Personal Diaries

Ivan S. Chetyrbok

Scout at Summa
Senior Sergeant, 3rd Battalion, 85th Rifle Regiment, 100th Rifle Division

This account is uncensored and contain graphic battle descriptions and strong language.

From Pesochnaya we marched on Vyborg highway, to Summa - Hottinen area. We arrived at the Mannerheim Line when it was still in Finnish hands. There were some Rifle divisions before us there, they were dressed in an old fashion, in autumn and summer uniforms. They had boots with leg-wrappings and budyonnovka winter hats.

When we were in Pesochny, we all received winter uniforms. We were dressed like Santa Claus - for the first time we received Russian shapka hats, for the first time in history of our Army - before that we only used budyonnovkas. Besides that, we had woolen helmet liners, which protected entire face, with only eyes and mouth exposed to the elements. Without those two things we would have all been frostbitten. We were dressed in the following manner - a warm under-shirt, gimnastyorka, padded jacket and a greatcoat on top of it. It was hard to turn around in such gear, not to mention fighting the war.

Despite all these clothes, it was still cold. When we were on our way to the front, a lot of trucks were moving in the opposite direction - the road was narrow and we would spend a lot of time in traffic jams. There were a lot of frostbitten soldiers moving from the front to the hospitals. They had to always move - so cold they were. We had our valenki felt boots, but they only had boots with leg wrappings. Those, who walked from the front, told us about the bunkers (DOTs). WE did not quite understand what they meant. There were cuckoo snipers that fired at us while we were on the march. On an evening we approached the Mannerheim Line. When we arrived, we all lined up at the field kitchen to get our food.

There was a very well camouflaged battery next to the field kitchen. It was our first time in the war - there were no serious battles in the Polish campaign. Those guns, 76 mm regimental ones, fired a salvo! We all fell on each other! I remember that our cook was so scared that he put a pot on his head.

The next morning we already assaulted, with three battalions of our regiment. Our third battalion was in the middle, the 2nd battalion was on the right and the 1st on the left. How did we assault? Our rifles jammed. All rifles were frozen and jammed with snow, it was impossible to fire them. So we assaulted the Finnish bunkers with only bayonets at our disposal. What weapons functioned? DP worked well, and tank MGs worked well. I remember a small MG-gunner Evseich - he was really small - from our platoon.

Our assault failed. We even had a panic moment - our battalion stood up and assaulted, while the neighbor thought that it was Finns attacking. So they retreated. On the second day we did not assault, as losses were too high and the assault was cancelled.

Tanks assaulted the Mannerheim Line alone. Artillery fired on the Line without breaks, day and night - the roar of guns was always in the air. I have no idea how much lead and steel they fired on the Line. They were firing both on the bunkers and on the Finnish supply lines in the rear. Tanks would make reconnaissance in force. We received special armored sleds for the tanks, so that a tank could transport infantry to a bunker, but Finns destroyed tanks with petrol bombs. Our tanks were burning. I remember, once I was standing there in a trench in the evening, and I saw something burning in the front. I asked my commander: "Is it a Finnish village burning?" He replied: "There is no village there, it's our tanks burning". The tanks would climb on the top of the bunker and would be knocked out there. When we captured the bunkers, there were plenty of destroyed tanks there... like a cemetery... There were plenty of dead men there, our men... I still remember one of them - it was cold, and his hand froze in lifted position - he was either throwing a grenade or tried to protect his face. So he froze solid in this pose.

Tanks would go there during the day and even in the evenings. Some died there, while the others managed to abandon their knocked-out vehicles and made it back to our lines. They were completely black from smut and smoke, like Afro-Americans. The tanks that remained on the battlefield would burn for one or two more days and ammunition would explode in them all the time. Why did not they explode right away? I don't know. The only thing I remember, that I would be killed by a grenade from our own burning tank.

All our professional military were young, while enlisted men were quite old, some forty-fifty years of age, from Byelorussia. When we were standing in the trench and the officer told us that it were our tanks burning, one Byelorussian, who was standing at his DP, knocked down his machine gun and said: "A Finnish farmer has 30 hectares of land, while I have 100 times less. What for am I fighting him?" So, not everyone in our division wanted to fight. I believe that it was important to move the border. If we had not moved the border, we would have lost Leningrad in the second war and would have lost the second war. However, not everyone could understand it back then.

