Leonid Fyodorovich Shakh was born in Ukraine. He volunteered for the army at the age of 17.
He was assigned to the 2nd Shock Army, which had been formed to break the siege of Leningrad. In December 1941, General Grigory Sokolov, formerly Deputy People’s Commissar of the NKVD, was appointed its commander. Under his command, the 2nd Army attempted to launch an offensive on 7 January 1942. Lacking artillery and desperately short of telephone cable and radio sets, the army of 12 000 men suffered around 3,000 killed and wounded in just the first half-hour of fighting. On 10 January, Sokolov was replaced by General Nikolai Klykov, under whose command the 2nd Army would be encircled. In April 1942, a new commander, General Andrei Vlasov, would be flown in to take command of the encircled army…
– I arrived on the Volkhov Front in December 1941. Our 2nd Army was called a shock army because it was intended to take part in an offensive. But we had no tanks or aircraft — we did not even have any guns! The only weapons we had were rifles. There were no submachine guns yet, and if there were any, only the commanders had them. Not all commanders, either — only company commanders. So compared with the Germans, we were poorly armed,’ Leonid Fyodorovich recalled.
‘How much ammunition were you issued?’
‘We had enough ammunition. But that made no difference. We were at the edge of a forest, while 500 metres away, on a rise amid the frozen marshes, stood a village. That was where the Germans had dug in. The villagers stoked the stoves for them, and they kept warm, drank tea and watched us through the windows. Through the windows!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The Germans had poured water over the hill on which the little village stood. In temperatures of forty degrees below zero, the water turned to ice, and there was no way for us to reach them. So the Germans watched us from their warm cottages. Whenever we tried to advance, they managed to kill or wound half of us. We fell in the snow — some alive, others dead. After an attack like that, we could not withdraw. We were below them, out in the open, and the Germans opened fire on anyone who moved. So each of us slowly burrowed into the snow and waited for nightfall. Winter days were short, and it grew dark early. Under cover of darkness, we returned to our starting positions. New reinforcements were already waiting for us there, so by morning we could go into battle at full strength again. But after our attacks, half the rifles remained on the battlefield with the dead. Before long, there was nothing to give the reinforcements, and men began going into the attack with one rifle between two of them. The losses were appalling. Our Volkhov Front was commanded by General Meretskov, who had recently been released from prison. He had been ordered to break the siege of Leningrad and, I suppose, he no longer thought about the men or how many of them would be killed — he had to carry out the order! So every day more men arrived at the front and were ground down…’
‘Were the dead simply left lying there?’
‘No. Once, during a lull in the fighting, I was assigned to a party sent to collect and bury the dead. We were given one pickaxe and one shovel. The ground was frozen so hard that not even a crowbar could break it. So we hacked through the ice to a depth of up to a metre and dragged the dead into the hole. We had no stretchers, so we dragged them by their greatcoats. But when a man was killed, he did not lie down flat and fold his arms to make it easier for us to bury him afterwards. No. Each man had fallen differently — one with an arm like this, another with a leg…’
There were many dead, and they all had to be buried. But how could we bury them like that? We had to force them into the grave. We could not dig any deeper than a metre, so we put the dead in and covered them with broken ice. In spring, of course, the ice melted and the bodies reappeared…
Leonid Fyodorovich fell silent.
‘How were you dressed in such cold weather?’
‘We were well clothed,’ said Leonid Fyodorovich, glad to change the subject. ‘The Germans kept warm in the cottages because they had no winter clothing. We had warm underclothes, then winter undergarments. Over those we wore quilted trousers and a quilted jacket, with a greatcoat on top. We had balaclavas and ushankas, and felt boots on our feet. Of course, dressed in all that, a soldier’s movement was somewhat restricted, but I did not see anyone suffering from frostbite. And that was despite the fact that we slept neither in dugouts nor in houses, but directly on the snow!’
‘How was that possible?’
‘Just like that! The snow served as both our dugout and our home. We did not even have a proper line of trenches like the one you have at Stalin Line. Each man simply dug himself a hole and collapsed into it. In that forest, we had no trenches along which we could move from one position to another. So we slept in the snow.’
‘How many nights in a row did you sleep like that?’
‘We slept like that all winter,’ Leonid Fyodorovich laughed. ‘From the moment I reached the front until I was wounded, I slept on the snow. It was only when I was taken to a field hospital that I found myself in a tent and on a camp bed. Otherwise…’
Of course, there were times when we went deeper into the forest and lit a fire there, but we rarely did so. We were so exhausted that we could fall asleep anywhere — even in battle! Sometimes, during an attack, you would fall and have no strength to get up. You would think, ‘I’ll catch my breath for a moment, then I’ll get up.’ Bullets would whistle over your head, your eyes would close and you would drift off to sleep…
So it was only after I had been wounded and taken to hospital that I could finally get a proper night’s sleep. I was wounded twice, and the second time it was very serious. After leaving hospital, I was sent to the Gorky Anti-Aircraft Artillery School. I graduated in the summer of 1944, by which time Minsk had already been liberated. I was sent there with orders to form and prepare for operational duty the 269th Independent Radar Battery of the 73rd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Brigade, which defended the capital of Soviet Belarus. That is how I came to be here and, thank God, I lived to the age of 97 and even celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Great Victory in Minsk!
Leonid Fyodorovich Shakh (centre) before the premiere of the film “Panfilov’s 28 Men”
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