Selected text
I entered the Naval School on July 3, as soon as I arrived from Kerch, and in August I was already at the front, here in Leningrad. I was a machine gunner (they changed our cloths for infantry uniform). At the end of September they brought us back to Leningrad and changed our uniform for naval one. We starved in blockade for three months, till December 9. On December 9, 1941 we were brought to Ladoga Lake [39 km far from St. Petersburg]. The Lake was already ice-bound, and 1 day and a half we went on foot across the Ladoga Lake to Kobona. [Kobona is a settlement on the east coast of the Ladoga Lake, where they accepted people evacuated from the besieged Leningrad.] And we happened to loose our way at night walking through the ‘ice desert’ and went towards German positions. We were lucky to be noticed and set on the right way by ski patrols of the Road of Life [20].
We walked about 50 km across the Ladoga Lake: it was terribly windy and frosty. On my left there walked Sergey Akhromeev (later he became a USSR Marshal and a Hero of the Soviet Union [21]), and on my right – Evgeniy Markin. All of us were cold and lousy, because we had no opportunity to wash. We suffered from starvation! During the hardest period of the siege people received 125 grammes of bread per day, and we got 250 gr. From Kobona we went on foot to Tikhvin. [Tikhvin is a city 140 km far from the Ladoga Lake; front line went across Tikhvin.] At that time Tikhvin was recaptured and was full of corpses: both German and Soviet. We were told to take away corpses. They promised to give us supplementary ration for it. We did it and received half-pack of porridge concentrate and two small bits of sugar each. In Tikhvin we got into the train and moved to Astrakhan: our School had been already evacuated there. [Astrakhan is a city in the Delta of the Volga River.]
It took us a month to get to Astrakhan by train. We got terribly dirty - black! But we were well fed, in compare with Leningrad.
We arrived in Astrakhan on 10th January 1942. Immediately from the railway station we were brought to bath-house, they gave us clean uniform and took to our School. And we started our studies. At first I studied at the command faculty. But soon we got to know that a lot of students from Hydrographic school perished on the ice of Ladoga Lake. Therefore in Astrakhan they offered us to change the faculty in case we wished. I agreed to change for hydrographic department, because I wanted to get engineering education.
Having finished the first course, we went for practice to a village near Astrakhan. As far as I was a specialist in hydrography, I fulfilled topographical survey.
By that time German troops approached Volga (Stalingrad, Volgograd at present). Our School students immediately finished their practical studies and moved to Baku. But we, specialists in topography (‘educated’ already after a year of studies) were made lieutenants: those who had not very good marks for exams became junior lieutenants, and those who had good and excellent marks (like me, for example) became lieutenants. And we were sent to Stalingrad hell [22]. It was the time of the famous Stalingrad battle. By the way, not all students, specialists in hydrography were sent to the front line (only 28 from 100). And the rest 72 did not participate.
We walked about 50 km across the Ladoga Lake: it was terribly windy and frosty. On my left there walked Sergey Akhromeev (later he became a USSR Marshal and a Hero of the Soviet Union [21]), and on my right – Evgeniy Markin. All of us were cold and lousy, because we had no opportunity to wash. We suffered from starvation! During the hardest period of the siege people received 125 grammes of bread per day, and we got 250 gr. From Kobona we went on foot to Tikhvin. [Tikhvin is a city 140 km far from the Ladoga Lake; front line went across Tikhvin.] At that time Tikhvin was recaptured and was full of corpses: both German and Soviet. We were told to take away corpses. They promised to give us supplementary ration for it. We did it and received half-pack of porridge concentrate and two small bits of sugar each. In Tikhvin we got into the train and moved to Astrakhan: our School had been already evacuated there. [Astrakhan is a city in the Delta of the Volga River.]
It took us a month to get to Astrakhan by train. We got terribly dirty - black! But we were well fed, in compare with Leningrad.
We arrived in Astrakhan on 10th January 1942. Immediately from the railway station we were brought to bath-house, they gave us clean uniform and took to our School. And we started our studies. At first I studied at the command faculty. But soon we got to know that a lot of students from Hydrographic school perished on the ice of Ladoga Lake. Therefore in Astrakhan they offered us to change the faculty in case we wished. I agreed to change for hydrographic department, because I wanted to get engineering education.
Having finished the first course, we went for practice to a village near Astrakhan. As far as I was a specialist in hydrography, I fulfilled topographical survey.
By that time German troops approached Volga (Stalingrad, Volgograd at present). Our School students immediately finished their practical studies and moved to Baku. But we, specialists in topography (‘educated’ already after a year of studies) were made lieutenants: those who had not very good marks for exams became junior lieutenants, and those who had good and excellent marks (like me, for example) became lieutenants. And we were sent to Stalingrad hell [22]. It was the time of the famous Stalingrad battle. By the way, not all students, specialists in hydrography were sent to the front line (only 28 from 100). And the rest 72 did not participate.
Period
Location
Russia
Interview
Boris Lesman