On the Roads of War by Ivan Yakushin

Author:Ivan Yakushin
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781783409112
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2013-05-28T16:00:00+00:00

Give Me a Rifle With a Twisted Barrel

We normally marched at night. During the day, we rested in forests or ravines, next to some settlement. Night marching was a tough ordeal for our new soldiers, as they had to stay awake but also feed and groom the horses during the day, as well as clean their weapons. Drivers of the gun and ammunition carriages had even more tasks to do: each one of them had two or three horses to care for. Those on duty had even more chores.

If we had to leave the forest during daylight, we had to change our cavalry shoulder boards for some other type: like infantry, with raspberry piping, or artillery, with red piping. Such secrecy was necessary in order to conceal the direction of the main thrust of our forces, so the enemy could not prepare his defences. It was especially important that the presence of cavalrymen be hidden, for we had a specific task: our role was not to remain in defence, but to enter gaps in the German line created by our infantry. We had to ride as far possible into the enemy’s rear, exploiting the success of the offensive. Thus, if a large cavalry unit arrived at a certain sector of the Front, one could expect an attack to be imminent.

At one of our daily breaks we received an order to return all captured small arms: only gun leaders were permitted to keep sub-machine guns. It was always like that. As soon as we entered a gap in the German defences and went into battle, we would pile our cavalry carbines on a carriage and pick up sub-machine guns – be they Russian or German. After the fighting, we always received an order to hand in all weapons that did not fit our field manuals and switched back to carbines. Gun-layers were also supposed to get pistols, but they never got them during the whole war.

In place of the weapons that we handed in, the crews and drivers received the Model 1891 Mosin-Nagant infantry long-barrelled rifles, which did not suit anyone in the cavalry. But orders are not to be discussed and we began cleaning the weapons. The rifles were old and in poor shape. One of the young soldiers was cleaning his barrel with a ramrod and slammed it in with such force that he could not get it out. He was almost weeping with frustration. I had to help him out. I ordered him to take a bullet out of the cartridge. I put this improvised blank cartridge into the chamber, closed the lock, and walked away from my men. Then I fired the ramrod into the air. This, of course, was against all regulations: but I had no other choice. We were doing all this in a spot between a forest and a road. After cleaning the rifles, we had to adjust their sights by test-firing them. We test-fired the rifles at targets set below the brow of a hill, between the forest and the road.

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