This is where we stopped and started to dig in. But we did not spend a lot of time in our dugout - we went on scout missions. We went behind Finnish lines sixteen times, together with Lieutenant Rebenok, who later received the Golden Star for it. I guess these days I am the only one alive from those scouts. Rebenok died three years ago. Only four of our scour party survived the Winter War.

The last seventeenth mission for us was a tragic failure; it is horrible to recall it now. We went behind Finnish lines, infiltrating their defenses, which was quite complicated. Although artillery was pounding their positions all the time and thus it was easier for us - the barbed wire fences and minefields around bunkers had been destroyed. They prepared everything for us, we could pass their obstacles. They were firing on Finnish positions for almost a month. Artillery men had an easy time - they were in the rear, lived in their dugouts and could take turns at their guns. I really did not envy our tankers, but I did envy artillery crews. Although if Finns started artillery fire, there were always a lot of casualties, because everything - trucks, horses, men - were all standing there in the open.

Our last mission was before the major offensive. Divisional commander Yermakov ordered to capture a prisoner. We were behind Finnish lines for sixteen times and we could not capture a prisoner, although we still managed to get valuable information. It was a categorical order to capture a prisoner. All men in our group started to write letters in our dugout in candle light, I remember... We started cleaning our rifles. The only automatic rifle we had was SVT, but it did not justify itself - it was quite primitively made. I remember one of our guys was cleaning it and a spring jumped out of the lock and he had to look for it in hay for a long time. All men started writing letters because everyone had a feeling that not every one would come back home. I only had my parents at home; I was still single those days. I decided that I should not worry them with a letter.

So off we went to our last scout mission. When we crawled to the anti-tank ditch, we saw a gun aiming right at us from the ditch! We sent one soldier there. It turned out that it was our burnt-down tank with its gun sticking out from the anti-tank ditch at us – and we thought it was a Finnish gun! The tank was empty, except for a dead burnt tanker. There were some petrol bombs lying on the snow around the tank. We started cutting the barbed wire - we had very good scissors, they could cut barbed wire like thread. We started to cut it and bullets started hissing around. They opened up on us. We made it across the barbed wire fence, and they spotted us. We should have turned back, but our platoon commander Deri, Junior Lieutenant, shouted: "Forward, comrades!" He was either drunk or he just decided that it was better to die in battle than come back with nothing. All of a sudden three Finns emerged - they were all big, in white helmets, all in white clothes: "Drop your weapons!" I first thought it was a joke! They just said it in Russian: "Drop your weapons!". Sergeant Major Kramarenko shouted in response: "Bolsheviks do not surrender!" Then Finns opened fire and we fired in return. DP light MG was normally helping us out - can you imagine, we would take DP with us on our scout missions! But it jammed quite shortly after the beginning of firefight. We started tossing hand grenades, but we quickly ran out of them. Deri, platoon leader realized that it was the end and something had to be done. He shouted: "guys follow my example!" He took an RGD hand grenade, put it against his chest and fell on it. An explosion sounded in the air, guys shouted" "Lieutenant is dead!" Finns started to finish us off. Our wounded were screaming in the snow. A Finn would come up to a wounded; put his submachine-gun against his back and... They all had submachine-guns, we did not have them! In that war an SMG was like museum relic for us. I guess we would not have had PPShs in the second war if we had not encountered them in the Finnish war.

So Finns started to finish us off. Private Miklush, my friend, was lying next to me. He ran out of hand grenades, I was also empty. Only Sergeant Major Kramarenko, the guy who shouted "Bolsheviks do not surrender!" left one bullet for himself in his Nagant pistol. As a Sergeant Major, he had a sheepskin coat and a Nagant revolver. So he left one bullet to shoot himself. A Finn walked up to one of our wounded guys, Basko, and stood above him. Wounded Basko shouted: "Shoot me now, [expletive deleted]!" In the next moment Kramarenko fired his last shot at the Finn and he fell down. Another Finn walked up to Miklush, I was lying nearby. I thought it was the end. Miklush pretended that he was dead. He was just lying motionless on the snow. The Finn walked up to him and pointed his gun at him, but thought that Miklush was kind of dead. He just hit him in the head with his foot - helmet flew off Miklushe's head, and the Finn walked on.

