REVIEWS 769 Loza, Dmitriy. FightingfortheSovietMotherland.Recollectionsfrom theEasternFront. Edited and translated by James E. Gebhardt. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE, and London, I998. XiV+ 260 pp. Figures. Maps. Appendices. Notes. Index. $45.00: C42.75. COLONEL LoZA'sbook, containing as it does numerous accounts and analyses of combat episodes drawn from his own experience and that of fellowveterans , must be interesting first and foremost to soldiers, especially those who serve or have servedin or with tanks.But, valuable as such anecdotes are for our understandingof what battle on the EasternFrontwas like, there is a lot more in the book than that. Chapters are devoted to problems of tank maintenance, the army'smedical services,leave arrangements,the workingof the armypostal service (includingcensorshipand how to cheat it), the feeding of the troops, awardof decorationsand burialof the dead. Britishand American readerswill appreciatethe author'swarm acknowledgement of the aid received from Russia's allies even before the Second Frontwas opened. Loss of mineral-richareas in the early months of Russia's war meant that the Soviet factories that made armour-platehad insufficient supplies of the smelted metals needed to ensure the necessary toughness, so that the armourof Soviet-made tankswasbrittle.The Matildasand Shermans sent by the Allies were free from this defect and, in general, they receive high praise here. The Studebaker trucks, from the same source, also proved invaluableand thisvehicle was calledby Red Armymen 'thekingof the road'. Much of the food the soldiers ate at the front came from the USA, and was cooked on Primusstovesthatwere included in the Shermans'kit. Colonel Loza quotes examples of where the lessons of combat experience proved superior to 'the school solution'. As is common when regimental soldiersreminisce, he is criticalof some staffdecisions, or lack thereof. Thus, when the new tanksarrived,the men at the front were not informed of their distinguishing characteristics, and consequently a 'friendly fire incident' occurred. Social criticism emerges from time to time, in passing. The men, Colonel Loza notes, were betterfed duringthe warthan eitherbeforeor afterit. When he records the suicide of an NCO who had had a leg shot of, the writer observes: 'Having grown up in an orphanage, he knew what kind of fate awaited him as an invalid' (p. I99). The famine of I933 in the Ukraine, Loza's homeland, is mentioned. Stalin never gets praise. On the contrary, occasions are quoted, with approval, when a commander achieved a success by ignoring an order from the dictator.The Colonel is understandablyunhappy about an incident when firehad to be opened on Red Army men makingan unauthorizedwithdrawal (a fire-screen was laid in front of the fleeing soldiers), in accordance with Stalin's order no. 227 of 28 July I942. Yet this order only complied with the principle explained by Trotskyduring the Civil War, that a soldier must be placed between possible death in frontand certaindeath behind. More distinctiveof the Stalinregime waswhat happened when an innocent misprint in a divisional newspaper turned 'commander-in-chief' (glavnokomanduyushchii ) into 'shit-in-chief' (gavno-komanduyushchii). The editorwas sent 770 SEER, 79, 4, 200I to a punishment battalion. 'In that faraway time, which we hope will never return, they knew how to attach a false accusation to someone and make it stick'(p. I15). The writer's attitude to the counter-intelligence organization Smersh comes across when he speaks of its chief representative in his own tank brigade. 'For someone who headed up this atypical organization he was a remarkableman by everydaystandardsand a good comrade' (p. 24). This reviewer found particularly rewarding the passages derived from Colonel Loza's participation in the Manchurian campaign of August I945. He illustratesthe topographical and other differencesbetween this front and the one against the Germans. Here the Matilda tank was in its own country, so to speak.It had been mistakento send Matildasinto swampytracts,as had sometimes happened on that other front: mud jammed the openings in the tanks'sides.In Mongolia, however,where sandwas thrownup, thissimplyfell away. We are told the circumstances which caused the surrender of the Kwantung Army to be delayed till four days after the government in Tokyo had raisedthe white flag. The appendices include the text of the militaryoath and the full text of Stalin...
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Oct 12, 2004
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