Tank Rider: Into the Reich with the Red Army

I just finished this book and found it to be one of the most interesting WWII memoirs that I've read. Here's what I liked about it: 1) This is the most honest Russian account of WWII that I've ever read. The author tells it like he sees it, even when it is not necessarily flattering for the Red Army: the absence of Russian fighter cover, tankers refusing to advance against panzerfausts or Tigers, fraticide, bungling, commanders mysteriously always absent from the fighting, etc. That said, the author's pride in his men and his unit's achievements is obvious. 2) Unlike some other military memoirs, where the author might start the war as a colonel and end as an army commander, this author remains a platoon leader for almost two years of constant fighting. While he seems to have been constantly passed over for promotion, he was constantly assigned to the most dangerous missions in the leading elements of his brigade (overall, this book really reminded of IN DEADLY COMBAT by Bidermann). 3) While the book focuses on the fighting, there is also plenty about rest periods, what they ate, how they interacted with civilians, etc. From this perspective, this book is vastly more informative about the Russian soldiers' experience during the war than the more highly acclaimed IVAN'S WAR and more interesting than books like FIGHTING FOR THE SOVIET MOTHERLAND by Loza. What didn't I like? Nothing really...not many maps, but they are not really missed given the small scale of the engagements described in the book and the good descriptions by the author.

These memoirs written a few years after the author's 50-year career in the Russian Army "are a look back at the life of a typical member of the Red Army" in World War II. Bessonov was an officer in a tank detachment; but lower-ranking field officers such as he was at the time were out in front of their men in advances and engagements. The memoir is shorn of any heroics or sentimentality. Nor does its author focus on himself any more than necessary to make for a sense of continuity or set the scene for the reader. The style is like an officer's "after-action report"--in this case one long report--going little beyond what happened to be read by others for purposes of intelligence-gathering or a comprehensive military history. "We came under fire from three German assault guns, which turned out to be some 50 metres from us. We had to take cover behind trees, as the assault guns fired at almost very single soldier." For the reader, such spareness makes in seem he is almost participating in the action. In battle, there's no time or occasion to think or feel really--only sheer action and reaction, the way the former officer writes. Bessonov joined the Red Army at the climatic 1943 battle of Kursk dooming Nazi Germany to eventual defeat on the Eastern Front. But it wasn't until two years later that the author and his tank crews and accompanying infantrymen victoriously enterered Berlin. In his plainly-written, though gripping war memoir, Bessonov brings the reader every step of the conflict-filled way.

Evgeni Bessonov took part in the Great patriotic War while he served in the 49h Mechanized Brigade of the 6th Mechanized Corps of the 4th Tank Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front (commanded by the dynamic Marshal Ivan Konev). In this book he recounts many of his wartime adventures, at least as far as his memory perimtted, because the writing was made many years after the war. Bessonov was a junior officer who commanded a platoon of 12 - 20 tank riders, the men who rode in battle on top of the Soviet tanks, mainly T-34s and later IS-2s. Although he saw much action and was wounded some times he was not lucky when it came to promotion and didn't manage to command his own company. Albeit he made the Army his carreer after the end of the war. The book is important because it presents the war from the view of a simple Soviet warrior and is particularly revealing regarding the strength of the Luftwaffe even late in 1944 (when according to history books German aircraft had been disappeared from the sky of the Eastern Front, but quite the contrary was true!) and of the qualities of the German soldiers, whom he regarded as tough, well trained, cunning and strong opponents, from whom one could expect anything, anytime. Bessonov started his wartime carreer in August 1943 and finished it just a week before the fall of Berlin, when he was seriously wounded fron an artillery shell. The book contains some good maps but many of the places mentioned are not to be found on them. I didn't also understand why the translator kept calling the artillery and mortar rounds as "mines" throughout the text.

I just finished reading this book and I must say I thoroughly enjoyed it. The author gives a fresh perspective of the fighting on the Eastern Front during WWII. The author was an infantry officer who "specialized' in riding on tanks into battle. He provides very detailed accounts of tank/infantry cooperation during urban battles (relevant if you are a soldier on the way to Iraq) and dispels the myth that the Soviet Army was a faceless mass that just steamrolled over the German Army. He changes the "face-less mass" belief. He shows the human side of the Soviet soldier and his many tales of life with his comrades shows they were not communist robots, but humans who loved, mourned and lost. Overall this book is worth every penny and worth reading. I highly recommend it.

Evgeni Bessonov served as a platoon and a company commander in the Red Army during WWII. He was posted in the 49th Mechanized Brigade of the 4th Tank Army. He served continuously in the brigade from the Orel offensive (August 1943) to the encirclement of Berlin in April 1945 when he was wounded. He was almost unbelievably lucky to survive since he served among a tank rider batallion, commanding men who rode to the battle on tanks of the vanguard of breakthrough advances. He took a part in five stragegic offensives and in each one his batallion lost at least 80% of its men. This book contains Bessonov's memoirs about the war, covering the time between his graduation from high school five days before the war started up to his transferral out of the brigade in Fall 1945. The text gives a very vivid picture of life (and death) in the spearhead of the Soviet offensive. As most of the books on the East Front of WWII have been written from the German perspective, this book is a valuable for giving the front-line perspective of the opposing side. Since this book was written almost 60 years after the events, it is possible that it contains factual mistakes due to faulty memory, as do most of such memoirs that are written without a support of a diary. In particular, I suspect that most of the ever-present German "Tiger" heavy tanks were actually misidentified Panzer IV medium tanks. However, such small shortcomings don't seriously devalue the book. In short: this book is a one-of-a-kind account of war among the Soviet 'tankodesantniki'.