Our generation is passing away. Generation of winners, veterans of the Great Patriotic War. Unfortunately, we also take our positive combat experience with us. And it must certainly be adopted by the current defenders of the Motherland.

It is well known that during the Great Patriotic War, and now the basis of combat readiness of the troops was the psychological readiness of personnel to overcome the fear of danger. I can't help but share a few examples from my combat experience.

In my first reconnaissance mission near Vyazma, together with an old-time soldier P. Miloserdov, we received a combat order to destroy the bunker. With ten kilograms of TNT in a bag, a detonator capsule, a Bickford cord, and matches, it was necessary to crawl at night through the passage made in the minefield and wire fence to get to the German trench, jump over it, then crawl to the German bunker, jump on its roof, insert the detonator capsule with tnt, light the Bickford cord, which would be used to light the burn for 15 seconds, put the bag of explosives in the embrasure and jump back into the trench. After the explosion, a company of submachine gunners will attack.

Having received such an order, I must admit that I was stunned, terrified, and demoralized. I looked longingly at the setting sun and thought that I was seeing it for the last time. But then the deputy political officer of the unit came up and, addressing the two of us, said that we had a very difficult and dangerous task, but the command trusted us, the success of the battle depended on us. "And remember," he concluded, " Moscow is behind us..." After these words, my fear and doom disappeared, I was burning with fighting enthusiasm, I could not fail to fulfill the order.

I remember, on the way to the front from the sniper school, I thought with fear how it is possible to shoot not at the target, but at people. After the liberation of one of the villages, the head of the political department of the division called one person from each of the companies and batteries to this village. When we got together, he said: "Take a look and tell your comrades what the fascists are doing to our fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, and children. In this village, "the political officer continued," the Germans shot a father and mother, took a two-year-old boy by the legs, smashed his head against the door jamb, and then began to rape a young woman. After abusing her, they brutally killed her and continued to abuse her lifeless body."

After describing this terrible picture, I have no doubts whether it is possible and necessary to shoot people in German military uniforms.

Unfortunately, so far I have not seen in today's press the experience of quickly restoring high combat effectiveness of units that suffered the greatest losses in battles and where personnel were constantly updated. In the 599th separate sapper battalion of the 312th Rifle Division of the Western Front, where I served in 1943 as an ordinary sapper, senior intelligence officer, and commander of the intelligence department, nine major replacements arrived in eight months (during this period I was wounded twice).

The success of the offensive battles at Vyazma, Dorogobuzh, Smolensk, and Orsha depended on the combat initiative and skill of small groups of defenses. Officers of sapper units were assigned the task of forming combat-ready barrier groups from the replenishment as quickly as possible, taking into account the psychological readiness of each of the new arrivals to perform dangerous combat tasks.

How this was implemented in practice, I understood after the war, having met the publications of military psychologists. They divided all people caught in a high-risk situation into three main groups.

Group 1 (about 30 percent) - in a life-threatening situation, they lose their composure, act under the influence of blind emotions, not reason. In combat, they are distinguished by a frightened, meaningless look, the desire to mechanically, formally execute an order, without taking into account the rapidly changing situation. After the fight, they didn't remember what, how, or why they did it. In practice, these people without a skilled leading partner next to them were doomed to failure, likely death.

The 2nd group on the level of psychological readiness to overcome dangers is about 60 percent of new arrivals. Once in an environment of increased danger, these people are capable of reasonable actions, although their psychological processes are slowed down. After the battle, they remember a lot, although some episodes seem to fall out of their memory.

The 3rd group includes 10-15 percent of the deposit. In a situation of danger, their mental processes accelerate, they quickly find reasonable solutions in a changing environment, and they take the initiative. After the battle, the officers identified such soldiers among the new arrivals through individual interviews. The soldiers of this group remembered all the details of the battle, what, how and why they did, i.e. they acted consciously. From this group of soldiers, the backbone of the units was formed, scouts and sergeants were promoted.

In practice, after several days of heavy fighting to break through the prepared enemy defenses in the crucial areas of our Western Front, up to 90 percent of soldiers and sergeants left the company without being shot, and 1-2, less often 3, of experienced soldiers and sergeants, the so - called "old men", who numbered from 7 to 10 to 15 people in the company a person. They were the basis, the combat-ready core of the unit.