We would have all been dead, if our guys had not helped us out. They heard a firefight in the forest and Chief of Staff Pilipenko ordered the artillery to fire on the forest - he knew we would not come back anyway. We used this artillery barrage. Finns ducked for cover and we crawled back to our lines. Rebenok, me, then Miklush and Kramarenko made it back. We also managed to pull out wounded Basko from the battlefield. That was the end of our last scout mission at Hottinen. Rebenok later on described all those events in "Fighting in Finland" book, but he did not write all the truth. If he wrote all truth, he would not get the Golden Star of Hero of Soviet Union. He was wounded later, I saw how it happened. He walked out from behind a large stone (it was on the second line of Finnish defenses) and he got hit right in his arm. After that his hand remained bent for the rest of his life. During the Great Patriotic War he reached the rank of a Colonel, although he had to write with his left hand.

Before that we also went into the Finnish rear. We were trying to find out what they had there. There were very few Finns against us. How could they hold us? Their weapons were very good; one Finn could hold back an entire Red Army battalion. They had bunkers, a trench next to the bunker and infantry in the trenches. When we started our offensive, they fired at us from there. It was only when our artillery hit them - earth stood up like one huge black wall, so close to each other were the explosions - only then they started retreating from their trenches. I saw men in grey overcoats, they looked like mice. That was it, when we ran up to the bunker; they were gone - no dead, no wounded. But the whole area was full of craters; every inch had been ploughed by our artillery! Where on earth did they go? God knows. I only saw a large thermos there, with steaming macaroni in it. I must say I had not seen a single killed Finnish soldier in that war.

When we were marching towards the frontline, those frostbitten men who were coming against us, told us that Finns had bunkers covered with thick layer of rubber - that was all fairytales. Why would they need rubber, if walls of Finnish bunkers were over one meter thick?

We were always advancing on Vyborg highway. When the battle for Vyborg city started, we were to the right from the city, on a hill that has a radio tower now. That was where the war ended for us. From the hill we could see Vyborg burning. That was the last day of the war. We did not know that the war was about to be over. That's because we were receiving a lot of Soviet propaganda leaflets "Remember that Vyborg is the gateway to Helsinki". I also remember a Finnish leaflet about Stern. Stern was the general who was commander of our 8th Army. There were leaflets on the ground, and I picked up one of them. There was a heading and his portrait. The heading was: "Stern - a [expletive deleted] Jew, traitor, whistle-blower, [expletive deleted]". Just like that. And then it read: "Stern, your army commander, only completed six classes in primary school, did not have brain for more. He was licking Voroshilov's [expletive deleted], betrayed Marshal Blucher." And I did not even know who the commander of the 8th Army was; I learnt it from the leaflet!

So, we did not know that the war was to be over on March 13th. In the evening of March 12th I brought food to the frontline, and someone from another company was speaking about the end of the war the next day, but he was shouted at. No one believed that the war would be over. So we just did not know. Below us from the hill we could see smoke and dust, Vyborg was burning. It was either another regiment from our Division or another division storming the city. I was an NCO then; I did not know many things. Our leadership, on the contrary, already knew that the war was to be over the next day, and was in a hurry to capture Vyborg before the end of the war. And all of a sudden the next day the company commander told us: "the war is over." After that he met a Finnish company commander on no-man's land, they shook hands. In the evening everyone started campfires, both us and the Finns. Our campfires were far from the Finnish ones. Everyone was drunk and our company commander was rebuking us. Our soldiers replied to him: "What? Who wants to fight the war here? Who needs this war? Do Finns need this war? No one needs it, neither us nor Finns!" I could also hear the Finnish officer shouting at his men. Everyone was singing songs, everyone was drunk. However, we did not come close to each other, the Russians and the Finns. Quite a view it was. I also made myself warm at the fire. That was it, the war was over. During the war I was always OK, although I always had heart problems. When the war was over, my heart again gave me problems. At a train station, when we were leaving from there, I fell down - so bad my heart was.

