A Soldier’s Duty is the memoir of Marshal of the Soviet Union Konstantin Konstantinovich Rokossovsky (1896-1968), who commanded troops from the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War to the final days of the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Rokossovksy was an ethnic Pole who served in the Russian army in World War I, the Red Army in the Civil War, fell under the finger of suspicion and was imprisoned in 1937, released back to active duty in 1940, and was in command of a mechanized corps at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.

A Soldier’s Duty describes the planning and implementation of huge military operations, the relationship between high command and the front, and interesting people Rokossovsky met along the way. You are now reading a translation based on the 5th edition of Soldatskii Dolg, published by Voinizdat in 1988. The 1988 edition includes text that had been considered too controversial and scandalous to print during Rokossovksy’s lifetime.

See the largest and most cataclysmic war in human history through the eyes of one of the allies’ greatest generals.

Chapters:
Tomorrow There Will Be War
The Battle Begins
On the Yartsevo Heights
An Unexpected Order
The Volokolamsk Direction (COMING SOON)
Nowhere To Retreat
Forward!
Sukhinichi
Memorable Lessons
The Bryansk Front
Battle for Stalingrad
Closing the Vise
Destruction of the Enemy
The Kursk Salient
Going for the Dnieper
For Belarussian Soil
Both Offensives Are the “Main” One
Destruction
Warsaw
In Germany
On Two Fronts
East Pomerania
From the Oder To the Elba
Happiness of a Soldier

Chapter 1: Tomorrow There Will Be War

Spring 1940, while I was with my family for a vacation in Sochi, I recieved an invitation from the People’s Commissioner of the Ministry of Defense, Marshal Simon Konstantinovich Timoshenko. He received me warmly and sincerely.

I am reminded of when we were first acquainted in the early 1930s when Timoshenko commanded the 3rd Cavalry Corps, and I the 7th Samara “English Proletariat” Cavalry Division [Scottish communist and member of the Great Britain Communist Party Alec Geddes had visited the unit in 1925, became an honorary member, and received a banner to take home. Hence the name “English Proletariat”–IK]. As a commander, he was loved by all us horsemen. Loved, even. And now in this high post as People’s Commissioner, he still had that same simplicity of manner and camaraderie.

Simon Konstantinovich reinstated me as commander of the 5th Cavalry Corps, my position in 1936-1937 [In 1937, Rokossovksy was accused of being a spy and imprisoned unil 1940–IK]. The corps was transferred to Ukraine, and while still enroute, the People’s Commissioner assigned me to the Kiev Special Military District, under the command of Army General Georgy Zhukov. I was to inspect the troops and prepare them for the liberation march to Bessarabia [which became the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic–IK]. This was communicated to me by a telephone call from the People’s Commissioner in my presence.

I worked with a group of generals under the authority of the district commander. We spent the whole time with the line units. My assignment from General Zhukov was interesting. He called upon me to identify the strengths and weaknesses of our forces. But we did not work together for long in Ukraine. Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov was transferred to Moscow as the Chief of the General Staff, and I returned from Bessarabia to my previous position as corps commander.

The experienced gained from the liberation of Bessarabia was very useful, and we commanders tried to use it in the organization and combat preparation of troops for war.

At the end of 1940 I received a new assignment. I became the commander of the 9th Mechanized Corps, which was still being formed. It was a complete surprise, as I was in the cavalry for 27 years. I entered service with the Kargopol Dragoons Regiment in the old Russian Army in August 1914, and stayed in the cavalry for all of World War I. After October 1917, again in the cavalry, this time in the ranks of the Red Army.

In short, I was born for this military branch, and I loved it. Here I was in a good school, both at war and in peacetime. Here I rose through the ranks from squadron commader to corps commander. I was confident in my work, and understood the quirks of commanding cavalry.

To transfer to a new military branch, naturally, brought risks. Could I handle the requirements of commanding mechanized troops? But I was inspired by my longstanding enthusiasm and deep interest in armor formations. “It doesn’t take Gods to bake pots” [Simple people can do great deeds through hard work and perseverance–IK]. So with all of my energy I dived into the new task, understanding that forming a new corps requires a high operational tempo.

It needs to be said that at the beginning of the first world war, cavalry were already starting to lose their relevance as a weapon. Military theater operations saw the appearance of massed automatic weapons (machine guns), rapid-firing artillery, tanks and aviation. The fighting settled into continuous frontlines. Troops barricaded behind earthworks and barbed wire could not be defeated by cavalry formations. So cavalry and infantry alike were planted in trenches, and the horse became mostly a mode of transportation.

