My name is Alexey Svyatogorov. I was born in 1925, in the Caucasus, as my father used to work there at that time. He was a civil engineer and they would give him commissions in different parts of the country. So we traveled to Siberia, Ukraine, and many other places. I had two elder brothers - Anatoly, born in 1913, and Pyotr, born in 1917. We were in Luhansk in 1941 when the war broke out. My brothers were students at Dnipropetrovsk University of Civil Engineering then. In spite of the difference in age, they were both in the same year of study. As for me, I was at school.
Hardly had I finished my ninth grade that our troops retreated and the Germans took Luhansk. It was in July of 1942. The German vanguard detachments were the first to enter the city, followed by the Italians a couple of days later. So we had to discover what it was like to live under occupation. I remember there was a girl, Lida Teppel, who was the secretary of the Komsomol (Young Communist League) unit in our school. At the beginning of the war, her father, who had a German background, was deported to Siberia, beyond the Ural Mountains. She must have held a grudge against the Soviet state because of that. In fact, when the Germans came, she immediately put on their uniform and an SS armband, a piece of red cloth with a swastika on it. Our family, together with other remaining citizens, was supposed to be evacuated, but my father had just undergone a serious surgery and we had to stay put. He had cancer, and the doctors told us that he would die in about a month. And so it happened.
It was not long after my father's funeral that I got arrested. It was Lida who had betrayed us. They took us in November, and I was released only on February 14, 1943, when the Soviet troops finally took the city back. When the Germans retreated, they blew up the prison, the former KGB building. The walls of the basement, where we were kept, were massive, so they made sure that the explosion was really strong hoping that the prisoners, who were presumably working for the Soviet state, would die under the ruins. We were actually buried under the debris but, fortunately, rescued by our soldiers. When I finally got home that evening, my mother was so full of emotions that it took her some time to get the key into the keyhole. She had already lost all hope to ever see me alive.
My two brothers were at the front. They were supposed to be graduating from Dnipropetrovsk University and they already had their diploma theses ready. Naturally, because of the war everything was cancelled, and they were drafted and deployed first to Kharkiv, and from there to Moscow, and from there to Nahabino, where there were instruction camps organized by Kuybyshev Military Engineering Academy. There they studied for six or seven months to qualify as military engineers. After that, they both joined the troops that defended Moscow. As far as I remember, one of Anatoly's assignments was to blow up Krymskiy bridge in Moscow, and Pyotr had to blast some railroad bridge. The conditions for blasting were quite peculiar in both cases, but I won't go into the technical details now. Luckily they both survived those assignments. Pyotr got into the Guards unit and was appointed deputy commander for military engineering, and Anatoly was a bridge builder in a different battalion. Pyotr was killed on March 23, 1942, near Moscow, and Anatoly survived. He marched all the way through to Germany until the Victory Day. Later, when the war with Japan began, he went there as well. Nothing ever happened to him, no wounds, no shellshock.
As for me, I was supposed to be drafted right after I was rescued from the ruins of the building, but I was too feeble and weak after the imprisonment. So they let me stay at home for some time and gain back my strength. In March, however, I was already in the army, with the 5th motorized infantry brigade that came from Stalingrad and had a camp in Peredelsk, which is near Luhansk. I stayed with them during the whole summer training, and my mom came to see me sometimes. It was sheer luck that I and all the other young guys like me did have some training before we were sent to the front.
I was trained as a mortar gunner. My first battle was in Donbass, in a small town Yama, which is now called Seversk. It was terrible but successful, and it certainly made a huge impression on us, especially on those of us who saw a dead soldier for the first time in their lives. That was a man called Okrainets, the commander of the battery. He would urge us to go faster, which wasn't an easy thing to do, as it was autumn already and it started to rain. A 82mm mortar weighs around fifty-six kilos, and you and your partner have to drag it up the hill, and the wheels are all covered in mud! It happened so that Okrainets got killed. He was standing with his back turned to us, when a stray bullet, a shell splinter to be more precise, hit him in the chest and tore out his heart. It was extremely depressing for us. Nevertheless, we successfully marched through Slavyansk and took Kramatorsk. I think it was September 5. Interestingly, the day of liberation of Donbass is celebrated on September 6.
I took part in the liberation of Ukraine all the way from Luhansk to Izmail. After Donbass we headed for Nikopol and crossed the Dnieper there. The Nikopol beachhead was known as the cemetery of German tanks. There were as many as six rows of tanks stuck in the mud along the distance of eighty kilometers. We had to blow them up in order to get through. Then there were Ingulets and Belozerka, but it wasn't until late in the fall of 1943, that the infantry finally managed to clear the way for our motorized detachments and we could rush towards Zaporozhye. We had good German machines, brand new two-axle Opel Blitz, taken as trophies at Stalingrad. We drove those trucks across the whole Europe.
