Hardcover
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
Honest and irrepressibly frank, these are the dramatic memoirs of a Russian officer on the Eastern Front, where he played his part in a clash of titans and witnessed the shuddering collapse of the Third Reich.
The cataclysmic battle of Kursk in 1943 put an end to Hitler’s hopes of victory on the Eastern Front, and it was Evgeni Bessonov’s first battle. From then on the Germans were forced into a long, bitter retreat that ended in the ruins of Berlin in 1945. An officer in an elite guards unit of the Red Army, Bessonov rode tanks from Kursk, through a western Russia and Poland devastated by the Germans, and right into the heart of Nazi Germany.
Tank Rider is the riveting memoir of Evgeni Bessonov telling of his years of service at the vanguard of the Red Army and daily encounters with the German foe. He brings large-scale battles to life, recounts the sniping and skirmishing that tried and tested soldiers on both sides, and narrates the overwhelming tragedy and horror of apocalyptic warfare on the Eastern Front.
So much of the Soviet experience of World War II remains untold, but this memoir provides an important glimpse into some of the most decisive moments of this overlooked history.
Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781510712393 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Skyhorse |
| Publication date: | 01/31/2017 |
| Pages: | 256 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d) |
About the Author
P. J. Ochlan, an Audie Award-winning and multiple AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator, has recorded hundreds of audiobooks. His acting career spans more than thirty years and has also included Broadway, the New York Shakespeare Festival, critically acclaimed feature films, and regular roles in television series.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
YEARS OF CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
* * *
I was born in Moscow on 20 July, 1923, in no. 77 Friedrich Engels street, formerly known as Irininskaya. My father, Ivan Vasilievich Bessonov, moved to Moscow from a village in 1908 at the age of fifteen. Although he had almost no education, he managed to get a job in a small store and after a while become a prikazchik (salesman) and later senior salesman. In 1915 he married my mother, Olga Pavlovna, a native of Moscow. They had a daughter Elena (we called her Lelya) in 1916 and that same year my father was drafted into the army. He served in the army until the February revolution and retired in 1917. After the Great October Revolution my father worked in trade before retiring in 1960. My mother studied at a school for tailors in Moscow but didn't like to recall that period of her life. As she put it, it was pure drudgery. They had to get up at 5 or 6 o'clock in the morning, start the oven, cook tea for the foremen, wash dishes after their meal and clean the rooms and the workshop. Such apprentices would only start their professional training several years later, as it was profitable for the master to have several minor servants almost free of charge. After she completed her professional training and became a tailor, my mother got a job in a more prestigious tailor's shop at Kuznetski bridge and had a decent salary for that time – 37–40 roubles in 1913. After she married my father she had four children and became a housewife.
In early 1917 my parents were renting an apartment in the building where I was to be born. It was a typical Moscow yard, surrounded by a high fence. There were many small yards like this in the street, and they were named after the landlords: Krushinski, Reshetkin, Maslov, Petrusinski and so on.
There were three wooden buildings in our yard, two of them were available for a rather high rent, and the landlady with her family occupied the third one. A carriage shed with stables was adjacent to the landlady's building. All the buildings were one storey high, heated by stoves, without running water or plumbing, so we had to get water in the street from a water pump. The landlady had a fruit garden in the yard with apple and cherry trees, raspberry and gooseberry bushes.
After the October Revolution they took all three houses from the landlady and father started to pay significantly less for the two twelve-square-metre rooms that we occupied. We had to share our kitchen with neighbours, who also had two rooms. A Russian stove heated our two rooms and one of the neighbours rooms. In wintertime the temperature would drop to 13–15 degrees Celsius by morning.
Dinner, or food in general, was heated on kerosene heaters and Primus stoves; we also used these devices to boil water for tea, as the main stove and the oven were only stoked once a day. They only installed gas in the building after the Great Patriotic War and the wood oven was only then replaced by a gas oven. Other conveniences, or rather inconveniences, remained the same.
