Born Under A Lucky Star.

By Ivan Makarov

What readers of Born Under a Lucky Star say:

 

"Gripping and humbling read." — Goodreads Reviewer

 

"This book taught me a great deal, and I feel lucky to have read it." — Goodreads Reviewer

 

"Possibly, one of the best WW2 books I've ever read, and I've read a great many. Also, a tremendous example of how to live life. Remarkable story!" — Amazon Reviewer

 

"A startling recount of privation and duty. The author was a very brave soldier in defense of his people and their land." — Amazon Reviewer

 

"This is one of the more compelling memoirs of a WWII soldier that I have read." — Amazon Reviewer

 

History is written by the victors, but the harsh reality of war can only be depicted by its soldiers.

As a Russian recruit in World War II, Ivan Makarov witnessed General Chuikov pull out his pistol and shoot their regimental commander as a traitor. That was on his first day at the front.

Thrown into an open field to face German tanks and artillery fire, with only rifles and machine guns to defend themselves with, almost 2,000 men of his regiment were wiped out in only six days at the Eastern Front. At this rate, Ivan struggled to comprehend how he would survive the hundreds of battles that lay before him, with death seeming to be the only certainty.

In his raw and trenchant memoir, Ivan recounts the terror and despair faced by a Red Army soldier on the Eastern Front.

He has no sympathy for Stalin and his incompetent commanders, who sought awards and recognition at the expense of their soldiers' lives. He simply wanted to serve his country.

It is rare to find first-hand accounts of the Great Patriotic War from Red Army soldiers, as many did not survive to tell the tale. For the first time, Ivan reveals his gripping recollections of battles, times, places, and people encountered throughout World War II, from when he was drafted in 1941 until their victory in 1945.

These recollections he dared not put on paper until 1992.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anastasia Walker
• Release date: Feb 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201077327

Book preview

First Published in 2020

Second Edition 2022

Copyright © 2020 Anastasia Walker

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Book cover design: Julien Design Studio

Editor: Ana Joldes

Translation: Anastasia Walker

Foreword & Epilogue: Anastasia Walker

Published by Anastasia Walker

[e-mail]

Dedicated to the faithful soldiers of the Great Patriotic War

who faced danger and death yet took on the battle.

These soldiers who never made it home

and whose stories died with them.

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Battle Near Stalingrad

Battle Near Stalingrad

Into Occupied TerritoryValley Of Liska River

Chapter 2: Winter 1942–1943

Village Kamenka, Rostov Region

Popovka

Chapter 3: Reconnaissance

Donbas

Chapter 4: Taking Germans Alive

Who Was It?

Photos

Chapter 5: Southern Bug

Chapter 6: Kuchurhan

Chapter 7: On The River Dniester

Moldova

Chapter 8: The Meeting With Germany

Epilogue

List of Military Decorations

Map

Endnotes

Foreword

Ivan Makarov was my grandfather on my mother’s side. He was a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. From my childhood, I remember that he loved to tell stories about the war—about his childhood and life. Ivan also had an old typewriter and was constantly typing on it. In early 2000, he came to visit us, gave a bundle of printed stories to my mother, and said, These are my memoirs of the war. One day, you should publish a book. Let people know the real truth about the war, as all my life, I have never seen the real war portrayed in any book or movie.

There are hardly any accounts detailing what the war was like for a Red Army soldier from the front line, especially in the first years. A profoundly changed man returned from there. Those who managed to return, as a rule, did not like and could not recount the real events that had transpired, and many of the Russian military documents of those years are still inaccessible to the public.