What did the "old men" take? In addition to having a strong will and self-control, they were also able to "read" the battlefield. The sounds were used to distinguish shots from explosions, the caliber of the gun and the expected place of falling shells and mines were determined by the bursts of shells and mines. Knowing the possibilities

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German small arms fire in defense, skillfully used the transfer of fire, pauses in the firing of German machine guns, which need periodic air cooling of the barrels. They knew the rules for firing German artillery and mortars: the rate of fire, when and where the fire would be moved.

With the beginning of artillery training, smoke was creeping over the battlefield, and targeted fire was impossible. The troops used prepared fire systems that, in theory, destroyed 90 percent of the advancing troops. But the "old men", using their knowledge of fire systems, conducted small groups of soldiers almost without losses.

Replenishment of the company arrived, and vigorous work began to restore combat capability. To do this, the officers distributed the "old men" in all departments, attached non-shot soldiers to them, and recommended the latter to take an example from the "old men". The old-timers gathered the un-shot soldiers around them, taught them to "read" the battlefield on a daily basis by the sounds (what is the caliber, where the projectile flies, how to act, etc.). They taught them how to choose the safest route of movement, how to overcome the area shelled by enemy artillery. When choosing the route of movement, the "old men" were taught how to use shelters that mask the properties of the terrain. They explained the nature of the enemy artillery fire system in different types of combat.

Non-shot soldiers had a so-called psychological barrier at the moment when it was necessary to shoot for the first time not at a target, but at a person: the first time to defuse a mine placed by the enemy; the first to jump into an enemy trench, etc.There was a temporary hitch. And the "old men" did not allow such psychological pauses by personal example. They were the first to open fire, remove mines, immediately throw grenades into the trenches and after their explosions the first to jump into the enemy trenches.

Unfortunately, there were cases when the commander, in a hurry to form a battle group, did not include the "old man"in it. So, after the capture of a German stronghold by reconnaissance, our rifle battalion retreated, and a battalion medical center remained in the neutral zone in the forest. The commander of the unit called us, four un-shot soldiers, and ordered the wounded Sergeant S. Lopatin to be taken out of this infirmary. Thither we dashed in short bursts under enemy fire, and found that our sergeant had died of an explosive bullet wound to the head. And so, taking a stretcher, four disciplined soldiers in full growth carried a stretcher with a dead man under the fire of a self-propelled gun, firing direct fire. The first shot of the cannon - short flight, the second-flight, the third-ours...

After this incident, I adopted the basic rules of military affairs, which require: having received an order, assess the situation, understand the task. That is, first understand what the commander wants and what the ultimate goal is. In the last example, the commander sent us to save the life of a seriously wounded person in need of surgery. There was no point in taking out a soldier who had already died of wounds under enemy fire during the day at the cost of new victims. This was a risky and unnecessary step on the part of the un-shot soldiers.

Later, when I became an "old man," I would have organized the removal of the wounded, not the dead, in a different way. Two soldiers would be given the task to make demonstrative dashes to the side, diverting the fire on themselves, while the other two would drag the wounded man out on a raincoat tent crawling, in a plastunsky way, where the grass and bushes are thicker.

Initiative soldiers capable of acting intelligently in a situation of high danger should be formed now, in a peacetime environment. According to statistics, out of 100 of my peers who participated in the battles, three are now alive. I am convinced that the war was won by those who managed to prepare themselves to overcome the danger before the army. So, in our family, all three brothers who were injured and received awards survived. And this is not accidental. My older brothers, university students, came to visit me on vacation, trained me, taught me self-control: we skied down the most dangerous sections of mountains and jumps, jumped into the water not only from special towers in swimming areas, but also from the masts of ships in the port. At the age of 12, I already jumped from a parachute tower. In the summer, we went for a week and a half to the taiga, where we took a survival course, etc.

At the front, when I was unloading the first enemy mine, I felt the same fear as before the first jump from the parachute tower. The pre-war experience of overcoming fear was very useful at the front.

Now we need to pay attention to military sports work. Young people should exercise their self-control in a dangerous environment. Unfortunately, parachute circles have disappeared, there are not enough diving towers, trampolines, etc. Our army might have had fewer losses in Chechnya if the officers of the units sent to battle had formed them on the basis of knowledge of elementary military psychology, based on the combat experience of the older generation.

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