Hello my dear friends! Today we will learn about
the remarkable memoirs of a captain of the Red Army. We have already learned many stories of
German soldiers and officers about the beginning of the war with the USSR, about their rapid march
through the territories of the Soviet Union... Thanks to the memoirs of Captain Piskunov we can
look at those days with the eyes of an officer of the Red Army. He gives a comprehensive description
of the mayhem and confusion that engulfed the troops. The soldiers and officers were not
aware of the events happening around them, had no communication with the higher command.
All the decisions were made by intuition. When his division was defeated, he and
other survivors began a retreat inland. So did a lot of people at that time. To have
less problems for the soldiers and officers, they tended to retreat not only with
small arms, but they also brought guns, machine guns, mortars and other
equipment with them. Afterwards, they joined already formed divisions or they
were organized into separate units and sent into battle again. That's his story. You can
experience all the horror of the hopelessness of the soldiers and officers of the Red Army
at the beginning of the war with Germany.... Now let's start.
When we crossed the Minsk-Slutsk Road, we encountered a newly formed unit that had
occupied the line of defense. I was very glad to see them. My thoughts told me that my
ordeal of obscurity was over. It was the 210th Motorized Division, which was commanded by Brigade
Commander Parkhomenko. Parkhomenko was a close relative of the legendary Civil War division
commander Parkhomenko Alexander Yakovlevich. After a brief conversation I was directed to
the commander of the artillery regiment Major Fimitov. I assumed that the artillery regiment
had the equipment and means of management, and I would finally be assigned.
However, I was to be sorely disappointed. The commander of the regiment explained that the
division was only named a motorized division, but in fact, except for small arms has
got nothing, and even small arms were not available for everyone. Major Frolov mentioned
that they had orders to take weapons and artillery equipment from withdrawing scattered groups
and to reinforce the division's units with it. Legally I was given a verbal order to be
assigned as commander of the artillery division, and the division should be formed of the
retreating artillery units. It was good, I had a senior commander, who would give me
all the necessary orders on the organization and conducting of combat operations, and
I would get the men I needed among the retreating soldiers and commanders. The most
important was that the uncertainty was over. Nevertheless, my happiness and dream were not
destined to last for long. Since the afternoon of June 28 or 29, 1941 we gathered more guns
together with the crews, though partial, than we needed. The calibers of the guns were
76-mm of regimental and divisional guns and 122-mm howitzers and there were some 45-mm guns.
I divided them accordingly into batteries, into platoons, and appointed platoon
and battery commanders - and here the organizational aspect was over. There were men
to complete the command-and-control platoons, but there were no means of communication. So, the
only way to conduct the artillery firing without means of communication was by direct fire.
I chose places for the batteries to fire and reported to the regiment commander. The regiment
commander confirmed the disposition of the battle order of the batteries and ordered to prevent the
tanks breaking through from the Slutsk highway. At dawn I decided to once again inspect their
knowledge of the tasks and their preparedness to open fire. How surprised I was when, during the
inspection, it turned out that as many as half of the gathered guns were removed unauthorized
from their firing positions and the crews left! The following day the situation in front of the
division front was quiet, and we were replenished again with retreating units. In the afternoon
we decided to do a reconnaissance. The regiment commander ordered the reconnaissance to be
taken over by me. I took two trucks of soldiers, put a hand-held machine gun in each truck
body. When we passed the front edge, I informed the commander of the unit that defended
the area about the fact that we would return by the same route and possibly at night.
Suddenly we came out to the Slutsk-Minsk highway and found ourselves in front of
a moving column of German motorcyclists, bicyclists and vehicles with infantry. The
Germans at first had no idea that it was a Red Army reconnaissance and obviously assumed
it was German. I commanded to rapidly deploy the vehicles and open fire with machine guns and
rifles against the enemy. The Germans deployed quickly along the road and opened heavy fire on us
with tracer bullets from large-caliber weapons. We had time to pull back quite far, so the small
arms firing at us was already not effective. We had a junior commander wounded.