We did not use the armored shields when we were storming the Mannerheim Line. When we were preparing for the assault, there was a talk about them - they were testing the armored sleds. There was even a civil engineer from a factory that was making them. It seemed very odd to me - all men around were in uniforms, and that guy was just in civilian clothes. It was an older person, quite tall. First they made just rectangular armored boxes. It could accommodate five or six men. It was attached to a tank by a chain. When they were testing it, the tank drove to the forest, the armored sled hit something and the chain was torn. After that they made those armored sleds more round, smoothing the sharp corners. After that they brought the armored shields on skies. With a hole to fire a rifle or an MG. You had to push this armored shield forward in front of you. However, I did not see anyone using them. When we were attacking, there was no time to think about those shields. None of the armored shields proved to be good equipment.

I remember a lot of bombers flying into the Finnish rear. They were flying there all day long. I don't know where they dropped their bombs; we could not hear the explosions. I remember an incident that happened during the night. There was some aircraft flying above us, I guess it was an English-made one - Finns did not have their own airplane manufacturing. Finns were friends of England those days, while we were friends with Germany. So there was one plane flying from there, and another was going after him. One of the planes was shot down. We all shouted "Hurrah!" We thought that it was our plane shooting down a Finnish one, but it was the other way around, as our commanders told us later. I did not see any more airplanes or dogfights in the sky. Our artillery was doing a great job; tanks crews were doing a good job. We would have made a good job but our weapons were prone to fail. The only thing that worked well was the MGs. I remember that later in the war, after breaking the Mannerheim Line, we were all sitting there behind large boulders, the whole platoon. I brought dinner in the evening, everyone had a shot of vodka, and everyone started talking and in a minute forgot that we were in war. But machine gun crews were always on guard. They were our saviors. They would fire on the forest in zigzag pattern, from top to bottom. If there were a Finnish cuckoo sniper in the tree, it would have been shot down. However, there were no cuckoos, these are all fantasies. Why? I will tell you. When the war was over on that hill near Vyborg, our company commander Sukach and the Finnish officer walked out towards each other and shook hands. We all got out of our trenches. Finns also got out of their trenches, they were all dressed in white, we could not see them! The Finnish officer spoke Russian and he told us: "Why were you wasting ammo? Would we sit in the trees? No Way. One has to take food, water - and it would freeze there, one has to take ammo, a ladder in order to climb a tree. Where did you see a ladder next to a tree? Look at the branches, they are so thin, where can you hide there? Artillery is firing all the time, splinters are flying through the air, and you would not find a shelter there". He added: "we camouflage our positions on the ground, hide behind a stone or in trenches". Maybe they used snipers in trees sometimes - for example, when we were moving to the frontline on the highway, we had no time to look for the cuckoos. There were tanks, artillery, supply units, horse-drawn units on the move - no time for searching. When we did reach the bunkers, there were no cuckoo snipers there.

The way we captured the bunker. We tried to capture it several times, we even drove there on tanks, and nothing worked out. After our ill-fated scout mission we again stormed it. Early in the morning we were ready to assault from the forward trench. I thought: "I guess this is it. The end.” Fire was just too strong. We were on the other slope of a hill, in a small forest. There was an open field in front of us. I thought that was it. I recalled all my life that moment. I could not lift my head, so heavy fire was. I lifted a tree branch over my head - it was immediately cut down by fire. It all grew silent all of a sudden. They ceased firing. Then they brought a howitzer. I had never seen a heavy howitzer so close to the frontline. It was standing right on the forest edge, camouflaged with tree branches. It fired on the bunker and its surroundings all day long. The sun was already setting… It was cold. There was a ruined barn there, walls were made of stone, I remember a brass tap sticking out of its wall. Our entire platoon went there in order to move a little bit inside it, jump and stretch our muscles. So we were standing there and jumping. I was the tallest so I had to bend a bit. The bunker was really near, in some 200 meters. Rebenok shouted to me: "Get out of there; if a mine hits the barn, you are all dead!" He himself was somewhere outside, digging in with a shovel. He shouted: "Bobok, Chetyrbok, come here!" Bobok was our medic, a Belorussian man. He was a brave guy. We walked up to him, in order to help him dig a hole. Soil was frozen solid. We were hitting the ground hard; I lifted the shovel and - pam! It was cut into to by a bullet. It was a sniper.