I should say that they only installed electric lights in our street in 1935 or 1936 and that the street had been illuminated by gas lamps until then. Every evening a special worker would walk around the street and light the lamps and put them out in the morning. He carried a special ladder with him for this purpose, and the lamp-posts had a special crossbar to rest it on.
Until the mid-1930s our neighbourhood was a haunt for thieves and hooligans and we even had famous thieves living in our yard. Between 1936 and 1938 measures were taken, they all went to jail and our neighbourhood became quiet.
Recalling our life before 1941, I think that our family had a modest life. We had a Singer sewing machine, and our mother made all our clothes for us with the help of this machine. Clothes were passed on from one sister to another, and even I received some things adapted from my sisters' clothes. Our furniture was quite simple, for besides the sewing machine we had a wall clock, a chest of drawers, an old wardrobe, two metallic beds, two chests that we children used as beds, chairs and a bookshelf with some books.
It was cramped: sometimes I had a hard time finding somewhere to do my homework. For some time my sister Lelya even had to sleep on the table, which was, fortunately quite large.
In every room in the place of honour there were three icons with lampstands; grandmother lit them up quite frequently. After Lelya and Galya entered Komsomol (the common name for VLKSM, the All-Union Lenin's Communistic Union of Youth) in 1933, my father took the icons down and hid them, leaving just one icon in the kitchen for our grandmother.
On holidays, sometimes on Sundays, we would bake pirogi, pastries, jam patties, and sometimes a pirog with a jam or meat filling (pirogi are small pies, a pirog here refers to a large one for the whole family – translator's comment). For New Year our father would buy a New Year tree, decorate it with toys, candles which we lit in the evening and sweets if we had them. At Easter, my mother and grandmother baked two Easter cakes; sometimes they went to the church to sanctify them; they would leave early and then stay there for a very long time. My father rarely invited guests – his friends with their wives, sometimes with children. Mother's friend, aunt Shura, her former classmate, would come to visit her sometimes.
Before leaving for school for the first shift (as there was a lack of schools, some of them had to organize teaching in two shifts – the first one in the morning and the second one in the evening), we had tea and bread with butter if we had it; we did not have any hot meal. After coming back from school we had soup or schi (traditional Russian soup; the main ingredient is cabbage – translator's comment) for the first course; for the second course we had potatoes, pasta, millet porridge or buckwheat porridge, sometimes we had fried cutlets or fish. In the evenings we had tea with bread, very rarely we had sausage. We had free breakfasts at school.
On Sundays we went with friends to watch films for children at a cinema or to the Markov club or the '3rd International' cinema next to Bumanskaya Metro station. The Markov club was next to the school where I studied, on Bolshaya Pochtovaya street.
I went to the parades on Red Square on a regular basis on 1 May and 7 November, together with our school or with the workers from the factory where our neighbour Sergei Glazkov, a highly professional turner, worked. I liked going to parades – it was fun, people were dressed in festive clothes, sang songs, danced, orchestras played music everywhere and children received gifts from the factories (sweets, cookies and soft drinks).
Until the age of 13 or 14 I was a sickly and thin child. I would fall sick very often, I had scarlet fever, measles, pneumonia and inflammation of my middle ear. I was shy, I was often lost when I had to answer in class, I could not always express my thoughts properly. First I had trouble with mathematics, then I got it sorted out, but I never learned to write properly – my writing has always been full of mistakes. In order to improve my health I started to do sports: athletics, cross-country skiing, soccer and volleyball. We had high jump and long jump competitions. For two years I was in the wrestling section at Lokomotiv stadium, at the same place where I lifted weights in order to strengthen my muscles. In the school we boys jumped over the vaulting horse and did some exercises on the horizontal bar. Sports did me good, for I became stronger physically and illness left me alone. In the 10th grade I was the school's best high jumper, together with my classmates Fakin and Zolotukhin. I took part in the district-level ski race, but did not achieve any outstanding success, the same with wrestling. When I was called up to the army in September 1941, I was 180 cm high and weighted 70 kilograms, which was a normal combination for an 18 year old boy. Sports helped me to take the physical stress in army life and at the front. Later, in the army, I discovered a talent for shooting small-arms, especially pistols.
