On foot, they walked for six days to Myshkovy, where they began to take up defense on December 19. Then only! And in all our military sources it is written that Malinovsky's army somehow ended up on Myshkovo on December 12th. She wasn't there! It was empty, the Germans could pass! So we kept the tank army of Goth!

Having taken up the defense, Malinovsky's army immediately joined the battles. And already together we repelled all the attacks of the approaching troops of Manstein.

Thus, the advance of Army Group Don to Stalingrad was finally stopped.

I admire our tank generals! Learned to fight by this time! Only for this time! Before that, everything was a miss, a solid miss! And then they showed themselves! On December 19, the 17th tank corps of General Poluboyarov, in the deep rear of the enemy, having made a throw of 100 kilometers, captured Kantemirovka. The 4th Panzer Corps, commanded by General Badanov, also in the rear, took Tatsinskaya and Morozovskaya and captured 300 aircraft there - all aircraft of the German 8th Corps of the 4th Air Fleet! Badanovtsy reported to Moscow: the planes were captured, but we don’t know how to deal with them. At night, from Headquarters, they called the designer Yakovlev, got him out of bed to ask how to break these planes. He said: "Let them cut the tails!" And they chopped off the tails of the Luftwaffe! Since that time, air supply to the encircled group has ceased. They ate all the dogs, cats, rats - they ate everything, they boiled their boots! Badanov's corps received the name of the 2nd Guards Tatsinsky tank corps, and General Badanov himself was awarded the first Order of Suvorov, II degree.

On December 29, Rotmistrov's 7th Panzer Corps broke through into the deep rear of the Germans and captured Kotelnikovo. But Rotmistrov was not awarded. Although Stalin was very pleased, because the success was on New Year's Eve.

On this, in essence, it ended. It got easier there. The Don Front of Rokossovsky has already finished off the Paulus group.

The German General Mellenthin, the former chief of staff of the 48th Panzer Corps, recalling December forty-second, stated: “The fate of the Reich was decided not in Stalingrad, but in a bloody battle on the small but deep Aksai Esaulovsky River.”

Now in Verkhne-Kumsky there is a nine-meter steel torch. On the pedestal of the monument, the formations and units that won this battle, and maybe the war as a whole, are listed. And it would be necessary to write on the monument the names of all the dead heroes who did not let the Manstein group of tank armies to Stalingrad.

January - July 1943

In heavy fighting near Stalingrad, my tank received many dents, destroyed a lot of military equipment and manpower of the enemy, but then in December 1942, it itself burned down. I refused the hospital, and together with other commanders who were left without tanks, I was sent to the reserve and ended up in Sverdlovsk, in the personnel department of the Ural Military District. Here I received a new appointment - the commander of a platoon of self-propelled guns SU-122 in the 1454th SAP.

SAPs - self-propelled artillery regiments, began to be created just at this time, in early 1943, specifically to deal with new German heavy tanks and self-propelled guns and to destroy pillboxes and bunkers that hinder the advance of our tanks. These regiments were in reserve Supreme High Command and, as needed, were attached to tank and mechanized corps.

The SAP included four batteries of five self-propelled guns plus the tank of the regiment commander, as well as a company of machine gunners, a reconnaissance platoon and auxiliary units - ammunition, technical services, communications, medical services, rear services, etc. Compact in number, self-propelled artillery regiments were very mobile, in a matter of hours, even minutes, were thrown to the place of the breakthrough of enemy tanks, destroying the enemy with fire from a place, and in the offensive supporting tank attacks. Looking ahead, I can testify that it was difficult or almost impossible for enemy tanks to break through our battle formations where medium or heavy self-propelled guns were on the defensive.

The 5th reserve tank regiment was located in Sverdlovsk, which included four batteries of self-propelled guns - the mobile part of the 1454th self-propelled artillery regiment. The command was to join the regiment later.

I was the last to arrive in my 3rd battery, commanded by Senior Lieutenant Vladimir Shevchenko, everyone had already been retrained from tankers to self-propelled gunners, and I had to master military equipment and weapons in one week. It was a wise artillery science: to study the panorama, the rules of shooting from closed positions; be able to quickly prepare all installations for firing according to reduced data; break a parallel fan and correct the fire with the withdrawal of gaps on the line of observation.

In addition, now I had to command a platoon - two SU-122 self-propelled guns with 122-mm howitzers. The SU-122s were created on the basis of the T-34 tank, had almost the same frontal and side armor - 45 mm (the T-34's forehead was only 5 mm thicker) and the same maximum speed - 55 km/h. Unlike the tank, the self-propelled gun turret was made in a monolith with the hull and did not rotate, the gun had turns of 7.5 degrees to the left and right, and if the target was outside these limits, the entire vehicle had to be turned. The 122-mm howitzer had a low initial projectile speed - 515 m / s, but its heavy projectile weighing 21.76 kg could penetrate armor in 500 meters German tanks, and for a greater distance, his blow and explosion stunned and disabled the enemy crew.

On the last night before leaving Sverdlovsk, I could not fall asleep. Not because he was worried or it was hard to sleep on mattresses tightly stuffed with straw, laid close to each other on the second tier of wooden bunks, just memories of the tank school, the battles near Stalingrad, and the wounded hand worried a little. Or maybe it was a premonition. We did not know then that soon from the Moscow region, where we were heading for the final formation, our path would lay straight to the Kursk Bulge ...

Climb! came the command, interrupting my restless thoughts.

