GUNS AGAINST THE REICH: Memoirs of an Artillery Officer on the Eastern Front

231 Pages·2010·3.14 MB·English

by  Petr Mikhin

Guns Against
the Reich

Guns Against
the Reich

Memoirs of an Artillery Officer
on the Eastern Front
Petr Mikhin
Translator
Bair Irincheev
English text
Stuart Britton
Publication made possible by ‘I Remember’ (www.iremember.ru)
and its director Artem Drabkin.
First published in Great Britain in 2010 by
PEN & SWORD MILITARY
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire
S70 2AS
Copyright © Petr Mikhin 2010
ISBN 978 1 84415 931 4
The right of Petr Mikhin to be identified as Author of
this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage
and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI UK
Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the imprints of
Pen & Sword Aviation, Pen & Sword Maritime, Pen & Sword Military,
Wharncliffe Local History, Pen and Sword Select, Pen and Sword Military Classics,
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Contents
List of Illustrations ..................................................................................vii
Part One: The Rzhev Meat-Grinder ........................................................1
Prologue: Training is hard ....................................................................3
Chapter One: Rzhev ............................................................................11
Chapter Two: Die, but Don’t Retreat!..................................................21
Chapter Three: The Slaughter at Rz hev ..............................................31
Part Two: From Stalingrad to the Western Border ................................49
Chapter Four: From Starobelsk to the Donbas ....................................50
Chapter Five: Encircled!......................................................................59
Chapter Six: Kursk..............................................................................67
Chapter Seven: On the Heels of the Enemy ........................................75
Chapter Eight: On Defense along the Ingulets River............................85
Chapter Nine: The Spring Offensive..................................................100
Chapter Ten: Bridgehead on the Dnestr ............................................117
Chapter Eleven: Despair....................................................................127
Chapter Twelve: My Heroic Crews! ..................................................134
Part Three: Here it is, Eastern Europe! ................................................141
Chapter Thirteen: Romania – Bulgaria – Yugoslavia ..........................142
Chapter Fourteen: Command Problems..............................................156
Chapter Fifteen: The Liberation of Hungary ....................................180
Chapter Sixteen: Austria and Czechoslovakia ....................................204
Index ....................................................................................................211

List of Illustrations
Students of the Physics and Mathematics faculty of Leningrad’s
Pedagogical Institute, December 1939.
War is declared. Petr Mikhin, Ivan Zatsepin and Alexei Kovalev on their
way to the military commissariat in June 1941.
Lieutenant Petr Mikhin, December 1941.
Repairing the recuperator mechanism of a 122mm M-30 howitzer.
A 122mm A-19 howitzer in position.
A battery of 122mm M-30 howitzers.
A battery of 122mm M-30 howitzers on the march, 23rd Guards Rifle
Division, 26th Army, 1943.
An artillery observation post.
Artillery division commander Captain Petr Mikhin, 1944.
Mikhin’s artillery division staff.
1028th Artillery Regiment officers.
The commander of the 1028th Artillery Regiment, S.F. Rogoza.
The squadron’s Communist Party representative, Ivan Shevchenko, after
the war.
Captain Petr Mikhin, Bulgaria, 1944.
Ivan Shevchenko and Petr Mikhin, May 1945.
May 1945, near Prague – the joy of victory.
Scout Iasha Korennoi.
Veterinary Assistant Nikolaev and Sergeant Major Makukha standing on
each side of Battery Commander Raskovalov, 1944.
Varvara Somova during her time as a student at the Ivanovo Medical
University, 1940.
1944 photograph of Varvara Somova showing her as a medical officer of the
106th Field Hospital Medical Battalion.
V. Somova, Z. Ovsiannikova and E. Mishkina photographed in Prague in
May 1945.
Back to university, December 1946.
In 1942 bullets whizzed over these rails. Petr Mikhin, on the left, photo-
graphed near Rzhev in 1985.

01. Full book 26/11/09 13:48 Page 1
Part One
THE RZHEV MEAT-GRINDER