Tag #113234 - Interview #92279 (Boris Iofik)

I served like all other soldiers; I did not do any duties of a commander. I often rushed to the attack, including bayonet attacks, I shot certainly. I did not take part in hand-to-hand fights. What can I tell you about the war? It is a hard work! Your comrades, friends die every day. Every day can become the last one for you. I performed no exploits, but fought honestly. I never sheltered myself behind my friends. So, I can say that I faced up to my responsibilities. We used to joke: an infantryman’s hard lot is 2 hours at the very front-line and 2 months in the hospital. From that point of view I was lucky: I was wounded only once. Now I’ll tell you about it in more detail.

In January 1945 I took part in a hard fighting not far from Warsaw on the right side of the Vistula River. There I was seriously wounded and shell-shocked: an artillery shell blew up very close to me. I lost consciousness, my brother-soldiers carried me out from the battlefield. I was wounded in my foot: my heel bone was shattered. I spent more than 3 months in hospital in Poland. I was lucky to manage without operations. After hospital (at the end of April 1945: shortly before the end of the war) I was sent to the motorcycle battalion of the 2nd mechanized army of general Radzievsky. [General Radzievsky Alexey (1911-1954) was a Soviet military leader.