In an hour we managed to shave, wash, eat, and, still dark, moved by battery in the direction of the Uralmash plant. Snow creaked under the boots, passed the field, a small copse and soon found themselves in the factory yard, where in the predawn twilight they saw their echelon with self-propelled guns under a tarpaulin. On both sides of the platforms, sentries of a special guard walked in sheepskin coats and felt boots. It took no more than half an hour to load the property of the batteries and board the personnel in the heating cars, after which our echelon, driven by two steam locomotives in a train, entered the main highway and moved west. We drove at high speed along the "green street". I remember only two stops at the stations: locomotive crews changed.

Each subdivision occupied a two-axle cart equipped with bunks and an iron potbelly stove, which we immediately flooded. Through the white veil of falling snow in the opening of the half-open locked doors, the platforms of the stations flickered, the eye did not have time to make out the names, noting only rare passers-by on the frozen platforms. All the way they sang the then popular songs - “Dark Night”, “In the Dugout”, “ holy war”, “Spark”. In our battery, the gunner from the battalion crew, senior sergeant Sasha Chekmenov, usually sang, and when Ukrainian songs were sung, the battery commander himself, senior lieutenant Shevchenko, led.

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| site collection
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| Vasily Semenovich Krysov
| On a self-propelled gun against the "Tigers"
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//-- This is how the war began... --//
More than half a century has passed since the last volleys of the war, the most merciless, cruel, bloody war, have died down; many millions of our soldiers died on the battlefields on their own land and in foreign countries; rivers of tears were shed in the families of the victims, mothers, wives, children, sisters, brides wept, but how can you console the grief-stricken relatives and friends?!
And we fought...
I happened to participate in the battles near Stalingrad, in the Battle of Kursk, in the battle for the Dnieper, to liberate Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland and East Prussia. At first I was the commander of the KV-1S heavy tank, then I commanded a platoon and a battery of SU-122 self-propelled artillery mounts, they were replaced by SU-85 self-propelled guns, and I ended the war as a company commander of T-34-85 tanks.
And it all started like this.
Graduation party in our Istobenskaya high school Orichevsky district Kirov region took place on the eve of the war - June 21, 1941. Although there were persistent rumors that the war was about to begin, somehow we didn’t think about it, excited by the end of school, parting with friends, cheerful, cheerful, carefree, we danced until morning, walked along the high bank of Vyatka. I didn’t want to leave, everyone felt that this moment would never happen again. And at noon on a bright Sunday afternoon on June 22, we learned that the war had begun.
The very next day at nine o'clock in the morning, all the guys in our class were besieging the doors of the district military commissariat. A group of thirty graduates of the Istobenskaya and Orichevskaya secondary schools were sent to the Chelyabinsk tank school. We rode happy and proud, with songs, because all of us - without exception! - We were sure that the Red Army was the strongest of all and our borders were locked, we would only fight on foreign territory! That is, they thought the way the party and the government taught us for many years. Could it even be assumed that at that time our western border an armada of 170 crack divisions, four tank groups and four air fleets has already collapsed, that they are already moving across our land, inflicting crushing blows on the troops of the Red Army, which, as it turned out, were forbidden even to take combat readiness number one.
//-- At the Chelyabinsk Tank School --//
We arrived at the Chelyabinsk Tank School in mid-July 1941. The cadets turned out to be very heterogeneous both in terms of education and age. More than half of our course were people with higher education: engineers, teachers, school principals, artists, agronomists, as well as sergeants who have already participated in battles, and second-year cadets of the Kazan Tank Technical School.
The daily routine was very busy.