The Russian Civil War briefly resurrected a role for cavalry. This was mainly due to special circumstances; the field of battle had no continuous frontlines. In such conditions cavalry, as the most mobile military branch, became of great importance. The country’s rich abundance of horse stock, as well as old-style cavalry cadres who knew how to ride and care for them also contributed. The communist party’s rallying cry, “Proletariat, mount your horses!” quickly became the Red Army cavalry’s powerful words in crushing the internal counter-revolution and foreign intervention.

Years passed. Party slogans became reality; transition to modern industrialization to catch up with the capitalist countries. Over five years there were new possibities to equip the army with modern weapons and improve military doctrine.   Our military science made a great step forward in comparison to the strongest capitalist countries. In the West they also developed such theories, with the likes of Giulio Douhet and J.F.C. Fuller. Douhet praised air power as the most decisive component of military operations. And Fuller explored the possibilities of tank warfare. Meanwhile we had tanks, aviation, artillery and infantry, and each had their place and purpose in the armed forces, eventually coming together as the theory of Deep Battle, proposed by Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Vladimir Triandafillov and others.

Of course there were horse fanatics who cherished the glory of cavalry, but they did not last in this changing climate. Cavalry formations declined and armor took their place. By the late 1930s, we already had a significant number of mechanized corps.

The organizational structure and combat readiness of the Red Army changed completely to meet new doctrine established by the socialist government. Training command staff at every level was of the highest importance. Most of the commanders and political officers had combat experience from WWI and the civil war. Our armed forces could deal a crushing blow to any enemy who dared attack the Soviet homeland.

However, at the end of the 1930s there were serious mistakes. Our military cadres suffered, and this couldn’t not affect the organization and combat readiness of the troops.

The onslaught of Fascist Germany on Poland and the lightning-fast defeat of its armed forces, despite the courage of the majority of Polish soldiers and officers, and the even more tragic turn of events in France, showed how formidable Germany had become with the creation of powerful armor and mechanized forces, and such a strong air force.

At this moment we started another interesting re-organization of the mechanized corps. It was a joy to see that, in the end, the correct viewpoints prevailed and we once again changed   the organizational table to facilitate defense and victory in a modern war of tanks and mechanized formations. In this phase of reaorganization it was my turn.

The 9th Mechanized Corps was comprised of three divisions; the 131st Mechanized Rifle Division under the command of Col. Nikolai Kalinin, the 35th Tank Diviwsion commanded by Maj. Gen. Nikolai Novikov, and the 20th Tank Division under the command of Col. Michail Katukov (I have to specify that Col. V. M. Chernyaev fell ill in the early days of the war, so the 20th went to his deputy commander).

Our corps was under the direct authority of the commander of the Kiev Special Military District.

We were driven by one thought; the faster we brought the corps to combat readiness, the better we would fulfill our duty to the people and the party. We were already in the process of forming completely new divisions, units and formations with their own purposes. Most of our personnel were people who had to be taught the basics. As commander, I was fortunate that my closest staff officers were the most educated and dedicated people. They could teach soldiers and commanders what would be required in war. Amongst them all, I would like to highlight my chief of staff, 39-year-old Maj. Gen. Alexei Gavrilovich Maslov. He was, how to say this, “academic” (graduated the Frunze Military Academy). The corps headquarters kept good order and committed itself to training the subordinate headquarters, mentoring their staff and teaching them to think independently. I liked his style; demanding, and sensitive to the thinking and initiative of subordinates, communicating organizational demands to the troops in person. Vnukov, the deputy commander of technical support, and Comrade Kamenyev, the deputy commander of military political affairs, were of great help to me in preparing the corps for the challenges ahead.

Time was running out. Fascist Germany, drunk on its successes in the West, launched an operation against the Balkans, conquering one country after another. All of us soldiers felt that in the immediate future, our country, whether we liked it or not, would be dragged into the whirlwind of raging war.

Speaking frankly, we did not believe that Germany would honor the peace treaty with the Soviet Union. It was clear that they would attack us regardless. But the treaty did buy us time to bolster our defenses and deprive the imperialists hope of creating a unified anti-Soviet front.

How much time there was to prepare, we at the corps level didn’t know. We didn’t waste one moment. In the first order of importance was to focus all of our attention on the readiness of commanders and staff. We sent commanders and staff into the field with radios and designated troops, and organized tabletop wargames and field trips to the most likely routes of the corps in the case of sudden war. We instructed all officers to maintain constant combat readiness in their departments and units, and not wait for full staffing.