Ivan wrote these stories from 1992 to 1998, after the Soviet Union collapsed and it became possible to talk about what had really happened openly. Before this time, he could easily go to prison for such writings. This book is a collection of individual stories. These events, Ivan recalls in detail, from Stalingrad to Germany. During the first half of the war, Ivan was a machine gunner, and during the second half, he was a regimental scout. He talks about what he personally saw and experienced during the war and what difficulties were faced by ordinary soldiers. Ivan describes how he was captured by the Germans, escaped, and returned to the Red Army, and how he served in the machine-gun company once more. Later, he was assigned to the army’s intelligence services and performed special tasks. Despite all the difficulties on the front line, he maintained his desire to live, managed to survive, and returned to Russia. On the fortieth anniversary of the victory of the Great Patriotic War, my grandfather decided to visit the places where he fought during the war. At that time, the Soviet Union was a closed country, and Ivan could only reach the border with Poland as he lacked special permission to travel any further.

Ivan was not a professional writer. In his memoir, he merely recalls real events that happened to him at the war front and during his childhood. Details of many of the people whom he mentions I have found in archival documents on Feat of the People¹ and Memorial.² All these documents are posted on the website of the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation. It is amazing how accurately he remembered the time and place of events—even fifty years later—and how his memoir accurately reflects archival documents. I furthermore had the good fortune to find the map detailing the hostilities of the German approach to Stalingrad in an old book from 1947.

These stories I found in my mother’s house before I moved to Australia in 2014. I started reading and could not stop. I found them captivating. After reading and making copies, I decided that publishing the book and even translating it into English was necessary. Very few books were written by soldiers who actually fought on the Eastern Front. Usually, the authors of Russian war memoirs were commanders or political workers, whose stories were vastly different. Not many soldiers managed to survive the war, let alone live to the 1990s and have such stories to tell.

I really wish I had found these manuscripts earlier when my grandfather was still alive. Unfortunately, death takes a man and all his memories forever.

Luckily, Ivan penned down his memories, and the events recorded in those pages will live on forever. The soldiers of the Great Patriotic War are worthy of remembrance!

Introduction

War scorched me in the summer of 1942. Though I was only eighteen years old, I began to realise that there are such things as fear, patriotism, heroism, cowardice, and morals. My heart aches when I watch a movie or read a military book about invented heroic feats and patriotism. There are stories of men knocking out tanks with hand grenades and of men throwing their bodies over machine-gun muzzles. During the entire war, I had not heard nor seen the fictional characters who would throw themselves under tanks and over the muzzles of machine guns. I am proud of my military comrades because they did not demand awards and honours. All of them had a common cause for victory, but not for the idea or the love of our leaders. Only Russian soldiers and no one else saved the world from Nazism. It is a pity how quickly the world forgot about the role of Russia and Russian soldiers in the new democratic repartitioning of the world. God willing, our grandchildren will live in prosperity and happiness. Hopefully, they will not have to save the world from war, plundering, terrorism, and the immoral quest for personal unrestrained glory and power.

Patriotism in battle is not a human act whereby the soldier loudly declares allegiance and gives his life for the cause. Quite the opposite, it occurs when a soldier saves his life in the name of an idea, thus indirectly or directly saving the lives of others. A patriot is a person who remains faithful to his people and country to the end. A hero is anyone who directly took part in the battle, did not hide behind others though frightened himself, and stayed to face danger and death.

Fear is inherent in every person. It is given by nature to encourage self-preservation, and we should not be ashamed of this gift.

I write about what I saw, experienced, and felt. Despite all the hardships and thousands of meaningless deaths, the morale of our soldiers and loyalty to the motherland increased every month.

Once again, I want to stress that the main duty of a soldier is to save the life of himself and others. Your motherland needs you alive. Only your enemies need you dead. Therefore, the winner is the one who destroys the enemy and survives.

If you want yourself, your children, your people, and your original culture to live, you should follow the laws of nature, the laws of God: do not kill, do not steal. Knowing this truth, all else will fall into place.

Chapter 1:

The Battle Near Stalingrad

Baptism of Fire

Near the Chir railway station, Stalingrad region

Dead soldiers do not win, though they have no shame.