The three-year training program was compressed to one year, since the Kirov Plant in Chelyabinsk began mass production of heavy KV-1S tanks, and there were not enough tankers who could fight on them. They studied military equipment, weapons, communications, topography, tactics, shooting rules and much more. We, yesterday's schoolchildren, and cadets with higher education studied on an equal footing, so that in the exercises and classes we had to compete with the rest of our fellow students with all our might. We took perseverance and tenacious young memory. But both those and others were engaged, as they say, in the sweat of their faces.
Wartime affected everything. We were fed very modestly. It seems that there was a good ration for that time, and the norm was given to us, but we were still growing and we didn’t have enough, we always asked for supplements.
The cadet's uniform was simple. Back then, epaulettes had not yet been introduced; on the collars of our tunics we had oblong buttonholes made of black cloth and small metal emblems of tanks. On the feet are boots with windings. Here is the command: "Rise!" In three minutes you need to get dressed, wind the windings and get in line. And the bunk beds in the barracks are two-tiered, and it’s still dark, and the windings, each two meters long, should be in time!
Physically, we were well tempered. That winter, the frosts were up to forty - forty-five degrees, and we ran to exercise in our underwear - and did not get sick!
There were front-line soldiers among the teachers, but they didn’t tell much, and we were embarrassed to approach specifically with this question, to ask questions. I think they did not tell because it was impossible to tell. Say the wrong word - counterintelligence officers are here right away.
At first, the platoon commander was Lieutenant Maksimov Ivan Gurevich, the company commander was Gorshkov, a lieutenant too. Battalion commander - Boyko. The sensible was the muzhik, the good fellow, exacting. He had a saying when he saw that we were tired or depressed: “The soldier eats straw, and the tail is a pipe!”
But the company foreman Tolkachev did not make our life easier. He was a very unfair, rude, dishonorable person. Small, below average height, freckled, and evil eyes seemed to burn with hatred. His rudeness bordered on mockery. Such, under the guise of military discipline, do not know how to hold back in mockery of their subordinates, but, just a little, they celebrate a coward. Which Tolkachev proved by not appearing at the graduation party: apparently, he was afraid that the former cadets would beat him up, and the next day they would leave for the front, and then look for the fistula to blame. Maybe it would have happened, but that evening God spared us from meeting with this disgusting individual of the human race. Surprisingly, this useless type grew in ranks at lightning speed: in 1946 I ended up in Chelyabinsk and, naturally, went to the school, where I met this warrior already as a major.
We studied the KV - a heavy tank, then the KV-1S had already come out. But in parallel, they touched on the “thirty-four”. They also climbed into captured T-III, T-IV tanks. For the whole school, we had two KVs and two T-34s, so we mainly drove on a tractor. There was little practice, because there was no such opportunity, for the year of study, in total, I had no more than a couple of hours of driving practice - 120 minutes.
We also fired not with live shells, but through the loose barrel with bullets or from a coaxial DT machine gun on a cannon scale.
Teaching tactics, for example, went like this. The platoon leaves for exercises. The platoon commander commands the flags:
- We walk along the tank! - and went to the field.
Why are we walking? There are three tanks in a platoon. But there are no tanks! So the platoon is divided into three crews, the platoon commander gives commands with flags, and instead of tanks we take battle formations: “line”, “ledge to the right”, “ledge to the left”, “angle back”, “angle forward”.
Taught the tactics of fighting German tanks. The main thing is to determine the distance correctly and fire - immediately to defeat! In artillery, there is a “wide fork”, “narrow fork”, and the tanks had a small ammunition load, so they taught us to hit immediately to kill and, of course, figure out where to hit: on the side of the hull, in the rear of the tower - if the tank’s turret gets jammed , then he is already incompetent. And in order to quickly disable an enemy tank, then the fire is "just enough", that is, on the caterpillar with a high-explosive projectile, and "on the forehead" - with armor-piercing on the tower.
I must say that I shot "excellent" and graduated from college with round fives. Then, however, it did not give any advantages, it was not before that. We were trained to be a tank commander. Then we needed as many commanders as possible, because we lost command staff in the very first days, weeks of the war, and before that, Stalin tried.
For all the time of study there was not a single dismissal to the city, civilian population we didn't really see it. Such was the situation of the forty-first - forty-second years and our attitude towards it: the more the Germans advanced, the more intensively they treated the classes. They knew that they needed to save the Motherland.
We did not know about the defeats, heavy losses of the forty-first year, it was hidden, as well as the fact that the Germans have an advantage in manpower and military equipment. They knew that they had occupied such and such a city, and they didn’t tell us about everything. We had a battalion commissar, senior political officer Pepelyaev, he conducted political information, called those who retreated: “Alarmists! Underpants!" He died later, this Pepelyaev. And our battalion commander Boyko died.
The more difficult the situation on the fronts was, the more diligently the cadets comprehended military science. We practiced 14-16 hours a day, slept little, but after six months of study we were able to drive tanks on our own and learned to shoot from cannons and machine guns. Shooting on the move was incredibly difficult! The tank rushes at high speeds over rough terrain, throws it up on bumps, potholes, you can see either the earth or the sky in the sight, but you need to quickly find the target, take it to the vertical hair of the sight scale, catch the moment the aiming mark square approaches the target - and that’s it at this moment, press the trigger!
Even now, with great gratitude, I remember the commanders and commissars of the school, who gave us good combat training, physical and moral hardening.
//-- "Congratulations, Comrade Lieutenant!" --//
On June 20, final exams began in all subjects, including drill and even bayonet combat. But, of course, the first handed over "Marxism-Leninism." At this exam, I remember the non-standard answers of the cadet of our platoon Ivan Nikiforovich Zholudev. In civilian life, he was a candidate of forestry sciences, even had printed works, but he was also brave man. At the exam, he argued with the senior regimental commissar about the Brest peace and the position of the left communists.
– How do you know this? the commissioner asked.
You don't have to be in Paris to know that Paris exists.
His free statements always surprised us, it was not customary and it was not safe to object to the authorities, especially on political issues.
