Tag #155301 - Interview #94498 (Evadiy Rubalskiy)

On 13th November 1939 I was recruited to the army and sent to study in Kalinin, Donetsk region [about 500 km from Kiev], in reserve artillery regiment 19. We took a military oath and then batteries of our regiment were sent to join the armed forces in the Finnish front [Soviet-Finnish War] [26]. In late February 1940 I was sent to Vladimir (Ukraine) with a small group of other military. In Vladimir the commandment was forming a light artillery regiment to be sent to the Finnish front. In March 1940 we moved to the front. On our way we heard about execution of a peaceful agreement between the Soviet Union and Finland [12 March 1940]. We arrived at the Karelian Isthmus near Leningrad where our regiment joined the 24th rifle division. We were reequipped and became howitzer-artillery regiment 246. This division, one of the oldest in the Soviet army, was formed from partisan units in summer 1918. It was awarded the Order of the Combat Red Banner [27] and named ‘Iron’ for the seizure of Simbirsk during the Civil War.