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The war started when I was about to go to the 9th form at school. We, boys, knew that there would be a war and we were sure that the victory would be ours. In 1935 there were maneuvers in Kiev under the commandment of Yakir. There were some training landing operations and I watched them. I saw Voroshylov when he came to Kiev. The war was in the air. I went to the sniper school, and was master of shooting. Everybody knew there would be a war, and they were preparing to the war. We were just boys, and the beginning of the war was an exciting event for us. War! How interesting! Great! Of course, we shall win! It was a sunny day when they declared the war. In general, we were in high spirits and there was no pessimism. Father had been summoned to Lvov few days before the war. We were staying with our mother. She was concerned, but we, boys, were so careless and happy that I didn’t notice her concerns. My father was first lieutenant, he didn’t find his military unit near Lvov. He joined some other unit, and they were trying to escape from the encirclement and disappeared. My mother left on 9 July with some organization. I was on the railway station with her. I was going to evacuate. But at that time the teens were summoned to the military committees. We heard they were planning to send us to the East to train and get summoned to the army in a year or two. So, I didn’t go with my mother – I went with the boys. There were 200 of us from Leninskiy district of Kiev. Our commander was a man. We called him Bare Skull, as he was bald-headed. They got us all boys together and we went to the East via Brovary.
I put on my best suit: Polish black suit with wide shoulders, and English boots on high sole. My father sent me this outfit from Poland in 1939. He was in the Red Army then and took part in the liberation of Western Ukraine. I was stopped several times on our way. They suspected I was a spy, because my clothing was so different from the others. Now I realize that I looked stupid. We were going to the East and some of the boys wondered about. I liked to walk fast. There were few of us ahead of the others. We were the first to enter villages, and people there met us nicely and gave some food. This was the only food that we had – I can’t remember any organized meals or rationed food. Generally speaking, the first ones in the column always had some advantages. Every now and then there were air raids. The planes were flying low above our heads, but we weren’t scared. In Donetsk they divided us into groups. I was sent to Dnepropetrovsk region. We were to gather crops there, work on the winnowing machine or load something. We worked there a week. And then they sent us to dig anti-tank ditches near Guliaypole in the vicinity of Dnepropetrovsk. They gave me two bulls, a plank and a stick. I had to remove soil from the pit. The most difficult thing was to catch those bulls. You let them free in the evening and then it gets almost impossible to catch them! We stayed a week and a half there. German airplanes came there, too, to fire at us. So we were digging those ditches when some guys came and said “What are you doing here? The Germans are already behind you”. We avoided the roads. German motorcyclists were going on the roads. We were hiding, we didn’t want to be noticed. It was a war, we knew. As soon as they passed by we got on our feet again. That was almost flat steppe. Ad there was a village lying beautifully in the curve of land. A clean village, white houses and the German signal flares above the village. It was unbelievably beautiful. There were no Soviet authorities left in the village. People told me to go away. There was a grain elevator in two or three kilometers from the village. They transported grain to Donetsk by trucks. They took me with them and we drove to Donetsk. There was Daddy’s acquaintance from the civil war years. His last name was Alexandrovich. He was in the army, but his family was staying there. When my mother and I were saying “good-bye” to one another, she told me to come by the Alexandrovichs in Donetsk (she knew I was heading to Donetsk) and she would let them know where she was. The Alexandrovichs told me that my mother was in Kuibyshev. All my friend have left, who where, search their own native. I decided to go to Kuibyshev. All roads were packed with trains. I just moved from one train to another, walked sometimes, stayed overnight on a platform or near a train. I ate whatever the Lord had sent me. All people were moving to the East. There were some from Kiev among them.
Bare Skull had all our documents. He gave us back only our birth certificates. We didn’t have passports. It took me two or three weeks to get to Kuibyshev. I came there with fleas, dirty, all this time I didn’t have a wash or take off my clothes. It was cold already. I came there on 7 October 1941, on my birthday. In Donetsk I received some special uniform, and on the way I exchanged it for sausage and bread. In Kuibyshev my mother worked already as an accountant at the Bread Department. She lived a small corner in an apartment, behind a screen. She didn’t know anything about me through all this time. Of course, she had been very concerned. I was standing there but it was too dangerous to approach me. I was so dirty that they pulled all my clothes off me and put them into a metal milk canister. Then I announced my arrival at the military committee. I got a job of a draftsman at the place where mamma worked.
