lighter and more maneuverable Pz.IV's continued to advance together with small numbers of infantry. It made little sense for us to fire at the AFVs deployed in the rear. Even in case of a direct hit the shell couldn't cause serious damage at such range. But German tankers waited until our anti-tank battery was forced to open fire at the tanks advancing in the front. A gun that opened fire, exposed itself, immediately fell victim to a well aimed shot from the stationary heavy AFVs. It must be noted that Tigers had very precise sights and very accurate 88mm guns. This explains the advice that I received about not opening fire until the last moment. When opening fire from a "pistol shot range" you could expect to hit with the first or, in an extreme case, the second shell, and then, even if the gun was destroyed, you could still get an "exchange of figures" disadvantageous to the Germans - a tank for a light gun. But if you exposed your position prematurely the gun most probably would've been lost in vain.

This also explained the additional changes introduced to a typical structure of an artillery ditch. Two holes were made to the left and right of a gun's wheels - one for the gunner, the other for the loader. Practically, ZIS-3 guns didn't require simultaneous presence of the entire crew near the gun. Moreover, it was usually enough for only one person to be present. The gunner, after firing, could hide himself in his hole while the loader would drive the next shell into the barrel. Now the gunner could take his place, aim, and fire, and the loader would be taking cover at that time. Even after a direct hit into the gun at least one of the two had a chance to survive. The other crew members were spread out through the holes, side "pockets" of the trench. Practical experience, which was being accumulated in this regiment starting as far back as the Batttle of the Kursk Salient, allowed to minimize casualties. Over the one and a half months of fighting in the bridgehead, the regiment replaced its equipment three times, getting new and repaired guns to replace damaged and destroyed ones, and kept its fighting efficiency while getting almost no replacements in men.

No matter how much I tried to assemble everything that remained in memory about the fighting in the bridgehead into a connected, sequential chain of events, nothing came of it. Separate episodes, separate moments, not connected to each other, maybe not even in chronological order, like pieces of a torn film... That's how they'll have to be written down.

...A quiet August morning. The western side of the sky is still noticeably darker than the eastern side. I stand in the artillery ditch and look westward, toward the enemy. I see how, in a pretty wide sector of the horizon, maybe thirty degrees, small sparkling dots quickly take off and disappear in the ligher sky above, as if a flock of luminescent birds is taking flight. A thought of the Moscow salute flashes, which I have never seen and imagined only by a color panel in the Lenin room of my school, made by an amateur painter. Sergeant Shahbazian, having noticed my glance, also looks westward and suddenly gives a hard shove to my shoulder, so that I fall down. He falls next to me and I hear his voice: "Stay down! Vaniusha's playing!" In several seconds, there is thunder of explosions around us, whistling of fragments, chunks of falling soil plop, sharp smell of burned explosives. Well, it's starting! Crews run to their places without command, get ready for battle. This was my first acquaintance with "Vaniusha" - German analog of our "Katiusha". I can testify, based on personal experience, that the German six-barreled mortar was significantly inferior to our BM-13. Later, during the fighting in Silesia, in March 1945, we were hit by an accidental salvo of BM-13, and I can judge.

...We're in the middle of a battle against tanks. The guns that Germans approached closely are already responding. My platoon is silent. The first platoon's commander runs over from the right flank, ducking, jumps down into the trench: "Do you have anti-tank grenades?" I nod affirmatively and dive under a thin overhead cover, into the gun "pocket" - eight meter long ditch which the gun is rolled into for camouflage and defense. The "pocket" is empty now, the gun stands in its position. There, in the pocket's depth, several grenades are lying together with my greatcoat, knapsack, and field bag. I grope for them in the semi-darkness and as if fall through to somewhere... I regain consciousness from smoke suffocating me. Something lies on top of me, pressing me to the ground, tongues of flame can be seen on top. I climb out pushing the collapsed stakes from the cover aside, branches, straw. The straw on top of the "pocket's" cover is in flames. First impression is as if I'm in a silent film. There, close to us, a shell explodes. Here, in about hundred meters from us, a gun fires, I can feel the earth shake, but there isn't a slightest sound except ringing in my ears. I look around - there is a hole next to me, half filled with earth moved due to proximity with the explosion. There's still smoke coming out of the crater next to it. The lieutenant lies buried in this hole - only his head and one arm are on the surface. I see that he's yelling something, opening his mouth wide, but all I hear is silence. I pull him by the collar of his greatcoat. (A thought flashes: "Why did he wear his greatcoat, it's not cold?") I throw the loose soil aside with my hands. Finally, I help him get out. The lieutenant ducks, moves while bent at the waist, I walk at my full height. I don't hear shooting, explosions - I'm not scared. Only after several hours passed did some sounds start to get through, I start hearing everything in several days, although the ringing in my ears doesn't stop. And so it remains, although almost fifty years have passed. Doctors say: "If it was treated immediately..." The lieutenant said that our position was hit by the artillery raid, a shell hit the cover of the gun pocket and collapsed it, exploding somewhere above my head, in the straw and stakes of the cover, a second one almost buried him in the hole. According to him, about two minutes passed before I came to and crawled out, but in his condition time dragged slowly, probably everything happened faster...

