Tag #156962 - Interview #78231 (yakov voloshyn)

The remanning was very poor. We weren't sent to the rear for remanning. There were special units in the rear to recruit people to the front from villages, but still, we never had a complete staff. There were old people with no education who came to the regiment. If there was a telephone message these old men would ask someone to put it down. Those people couldn't write. Many things were happening. During my random checks I sometimes saw a telephone operator sleeping on duty. It was an emergency actually since he could have missed telephone calls. I would wake him up and reprimand him for sleeping, but he would tell me that he wasn't sleeping, just dozing off. There was nothing I could do. We were in need of staff and besides: what kind of punishment did those people deserve? This man might have been exhausted, hungry or received sad news from home, there might have been whatever reasons... I understood the circumstances. Perhaps, the fact that I wasn't a professional military also played its role. I wasn't taught implicit obedience and following orders.

Being an officer I had the right for a personal weapon. I had a gun. I also had an adjutant, a courier. Whenever I had to send a message he was always at hand. His name was Fedia. He came from Kursk in Russia. He was a nice guy! How many times he saved my life risking his own! If we had to go on an errand and there was a sniper ahead of us, Fedia went first. Or, if there were mines in the area Fedia went first and I followed him.