May 22, 2006 May 22, 2006
In the July of 1945 our Guards Tank Army was transferred from Czechoslovakia in Mongolia, in the border with puppet Manchu-Oko state which was made and controlled by the Japanese.
In the night on August, 9th in 01:05 we crossed the border and began to move inside of Manchuria.
It was extremely difficult during our offensive. When we were crossing the desert the hot at a day was very large; the temperature was plus 40 degrees Celsius and even higher. The terrain was completely waterless. There was a lot of dust. There were sand-storms. Then we had to cross the Grand Khingan Ridge. There was a steep slope up and much more steep, difficult and dangerous slope down from it. Right when we had entered Manchurian plain many-days downpours had began. Thick mud was everywhere, and moreover, all the rivers overflowed the banks and flooded everything. Our tankmen had to advance from Tunliao to Mukden along high railroad embankment, it was alone path even for tanks, the other way was to swim only.
And it is necessary to remember that we had to overcome not only natural and climate obstackes but and the resistance of the Japanese which had surrendered not soon.
In such conditions the significance of our air landings in deep Japanese rears - in Mukden, Chanchun, Port Arthur, Lalnii, Kharbin, Girin - was notable, those landings hastened the surrender of Quantung Army.
Our Mukden's landing party captured Pu I, Emperor of Manchu-Oko. He was sent in USSR in the next morning. I was commander of his guard.
After the end of my mission I was appointed Local Party Leader of the battalion that was in landing party that landed in Mukden.
Also I remember an outstanding case. When we were in Mukden Junior Sergeant Ivan Zagorulko was a commander of a squad of sub-machine gunners. He told that his grandfather got a mortal wound 40 years ago in the 1st Russian-Japanese War during dolefully known Mukden Battle that was lost by our army. And now during a visit on local cemetery we had found there a common grave of soldiers of the 1st Turkestan Regiment in which Ivan's grandfather served. So the grandson returned there as a winner 40 years after the death of his grandfather and bowed before his grandfather's grave.
