Tag #150816 - Interview #97113 (Semyon Goldwar)

In May 1943 I finished the school in the rank of lieutenant. I was sent to the First Ukrainian front. My first big action that I took part in was liberation of Kiev in November 1943. Our battery was taken to the right bank of the Dnieper River and we were to distract attention of the enemy. It was a miracle that we survived. I was commanding officer of a howitzer battery. My howitzer cannon weighed 3 tons and was pulled by ten horses. I remember battle near Proskurov [town in Ukraine]. We didn’t have enough shells. A Churchill tank (an assistance from Great Britain) was near my battery and I begged him to pull my howitzer, since my horses were killed. Later I participated in the battles near the Dnestr. I was only twenty years old, but I was already a first lieutenant. I was wounded in the autumn 1944 in Germany, where I went with the offensive army, shell-shocked. One splinter injured my eye and another one hit my right side where it got stuck in my bag with papers. The bag saved my life. I kept that splinter for memory for a long time.