Konstantin Dyachkov
Series 
Veterans of war
Nikolay Ivanovich Ivanov, sergeant
“I really have nothing to say, all war was like rumble. Attack – injury – hospital – back to battle-front. I have no pictures, when would we take pictures? And what camera would we use, anyway? We kept running out of cartridges… you use up all your stock and get back to cover. I went to the front at 18 or 19. Death was all around us; people, equipment – all mixed with soil. Roads covered with dead bodies, hard to breathe, especially in summer. Unbearable stench. Ordeal.
In 1943-1944 there was a terrible slaughter there. It was hard to understand anything. In the morning we would take our stand half a kilometer away from their defences; our troops would do artillery preparation, but then Germans’ response would follow – just terrible. Land seemed to turn upside down. Some soldiers would lose their legs or arms; others would get buried alive… Then advance would sound, and you could not hear or see anything. All you could hear was roar of the battle, and all you could smell was burning. Then you would break in a Germans’ trench and there you had to keep your eyes open every second – he that was first would remain alive. Look at my hands – they are covered with scars.
We would repulse an attack ten to fifteen times a day. Their fortifications were very strong, very different from ours. They prepared everything in a proper way: both dugouts and blindages… However, Katyushas would raze just anything to the ground – no defences could withstand thermite shells, anything would burn.
Then I was appointed gun-layer at a self-propelled vehicle. Here everything was quite different: the place where I had to sit seemed to be a tomb, nothing could be seen, neither right nor left, you could only look straight. We got hit many times. When the machine was not burning, it is better to stay inside. As soon as you went out you would catch a bullet or splinter. I happened to start burning, too. Well, clothes burn slower than humans do, I should tell you. Things like this would put anybody out of action pretty soon.
I returned to my village in 1947. Most people, or at least one person in every family, got killed. All people left were women and a few eighty-year-old men. We had no equipment – just bulls and cows – to plow the land. There is so much land here; we used to both sow and mow. Now nobody is left to do all this. Weeds grow tall, and the forest is overtaking our land and is leaving less space for people. In the past there were times when no hayfields were left, every plot of land was tilled.”
Ivanov from Kolupalovo
village Kolupalovo, Novgorod region, Russia
16 march 2008
Foto ID: 0730
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