No, there is no way! said the men of our village in the early days of the war. The war will not last more than five or six months. With so many tanks, aircraft, artillery, and machine guns, they will all quickly kill each other.

I listened to them, believed their words, and feared that I would not make it in time to the battlefront. I wanted to be like a movie hero, on a horse, cutting down fleeing Germans with a sword in hand. Soon, disappointing reports started to arrive from the Soviet Information Bureau³. In the villages, they began to live a different and extremely hard life. The folk songs once sung by young girls were soon replaced with weeping wives, children, and mothers. Tears and sorrow became the norm in the countryside.

On the 9th of December 1941, I was drafted into the Red Army. The dispatch was so urgent that even my father and mother could not see me off. My parents did not have the time to drive from my home village in Urgull to the Severnoye district of the Novosibirsk region. I was mobilised from Krasnoyarka, where I lived with my father’s brother, Nicholas, and worked as an accountant at the tractor-machinery station.⁴ My uncle still managed to arrive about ten minutes before my departure and brought me a loaf of brown bread. This loaf of bread was my food for two days.

It was December, and daylight was less than seven hours long. During that day, I skied about thirty kilometres from Krasnoyarka to Severnoye, passed my medical examination, and went on horseback to the railway station in Barabinsk, arriving in the afternoon at three o’clock. Barabinsk was one hundred and forty kilometres from the town of Severnoye. Sitting in the horse-drawn sleighs dressed in light clothing, we could not hide our joy. We thought we would soon overpower our enemy, just like in the movies. Our expectation of the war was that we would soon be killing the Germans rather than them killing us.

The first time I heard an air raid siren was in May 1942 while stationed in the barracks of Ryazan. Until the end of the war, I had never heard one again. We were to always be in a state of battle readiness. The military alarm sounded at night—nobody was ever scared of it. For five months, we had been waiting for this hour. After half a year, our drill ended. This period is a difficult test in any army of the world. Nothing grinds down a soldier so much as hunger and drills.

Rain was drizzling outside when our machine-gun company first left the barracks. My eyes took time to get used to the darkness. The battalion was loaded into a train bound for Stalingrad during this short summer night.

My partner Andrey and I got a tripod for our heavy machine gun and an anti-aircraft sight to shoot at the planes. We set the machine gun on the train platform and stood behind the gun, looking at the blue sky with tired and sore eyes, searching for German planes in this immense space. Near Lipetsk, we noticed a German plane high in the sky. This plane did not pay attention to our train and flew somewhere east.

Having unloaded our equipment from the train in the evening, we could see Stalingrad in the distance. Immediately after unloading, our 524th regiment of the 112th Siberian division headed toward the setting sun.

We Siberians had never seen such a large, lifeless expanse. As far as the eye could see, the cracked earth of the steppe was burned dry by the sun.

I was looking at the map of this region, mentally paving the way along the rivers Volga and Don. It was 60 km—this distance our regiment walked in one night.

We arrived at the River Don in the morning and were greeted by a pleasant coolness. Most of our soldiers lay in the shade of the green poplars after a tedious crossing through sunburnt steppes. I was interested in the apple trees—the short, spheroid trees densely covered with sparkling leaves. There were small apples no more than a thimble in size. I picked one and put it in my mouth. The apple was sour and tart.

The Germans must have arrived at the Don at the beginning of summer. However, our official press claimed that the Germans had reached the Don and the area of Stalingrad in late summer. This was contrary to the reality that apples could only grow to this size at the beginning of summer. Also, I was surprised to notice that the people living in the area surrounding the River Don spoke the same dialect as the Siberians.

