Tag #155990 - Interview #78231 (yakov voloshyn)

We had wire communications. The wires tore and we had to check and fix them continuously. There were casualties among communications operators. When communication gets cut off during a battle, an operator grabs an end of the wire and follows it to find a tear that he has to fix: connect and insulate the cables. Then he has to check if it works and if there is still no communication he goes on to find another tear. There were cables in an open field and we had to creep so we wouldn't be shot. It was easier when we could hang cables on tree branches, but this rarely happened. Cable on the ground was easily damaged by a horse, a tank or a wagon. Often operators perished. I never had a full staff of operators in my platoon. There were to be about 29 people, but I rarely had 12 and sometimes even less. There were untrained newcomers and I had to explain to them that this was a telephone and that was a list of codes etc. in the course of action. Everything had codes. The Germans knew them; their intelligence was efficient. For example, shells had the code name 'toys'. At times, the Germans shouted, 'Hey, Rus, have they delivered toys yet?' The Germans somehow managed to disclose our passwords. They shouted, 'Is today's password 'bayonet'?'

Tragic and funny things happened at the front. I remember one night in summer 1942: we encamped for a rest in a forest in Zaporozhye region. There was a village nearby. At dawn we saw that we were in an apricot orchard. We were very hungry and pounced on ripe apricots. We got so stuffed that we felt like doing nothing. We were lying down, hit a trunk with the foot and if an apricot fell at an arm's length we grabbed it, but if not we were too lazy to get up and pick it. Then we heard someone ask, 'Anybody wants sour cream?' It turned out there was a milk farm nearby and soldiers brought cans with sour cream. Nobody cared if sour cream and apricots were a good combination or not. We had sour cream poured in our tins, drank it and lay down again. When the order 'Line up!' came, only moaning could be heard around. Everybody had a stomach ache.