I sent the vehicles to a shelter, and we positioned ourselves on a height and could
observe the activities of the enemy. We thought that the Germans would pursue us, but they quickly
regrouped into a column and continued their march in the direction of Minsk. The column of infantry
was followed by tanks and armored vehicles. The task was fulfilled, we determined the direction
of movement and which enemy forces were moving. On our way back we almost faced a tragic accident.
The commander, with whom I had agreed on alarm, didn't inform his subordinates at the front line.
We were almost shot by our own soldiers, thinking we were the enemy. Everything went off almost
safely. Only one driver was shot, and I was in his cabin. Obviously, being killed by the bullets
of your own soldiers is a more regrettable and unforgivable loss, but what should we do in war?
It is impossible to foresee all the things. There may be all kinds of unexpected situations....
The division command either by order of higher command, or made an independent decision
to withdraw units to the crossing over the Berezina. I had a group of artillery guns of
various caliber, including even mortars. I was ordered to cover the flanks of the division
with fire until the river crossing was over. Before nightfall we continued to perform the
assigned task and, it should be said, successfully handled it, prevented the enemy from attacking the
flanks of the withdrawing units of the division. At night we were expecting an order to
withdraw from the combat positions and move to the crossing, but, unfortunately,
we never received such an order. The command of the formation and unit behaved,
at least, tactlessly towards our artillery group. After the crossing, they forgot about us.
There was nothing to do. We needed to decide what to do next. At this time two 45mm guns
led by a captain approached our group from the north. The guns were pulled
by light tankettes with 20-mm guns. Before I and the captain had a chance to exchange
ideas about further steps, the enemy from the northern direction opened heavy machine-gun fire
on us. To cut a long story short, the enemy had predetermined our steps. There was only one thing
left for us to do - to withdraw south along the Berezina until we could choose a suitable position
to get into battle order and take the fight. We moved back only 1.5 kilometers and on the northern
outskirts of the village we got into combat order and prepared to repel the enemy's attack.
For some reason, surprisingly, the enemy never attacked us, though their reconnaissance made
an attempt to move in our direction, but, facing strong firing resistance, moved back to the north.
The crossing took us only about three hours. We were joined at the crossing by quite many men from
various defeated and scattered units and about ten women and children - the wives of the commanders.
After the crossing we headed through the woods to the road that led from Bykhov to Mogilev.
In the first settlement, in the village council, we tried to communicate by telephone
with other settlements east of us, seeking to clear up the situation, but we
received no reply and decided to move on. While moving through the woods we met a group of
generals and several senior officers with them and suggested to them to join us, but received
a negative reply. Upon their request we handed over to them a ZIS-101 automobile, which
we found on the right bank of the Berezina River and ferried for ourselves.
Unfortunately, I don't know who were those generals, but my comrade, the
battalion commissar, said that they were generals and officers of the headquarters
of the Western Special Military District. It was getting dark when we reached the wood edge
on a road through the forest. About 500 meters in front of us was the same highway Bykhov-Mogilev,
along which vehicles, wagons and infantry units were moving in a continuous column.
At first, we thought that it was our troops withdrawing, but when we looked around,
we realized that it was German units moving. Of course, they couldn't help but notice
our column. A motorcycle with a sidecar turned in our direction from the column.
Probably, the Germans recognized us as their units too, otherwise they wouldn't have
sent one motorcyclist in our direction. At 150-200 meters distance two motorcyclists
were shot dead by a machine gun burst, and the motorcycle was captured by our soldiers. The
situation was such that we had no time to think. I commanded "To the fight!" The crews
promptly deployed the guns and opened fire on the German column. Beforehand,
I gave the order that women and children should be taken away to the woods away from
the country road along which we were moving. The Germans, obviously, didn't expect such
a twist and at first were perplexed by such a bold attack. Several vehicles in the
German column caught fire, the abandoned horses were rushing empty wagons across the rye.