I also remember well the cadet Shumilin, a former artist of the Kazan Drama Theater. Even at the exam in drill training, he always made a turn around over his right shoulder, and he began moving forward exclusively with his right foot. Shumilin did not shine in other classes and exams, he always confused everything. Perhaps he did it deliberately, did not want to be a commander, which he achieved - he received a “senior sergeant” at graduation.
Finally, the long-awaited release date has arrived. On the morning of July 1, right after breakfast, the company captain (assistant foreman) Corporal Ryabkov gave us new command uniforms: belts, caps and tarpaulin boots.
At 12.00 in brand new commander's uniforms, we lined up on the parade ground. The solemn formation was attended by all the leadership and command of the battalions, headed by the head of the school, Colonel Naumov, he headed the school after being wounded, his right arm was torn off at the front. The head of the firing cycle, Major Kazievsky, read out the order of the people's commissar of defense on conferring officer ranks on cadets and lists of graduates' distribution by name across the fronts. As a result of intense military studies, half of the cadets received the military rank of "lieutenant", forty-five percent - the rank of "junior lieutenant", the rest - "senior sergeants". I received the rank of lieutenant and, as commander of the KV-1S heavy tank, was sent to the South-Eastern Front, later renamed Stalingrad.
Assignment ceremony officer rank was very solemn. The surname was called. The brass band played carcasses, and the cadet, minting a step, broke down and stopped in front of the head of the school. The orchestra fell silent. Major Kazievsky read lines from the order of the people's commissar of defense on the assignment of such and such military rank and for the first time, instead of the usual address "cadet", sweet words for each of us sounded:
- Congratulations, comrade lieutenant, on the assignment of the first officer rank! and shook hands.
After that, Colonel Naumov handed the newcomer a commander's identity card and also said:
Congratulations, Comrade Lieutenant! - and we understood that now, before being sent to the front, with this commander’s certificate, he, a front-line soldier who participated in the battles, as if passes on to us, not yet fired upon, yesterday’s schoolchildren, the baton and his blessing, everyone felt it very sharply.
Clearly performing a turn around, the young commander, again under the carcasses of the brass band, returned to duty.
Those who received the rank of lieutenant returned joyful, the rest - sad, as if offended, they say, they were unfairly bypassed. On the other hand, the cadets of the 4th platoon of our company all became lieutenants, they passed the exams best of all, since before Chelyabinsk they completed two courses at a military school in Kazan.
Before being sent to the front, we were given a day of vacation and were given 600 rubles each - the first advance pay! Joyful and proud, we went to the city to take pictures and, if possible, buy something for the prom. A loaf of bread on the market cost 200 rubles, so you won't run away especially. Then they wrote letters home, friends, girls.
At eight o'clock we gathered in the dining room for a farewell dinner. Naturally, they drank in moderation, celebrating graduation, command ranks and parting with fellow students - everyone went to different fronts; and then in the club watched a concert.
A day later, our group of fifty people left for Saratov by passenger train.
//-- On the way to the front --//
In Saratov, we immediately ran into trouble. First, the Germans began to bomb the city and the bridge across the Volga connecting Saratov with Engels. Panic broke out in the city! They were running in all directions, and then, taking advantage of the general confusion, some saboteur on the move fired rockets from the crowd in the direction of the bridge, giving target designation to enemy pilots. The Luftwaffes still failed to get into the bridge, but they sank one barge near the bridge.
After the bombing, we went to dine in the garrison canteen, and then the second trouble came up. They refused to feed us, because the head of the group, the lieutenant from the staff of the school who accompanied us, forgot to take the food certificate and thus doomed us to a starving existence. Some offered to search the lieutenant, saying that he could not forget the certificate, we remembered very well that at the Chelyabinsk railway station the school management who accompanied us asked the lieutenant if all the documents had been taken. The majority considered the search humiliating for themselves, and we had to get out on our own all the way to Stalingrad: we sold and exchanged for bread what anyone had - soap, new underwear, watches.
We traveled to Kamyshin by freight train, often stopping because of the bombed-out railroad tracks. The train stopped at the Panitskaya station for a long time. Here we were struck by the criminal savagery of the authorities. A very large elevator was burning nearby, but the sentry did not let the half-starved residents near the burning grain. So the authorities ordered: let it burn, but we won’t let the residents! The whole group of us went to the elevator and took a lot of wheat into the floors of our overcoats. The sentry was afraid to shoot at the commanders. Already on the way, they got buckets and cooked the extracted wheat, it turned out something like porridge, and they ate it all the way to Kamyshin.
We arrived in Kamyshin at night. The wounded were immediately loaded into our vacated echelon. We went through the whole city. What they saw shocked everyone. The city was often bombed, and it was overflowing with the wounded, and the bodies of the dead lay right on the streets. In the intervals between bomb explosions, faint voices were heard pleading for help. There were few medical staff, the wounded lay on the ground for days without bandaging, there was even no one to give them a drink. For the first time, the true face of the war was revealed to us, and this made a very strong impression.
By dawn, we reached the southern outskirts of the city and moved in the given direction. Then there was no railway Kamyshin - Stalingrad, and we walked on foot, through the Cossack villages and villages of the former republic of the Volga Germans. The improvement, cleanliness, rationality of outbuildings and fields were striking. The first night was in the village of Gusenbach, where we slept well, without bombing.
We walked very quickly, stopping only near the keys to get drunk. Enemy fighters began to pursue us, so we looked for places to hide in advance. In the villages we were met differently, but strictly, if we asked to spend the night, they demanded a certificate from the commandant, and the commandant's offices, as a rule, were fifteen kilometers away. So we went to the field and stacked ourselves in haystacks or stacks of straw. But it was not possible to sleep properly in the field. That summer there was a real invasion of rats and mice! Apparently, they were disturbed by the thunder of the bombing. All night we had to throw off these annoying creatures and still had to save the remnants of the "wheat porridge" so that the rodents did not penetrate under the boards with which we closed the buckets. The last days they ate seeds, picking up pockets full from carts going to delivery points. The Cossack women were very affectionate and did not swear, maybe because many commanders were nice, or maybe they took pity on us, realizing that we were going to a mortal battle and many were not destined to return.
We went from Kamyshin to Stalingrad in six days and without loss, although shelling and bombing overtook us several times a day.

