Tag #144964 - Interview #78010 (Lev Galper)

I came to the Don River; Rostov was on the other bank. I started looking for a crossing and saw a line of soldiers lying on the bank. I asked them where they were from; they turned out to be from the 248th division. There was a fight in Rostov, our troops were trying to capture the city. The soldiers persuaded me to stay with them and to find my platoon when the battle was over. During the fight in the city it was impossible to find anybody: in the field or in the steppe one could see clearly where the Germans were and where the Russians were. But in a city, fighting took place in the streets, in the houses and it was impossible to tell who was where.

Together with that division, I crossed the ice of the frozen Don and participated in the fight for the city. At night, after the action, we came into an empty house, had dinner and went to bed. Germans had been driven out of the city and we could rest quietly. But in the morning we were woken up by shooting. We found out that a fight was going on not far from us. A wounded soldier was sitting on the stairs of our house. I looked out and saw a German near a low stone fence. I had no weapon with me; I had left it in the room. I took a carbine from the wounded soldier's hands, took aim and shot. The German fell down; I don't know whether I had killed him or not. I went out into the street holding the carbine in my hands but the fight was already far.