Page 34 - Excerpts from the diary

But now the enemy has transferred fresh reserve divisions from France, and the situation has become considerably more complicated. It
will be difficult to break through again, and God knows which of us will live to see Berlin.

Yesterday two soldiers who had deliberately shot themselves were executed, so after my night duty I spent the entire day occupied with
courts. During my watch a soldier who had deliberately wounded himself, Kolyada from our “Eight,” was brought to battalion
headquarters. The senior adjutant ordered me to guard him all night: “If he disappears, you answer with your life.” We are short of men. I
had one sentry at my disposal, but he stood outside in the yard, so I was forced to stay inside and keep the prisoner under my personal
observation. Fortunately he was tried first thing in the morning and shot behind the shed in our yard; otherwise I would have had to
remain responsible for him, and God knows what else might have happened to land me in the dock myself.

The other man who had “shot himself” was a lieutenant. It was the first time I had heard of an officer being executed for cowardice: he
had shot himself in the left hand. A young man, decorated with the Order of the Red Banner and the medal for the Defense of Stalingrad.
His decorations were taken away, his personal property confiscated, his family deprived of all privileges, and he was shot like a dog.

I felt no pity for one or the other, but the experience of watching it weighs on the heart. Especially the last moment, when the
commandant ordered the escort: “Fire on the traitor to the Motherland!” The man squeezed his eyes shut, his whole body contracted, and
in the same instant three submachine-gun bullets struck him savagely in the head. He collapsed to the ground, showered in streams of
blood.
Later the “command staff” went off to receive decorations. Just imagine the injustice! We were in the same battles and endured the same
dangers, while Rysev and Shitikov were “ill” half the time—yet all three of them received Orders of the Patriotic War, while I got
nothing! And on the bridgehead I was the first from the company, and from our battalion, to occupy a firing position on the front line. I
stayed there with the mortars for five days, until the battalion and company came forward on the eve of the assault. I did not lose a single
man before reaching the Oder.

20.03.1945
Mörin. “Who is there? Come in!”

I heard it and woke up. Someone had knocked on the tent.

“Yes, yes,” I called without taking my head from under the overcoat. No one answered and no one entered the dugout. I decided I had
imagined it and began to fall asleep again, but once more I was awakened by three mysterious knocks: knock-knock-knock.

“Who’s there?” I asked. Silence again. What on earth? Someone must be playing a joke. Well, let him. I am not opening anyway.

After the same interval the annoying knock-knock-knock sounded again.

“Yes, come in!” I exclaimed impatiently, threw off my warm overcoat, and jumped out into the yard. There was no one anywhere. I
stopped in bewilderment and listened.

Suddenly I heard distinctly the sound that had been waking me so persistently, and now there could be no doubt. Confused by the
discovery, I hurried back into the dugout. Bullets were whining somewhere overhead, and the familiar knock-knock-knock sounded
again: an enemy machine gun was firing short bursts that sounded exactly like someone knocking at the door of our tightly curtained tent.

Sergeant-Major Andreyev arrived. During the march he had fallen behind, gone through a mass of adventures, ridden as tank-borne
infantry, and finally ended up in the hands of counterintelligence, which “worked him over” a little and sent him back to our battalion,
though to a rifle company. Now he came to visit us, and I listened to his story with interest.

In the fighting for the town of Bernlikhet he came face to face with a counterattacking enemy women’s battalion. By then our men had
dug in well and calmly awaited the enemy sortie. But when they saw women advancing, the soldiers’ hearts faltered. They were ordered
not to fire.

The women advanced in neat lines: first one, then a second, then a third, firing their submachine guns as they came. The fourth and final
line consisted only of men. Our side remained silent. The women grew bolder and began firing point-blank at our infantry. They came
very close and seemed almost to have reached their objective. Then suddenly a penetrating wave of bullets struck them from behind.
Machine guns on our flanks burst into an overflowing rattle. The dead fell like sheaves; the close ranks of “soldiers” collapsed
awkwardly to the earth. Our flank machine guns kept hammering at them, and the survivors, panic-stricken and almost crazed, dropped
their weapons and rushed toward an unscathed stretch of the town street. The women fell into reliable hands.

Our soldiers greeted the women with pleasure, hatred, and triumph. The unfortunate “soldiers,” many of them not even seventeen,
blinked their frightened eyes and cried, “Oh, Gott, Gott, Gott!”

One young woman kept repeating bitterly, “Oh, Gott, Gott,” while repentant tears shone like emeralds in her beautiful eyes.

The paratroopers quickly sorted them. The prisoners were divided into three groups:

1. Russians—there were two of them.
2. Married women and those whose husbands or relatives served in the same unit. Some said, “My husband is an officer!”