Fatigue caught up with me. I lay on my back, legs spread wide, and closed my eyes… Tanks. One, two, three, I could not count how many. All of them had bright red stars on the hull. We were running after them. The tanks suddenly came to a halt. Their engines roared strange and unintelligible whistles. Suddenly, there was a deafening rumble. The ground under my feet came to life and moved. I woke up and opened my eyes. The explosion was throwing up smoke, dust, and clods of earth. It seemed as if all still hung in the air. A branch fell off from the nearest poplar. A bomb had shattered the tree. The whistle and roar of engines were approaching. I looked up at the sky. It was the same deep blue, but it seemed roaring and threatening this time. I understood that the sky had become dangerous for us from this moment on. At any time, we could expect German planes.

I lay on my back and watched as more than a dozen German planes swooped down upon us. From them came small black objects. With every passing second, their size got bigger, their whistling louder and more menacing. My nerves could not stand it. I could not look at the impending death of our platoon. I closed my eyes and rolled over on my stomach out of fear. The earth beneath me came alive again and shook as if in a fever. A hot wave of air from the closeness of the exploding bombs covered me. Smoke, earth clods, and the smashed branches of the poplar trees rained down on us.

Several soldiers jumped up and ran away when someone shouted, GET DOWN!

The groan of a wounded soldier filled the air. That must be the long-awaited front, I thought. With all the ensuing consequences. However, as I realised that this was hardly the beginning, these events would only be the lengthy preface to a soldier’s tragic story.

The airplanes did not come back for a second strike. They passed us by and headed to a pontoon bridge built across the River Don. No one was killed or wounded in our platoon. By order of our commander Reshetnikova, we all ran to the ferry. This place had just been bombed and was already being worked by the sappers.

We could see the huge craters left behind in the aftermath on the river banks near the bridge. Steam was rising as if after a warm rain. Various fish floated in the river, their silver scales gleaming lifeless in the sun.

A soldier walking beside me poked me in the ribs and pointed at the fish as if to encourage us to rush to them. We had slowed down a step.

Our platoon commander understood our intentions and shouted at us, Bigger steps, keep up!

We lowered our heads in frustration and picked up our pace to keep up with the rest of the column. We were all in a hurry to leave this dangerous place. No one was interested in sappers repairing a pontoon or the fish stunned by the explosion and floating down the river. The further away from this explosion, the less likely our soldiers were to die. That was the law of war.

We were stationed in an old apple orchard. Some of our company had brought a pot of potatoes. The sun was making its immutable circle in the sky and began to sink to the height of the Chir River. As we found out later, the Germans were already there. From the Chir River came a fresh coolness. In the west loomed the twilight. In the Cossack⁵ village, Lower Chirskaya, barking dogs echoed each other. Nocturnal birds crowed in the bushes near the river. There was no sign of fighting nearby. Our whole platoon was located around an old apple tree. I put one edge of the greatcoat under my side and covered myself with the other side. However, I could not sleep. I was very hungry and troubled by thoughts about how our soldiers and officers were getting along. I could not find the difference between the Soviet officers and the officers of the tsarist army. Then and now, our soldiers were implicitly expected to abide by the commander’s will. Any orders had to be executed without question. This was the charter of the Soviet Army.

In the morning, we received some unpleasant news. Our platoon commander told us that we would not be having breakfast or lunch. The field kitchen was left on the other side of the River Don, and the Germans had bombed the temporary bridge. I was very hungry. During the night, German spies had infiltrated the headquarters of our regiment and killed our commander and commissar⁶ with a knife.

Our commander continued his speech, According to our scouts, the German paratroopers have landed in our rear. Our task is to destroy them. At any moment, the enemy machine guns could start shooting at us from across the River Chir.

The platoon leader’s words left us shocked and saddened, not because the Germans were so close to us, but because they could easily infiltrate our headquarters and kill our leaders. Especially shocked was Andrey, the number-one soldier of our gun crew. Andrey was the eldest among us. His opinion meant a lot to me. I always listened to him and trusted him. For me, he was like a man, who stormed the Winter Palace during the Civil War,⁷ beat the White Army, helped establish Soviet power in the village, and stood as a defender of the truth. I was above him in rank in the charter, but I never acted like it. After a few days, Andrey said they were not paratroopers, just a regular advanced division of Germans.