//-- Heavy tank commander --//
In the personnel department of the South-Eastern Front, we, newcomers, were quickly assigned to units and formations. Nikolai Davydov, Misha Marder and I - at the school we were in the same company, ended up in the 158th separate heavy tank brigade. By the time we arrived, the brigade was at the Krivomuzginskaya station not far from Kalach-on-Don. The brigade had already participated in the battles, retreating from Volchansk, where they fought hard battles with the tank corps, losing 41 tanks and half of the personnel, but the 40th German tank corps lost 85 tanks and a lot of manpower.
Marder and I ended up in the same platoon. The crew welcomed us well. The platoon was commanded by an experienced front-line soldier, junior lieutenant Matvey Serov. At that time, there were two officers in the crew of a heavy tank, in my tank the second officer was a driver, junior lieutenant Talash Safin, a Bashkir by nationality. We just called him Tolya. Tolya, like me, took an accelerated annual course at the Chelyabinsk Tank School (they were released a little earlier), so there was no need to worry about the driver. The gunner was Sergeant Viktor Belov, the loader was Junior Sergeant Mikhail Tvorogov, he could also be the second driver; the radio operator-machine gunner was junior sergeant Nikolai Orlov. All crew members are young, strong guys, but all of the last replenishment have not yet participated in the battles. The junior, sergeant, crew had only three months of training in a training tank regiment in the same Chelyabinsk, had clearly not enough practice in driving a tank, as well as experience in shooting.
The tanks were given to us by the KV-1S, which were overhauled at the Stalingrad Tractor Plant. The KV-1S tanks had 75 mm frontal armor and 50 mm side armor, we already knew that the Germans, using sub-caliber and cumulative shells, pierced the KV armor from a distance of 1000 meters. In May, towards the end of training, two burned-out KVs were brought to our school, then we carefully examined the punched holes and realized: in battle, the crew must act with lightning speed, automatically, in order to forestall the enemy with the very first shot. Therefore, now, in the time remaining before the battles, the crew worked out interchangeability, studied all the adjustments and troubleshooting methods, actions with the gun during the battle, firing while moving and from short stops.
On July 24, tanks were already in well-camouflaged trenches on the southern outskirts of Kalach-on-Don. The Germans constantly bombed the area where the corps was located, bombed with impunity, the only anti-aircraft battery could not cover all the troops and the main crossing over the Don. During July-August, not a single of our fighters appeared in the sky, we saw only U-2s in the air, the soldiers called them "maize", and the Germans threw mocking leaflets: "Yesterday, Chief Corporal Hans Müller shot down a Russian plane with a brick." From the units passing by, we knew that our troops were retreating along the entire front, Rostov-on-Don had just been abandoned, and again leaflets with verses from the Goebbels department rained down on us from the sky: “Rostov is on the Don, Saratov is on the Volga, I won’t catch up with you - your legs are in debt. They scoffed, bastards, not knowing what retribution was coming.
In order to prevent the Germans from capturing the main crossing in the great bend of the Don and thus creating the bridgehead closest to Stalingrad, the Red Army command decided to launch a powerful counterattack along the right bank of the Don to the north. On the basis of the 38th Army, in one day the 1st Tank Army was created under the command of Lieutenant General Moskalenko, which also included our 158th Brigade.
At dawn on July 25, our troops went on the offensive. On the move, they attacked the enemy reconnaissance detachment and threw it away from the crossing. The Germans hastily retreated into the grove to break away from our troops. The tanks of the brigade dispersed at low altitude and disguised themselves. Through the observation devices, the battlefield was clearly visible. But there were no orders to go on the offensive.
Ten minutes later, the fascist aviation began to bomb. About three dozen bombs were also dropped on our brigade. Groups of 40-50 aircraft dropped 250-kilogram aerial bombs and left for another circular approach. Our planes were not in the sky again. Powerful explosions shook the ground, throwing out entire geysers of soil with the flame of the explosion. Houses and cars were burning on the northern outskirts of Kalach. Tanks of the corps with motorized infantry were already fighting close to the grove. The enemy had well-equipped positions in this grove, while ours advanced in open areas. But then a battalion of our T-70 tanks with a motorized rifle battalion stuck into the grove from the flank. Several tanks burned down on both sides, but the preponderance of forces swayed in our favor. However, ours were able to completely take possession of the grove only by the end of the day: artillery of the 1st tank army and the Germans withdrew to the north.
As a result of a fierce battle in the area of ​​​​the grove, the enemy lost 12 tanks burned out and 20 knocked out; was destroyed a large number of guns and machine guns, many were killed and manpower from the bayonet strike of the 32nd mechanized brigade. Our losses were also very high.
At dawn on July 26, our troops started fighting at the line height 174.9 - the village of Lozhki - the state farm "10 years of October". Here, a large grouping was concentrated at the enemy, and during the night they managed to well equip defensive positions, moreover, our advancing troops were dealt powerful bombing strikes by aviation, using air cannons and anti-tank bombs. Two T-70 tanks burned down. The advance slowed down.
Our tank brigade, in combat readiness number one, advanced one and a half kilometers behind the battle formations of the corps and still did not enter the battle. We were followed by small funeral teams, not having time to dig mass graves and bury the dead. The July heat was doing its job, the cadaverous smell was strongly felt. It was stuffy in the turret even with the fans turned on and hatches open, only when moving was the engine fan slightly blowing through the fighting compartment. People were tormented by thirst, for any convenient occasion the crew filled the flasks cold water. Everyone's nerves were strained to the limit! The second day we only watched through binoculars and instruments, how our comrades were fighting the enemy on the flat steppe near the Don! The battlefield was often covered with explosions of bombs and shells, the smoke of burning bread, but it was clear that here and there our tanks flared up, wrecked vehicles freeze, turning into fixed targets for the enemy! And we were all waiting for our turn to fight the enemy! After all, for each of us his FIRST FIGHT was coming! For training and in order to somehow distract people, he gave the command:
- Look for targets and report to the entire crew on the TPU!