As the reader can tell, I did not command the 9th Mechanized Corps for long before the war, but I hold in my soul gratitude to the corps’ officers who understood their commander, and had a deep understanding of our requirements and why they were necessary for the inevitable and imminent war ahead. What we did in these days was not wasted, and we felt this in June 1941. It was not in vain I tried to make the command staff feel self-sufficient, decisive and brave. Only an officer who possesses these qualities can demand them from subordinates.

This is what we were trying to achieve every day, through the faith and strength of people. And the officers of the corps as a whole showed initiative and self-sufficiency. This created an atmosphere of the highest vigilance. It was known to me that other corps were also preparing for any surprises.

In May 1941, the new commander of the Kiev Special Military District, Mikhail Kirponos, conducted a frontline training exercise. We participated, and our corps worked with the 5th Combined Arms Army in the Rovno, Lutsk and Kovel directions.

During this field exercise I familiarized myself with places in the border region that the corps and other units were expected to operate. The construction of fortifications had only just begun.

I didn’t touch high-level political problems then and I won’t touch them now. I will only share my recollections of 1941 as a commander with practical experience and knowledge in the realms of tactics, operational arts and strategy.

Even with the scarce information I was able to obtain from various sources, it was possible to make some conclusions about German operations in Poland and France. The Germans had borrowed some concepts from the theory of Deep Battle. In offensive operations they gave the largest role to tanks, mechanized formations and bomber aviation. They concentrated all their might into one fist, which they used to smash the enemy on a short timeline. They attacked objectives in powerful wedges, all offensives converging at a high operational tempo. Surprise was of the upmost importance.

So we decided to try to keep the powder dry.

I reflexively thought of my service in Primorye and the Transbaikal in 1921-1935. If our “neighbor” on the other side of the border showed the slightest sign of activity or movement we were prepared to repel them. Our unit was divided into shifts for round-the-clock readiness. There was a well-prepared plan for covering and deploying our main force, which changed based on the overall situation in this operational theater.

As far as I can tell, in the Kiev Special Military District, this did not happen.

Even during the exercise I talked with some comrades from the top command staff. These were Ivan Fedyunisky, Simon Kondrusiev and Feodor Kamkov (who commanded, rifle, mechanized and cavalry corps). Like me, they were of the opinion that we were on the edge of war with Hitlerite Germany. I happened to spend the night with Ivan Ivanovich Fedyunisky, who was a hospitable host. We talked about how much carelessness there was. For example, there was an order from the district staff that was difficult to justify in this disturbing environment. The order instructed units to send their artillery to training rabges on the border zone. Our corps was able to keep our artillery by proving we could conduct all training ourselves on the spot. This would help us in the future. Ivan Fedyunisky was also in agreement with me about how to not be taken by surprise when the time came to go into battle.

We did everything in our power and authority, starting with implementation of economic mobilization documents. For example, verifying civilian transportation authorized to the corps. Civilian organizations apparently did not pay enough attention to this issue. (I will say upfront: in relation to the difficult situation starting on June 22 in the border zone, the 9th Corps still had not received a single vehicle dictated in the written mobilization plan that, by the way, had already been published prior to the corps’ departure to the military campaign.)

And the most disturbing part; the May deadline came and went, July was almost upon us, and we still had not   received supplies for combat. Our training supplies were worn out and past their intended expiration date. I had to limit the use of tanks for training purposes out of concern that we tankers might end up at war with no tanks at all.

On June 21, I organized command staff analysis of corps-level night exercises. At the conclusion of our meeting, I invited the division commanders to a weekend fishing trip at dawn. But that evening the corps headquarters received a report from the forward positions that a Polish corporal from Poznan serving in the German army had defected to our lines and insisted: on June 22, the Germans would attack the Soviet Union.

I decided to cancel the fishing trip and called the division commanders to relay what had been reported from the border. We had a meeting with the corps command staff. We all decided to maintain vigilance…

What had been censored

The following portion of the chapter was deemed too sensitive for public exposure and was not published until long after the author’s death.

As a participant of the first world war from start to finish and the October socialist revolution and civil war, I had a lot of practical military experience. I understood war, and the full meaning of that word. I had both real-world and educational studies which gave me a deep understanding in the tactical, operational and strategic levels of military affairs. In my youth I was addicted to military history literature about the advancement of warfare, starting from the conquests of Alexander of Macedon, Roman military leaders and so on.