...Latest German attack. The regimental intelligence would later say that up to 120 German tanks were counted in the sector of our regiment. Two or three dozens of them remained there, hit by the guns of our batteries. There is a small farm -- a house and a shed -- to the left of our position, about hundred meters away. Someone from the retreating infantry, apparently to justify their flight, waves his had: "There is tank behind the house..." My gun is pointed in another direction. I show the direction to Shahbazian, the guys turn the gun in concert 90 degrees to the left. We wait. But nothing happens, nothing can be heard. I take an anti-tank grenade, crawl toward the house. Empty! Damn you!... Was I scared? Maybe, but I was really afraid that the men would see my fear. It seems they didn't, but looked at me with respect.

Soldiers' native wit (three guns pulled by one truck).

...After the latest engagement, after an "exchange of guns for tanks" with the attacking Fritzes, the regiment is pulled back a little to the rear. I am sent to the artillery supply depot to get new guns. I need to get three guns, but they give me one Studebaker. The experienced driver reassures me: "It's OK, we'll manage!" I'm not sure about that, but trust in his wit and experience. We arrive at the depot in the evening, it turns out that our turn will come the next morning. The driver drives the Studebaker into a ravine, where several other trucks have already stopped for the night, takes out a shovel, and starts digging: He cuts into the side of the ravine to make cover for at least the front of the truck, for the engine. Estimating the time needed, I decide that even if both of us dig until the morning, we'll barely put the car in place by dawn. But in the morning we'll have to get out to the depot anyway. The driver objects: Fritz won't come bombing at night anyway, but we can expect "guests" in the morning. The depot is an attractive spot for them. Looking at us, drivers of the other trucks also take out their shovels... In the morning the driver backs the truck in the depot, parks it with rear wheels in a side ditch, opens the rear like a walkway, and both of us - here's where the shool training helped - roll one gun onto the platform. The barrel sticks out over the cabin, like on a tank. We attach the second ZIS to a hook in the rear of the truck. The driver looks for a piece of cable to attach the third gun. An idea comes - hook the third gun's mounts around the second gun's muzzle brake. The two of us can't do it, we have to ask for help - after all, it would only take a minute. Hooray, it works! We're "home" by dinnertime, the guns leave for positions, where they will be deployed after dark. We can sleep for a couple of hours...

...Another day of heavy fighting. After paying, as always, a high price in tanks, the Germans drive a wedge into our defense, they advance faster than our infantry and artillery can retreat. Everything is mixed up, a "layered cake" has formed. Ahead of us, and to our rear - both our troops and the enemy. Everything hangs by a thread, a little more and the Germans will reach the crossings... The commander calls for air support. IL-2 ground attack aircraft literally "walk on our heads", slam everything, and there are both our soldiers and Fritzes in one ravine, at its different ends, hiding from bombs and rockets from above. Tanks that weren't destroyed by our guns are burning, skirmishes flare up between our infantry and wedged in Fritzes. Having lost their armor, the Fritzes withdraw hastily. The situation is restored. Of course, some of us were also killed by our own ILs, but there was no other way to save the bridgehead. I found out from memoir literature that those were the aircraft of one of the first five Heroes of the Soviet Union, N. I. Kamanin, working above us, and among them - one of the first cosmonauts G. Beregovoy.

...In the heat of battle, a messenger from the battery commander runs by. We're ordered to roll the guns to the right, closer to the first platoon's positions. I command "All clear!", the gun is in marching configuration, we set out. First we're going to deploy the first gun in the new place, then the other. It's fortunate that we have to roll downhill, it's fast and easy. Upon hearing the whistling of shells, we fall, crawl to the side ditches. The raid is over. One glance is enough to realize that we won't get to shoot - the recuperator is punctured by a fragment. The other crew catches up to us from uphill. The gun's commander holds the two pud (pud = 16 kg) wedgelike breech block in his arms, like a baby. He yells: "Direct hit! I barely got the breech block out." I assemble the men, we retreat in the direction of a grove, which should be occupied by our forces. We have to cross a field which has a huge haystack in the middle, between us and the grove, maybe 5 meters high and dozens of meters long. The Germans can fire at the field from the left with machine guns, and we can get from the side ditch to the haystack only by crawling in a deep furrow for about two hundred meters... I let my men ahead of me one after another - first of all, the commander retreats last, like the captain of a sinking ship, and second, I'm not as strong and adroit as the majority of my soldiers, and I would be holding them up. Everyone crawled away, now it's my turn. The soldier creeping before me freezes, pressing himself into the ground. The fire became very dense. I yell at him to take off his submachine gun. He pulls the sling of the PPSh hanging on his back over his head. The stock has already been hit by a bullet. The fire subsides. Apparently, I guessed it right: the SMG sticking over the crawling soldier's back was visible to a machine gunner. It's easier for me - I only have a TT. We crawl forward. I run into a drum magazine from an SMG, filled with ammo. I take it with me. We assemble behind the haystack and look where to move next. The owner of the magazine picked up by me turns up: "Here, look, mine is marked, there's a scratch from a fragment!" Soon I hear how the sergeant reprimands him: "Bungler! Must the lieutenant pick everything up behind you?" Although I'm not a lieutenant yet, it still feels nice... Soon the Germans set the haystack on fire with a shell, and that works for us: we leave into the forest using the smoke as cover...