,
1454th Self-Propelled Artillery Regiment,
1295th self-propelled artillery regiment

Vasily Semyonovich Krysov(December 31, 1922 - May 27, 2013) - Soviet officer, tank ace, veteran of the Great Patriotic War, reserve colonel. He served as a self-propelled gunner. During the war years, he destroyed 19 tanks, including 8 Tigers and one Panther. Three times burned in combat vehicles.

Biography

early years

Born on December 31, 1922 in the village of Krysovy, Orichevsky District, Kirov Region. Father Semyon Vasilyevich Krysov worked as the director of the Istobensky vegetable processing plant. Mother - Afanasya Fedorovna Krysova (Tupitsyna), a peasant woman.

During the Great Patriotic War

After the outbreak of the war, he volunteered for the front. In July 1942 he graduated from the Chelyabinsk Higher Tank Command School.

After graduating from college, he was assigned to the 158th tank brigade as a platoon commander. He fought on the KV-1s tank, then on the SU-122, SU-85 and at the end of the war - the commander of the T-34-85 company.

Participation on the fronts in hostilities:

1. From August 5, 1942 to January 1943: Battle of Stalingrad, commander of the KV-1s heavy tank of the 158th Tank Brigade of the Stalingrad Front
2. From March 1943 to September 30, 1943: commander of a platoon of self-propelled artillery mounts SU-122 of the 1454th self-propelled artillery regiment of the Central Front:
   • from July 5 to July 12, 1943 - the defensive period of the Battle of Kursk;
   • from July 12 to August 23, 1943 - offensive period Battle of Kursk according to the plan "Kutuzov";
   • from August 23 to September 30, 1943 - Chernigov-Pripyat operation
3. From October 1943 to December 31, 1943: commander of a platoon of self-propelled artillery mounts SU-85 of the 1454th self-propelled artillery regiment of the 3rd Guards Tank Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front:
   • August 25 - December 23, 1943 - Battle of the Dnieper;
   • from November 13 to December 22, 1943 - Kiev offensive operation;
   • from December 22, 1943 - Zhytomyr-Berdychiv operation;
   • from January 1, 1944 - hospital No. 5801 after a severe wound.
4. From March 1944 to July 29, 1944: commander of the SU-85 self-propelled artillery battery of the 1295th self-propelled artillery regiment of the 47th Army of the 1st Belorussian Front:
   • March 15 to April 5, 1944 - Polesie offensive operation;
   • from June 23 to being wounded on July 29, 1944 - Belarusian offensive operation.
5. Commander of a battery of self-propelled artillery mounts SU-85, then - commander of a company of T-34-85 tanks of the 1435th self-propelled artillery regiment (then the 1435th separate tank battalion) of the 11th Guards Army of the Belorussian Front:
   • January 13 - 27, 1945 - Insterburg-Königsberg operation;
   • January 13 - April 25, 1945 - East Prussian operation;
   • April 6-9, 1945 - Königsberg operation.

On November 20, 1943, the 1454th self-propelled artillery regiment defended the city of Brusilov. The platoon of Lieutenant Krysov (two SU-85s) stood on the edge of the forest from the side of the village of Morozovka. On this day, on a 500-meter section, where a rifle battalion dug in, two 45-mm guns and a mortar company, in the direction of Kornin - Brusilov - Kyiv, a large tank group of the Wehrmacht dealt the main blow. At dawn, 20 heavy Tiger tanks and three chains of German infantry advanced into the attack. Lieutenant Krysov, without engaging in open battle, entered the flank of German tanks at maximum speed and within 10 minutes Lieutenant Krysov's self-propelled gun (gunner - Sergeant Valery Korolev) burned 8 "Tigers". The remaining tanks retreated beyond the height from which they began their attack. He was not awarded for this feat, but Krysov's parents were sent 4,000 rubles, 500 rubles each. for each destroyed tank.

Three days later, on November 23, near the village of Yastrebnya, he destroyed three more enemy tanks. Then, on December 24, Krysov's crew added another tank to the combat score. December 26 was wounded.

Since the 1970s he has been historical research events of the Great Patriotic War. He offered his own version of the number of total human losses in the USSR - 32 million 912 thousand people - based on the population in the country before the war and after it ended. Performed in schools and other educational institutions.

Son Grigory also graduated from the Chelyabinsk Higher Tank Command School, a military man. There are grandchildren.

He died on May 27, 2013 in Kirov. Buried on his small homeland in with. Istobenskoye, Orichevsky district, Kirov region

Awards

Proceedings

• V. S. KRYSOV"Zigzags of War". - Chisinau: samizdat, 2001. - 20,000 copies.
• V. S. KRYSOV. - Moscow: Eksmo, 2007. - 448 p. - (War and us. Trench truth). - 5100 copies. - ISBN 978-5-699-20986-6.
• A large number of essays in regional publications about fellow soldiers.
• Poetry.

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Notes

Links

• . "I remember". .
• E. Demina.. TV company CTC-9 channel (02.02.2008). .
• .