Service in the Red Army on duty in the border regions taught me a lot. At least it gave me a full understanding of all activities and undertakings in covering and deploying a main force in the case of war. Combat readiness is measured not in days, but in hours.

In the border regions there was a special regime restricting visitation by non-residents. In the border regions of the Kiev Special Military District unbelievable things happened. Civilians traveled back and forth across the border. People who desired to live in the Soviet Union came to us, and people who did not desire to live in the Soviet Union left. True, there were designated border crossing points, but there was a lot of unacceptable movement in our rear areas.

German officers in civilian dress and cars were authorized by Soviet authorities to travel freely, allegedly to find and repatriate the bodies of fallen German soldiers.

It was not uncommon for German planes to fly overhead, and it was categorically forbidden to fire upon them. There was such an incident during one of our field exercises. A German plane conducted an emergency landing near our soldiers in the vicinity of Rovno. In the plane there were four German officers in civilian brown coats and a sophisticated camera they had unsuccessfully tried to destroy. Its film contained pictures of bridges and railroad hubs in the Kiev direction.

This was all communicated to Moscow. We were later very surprised to learn that the People’s Commission of Defense ordered the plane and its crew to be immediately released and escorted by two of our fighter planes to the border. This is how the center (Moscow) reacted to the clearly hostile actions of the Germans.

After long and careful study of German forces and operations in Poland and France, I could not understand what was the plan of action of our military in the case of a German attack.

Judging from the concentration of our aviation on airfields and warehouses accumulated so close to the border, it looked like a plan for a great advance, but the disposition and activities of our forces did not match this.

We could not understand how even when the Germans concentrated their forces near our borders, transferring them from the West, the general staff of the Kiev Special Military District did not react. An atmosphere of undisturbed calm dominated the the military district.

It became known that the headquarters of the Kiev Special Military District began to relocate from Kiev to Ternopol. What caused this was not communicated to us. I must emphatically repeat, there was an absolute lull and higher command gave us no information whatsoever. Our received written communications and radio transmissions were only undisturbed routine messages.

Regardless, if there was a plan, it did not match reality on the ground, and resulted in our forces suffering heavy losses in the opening period of the war.

Around 4:00 in the morning of June 22, I received a telegram from 5th Army to open a top secret envelope kept in the corps headquarters. Inside the envelope there was an order to immediately prepare the corps for battle in the Rovno and Lutsk directions and beyond.

Our corps was almost fully staffed, but still had not received its main shipment of material; tanks and motor transport. We did not have even 30% of the required vehicles and equipment. The equipment we did receive was worn out and unfit for longterm operations. To be frank, the corps as a mechanized formation for military operations was in a status of combat ineffective. The Kiev Special Military District staff couldn’t possibly have not known this, and the same goes for the General Staff.

The unclear situation compelled us to conduct movement with reconaissance and force protection, due to the possibility of making contact with the enemy. We were perplexed by the complete absence of our aircraft since the moment of alarm, but in this time we did see numerous German aircraft. They were bombers who passed us at high altitude without fighter escorts. We soon found out why when we came across the wrecks of our planes destroyed by the German aviation, which had been so senselessly concentrated at airfields close to the frontline.

On the first day we covered 50 kilometers, and the main part of our force comprised of infantry was exhausted and lost all combat effectiveness. We had not taken into account that our infantry, without transportation, had to carry not only personal equipment, but also machineguns, stands and ammo belts, 50mm and 82mm mortars and shells. Under these conditions infantry could only march 30 to 35 kilometers a day, which slowed down the 35th and 20th so-called tank divisions.

The motorized rifle brigade, despite being overloaded, had enough tanks and motorized transport to proceed normally 50 kilometers ahead to the vicinity of Rovno.

With this in consideration, we in the corps headquarters decided to follow in the path of the 35th Tank Division so that we could use the same crossing of the Goryn River south of Rovno. Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Alexei Maslov ordered a platoon of sappers on vehicles to move ahead to prepare a command post.

Bringing with us our battery of 85mm anti-tank guns to, we found the road to the site to be flanked by wheat fields reaching the height of a man. Here we noticed strangely dressed people, sometimes alone and sometimes in groups, who would quicky hide from our gaze. One would be in his underwear, and another, in a military-issue undershirt and trousers, and another, in badly worn peasant clothes and straw hat. Of course these people were suspicious, so the headquarters movement halted and I ordered these fugitives to be caught to find out who they were. It turns out they were in the first of the so-called escapees from the encirclement, assigned to various military units. Among them were two Red Army soldiers from the platoon sent to secure the site for our command post.

