Interview: Germans came with a counterattack at 6 o'clock or something. I saw for the first and last time how the dense line of Germans advanced, clothed for the night in unbuttoned overcoats with automatic weapons and carbines. I saw their faces - hairy and, one may assume, drunk. I kept mowing them down with my machine gun and shreds of their overcoats flew out from their backs, and then they just fell. It seemed a lot like a firing squad execution…
Interview: I also want to note that we were taught on training tanks. When we were sent to the front, they gave us new tanks. It would seem that the tanks were the same T-34, but that's only at first glance, that of a dilettante. Every vehicle, every tank, every tank gun, every engine had its unique characteristics. You couldn't find them out beforehand, you had to figure them out only in the process of daily use. In the end we ended up with unfamiliar vehicles at the front. The gunner didn't know his gun, the driver didn't know what his diesel engine could and could not do, and so on. What had to be adjusted, and how much: the gun, the sight, what else? We had to go into combat in unfamiliar vehicles.
SEMION ARIA, Guards Senior Sergeant
Story:The bridge collapsed at once and
without deliberation. The tank hit the ravine's slope with its front armor,
turned over with its tracks up, and slid to the bottom.
Interview: Tracer fire, when it starts from above, and you only see the luminescent line lower, lower, falling toward you, now it will reach your level and cut you in half. Well, in short, war is war, what is there to talk about.
Interview: My tank was hit on 19 April 1945 in Austria. A Tiger put a round straight through us. The projectile passed through the entire fighting compartment and then the engine compartment.
REM ULANOV, Lieutenant
Story 1: There was an 8-wheeled German gun-armed armoured car at the outskirts of the village, pinning our infantry down by its fire. Lt. Karginov told me to turn the SP to the right and our second shot blew the turret off the German armoured car.
Story 2: When one of the tanks from our group tried to pass a slow-moving truck, it collided head-on with an approaching truck, smashed it to pieces and killed the two people inside.