...We bury our killed comrades in the evening. The bodies wrapped in ground sheets are placed in a half filled and slightly straightened trench. Comrades-in-arms, with whom we didn't have time to get acquainted. Two short speeches. The earth falls with a dull sound. Flashes of officers' handguns in the darkness. I salute with everyone... The grave is marked on the commander's map, but there is no marker here. Who knows who will be in possession of this land tomorrow, or the day after.

...There is a wide hollow before the gun, covering it from the front. There is a tank on the other side of the hollow, conveniently showing its side to us. The gunner catches it in the crosshairs. The tank is not heavy, and it's showing its flank at that - the armor piercing shell loaded into the gun will be enough here. A machine gunner next to us (there was a light or medium machine gun for each gun in the IPTAP) suddenly sees how the front of a heavy AFV appears from the hollow right in front of the gun, a long barrel with a characteristic knob of the muzzle brake. A Tiger! The gunner doesn't see it yet in the field of view of his gun sight. And the machine gunner fires a burst at the tank, like a shotgun against an elephant, to attract the gunner's attention. The gun's barrel is lowered immediately, a shot, and the armor piercing shell ricochets off the front armor. And it was only fifty meters! "Subcaliber!" - the gunner yells desperately. The breech block clanks, swallowing the round. Fortunately, both the tank's gun and its driver look upward while the tank hasn't got out of the hollow. The subcaliber shell hits the bottom of the turret at almost point blank range. Apparently, something burst inside, a blue light flashed from all of the AFV's holes. The AFV doesn't burst into flames, but the crew tries to bail out through the hatches. A machine gun burst finishes the business...

...The soldiers that survived the severe battle assemble in a grove, the battery commander Yatsuk sits on a tree stump. Some papers are in front of him on an empty ammo box. He looks through them one after another and signs them. I approach from behind, look over his shoulder. The senior lieutenant is about to sign the prepared notice of my death - a "pohoronka". I clap him on the shoulder, he turns around: "Ah, you're alive!" - the "pohoronka" is crumpled and thrown to the side... Had I appeared one minute later, the notice would've been sent to the addressee. Although, which addressee? The regiment doesn't have my papers, they weren't accepted yet and have already burned up somewhere... My soldiers call to me: "Comrade lieutenant!" They stubbornly don't acknowledge the word "junior". What's that? A sign of respect or are they accustomed to the rank of my dead predecessor? "Comrade lieutenant! Please eat!" A large basket of raw eggs. There is nothing else: no bread, no salt, - but I swallow a dozen, one after another, raw, throwing the empty shells aside. If I had an ear for music, I could sing at an opera. What can you do, you don't know when you'll manage to "fill up" the next time.

...The tension of the summer fighting has already slackened, our defense became solid, and maybe that's why caution and attention weakened. I got hit by a random shot. The feeling was as if my leg was hit by something hard simultaneously form two sides. I didn't immediately understand what happened. I rashly pulled the boot off myself, probably it would've had to be cut off later anyway -- the joint was punctured, and there was strong pain during an attempt to move the foot. There already were soldiers next to me, but, remembering Artamonov's lessons, I took my belt off and made a tourniquet. I gave the holster with my sidearm to the gunner Kochetkov - the sidearm was my "own", unaccounted for, and it didn't have to be passed on officially. They helped me get to, or rather carried me in their arms, to that bridge where our regimental medical car - a trophy of French origin, of Renault make - could arrive. The driver, a huge man, loaded me into the back alone, raised me in his arms like a child, and when I asked if I was heavy, he laughed and told me that when there turned out to be several claimants to this trophy car, he pulled one of them out the same way, and the rest chose to retreat. He also refused help in the medical battalion of some divison and dragged me into the operating room on his own. There were several operating tables in the large tent penetrated by the sun's rays, several wounded were undergoing surgery at the same time, and while they were getting ready to take care of me, I could observe everything that went on in front of me: pulled up sleeves of bloodied gowns, shining instruments... The nurse clumsily tried to take off the apparently unfamiliar to her tourniquet made with a belt. I showed her: "Here's how!" "Well, well, one more time!" I tightened and released the tourniquet one more time. "That's great!" Meanwhile, a large syringe was prepared, they injected half a glass of some drug into my leg around the joint, the leg swelled and went numb because of it. The surgeon made two crosswise cuts in my leg around the entry wound, spread the edges, and, apparently to distract me, advised me to memorize: "A cut 9 by 6 centimeters." "Now hold on, you'll have to bear this!" They wrapped a bandage soaked in something around some kind of a rod, and they used this instrument to clean the bullet hole, sticking it right through. Probably the local anestesia didn't really work on the joint, my eyes popped out, sweat ran down my face and forehead, but I sat with my teeth tightly closed, grabbing at the table's edges with my hands so that finger joints became white. Finally, dressing, a cast, and evacuation to an army hospital.

Comments by Evgenii Monyushko