[烛光生存狂]-【卫国战争老兵回忆】茹拉夫廖夫·亚历山大·格里戈里

http://www.vor.ru/Victory/Veteranes/Zhuravlev_eng.html

Zhuravlev Alexander Grigoryevich, a Hero of the Soviet Union, Lieutenant and a commander of platoon, took part in the Stalingrad and Kursk battles,force-crossed the Dnieper River, liberated Poland, fought for Sandomierz, Berlin and Prague.Alexander Zhuravlev went to the front at the age of 30; in peace time he held a responsible post at a Moscow plant. Certainly, he could be entrusted with a command of a battery, not only a platoon. Yet his sight was failing. This, nonetheless, allowed him to see certain good things at a difficult time of the war, to see regularities in what appeared to be mere coincidences and to analyse the reasons and the consequences of the events during the war. When he is asked what is the secret of longevity he says: "You should just live!"

When the war broke out you were in Moscow. Did the war come as something that was quite unexpected? What sentiments prevailed among the capital's population?

When the war broke out I worked for a Moscow plant producing transformers. I held the post of the head of an experimental shop. We worked three shifts without days off since the beginning of the war against Finland in 1939-1940. We worked so till 1941. Our working day began at 8 o'clock. On the day when the war against Nazi Germany broke out I arrived at the plant as usual. That was an ordinary Sunday day. Some people went to their country houses, others went fishing. Suddenly an official of the manager's office rushed in crying out: "A war broke out". One of us responded: "Well, we'll give it them hot now".

Why did he make such reply? We were taught so, we were told that the favourite city was well protected, that we did not want any foreign lands nor would we surrender ours. We were convinced that our leaders knew everything and they would take all necessary measures. It is well to recall here a poster depicting three persons against the background of Russian fields: M.M. Litvinov, the country's Foreign Minister, N.I. Yezhov, the Interior Minister, and the Defense Minister K.Ye. Voroshilov. N.I Yezhov was portrayed as a ruler with an iron rod who kept in check all his enemies. The poster said: "We know what and whom we should defend, and we have all means of defending these all". At that time there was continuous talk that our diplomacy was skilful, our army was strong, and we could contain our enemies.

We, the young, could not relax, militant mood was encouraged among us. We attended clubs of Voroshilov riflemen. We shot in shooting-galleries, we parachuted. One tower for parachute jumps was in the Gorky Recreation Park. I,for one, took part in a cycling race with respirator. There were numerous books about the civil war. Films told us about our border guards who easily detected spies on the border. It is also well to remind here of a patriotic song entitled "If a war breaks out tomorrow"... That is why we were convinced that the Red Army will "give it them all hot ".

Yet quite the opposite happened An old man, a character of "The Alive and the Dead" film, says with bitterness: "Why have not you told us that the army is lacking so many things? We could have economized on everything but we would have given everything to the Red Army." The army proved to be less strong than we were told. Main troops were deployed at the distance of hundreds kilometers from the border which was protected by border guards alone. What were they equipped with? Certainly, border guards were getting ready for a war, and some measures had been taken. Later we found out that soldiers slept in their uniform overcoats and officers remained in the barracks. On the second day of the war the newspaper Pravda published an article saying that within previous six months Nazi aircraft violated the border 180 times, or practically every day. Meanwhile, a week before the war broke out TASS published a report claiming that all rumours of a possible Nazi attack should be regarded as provocations.

A war broke out. The country's population was taken unawares. The news shocked the Moscow residents. There were still no air raids. At the dawn of the second and the third days we saw a group of aircraft in the sky. There was much shooting. None of the aircraft was shot down.

We continued to work. On the second day of the war I was told that I would not me recruited for military service at once. Yet on July 10, I received the order to come to the recruiting office in my leisure time. Had I got any leisure time? I left the plant and took the last tram to take me home. When I arrived at the recruiting office I was told not to volunteer for any emergency corps and not to leave the city without the office's permission. I was to wait to be summoned. On July 17 they phoned to the shop: "Zhuravlev?"--"Yes". "You should arrive at the recruiting office at once"

They were recruiting heavy gunners. A regiment was being formed at the Alabino railway station near Moscow. Yet I was not so lucky as to fight in the regiment equipped with Katyusha heavy guns. No sooner that we received uniforms and ammunitions lieutenants, graduates of the Leningrad school, arrived. And we, recruits,were sent to the reserve of the Supreme Command and later to that of the Moscow military district. First we were deployed at the Kolomna railway station near Moscow. Later we received an order to take positions at the closest approaches to Moscow, in the Fili Park. That was Moscow's last line of defenses. There were no defenders behind us. In December 1941, when Soviet counter-offensive began we saw endless tanks moving at high speed on the Rublevskoye highway at night.

In January 1942 we were deployed in the Dmitrov region, to the north of Moscow. We stayed there till May. Battles were not intensive. We took one height. We were short of shells. In the beginning of the war we sat in trenches looking in the sky: we wanted our aircraft to appear. Yet there were no Soviet aircraft in the sky.

Your regiment was at the disposal of the Moscow military district. You saw Moscow in the gravest period of the battle at its approaches. What was Moscow like at that time?

I watched the first air raid of Moscow when I was in Alabino. We saw a continuous chain of Nazi aircraft approaching Moscow. We saw flashes in the sky. We thought those flashes meant that some aircraft had been shot down. We cried out: "Hurrah!" Yet it turned out that it was Nazi tactics. First, they dropped incendiary bombs and then flares. They used the same tactics at river crossings--on the Don and the Dnieper rivers.

In October the situation was most complicated. On October 16, 1941 there was a genuine panic in Moscow. The Enthusiasty Highway leading to the country's east was flooded with vehicles. People were leaving Moscow. We were in Kolomna at that time and knew nothing. On October 17, we were summoned to the headquarters of our reserve regiment. As we went through Kolomna we could not understand anything. There was a chaos, it looked like all people were packing their things. The commander of the regiment who spoke to us did not explain much; he simply ordered that we should hand in all arms and ammunitions and go to the railway station to take a train to Moscow. we sat at the railway station till night. There were no trains to Moscow. All trains moved from Moscow, they carried people and equipment. We saw that Moscow's several major plants were being evacuated. We realised that something grim had happened.

We arrived in Moscow on October 17.At night in the barracks near the Danilovsky market place we survived through a heavy bombing. Next morning we received the order to take positions at the edge of the Fili Park. We went there on foot and saw what Moscow was like at the time. We passed the Krymsky Bridge. It was mined. Near the Gorky Recreation Park, or Park kultury, metro station sugar bags were stockpiled between foo

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