I didn’t work there long. I was registered at the military committee and sent to the aircraft plant. It was Moscow plant #24, named after Frunze, that manufactured attack planes, the so-called “Black Death”, the best ones. At the beginning of the month they put me to work as a mechanic. It took me few months to learn this profession. Then I was transferred to a test facility, where they were testing aircraft motors and trained to work with aviation devices. I was responsible for maintenance of devices and equipment repairs. At first I lived with mamma in Kuibyshev. Then I lived in an apartment with a family from Kiev. My plant was located in Bezymianka, 15-17 km from Kuibyshev. We went to work by train or stayed overnight at the plant to save the journey. There I became a Komsomol member. This happened in 1942, and later I became head of a Komsomol unit. I also became a Party member there. I was supposed to be summoned to the army in 1943. I had been on the conscription for a while, when my mother (she received some certificate and money for my father at the military committee) made some arrangements to have me sent to the Artillery school. I packed all my belongings and was standing there among the others happy to be finally joining the army, when all of a sudden a few of us were sent back to work. They explained to us later that we were assigned to work at a military plant.
I put on my best suit: Polish black suit with wide shoulders, and English boots on high sole. My father sent me this outfit from Poland in 1939. He was in the Red Army then and took part in the liberation of Western Ukraine. I was stopped several times on our way. They suspected I was a spy, because my clothing was so different from the others. Now I realize that I looked stupid. We were going to the East and some of the boys wondered about. I liked to walk fast. There were few of us ahead of the others. We were the first to enter villages, and people there met us nicely and gave some food. This was the only food that we had – I can’t remember any organized meals or rationed food. Generally speaking, the first ones in the column always had some advantages. Every now and then there were air raids. The planes were flying low above our heads, but we weren’t scared. In Donetsk they divided us into groups. I was sent to Dnepropetrovsk region. We were to gather crops there, work on the winnowing machine or load something. We worked there a week. And then they sent us to dig anti-tank ditches near Guliaypole in the vicinity of Dnepropetrovsk. They gave me two bulls, a plank and a stick. I had to remove soil from the pit. The most difficult thing was to catch those bulls. You let them free in the evening and then it gets almost impossible to catch them! We stayed a week and a half there. German airplanes came there, too, to fire at us. So we were digging those ditches when some guys came and said “What are you doing here? The Germans are already behind you”. We avoided the roads. German motorcyclists were going on the roads. We were hiding, we didn’t want to be noticed. It was a war, we knew. As soon as they passed by we got on our feet again. That was almost flat steppe. Ad there was a village lying beautifully in the curve of land. A clean village, white houses and the German signal flares above the village. It was unbelievably beautiful. There were no Soviet authorities left in the village. People told me to go away. There was a grain elevator in two or three kilometers from the village. They transported grain to Donetsk by trucks. They took me with them and we drove to Donetsk. There was Daddy’s acquaintance from the civil war years. His last name was Alexandrovich. He was in the army, but his family was staying there. When my mother and I were saying “good-bye” to one another, she told me to come by the Alexandrovichs in Donetsk (she knew I was heading to Donetsk) and she would let them know where she was. The Alexandrovichs told me that my mother was in Kuibyshev. All my friend have left, who where, search their own native. I decided to go to Kuibyshev. All roads were packed with trains. I just moved from one train to another, walked sometimes, stayed overnight on a platform or near a train. I ate whatever the Lord had sent me. All people were moving to the East. There were some from Kiev among them.
Bare Skull had all our documents. He gave us back only our birth certificates. We didn’t have passports. It took me two or three weeks to get to Kuibyshev. I came there with fleas, dirty, all this time I didn’t have a wash or take off my clothes. It was cold already. I came there on 7 October 1941, on my birthday. In Donetsk I received some special uniform, and on the way I exchanged it for sausage and bread. In Kuibyshev my mother worked already as an accountant at the Bread Department. She lived a small corner in an apartment, behind a screen. She didn’t know anything about me through all this time. Of course, she had been very concerned. I was standing there but it was too dangerous to approach me. I was so dirty that they pulled all my clothes off me and put them into a metal milk canister. Then I announced my arrival at the military committee. I got a job of a draftsman at the place where mamma worked.
I didn’t work there long. I was registered at the military committee and sent to the aircraft plant. It was Moscow plant #24, named after Frunze, that manufactured attack planes, the so-called “Black Death”, the best ones. At the beginning of the month they put me to work as a mechanic. It took me few months to learn this profession. Then I was transferred to a test facility, where they were testing aircraft motors and trained to work with aviation devices. I was responsible for maintenance of devices and equipment repairs. At first I lived with mamma in Kuibyshev. Then I lived in an apartment with a family from Kiev. My plant was located in Bezymianka, 15-17 km from Kuibyshev. We went to work by train or stayed overnight at the plant to save the journey. There I became a Komsomol member. This happened in 1942, and later I became head of a Komsomol unit. I also became a Party member there. I was supposed to be summoned to the army in 1943. I had been on the conscription for a while, when my mother (she received some certificate and money for my father at the military committee) made some arrangements to have me sent to the Artillery school. I packed all my belongings and was standing there among the others happy to be finally joining the army, when all of a sudden a few of us were sent back to work. They explained to us later that we were assigned to work at a military plant.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Grigoriy Yakovlevich Husid