THE REAL RED ARMY

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVIII, Issue 23323, 5 October 1945, Page 6

THE REAL RED ARMY

Contact With British In Austria Notes From An Officer’s Diary A British major, commander of an almost legendary specialised unit of the Eighth Army, acted as liaison officer in the early days of May, when that army linked up with the Russians in Austria, writes the Vienna correspondent of “The Times.” From that period until the movement of the British into Syria and Vienna, this officer described the Red Army to different British units stationed in Carinthia, and it is doubtful whether any talks have been more earnestly listened to by the soldiers to whom they were addressed. This account is based on the diary in which he entered his impressions of the Red Army as he found it during its advance across Austria. On May 9 he first met the Russians in the countryside west of Graz. With a detachment of his unit he stopped a tank at the head of the Soviet column. From it a major of the 84th (Kharkov) Division stepped out saluted, introduced himself, shook' hands, and in a very loud voice delivered the following set speech:—“The Allied nrmies have met; war with Gennany is over; this is an historic day, ( th? proudest in my life, and I shall talk about it to my children and grandchildren.” Merry and Carefree The party drove on westward to Voitsberg. During the next two davs excitements went on, with ’ parties, songs, band-playing, some drunkenness, and a certain amount of looting of civilians' houses, from which many souvenirs were collected, to the intense distress of toe local inhabitants, who worked themselves into an hysterical panic. On the third morning the Soviet reverted to peace-time condi-tions—five-hours’ drill in the mornings, firing on the range in the afternoons, maintenance of vehicles and weapons, kit inspection, and haircutting parades. Commanding officers were given if) days t.o get their troops into shape, and then divisional, corps, and army parades started. The men were much smartened up in this process. When the British first met them they were shabby and dirty, but their clothing was in good condition and their boots excellent.

“Merry, carefree and humorous,” the diary adds, "the Russian soldier does not worry about the rather harsh discipline to which he is submitted. There is much saluting and clicking of heels, and punishment for an offence is awarded on the spot without much formality. It is mainly in the nature of extra fatigues and the equivalent of our old-fashioned field punishment, and it is accepted with resignation and often a grin. I should say that, though discipline is much harder than ours, the Soviet soldier has a much better chance of getting away with a minor offence.” Soviet Football An incident illustrates how exaggerated stories of “brutal” Soviet discipline arise. Football is a game in which the Russians have been passionately interested since the middle twenties, when the Soviet Army took it up officially with great vigour on the English model and incidentally with most of the English words. A British-Russian football match was arranged at Voitsberg. It was postponed three times, apparently because the Russian corps commander, having heard about the forthcoming match, vetoed it until he could be personally sure that a good Soviet team was available. When the team was selected, the corps commander told them: “You will now be allowed to play the English, but don’t think it will be easy. All Englishmen are born football players. For generations they have done practically nothing but practise sport. I shall give you a week to train, and remember, you have got to win that match. If you don’t I shall cut your ears off.” A description of this little “pep talk” was given by the British officer to his comrades in the British zone, who enjoyed the joke as much as he did. But it soon became common knowledge that “when a Russian football team is beaten every single man in it has his ears cut off.” Later the officer who had arranged the match at Voitsberg was actually warned by a senior to be careful about the game, because “if the Russians don’t win they will all be shot.” Abundant Tali Tales “The fact is,” writes the British officer, “we are ready to believe anything about the Soviet Army, and the more improbable the better. In some cases the tales are based on some slender - foundation of fact and deliberately made up to produce a good story, but generally the rumours are spread in good faith. This was particularly noticeable during the first weeks following our meeting with the Russians, when there was a daily flow across the boundary of our own liberated prisoners of war, displaced persons of various nationalities, andlocal Austrians in a state of panic fleeing before the Russians. “Nobody is more astonished than the Russians ’at the terror shown by the local inhabitants. They cannot account for it, but are rather amused and think it a great joke. If, however, we seem to believe that there is some foundation for it, they become very worried, lest we should think our Allies uncivilised.” At all levels in the Soviet Army there was a surprising knowledge of the British campaigns. Of the conversation at one party he writes:— “They knew about the Battle of Britain and how we fought the Germans alone for a whole year before they themselves got involved in the battle. Our campaigns in the desert were more than slightly romanticised, for they described hosts of 50 divisions careering backward and forward through limitless expanses of waterless sand. Tire Italian campaign was dismissed as unimportant, and we came to the long anxious wait for the opening of the second front. ‘Then, after you had miraculously landed several armies across hundreds of miles of sea,’ the Russians added, ‘the Germans soon collapsed, and now the war is over.’ Russians Talked Freely “Many stories were also told of the British and American bombing, and no episodes of the war are told by the Russians with more emotion than those relating to the rescue of Allied pilots. These men in foreign uniforms dangling from their parachutes came out of the sky as living tokens of the existence of brothers in arms fighting the same battle in strange countries, of help coming out of darkness.” After the boundary between the British and Soviet forces had been established there was a good deal of work in connection with the transfer of prisoners of war, the movement of displaced civilians of many nationalities, afid the handing over of the large body of Russian renegades—nearly 50 000 in number—formerly employed by the Germans under the name of Cossacks. Occasional looting parties of the Yugoslav Army in search of abandoned German equipment had also to be countered, and there was a host of minor problems, such as sharing coal from the Rosenthal mines and beer from the Graz brewery. In ;.ll these matters the Russians were helpful, and their enthusiastic friendliness toward the British was maintained throughout. , •‘Talk was free and easy. The Russians had no hesitation whatever in discussing Communism or pre-war relations between the Soviet Union and Great Britain or Generalissimo Stalin himself. It is obvious that, with the prestige of victory, the present regime in Russia is so firmly established and commands the enthusiastic support <.f such an overwhelming majority in the Army that there is no need to control the free expression of opinion." The complete lack of political consciousness was exemplified in the fact that of a party of a dozen officers only one remembered that the name Bolshevik had at one time denoted a political party. Guns and Mobility “The economic asnect of the revolution,” the British officer states, ‘is the only' one considered, much v vc ilk of our industrial revolution, and in

that aspect, when they can switch their minds off military matters, they take an enthusiastic interest. Officers and men all look forward to demobilisation and returning home, but they worry much less about their private affairs than the British." Superiority in artillery is given firs' place by the Russians in accounting for their final victory over Germany, particularly in the case of the critical battle fo> Moscow. Great moilitv is given as the next reason; by using infantry on their feet, particularly during the autumn rains and spring thaw, and supplying them by air when horsedrawn transport could not follow, they surprised and out-manoeuvred the mud-bound German forces. They also consider that their winter equipment enabled their troops to maintain their fighting potential during the fiercest cold spells, when the Germans just managed to keep alive. Allied supplies are given a high place among the factors leading to victory.