In Izmail our 5th motorized infantry brigade, which used to be an independent unit, had to join the 57th army, with Gagen as the commander-in-chief. Later, in Belgrade, we were renamed, and by the end of the war we were known as the 32nd Guards mechanized brigade. Zavyalov was our commander who stayed with us until the end of the war. In fact, whenever I have a talk with young people about the war, I always mention people who distinguished themselves and received awards for their bravery. So, there were as many as eight people in my brigade who were awarded the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union, the highest distinction in the country. Zavyalov was one of them. He received this award for liberating Izmail. So we went all the way through Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Austria. As for me, I was also awarded the Order for Bravery for liberating Kramatrosk and many other medals as well.
Well then, later we were heading for Budapest, when suddenly, 200-260 kilometers away from the city, we received the order to turn left. Who knows, maybe it was the thing that saved us, as all the major troops were directed to Budapest and the battles were quite severe there. We were sent to Pecs instead, moving in one big column: the tanks in the front, followed by AFVs and artillery units, then machine guns, mortars and motorized infantry. It was night and I fell asleep. I had a dream as if I was standing near the truck, disassembling my watch. Suddenly the mechanism fell out of my hands, but I managed to catch it just in time. I listened carefully and made sure that the watch was fine. I woke up and told the guys nearby that I was about to be either killed or wounded.
At that moment the Germans who were moving at a certain distance from us decided to start a fight. By the time our trucks came closer, the battle was already in full swing. We stopped and some of our guys jumped from the trucks into the side ditch without waiting for the command to get to the ground and get the mortar ready for action. Not daring to jump after them, I was waiting for what was going to happen, listening to the sound of bullets swishing over the truck. Suddenly I felt as if my head was torn away from my shoulders. I touched it, making sure it was fine, then turned around and felt an awful pain in my chest. I suddenly stopped being afraid of the bullets and jumped into the ditch. There the guys took off my shirt and saw that a shell splinter, the length of a finger, went through my clothes and got stuck in the chest injuring the lung.
They took me to the medical unit. I remember lying there in pain when I saw some other soldiers who were not injured as badly as me. They were drinking wine, so I pleaded with them to help me, and they did. Funnily enough, it was the only shell that actually hit us. Besides me, its razor-sharp fragments also wounded Klushin, the commander of the battalion, and Suhachev. As for the latter, a tiny splinter, as small as a needle, got into the white of his eye. All they had to do was to take it out carefully and that was it! Another man, Shcheposhkin, the platoon commander, wasn't wounded at all. A shell splinter got stuck in his pocket, which was luckily full of documents, money and other stuff. So the guys in the medical unit brought me a mug of good Hungarian wine. When I drank it, I suddenly felt so light and easy! I even thought, "Why on earth should I go to some hospital?" The thing is that after hospital they could send you to any first unit that would come across, and I really hated the idea of having to join any detachment other than my own.
I was evacuated to a hospital in Timishoara. I had to wear a funny sort of a bra with a suction drain and a small jar. As I didn't have to stay in bed all the time, I would put on my coat and my boots and sneak away to some restaurant, where I would place the jar directly on the table. However, I stayed in hospital from November 1944 till March 1945, which gave me plenty of time to get to know all the ins and outs of its bureaucracy. So when I was about to be discharged, I asked the girl who was in charge of issuing references and sick leaves, to give me a referral to my former unit. They gave me all the necessary papers, some money, clothes and food supply, and I set off to catch my unit.
Our unit hardly ever failed a battle. In fact, we were special in a way. I mean that other troops would make a breakthrough for us, and our job was to use this opportunity and drive as fast as we could deep into the territory, trying to gain the rear of the enemy. We could cover several dozens, or even hundreds of kilometers in one go, gaining lots of trophies such as cars, trucks and other equipment.
I remember how we entered Tatarbunary. It was a dark night and our commander ordered us to switch on the headlights. Much to our surprise, the officers showed us the way through the whole town taking us for the retreating German troops. That was unbelievable! The trucks were German indeed, but our soldiers were sitting on them without even trying to conceal their identity! Yes, we frequently found ourselves far ahead from the rest of our troops. From time to time, they would send a small airplane that would drop some food and ammunition for us. This is the way the whole brigade gradually moved further gaining the rear of the Germans.
Not long before the victory we had a major breakthrough towards Graz. I remember we were approaching the city when we saw the bright lights in the distance. We were sure that we were facing a head-on battle, the most dreadful thing that could happen to a motorized infantry unit. In this case, you are lucky if you manage to turn around and get everything ready for the fight. But if not, you are in for a smashing defeat. You can't imagine how surprised we were when we came closer and saw that those were not headlights, but street lamps! We hadn't seen any since 1941!