Soon after, our machine-gun platoons were allocated to separate companies and battalions. That was the last day we came into contact with soldiers from other machine-gun companies.

Our company went to an area where the River Chir could be seen ahead. The opposite river bank was covered with bushes, and outbuildings were located to the right. We all started digging trenches. Working, we felt less hungry. We had been deprived of food for the second day in a row. Andrey was very worried about our anti-aircraft gun, which was not adapted for ground targets. The gun stood high above ground level on a tripod and without a shield. I often watched Andrey, trying to determine what he was thinking.

My eighteen-year-old comrades, who had no interest in politics, lofty words, or slogans, and I were called to give our lives in the name of Stalin and our motherland. In the Soviet era, the motherland, the Party, and Stalin meant the same thing. We were more concerned with where our next meal would come from. All was well if you were fed and clothed, including the motherland and Stalin. Forgive me, God, for the way I used to think in those days.

As I mentioned, the way hunger acted was much stronger than patriotic appeals. I took two pieces of soap, a pair of underclothes, and shirts to exchange them for bread. I went to a Cossack farm a kilometre away from our location. I stopped in the garden under the apple tree, hesitated to enter, and felt tormented by shame for my poverty. I knew from history that the Cossacks were a military nation, and they knew the military order. What would they think about us, the most disciplined soldiers in the world? No, I shouldn’t go to the farm. But how can I return to my friends, who are waiting for me to bring back some bread? I looked at the farm. My stomach felt hollow, and I could not decide what to do next, occasionally looking back at the abandoned trenches.

What the—? I was surprised when I noticed our platoon running in the direction of the River Don. I bolted out of the orchard. Kaigorodov Vasya was running by my side. He was my countryman from Krasnoyarka Village in the Severnoye district. He noticed me and began waving his hand. I saw Andrey running hard with our machine gun. My shoulder ached from the unhealed bruises from a machine gun that weighed 34 kg. Watching them, I felt an unfamiliar sense of dread. My hunger vanished. I rushed across to the boys. With every minute, the distance between us dwindled. The noise of the approaching aircraft could be heard from the other side of the River Chir.

Air attack, get down! I cried and fell to the ground, but the rolled-up coat hanging from my shoulder would soften my landing. Andrey was lying ten metres away from me.

Ziv, ziv… The whistling and clatter of bullets were unfamiliar to my ear. Plumes of dust rose between those of us lying on the ground.

Death had power over our lives. From this day on, our lives could be taken at any moment. Death appeared to me in the form of a bony, old woman with a scythe in her hands. The whistling and clatter of bullets reminded me of the sound of a scythe mowing grass. Only it was not the grass; it was us who were falling.

The German reconnaissance aircraft flew low over us and fired. This Focke-Wulf Fw 189 aircraft was nicknamed frame. We did not wait for the second round and ran into the bushes to hide from the keen eyes of the pilot. The guys told me that a liaison from the company ran to them and gave the order to retreat. Supposedly, the Germans were surrounding us.

Andrey was silent and thoughtful. He seemed to have troubled thoughts. He was lying on the ground and looking skyward as if there, in the abyss of the universe, he could see the answers to our problems. We did not know where we were or where to retreat. There was not a soul around.

For us, this bad start could end just as badly, Andrey said reluctantly.

We decided to retreat in the direction of the rising sun. I do not remember how long we walked among the bushes without meeting anyone. At sunset, we noticed a group of people with a wagon and joined them. They were our soldiers, among whom was the commander of our battalion. At that time, he was a person I would not normally approach. By statute, I was the most senior in rank. It was up to me to ask where we were and what we were doing. My hunger had gone by the wayside. It was very difficult to overcome the disparity in rank, but I finally asked a question.

What happened to us? Where is our battalion? Where is our regiment?

The commander looked at me and