Tag #146888 - Interview #92395 (Igor Lerner)

Three months later our skill was checked up near Kolpino. I managed to find two big guns and was awarded a medal For Military Merits [9]. I understood that I had the only chance to survive in this war: to continue my service in that unit. We studied three months more and were sent to the Finnish front. Soon we were taken back to the Leningrad front. At the end of December 1943 they alarmed us and sent to the Oranienbaum Pyatachok (across the Gulf of Finland). [Oranienbaum Pyatachok was a small sector of the front near the Gulf of Finland. It became an impassable obstacle to fascists and did not permit them capture Leningrad.]
One day in the morning we were told that a great offensive would happen soon. We had to find location of all guns around us. It was not so easily because (for example) tanks changed their place after a shot, so it made it impossible for us to define their location. Fascists hunted for us, therefore we were specially guarded and always took up position in the most safe dugouts. But on the other hand we were rather defenseless, because it was impossible to place any guns near our dugouts: fascists could try to destroy them by bombing and the bomb could accidentally find us. One day connection with one of our receivers was broken and I (together with 2 submachine gunners) went to search for the break. We found it: the wire got fouled up in the big bush. We came closer to unhook the wire and suddenly saw Germans sitting under the bush. They saw us and rushed away, but we managed to seize one of them. Those Germans attached explosive to the wire, hoping to blow up us in case we pulled the wire.