When our artillery fired a salvo, the explosions were like one wall of earth - a solid wall. Earth stood up. Then it was over and I saw Finns crawling out of their trenches and disappearing somewhere in the rear. Then the "Forward!" order came. We shouted "Hurraaah!!!" and ran forward. I was the first, I ran into the Finnish trench and saw that it was empty, just that thermos with macaroni there, I was just standing there gazing at the bunker, it was interesting to see it. I was just standing and gazing at it like a moron. Mishko, chief of staff, shouted to me: "Chetyrbok, get down!". Before I could duck for cover, the bunker flew into the air. Our engineers brought explosives on tanks and blew it up. I was thrown into a shell crater; it is good that I had a helmet on. I just fell into that shell crater feet over my head. When I fell down I saw a large part of that bunker flying through the air and falling with loud noise. I thought: "It is going to kill me now". We blew that bunker up and moved forward. There were more battles after that.

We went on scout missions again. I was with the first squad there - we could not just let the whole battalion march. So we just walked forward, not knowing what was in front of us. It was already growing dark. There was a large stone in front of us, like a haystack. All of a sudden a shot was fired from behind that boulder, and we saw flashes of rifle shots all over the place in front of us. We stopped, turned back and reported that Finns had another defensive line there. It was their second line of defense. It was not as strong as Mannerheim Line, but it also had some fortifications. They had the third line at Vyborg, too. More casualties occurred on our side.

I had a regular rifle, without bayonet. The bayonet was quite uncomfortable when I had to bring ammo and thermoses with hot food to the frontline. When the fire was too strong, I would just attach the thermos to my leg with a rope, and would crawl on the ground. One thermos for the first course and one for the second course. I had one assistant, a young soldier. He started weeping, saying: I have a stomach rupture. I let him go into the rear and did not report this to anyone. If I did report, they would have executed the boy. What for? Maybe he really had a rupture. The Sergeant Major did not do a thing, he was just sitting there in the rear in his nice sheepskin coat and. All he had to do was to load all the food and ammo on me. He never showed up at the frontline. However, he joined us in that ill-fated scout raid. I would also tie MG belts and DP ammo boxes to my leg. I don't know how far our forward trench was from the Finnish positions. I was bringing food there in the evenings. I saw a field and our dead men lying on it like heaps of grass during harvest. That meant that there were Finns behind that field.

Field kitchens would drive closer to the frontline in the evening, so that soldiers who were nearby could have something to eat. But as soon as Finns opened mortar fire, they would ditch all the food on the ground and flee. They had to leave the food to the soldiers in some way! So they just dumped the food on the ground and leave from a dangerous spot. Sometimes in the mornings I saw a pile of frozen pea soup, pork or lard in the snow. You could just take it and eat it. Catering was very good. They did not ask you at the field kitchen, which unit you were from. There were artillery crews and tank crews in the rear - they were all getting their food there. So sometimes I would walk from one field kitchen to another and look what kind of food they had. Pea soup? Damn I'm tired of it. So I would go and find a field kitchen that would have the best food to offer. Catering at the frontline was also good. They gave us 100 grams of vodka per day. Actually, it was more than that. A rifle company is 120 men, while only 20 men would be left there at the frontline. Of course, they did not get all the vodka for the company, so that they would not drink there too much, but still they would receive a lot of it. One time I was riding on a horse-drawn carriage, got under fire and I saw a whole box full of vodka bottles. The Sergeant Major was not there. He was either killed or wounded. There was no one, so I could just grab that box of vodka bottles. So catering at the front was very good. I even heard a story - maybe it is true - that a Finnish sniper was getting food from our field kitchens - he would just put on Red Army uniforms and go to the kitchen.