They soon realized that they were facing a small artillery unit. They requested aircraft,
which started bombarding our column from the air and at the same time opened fire on us
with machine guns and mortars. Our troops were getting smaller, our ammunition was running out.
In this fiery fight, we hadn't thought of at least minimal cover from the side of the forest, which
was fatal in our fight. I was wounded, despite the fact that I didn't leave the battlefield,
and there was nowhere to go before nightfall. The Germans, shooting at us from the front,
bypassed us with their tanks from the rear, from the side of the forest, which finally
determined the outcome of our battle. There was nothing we could do to change the situation.
The Germans began to crush our guns and men with their tracks. Some soldiers and officers, who
were slightly wounded, taking the opportunity of nightfall, managed to hide in the woods
near the village of Starye Maksimovichi. Our comrades paid a heavy price in this
battle: they sacrificed their lives. But the Germans also suffered huge losses
from our unexpected and daring attack. The road for 600-800 meters was covered with
burning vehicles, wagons and human bodies. My comrades helped me to shelter with them.
My wound turned out to be not so serious, but due to loss of blood and high air
temperature I was very weak and couldn't avoid the tracks of enemy tanks on my own.
We moved only at night and rested during the day. In two days, at the end of June, we
crossed the front line and reached our troops, who were defending the city of Mogilev.
It should be mentioned that at that time the Germans had no solid front line, so it
was pretty easy to cross the front line. There were a lot of our soldiers in Mogilev,
but there was no strict organization of control of these units and subdivisions.
All the canteens, food stores and other food service served the troops for free. I
didn't see a well-defined system of defense and construction of defensive fortifications.
At first impression it was noticeable that each unit or subdivision acted independently
in accordance with the proverb "every man is himself an agronomist". May be, my fleeting
impressions were mistaken, because I didn't have to stay in Mogilev, which I regretted very
much later. In the town I had my wound treated, and I felt almost quite well.
We didn't find the unit we had joined earlier. While we were looking for
the 210th motorized division, the Germans had already occupied Chavusy. The road to the
east in this direction appeared to be cut off. We still could have broken back to Mogilev,
but unfortunately, we had no information about the situation in Mogilev, and the
withdrawing units that came across us on the way couldn't tell us anything clear about
the situation. We assumed that our troops had evidently abandoned Mogilev, since the Germans
were 50-60 kilometers to the east of Mogilev. Again, we turned out to be stray warriors.
We joined the general movement of scattered units and civilians retreating to the East,
expecting to find at a certain point a solid, stable defensive line of our troops, beyond which
the Germans wouldn't be able to break through. I remember the settlements we passed
by - Zhuravichi, Seltso-Khopeevo - and reached our troops at the Dnieper River to the
northwest of Udovsk. When we met our troops, the joy was boundless. We believed
that our ordeal was finally over. They greeted us warmly, provided us
with food and allowed us to rest. When we had rested and consented to use us
according to our specialty in this unit, our proposal wasn't accepted. The privates were
left in the unit, and the commanders were sent to Novobelitsa through the city of Gomel. There
the reserve of the command staff was located. In Novobelitsa I have met my comrades
on joint service in the 17th division, in the further 20th artillery regiment and on
war in Finland: lieutenants Volodya Kozhepikshev, Nikolay Sokolov, political instructor Veselov, the
commander of the 17th division General Batsanov and many other commanders I knew. The guys told
me that many of my friends had died at Lida. General Botsanov informed me that a new division
was to be formed under his command and that he would take all the commanders of the former 17th
division out of the reserve to his Division. That is all for today! Captain Piskunov
survived the war. After it was over, he continued to serve in the Red
Army. If you enjoyed the video, please like it and support the channel by
subscribing. Goodbye, and see you all again!