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Vasily Krysov

Soviet self-propelled artillery mount Su-85

Vasily Krysov - the legendary Soviet tanker - went through a difficult military path from Stalingrad to Königsberg. It burned three times in wrecked vehicles, destroyed 19 German tanks, including 8 "Tigers" burned in one battle. And he was then a little over twenty years old. One month was not enough to twenty-one years, to be more precise ...

After training at the tank school, Vasily Krysov received the rank of lieutenant, which was given only to those who studied well (for the worst performance, the rank of junior lieutenant was supposed to). And Vasily Semenovich spent his first battle as part of the 158th tank brigade on the KV-1S tank between Kalach-on-Don and the state farm "10 years of October" during offensive operation"Uranus". Having completed the encirclement of the Paulus group near Stalingrad, Vasily Krysov's unit found itself in the path of the 4th Panzer Army of Goth, advancing to release the encircled German forces in the city on the Verkhnekumsky farm with access to the Myshkova River. For six days, Soviet tankers held back the offensive of the superior forces of the Nazis. Here the first tank of Vasily Krysov was lost.

The front-line whirlwind several times changed the place of service of Vasily Semenovich after the battles near Stalingrad. He even had a chance to serve in the regiment of self-propelled artillery mounts SU-122, which held the defense near Ponyry.

In October 1943, Krysov took command of a SU-85 platoon. Once, answering a journalist’s question about which day or event in the war was the most terrible for him, the front-line soldier, after a little thought, answered:

- The scariest? Hard to say. The most dangerous day was the battle with the "Tigers", when about 20 tanks went to the platoon.

It was November 20, 1943, when the 1454th self-propelled artillery regiment, in which Vasily Semenovich served, defended the city of Brusilov. A platoon, or rather two SU-85 self-propelled guns under the command of V. Krysov, were among the units that held the defense on a five-hundred-meter section near the village of Morozovka. A battalion of dug-in infantry, a mortar company, two 45-mm anti-tank guns and two Krysov self-propelled guns stood in the way of the Wehrmacht tank group, which attacked in the direction of Kornin-Brusilov-Kiev. On the defensive positions in the morning Soviet soldiers 20 "Tigers" moved with the support of numerous infantry. Lieutenant Krysov was by that time a seasoned front-line soldier and understood that even in a closed position, very soon only a memory would remain of two self-propelled guns. Having undertaken a flank maneuver and later recalling with surprise that the Germans did not detect the movement of two SU-85s, although the autumn bushes served as shelter, the tankers took up a position three hundred meters from the attacking Nazis.

When Vasily Semenovich is asked what he was thinking about before opening fire, the veteran answers without prejudice: "I was thinking about one thing - just level out faster, turn the cannon to the left 90 and fire."

Opening fire on the sides of German tanks, Vasily Krysov and his subordinates hit three Tigers on the move. The smoke from the wrecked vehicles blocked the view of the German gunners. Our tankers, seeing the silhouettes of the "Tigers" in sight, sent shell after shell at the target until the Germans began to retreat. After 10 minutes, eight heavy "Tigers" were left to burn on the battlefield.

As Vasily Semenovich himself says, no one received awards for this battle, but four thousand rubles were sent to the parents of the tanker - 500 rubles each for one "Tiger". Then again there was war, battles, a new appointment as commander of a T-34-85 tank company, Koenigsberg, etc.

ABOUT combat way You can read Vasily Semenovich Krysov and his fellow soldiers in his memoirs “Zigzags of War” and “Battery, Fire!”. On self-propelled guns against the “tigers”, as well as on the page of the project “I Remember”. As it is written on the bas-relief dedicated to the capture of the Swedish ships "Astrild" and "Gedan" on the Neva coast in 1703 - "Unprecedented things happen", so our hero, without flinching, managed to accomplish the impossible and stopped the attack of superior enemy forces, inscribing another glorious page in the feat of our people.

According to Stalin, "life has become better, life has become more fun." If earlier the peasant was already in the field at six o'clock, now with a blow of a piece of iron on a rail suspended by a fire tower, collective farmers were gathered only at nine. On the other hand, on every occasion, the collective farm arranged general drinking parties: they bought vodka and slaughtered either a bull or a horse.

When I learned that our horse Bulanka would be taken to the slaughterhouse, I went to say goodbye to him, taking a loaf of bread. Seeing me, he was delighted, but he ate bread without much desire, and tears rolled down his cheeks. Apparently, he had a premonition of his death. I hugged him and barely held back tears.

As soon as collectivization ended and the posters about the collective farm good were removed, their place was taken by posters where a fascist with a swastika is pressed by the throat with hedgehogs. We realized that our number one enemy is German fascism.

He taught at our school German Karl Petrovich Kruger. He was one of those Germans who were brought under Catherine II in the 18th century. At night, a "black raven" drove up to their house, and they took away poor Karl Petrovich, took him to the ends - as an "enemy of the people", they did not see him again. His wife Anna Vasilievna was the head teacher of the school. She was not yet thirty. In the morning she came to work all gray-haired.

The next shock for me was when we were forced to cover up with ink portraits of the heroes of the Civil War - Blucher, Tukhachevsky, Yegorov, Yakir, Uborevich and others in history textbooks. Under their command, victory was won in civil war- and suddenly they turned out to be "enemies of the people"! In my heart I was terribly indignant! But I realized that it was impossible to talk about it.

Then suddenly fascist Germany became the friendliest country Soviet Union. And at the same time, propaganda began to exalt the strength and power of the Red Army: “The Red Army is the strongest of all!”, “Our borders are locked!”, “We will fight only on foreign territory!” Even in songs they extolled Stalin, Voroshilov, Budyonny as brilliant commanders.

