Tag #151536 - Interview #78270 (Semyon Gun)

As soon as my father delivered the shipment to the point of destination he was summoned to the front. He was a private in infantry. There were horrific casualties and then it was easy to get a promotion particularly when a person was a communist. My father was made commander of a squad and then a master sergeant. He was responsible for making all necessary provisions to his unit. My father told me that they once, when they were taking weapons to the front line a splinter broke the truck lights and they almost got lost. It was a miracle they were not captured by Germans. He also told me about the New Year near Stalingrad. The distance between the front lines was about 25 meters. Our soldiers could hear Germans playing mouth organs and having fun. Then Soviet and German soldiers started talking and throwing cigarettes and treatments to one another. It was a surprise for me. But my father said people were only human. Who ever wanted to kill each other? The night before Stalingrad battle my father wrote a letter home. My mother read it to us aloud: 'I am writing this letter in the moonlight. It's 3 am and in the morning we shall go in attack...' We received his next letter in three months from Voronezh where my father was in hospital. He told us that a shell exploded near him and all others around him were killed. He fainted and when he regained consciousness he thought he had lost his leg so acute the pain was. In hospital doctors removed few splinters, but one. The doctor said that might injure hamstring if they wanted to remove it and then my father's leg wouldn't bend. My father agreed to leave it there. This splinter caused a lot of pain for the rest of his life. Every now and then his leg got swollen and turned blue and in bad weather it ached.