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Bitik Nikolai Sergeevich
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ThatТs how the war began Е
Today this man is not with us any more. Neither are many other people who defended our country during the years of war hardships. These records describing the grueling days of World War Two lived through by a former leader of a reconnaissance section, battery-4 of 447th corpse artillery regiment, were taken to the editorial board by his widow. Starting from this issue we will publish extracts from the memoirs of Nikolay Bytik, a man whose life was full of heroic and bright pages not only in the years of war, but also in peaceful time.
Nikolay Bytik worked as a leading specialist in hydro-pneumatic automated systems. He was an author of more than 100 scientific works and had 14 state awards. He died a professor of the Moscow State Academy of Motor Industry.
In Brest
ЕBefore the war Brest garrison consisted of three sub-garrisons. The first one was the Brest Fortress accommodating two infantry divisions, engineers, anti-aircraft batteries, a hospital and other units. The second was the Northern Cantonment which was dubbed Artillery Village. All in all it had 144 guns. Frontier guards regiment, motorized reconnaissance and radio communication units of the corpse and the army quartered in Brest. The third garrison, the Southern Cantonment was located 10 kilometers to the south of Brest. It had an armor and an infantry divisions, engineer and chemical defense units.
In the opinion of my numerous fellow soldiers and in my humble opinion too, if the above mentioned troops of Brest garrison were in their combat positions during the night of June 21-22, most probably the Germans would have failed to advance as far as Minsk.
In early June our regiment was replenished by a thousand of conscripts drafted from Western Byelorussia which could not but tell on our combat ability because with the start of hostilities they fled home.
Approximately two weeks before the war German aircraft began to cross our border regularly, and from June 18 Ц several times a day. Combat aviation of our 4th army located 50 km to the East of Brest just ignored the trespassing of the Germans.
During this period the people living in Brest were snapping up like hot cakes salt, sugar, soap, coffee, cocoa, tea, matches and all from the stores. In every public area city dwellers harped on one and the same string: УA war is coming, a war is comingФ. They regularly listened to radio broadcasts of the former Polish government. Meanwhile the army kept on its peaceful existence. One of the regimentТs battalion was preparing for demonstration fire at an artillery range situated 15 km to the south of Brest, on June 21 two guns with the gun crews were sent to a weapons exhibition. The notorious TASS report of June 14, 1941, informed the Soviet population that at the Soviet-German border there was no troops concentration either on our side or on the German.
On June 22, 1941 at 3:30 a.m. when everybody were sleeping the barracks suddenly started to shake and we heard a continuous thunder of cannons. First we though it was a storm, but at 3:40 our regiment was showered by German shells. Their fragments penetrated through the barrack walls. Someone shouted: УItТs a war!Ф There was no alarm signal in the regiment because saboteurs had cut the power and the telephone wires in the cantonment.
Artillery tractor drivers discovered that at night the fuel was drained from the tanks. This delayed the guns towing by almost one hour (according to the then estimates). The unending German gunfire was adjusted from an air balloon. On top of it, the planes at which we were shooting with our carbines flew-by and fired their machineguns at our soldiers, hardware, warehouses and barracks. Nevertheless, in such a situation two 152-mm mortar guns did manage to open fire at the air balloon and the German troops. In several minutes these guns were destroyed and the personnel was wounded.
Many were killed during the first minutes of the war. Tractors, cars, warehouses wee on fire. More than a half of guns and tractors were damaged or destroyed. The regiment was forced to retreat to the East in several groups dispersed frontwise. This is how the war started.
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During our retreat from Brest we engaged in combats in the vicinity of Gomel. Most of our regiment units were relocated to Orel region. In several days the regiment got 18 new 152-mm mortar guns and artillery tractors. Day and night all the units had training. Among those units was the battery-4 section led by me. In three days we received a order from the battalion staff: to mo move to the motor road and on to Orel. We passed Orel and headed toward Mtsensk. Early in the morning on October 3 we moved across the city of Mtsensk and stopped in a birch-tree forest. It was near Mtsensk that we saw for the first time Katyusha multiple rocket launcher work. At night Katyushas approached the city and fired their projectiles at the German positions.
The famous 1-st armor brigade under the command of Katukov operated in this area too.
On a dark and rainy night of October 18 the battery left its positions and moved along the motor road toward Tula. In less than one day a new directive arrived: Urgent. Advance to Tula. In the morning of October 28 the battery reached Tula. In the city suburb in the attic of a five-storey build an observation post was equipped and the telephone connection established. The observers viewed avenues of enemy approach: Orel road and Kosaya Gora.
At the dawn of October 30 I heard through my sleep some single shots as if fired by tanks. Everybody were sleeping in their uniforms. I went up to the attic. The shots continued. Looking through the battery commanderТs telescope I noticed in the fog the first and then another flash. Thinking that these were tank shots fired on the move I reported it to the commander. The commander signaled reveille and we went to the observation post. By that time the fog had grown thin and we saw distinctly a column of German troops. The enemy was advancing from Kosaya Gora to Gostiyevsky Village. We were allowed to open fire at the enemy. However, we were not supplied with a topographic map of Tula. The battery commander was sick at the moment and could not lead the fire. Then I prepared the shooting data without a map. I tried to shoot the first shell to a longer distance or to the left of the target. I managed to notice the burst through the telescope. Then it was rather easy to make an adjustment and hit the enemy column. The artillery fire stopped the Germans in Tula suburbs and they were unable to seize a single building in the city. This way the German attack on October 30 was disrupted by the gun fire of heavy 152-mm guns of battery-4, 447th artillery regiment.
In several days the enemy started to outflank the city from east and west. In the beginning of November our observation post was relocated to the roof of a six-storey building in the Communards Street. At about 21:00 our battery had an order from the regiment command to send scouts to the vicinity of Verhnaya Kitayevka. Me and scout Gryaznov were appointed to perform the mission. The closer to the village the harder was the way because the enemy opened harassing machinegun fire from the village now and then. We started to crawl and tried to bypass the village from the right. On finding out the machineguns and tanks positions as well as the approximate number of troops in the village we returned to our batteryТs command post at 4:00 a.m. Our information was immediately reported to the regiment command and Katyusha rocket launches followed thereafter in no time. The fire was such a success that the Germans did not advance even an inch in this area. However, soon Tula was completely surrounded. Fighting in besieged Tula went on till December 6. On that day our troops advancing from Moscow broke the enemy trap.
Our 447th artillery regiment was the only unit in Tula which had to fire in all directions: to the South, East, West and to the North. It is worth mentioning here the words of the greatest commander of the Second World War Marshall Grigory Zhukov, who said that УЕall the units defending Tula were fighting exclusively bravely. Guderian planned to take Tula on the run as he had taken Orel, and then move to Moscow from the South. But he failed.Ф
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