We believed in this bragging and were not afraid of war.

About a week before the start of the war, I received a letter from my cousin Pavel, who was serving in Kobrin, not far from Brest. He wrote to me that the war with the Germans would soon begin. It is surprising how military censorship overlooked this letter.

Even at the school, my parents informed me by letter that Pavel had died. And then they wrote that Uncle Misha and Uncle Kolya, my father's brothers, died, and Uncle Ivan Nikitovich, my father's sister's husband, died in a reserve regiment in the Sernur military camps of the Mari Republic. Of course, I guessed what he died from, but I did not tell anyone. The fact is that in these camps, where units for the front were formed, people could stay for a month or two, but there was practically no food, and many, many recruits died of starvation.

I experienced the death of my relatives hard, but the danger for the Fatherland drowned out all personal pain.

Unfortunately, even now no one will say how many sons and daughters of our Fatherland died. Stalin said that we lost 7 million people, and the Germans, they say, twice as much - 13 million 600 thousand. It is unlikely that anyone believed in this blasphemous lie, but the political instructors passed it off as the truth. Who could contradict the leader - no one! And in the textbooks they wrote it down, the schoolchildren were told this lie. Khrushchev said that they lost 20 million, and Gorbachev that 27. All these figures are ceiling.

I do not agree with the existing assessment of losses, I thoroughly calculated them. Some 44 million are called, but without justification, but I have a justification. According to my calculations, we lost 32,912 thousand people. I read all the colleagues who counted losses. Of the military specialists, only Colonel-General Dmitry Antonovich Volkogonov had access to documents of losses. He gives a figure for 1942 alone: ​​6 million dead.

When calculating, I proceeded from the population in the country before the war and after it ended. During the war, 18 million children were born, but most of them died. Or here on the Western Bug, 136 thousand soldiers were building pillboxes, and Stalin forbade them to give weapons: by order, all weapons were taken away and locked up - and all of them were captured in one fell swoop. I give the calculations and justification of the losses in my book “Zigzags of War” (Kishinev, samizdat, 2001; circ. 20 copies).

During the war, I received three wounds and a severe shell shock. He was awarded three military orders. He finished the war with the rank of senior lieutenant.

After the war, he served in command and staff positions. In 1958 he graduated with honors military academy armored and mechanized troops named after I.V. Stalin in Moscow, but three years later, with the rank of lieutenant colonel, he retired for health reasons, wounds and severe shell shock in Poland affected. Since 1961, being first in the reserve, and then retired, I worked until the age of 70, mainly in the field of mechanization of construction work. In 2000, I was promoted to the rank of colonel.

Since the beginning of the 70s, he began to collect material for the book. I am very grateful to my brother-soldiers who, with their memories, helped me to recall some pictures of the hostilities, these are Pavel Danilovich Revutsky, Ivan Georgievich Shuliko, Ivan Petrovich Marchenko, Sergey Grigoryevich Bykov, Georgy Dmitrievich Istomin and others.

Studying the documents, I worked three times in the archive of the Ministry of Defense in Podolsk. I also traveled to battlefields. I found many fellow soldiers, which was very difficult, since the addresses of all have changed. But what a joy it was for people! Everyone rejoiced that they had not forgotten, remembered him. I also wrote many essays about the living and the dead for the regional publishing houses of those regions, districts where my brother-soldiers lived - otherwise they would not have known how their fellow countryman fought there! Many times we as a family, with my wife Roza Ivanovna and son Grigory, went to meetings of veterans and even to combat places, met with residents of villages, villages where battles took place.

I continue to write even now, relying more on my memory and somehow thinking that if I do not describe our battles, then there will be no one, since there are fewer and fewer of those who had to drink their terrible cup from the monstrous cauldron of that war. But, often speaking at schools and other educational institutions, I do not strive for naturalism in depicting pictures of war, this will teach little, I talk about my fighting friends, by name, their sacrifice, about mutual assistance in battle. In battle, we recognized who is who and knew ourselves. This is what seems important to me.

Our son Grisha also graduated from the Chelyabinsk Tank School, but he did not rise to the rank of general, and we did not want this from him, we were more oriented towards normal service and, most importantly, that he be a decent, worthy person. It seems to have worked out. There are also successors of the family, we already have three grandchildren.

That, perhaps, is all. This is my biography in a nutshell. I think this is enough for an ordinary warrior.

After the victory near Moscow

we got sick with euphoria,

and in early spring

They wanted to defeat the Nazis.

In regiments, divisions, brigades

there were not enough people and guns,

needed tanks and shells,

there were few forces to advance.

But the attack continued

not even knowing the enemy forces,

and lost three battles!

And who asked the culprit?!

Our front was broken through without difficulty,

The Fuhrer immediately gave them an order:

“Seven armies to leave! All there!

To Stalingrad! And to the Caucasus!

The enemy outnumbered us

tanks, guns, planes

and again, and again the division introduced

Romanian and its infantry.

The Japanese, the Turks counted the days,

we will be attacked immediately

(already ordered the troops),

how the Germans will take Stalingrad.

That retreat was disturbing

and the army, and all the people -

all this reminded us

sad forty-first year.

Then we were forced to leave

under the superiority of the enemy forces,

and everyone went to counterattacks,

who could carry weapons.

And now the Nazis broke through the front again,

then crossed the Don

and the advance continued