I was not too brave and so I got into fights very rarely; not only because I did not know how to fight, but also because of my character – I felt bad hitting someone in the face, especially a friend. I was never angry with anyone, unlike some other boys. A couple of times I was hit and just could not bring myself to hit back.
I think I was the last one in our class to join Komsomol. That was as late as 1939. I was a Pioneer in junior classes, so I had my red tie before I entered (the Young Pioneers was a youth organization for 10- to 15-year-olds, highly ideological in character with aims of educating children about the Soviet state, the history of the Communist party, etc. – translator's comment).
When our 341st school joined the trade school in December 1940 we were transferred to the 350th school on Bolshaya Pochtovaya street, the Komsomol organization elected me the chairman of voluntary Osoviakhim society (renamed DOSAAF after the war) (this was the Society for the Promotion of Aviation and Defence against Chemicals. It was an educational organization in the USSR in the 1930s, providing a basic military education along with training in defence against chemicals – translator's comment). I would not say that this organization did a lot of activities in the school, but there were sometimes shooting competitions, which were especially important; we arranged hiking trips in gas-masks; sometimes even classes and other activities were done in gas-masks. My best friends in the street at that time were Vladimir Dolmatov, Petr Hromyshev, Lev Kolyhalov (killed in 1942) and Yevgeni Bogolyubski (missing in action). Later my best friends in my class were Alexander Fokin (killed in 1943) and Andrey Otryganiev (became a Lieutenant Colonel and died in 1957 at the age of 35). We all lived close to our school, we had common views and areas of interest, we were all tall and athletic guys and attained similar results in our studies.
Unfortunately, in the last quarter of the 1941 school year we stopped all sports activities – we had to prepare for graduation exams. After a long discussion, several guys from my class, including me, decided to apply for the Sevastopol Navy Academy, but I did not pass the medical commission – they said I had colour-blindness, rather insignificant, though. Nevertheless, the commission found me unfit for service in the Navy and Air Force (I also tried to enter a pilot club). We schoolmates did not think of war, believing that war would take place on the enemy's territory, and we were light-hearted then. I passed all my graduation exams with distinction, except for Russian literature composition. The graduation party took place on 17 June and we received our 'Maturity certificates'. The war started five days later.
CHAPTER 2THE WAR BEGINS
* * *
I first heard that the war had broken out while I was in the city, where I had gone with Vladimir Grivnin, my classmate – we had plans to go to a retro film theatre, which was at Nikitski Gate. We young boys took the news quite calmly, we thought that the Nazi invaders were about to be thrown back from the country's borders. But exactly the opposite happened. This conflict, the harshest of all wars, would last 1,418 days for us, or 3 years, 10 months and 17 days.
On 25 or 26 June, 1941, I, along with other Komsomol members, was invited to the Baumanski district committee of Komsomol. There they suggested that we go to the Bryansk region to build fortifications. On the evening of the same day we were loaded on to a train with some personal belongings and food; we travelled westwards to build fortifications. We started to work at Kirov city in the Bryansk region. We worked twelve hours a day, and as we were not used to physical labour, we were really exhausted. We fell asleep as soon as our heads touched our 'beds' of hay or straw, which were made mostly in barns. We dug anti-tank ditches, dug around the riverbanks, dug trenches and set barbed-wire obstacles. In some cases we had to repair the railways destroyed during air raids and clear them from the debris of destroyed goods trains. However, our main job was to dig anti-tank ditches. The food was poor, it was not enough for us and the village population was not very kind to us. Our foreman, who arrived with us from Moscow, had to talk to the locals, mostly to leaders of the kolkhos (collective farm) or village, if they had not been drafted into the army, and persuade them to give us some food, at least potatoes. Such talks helped, but quite rarely. The German air force bombed us several times: scared, we ran in all directions like rabbits. We were young and healthy and could run fast. We did not suffer any losses, especially as the bombs exploded far away from us, but as we had not seen fire, we were quaking in our boots. We worked there for 45 days, until 8 August, 1941, and then were urgently loaded on a train and in the morning of 9 August we were back in Moscow, at Kiev station. College students were drafted in the army on the spot and were sent to different units.