One peculiar thing happened to us in a village near Graz. Our assignment was to take the city by storm, but we realized that there was nobody to fight with. Here and there we met scattered German troops who told us that the war was "kaput", meaning "over." They were completely dispirited and passive, sleeping in the streets, leaving their guns almost unattended. However, when one of our soldiers ran after some of them, trying to attack them, they turned around and shot him point-blank.
We were quartered at the outskirts of Graz. It was May 9, and we were planning to celebrate Kolya Astakhov's birthday. So we set the table, gathered some food and drinks. In fact, we had a lot of alcohol available then. Cognac, wine... There were two handicapped German soldiers staying in that house as well, and the Austrian woman, the landlady, took care of them. One of the Germans was wounded near Odessa, and the other lost one arm and one leg at Stalingrad. We switched on the radio and heard the Moscow news saying that the 9th of May is the Victory Day. I can't describe to you the euphoria that overcame us. We were beside ourselves with joy and we even invited those Germans to share our food and drinks, and memories about the war, of course. Several hours later, however, we had to move on, further into the Alps, where some German units would not give up the fight. So we were in a war for another few days. As for Graz, there was an agreement with the Americans that the city had to be taken by them. Our task was merely to get hold of as many cars, trucks and other equipment as we could. It meant that anybody who could drive at least a little was to get hold of the steering wheel.
We stayed for some time in makeshift camps in the Austrian mountains, relaxing and enjoying the most beautiful landscapes I had ever seen. It was during that time that they sent us a message to delegate a representative for the parade in Moscow on June 24. One of our guys, Kolya Chumakov, the commander of the submachine gunners' unit, was sent there. Funnily enough, when he came to Moscow, he refused to take off his boots, which he had actually borrowed from his commander especially for the parade. They couldn't change his mind, and he returned back to his unit. Later he moved to Rostov and became a pilot, the commander of Tu-124.
After the war I stayed in the army for another five years. It turned out that it was not possible to organize a new recruitment, as there were no people available. It wasn't until 1948 that they could finally make a new draft. So we were sent to sergeants' schools to receive additional training. There we spent two years and were finally promoted to the rank of sergeants. As a sergeant, I was in charge of a platoon, and I am really proud of that.
In 1948 those guys who had been wounded at least once could finally leave the military service. If I had been wounded twice, I could have returned home as early as 1945. But, like I said, I was hit only once, in my chest, near the city of Pecs in Hungary. So, I remained in the army, and in 1948 we were obliged to stay at the sergeants' school to train young soldiers who had been drafted after the war. So it wasn't until two years later, in 1950, that we were finally discharged.
When I left the army I went to live with my brother in Poltava. He was busy re-building airfields and roads destroyed during the war. In fact, Anatoly had been moving around the whole country, together with his family. He had built hundreds of airfields across the whole Soviet Union. Siberia, the Caucasus, Ukraine... you name it! Later he went on to build rocket launchers. Somewhere in the 60s he came to Kharkiv, where he took part in the construction of the Opera house, the peak of his career as a civil engineer. He died in 1999 here, in Kharkiv.
I followed my brother wherever he was commissioned. No sooner had I joined him in Poltava that they sent him to Novosibirsk. So I went there with him. There I finally finished my high school studies and received the certificate of secondary education. I entered Novosibirsk University of Civil Engineering and I was finishing my first year of study when Anatoly was sent to Tbilisi, where he was to build another airfield. I followed him and got transferred to Tbilisi Polytechnic University where I studied until 1953. It was the year that Stalin died, and I remember enormous crowds of people in the city commemorating the death of their compatriot. That was the time when I decided to move to Kharkiv and live there with my mother. We had some relatives here, my mother's sister in fact. She had a big family, and me and my mother stayed at her place.
As I yet had to obtain my university degree, I did a part-time evening course in Kharkiv University of Civil Engineering. After I finished my studies, I took various engineering positions there, and was finally promoted to the head of the department that dealt with construction organization. Altogether I worked there for forty-one years and eventually retired in 1994. I still keep in touch with my co-workers. They do remember us, veterans, and help a lot indeed, even financially.
After the war our lives became extremely busy, as a great many of enterprises in Donbass had been destroyed during the war and had to be rebuilt. I was lucky to be at all the steel plants there, doing my bit to restore their industrial facilities and infrastructure.
We did work hard at that time. Besides, I got married and received an apartment. I had two children, a son and a daughter, but my daughter Olga died two years ago. Life does have its ups and downs.
Today many of my fellow-soldiers are already either confined to their beds or can hardly move. Most of them have lost their eyesight. My eyesight is not great either, I should tell. I can't read or write without a magnifying glass. I try to write by touch but it's no good, as the lines keep getting on top of each other. This is how my wife, Valentina, and I live now, helping each other the best we can. We have a son Mikhail and a grandson Misha. He works at the same factory I worked. Recently his daughter Dasha, my great-granddaughter, was born.