When we, five to seven young men, walked into a metro train, passengers started to pay attention to us. We were dirty and ragged, in patched-up shirts and trousers, our hair grown long and dirty and tangled. However, women came up to us and started to ask us who we were where we were from. When they learnt that we were from the labour front, they, just like all mothers, started to ask us about their children, but we had not known or seen anyone that they were asking about. When I came home, there was already an official paper that said that I had been drafted into the Red Army and had to show up at the assembly point in school in Takmakov lane by 11 August. That was the assembly point for the Baumanski district military commissariat of Moscow. Some neighbours in the street and classmates also received similar call-up notes.
During the night of 12 August we were loaded on to a train, taking our places in freight wagons (for 40 men or 8 horses) and we rolled eastwards. On the way individual cars were taken away as the men were sent to different military academies. Alexander Fokin left our company this way. In the vicinity of Chelyabinsk we were quartered in tents at the Chebarkulski military camp, where army units of the Urals Military District stayed during the summer. Before the cold weather set in, we lived in that camp, mostly doing drill. We still had civilian clothes. With the arrival of cold weather we were transferred to the summer film theatre of the Chelyabinsk park of culture. Moscow also had similar summer film theatres before the war. The autumn in the Urals was cold: we were freezing in the film theatre, some were falling sick and the shoes of some men fell apart, plus the food was very bad, and some men turned to theft. After that some top brass decided to get rid of this large, unmanageable and motley crew (we were at least 500), the majority of whom went into the city in the morning searching for food. They started to send the men out to different places of service. My friends Turanov, Tvorogov and Silvanovich left. I met them only after the war in Moscow. They all went through the war and survived, although Silvanovich was crippled after being wounded. In October a strange Sergeant Major picked us, some twenty men, and together with him we went to a kolkhoz to harvest potatoes, which the locals had not managed to harvest before the first frosts. They put us in an unheated room, we were freezing at night, but we were getting so tired during the day that we did not notice the cold. That was in Urals region, and it was already mid- or late October. The villagers did not help us at all, did not give us either food or firewood, we did not even have a pot to boil potatoes in. We were constantly hungry, besides that, many of us, including me, caught cold. Our superior also did not take proper care of us; it was good that they made a decision to move us back to Chelyabinsk. I can to some extent understand the words of one woman from a village where we had been digging anti-tank trenches, who refused to give us food saying: 'What am I going to feed the Germans with, when they come?' But that was in Bryansk region, not in the Urals, which was far away from the Germans. Never again in my life did I meet such people – they really deserve their name choldons (a name for Russians living in Siberia; however, normally the name does not have any negative connotation – translator's comment). We only encountered such attitudes in the Western Ukraine, but those were Bandera's areas (Bandera was a famous Ukrainian anti-Soviet resistance leader – translator's comment), which only became part of USSR in 1940.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Tank Rider"
by .
Copyright © 2003 Evgeni Bessonov.
Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations and Maps 7
Foreword 9
Chronology 11
Years of Childhood and Youth 17
The War Begins 23
Baptism of Fire: the Orel Offensive 35
Training for a New Offensive 43
The Kamenets-Podolsk Operation 47
The Battles for the Town of Skalat 53
The Battle for Gusyatin 61
The Battles for Kamenets-Podolsk 69
The Bridgehead at the River Strypa 77
In Reserve at Kopychintsy 91
The Lvov-Sandomir Operation 95
The Battle for Lvov 121
Fighting on Sandomir Bridgehead 137
Preparations for the Push West 147
The Vistula-Oder Operation 153
The Advance to the Oder 169
On German Soil 181
On to Berlin 191
The Berlin-Prague Operation 197
The End of the War 225
Epilogue 233
Brothers in Arms 237
Afterword 251
Index 255