From their stories it appeared that the platoon, while en route to the designated site, were suddenly attacked and surrounded by a group of German tanks, motorcycles and infantry on vehicles. A few soldiers had managed to escape with the rest killed. Different interviewees tried every possible way to convince us that their units had been killed and destroyed, while they by some miracle survived, so decided break out deep from the enemy rear to reach friendly forces.

Their masquerade is easy to explain. They got civilian clothing from the locals, and those who couldn’t, stripped down to their underwear. Fear overcame common sense, and such primitive cleverness would not save them from captivity, because their underwear had military markings. The enemy was not naive enough to not notice this. Afterward we saw the corpses of those executed on the spot like this, in their underwear.

While the heroism and achievements of the large majority of units and individuals in combat against the enemy should be praised, one cannot ignore the panic and disgraceful flight, desertion from the field of battle and march to the front, and self-inflicted injuries and suicides to avoid accountability for their behavior in combat.

The unexepected and powerful enemy attack deep into Soviet territory stunned our unprepared forces for some time. They were in shock. Military and political considerations unrelated to the attack contributed to general confusion.

A combination of major factors and circumstances to various degrees degraded the combat readiness and morale of the troops, and for a period weakened their resilience and resolve, particularly impacting units that engaged the enemy in a disorganized manner. They lost faith in their own strength to oppose the mighty enemy.

There were cases when small flanking attacks by tanks and aircraft caused even whole units to panic… fear of encirclement and imaginary enemy paratroopers were a real scourge for a long time. Only where there were strong cadres of command and political staff did people find their courage and repel the enemy in an organized manner.

It needs to be said that reports flooding the country by   local, regional, republican, and to some extent, even the national news, about enemy infiltrators disguised in the uniforms of police, border guards, NKVD, commanders and so on, calling for vigilance, also contributed to the spread of fake news and panic. These excuses were used by the weak-spirited in the armed forces.

For example there was one case in our corps. A general appeared at our command post in a torn uniform, without a weapon and completely exhausted. The general explained that while on an assignment from the 5th Army headquarters he had seen a stream of our vehicles and soldiers to the West of Rovno heading East. He panicked and stopped one of the trucks. Inside there were around 20 men. Instead of answering where they were going or what unit they were with, they pulled the general into the back and interrogated him in unison. Without a second thought they decided that he was an infiltrator, seized his gun and documents, and sentenced him to death. The general jumped off the truck, escaped into the woods and found our command post.

In our location and other units there were cases of personnel being fired upon while trying to detain panickers, who would flee from the front and behaved like this due to fear of having to return. They justified their behavior for a variety of reasons;   their units were killed and they alone survived, escaped from encirclement, attacked in the rear by enemy paratroopers, shot at by “cuckoos,” and so on.

There was one such case of an officer’s suicide in the 20th Tank Division. His suicide note is burned into my memory, “The fear haunts me that I cannot endure battle, so I must kill myself.”

Cases of weak spirit and instability took various forms. That they were not isolated incidents worried command and political staffs, party and Komsomol organizations, forcing them to take extreme preventative measures.

To find and make contact with the 19th and 22nd mechanized corps, which should have been located ahead of or adjacent to us, reconnaissance groups led by officers from the corps headquarters went in several directions. One of these groups was led by the chief of staff. Upon returning he reported briefly making contact with the Front Chief of Staff Maxim Purkaev. He did not communicate any information about the situation at the front, which suggested that the front chief of staff himself did not know. This was understandable because enemy troops had disrupted lines of communication within the first hour of their attack. Planes dropped bombs with rods attached to a cross piece that exploded when they touched the telephone wires. In addition to this, wires were cut by saboteurs sent for this purpose, possibly even before the war started.

As we continued moving toward the assembly area, we more than once observed German aircraft bombing military and civilian columns alike as they evacuated East along the Lutsk-Rovno highway. The disorderly movement of individual and groups of vehicles looked more like a panicking stampede than an organized evacuation. More than once we had to send squads to restore order and detain servicemen who were (without proper authorization) trying to leave the frontline.

Chapters:
Tomorrow There Will Be War
The Battle Begins
On the Yartsevo Heights
An Unexpected Order
The Volokolamsk Direction (COMING SOON)
Nowhere To Retreat
Forward!
Sukhinichi
Memorable Lessons
The Bryansk Front
Battle for Stalingrad
Closing the Vise
Destruction of the Enemy
The Kursk Salient
Going for the Dnieper
For Belarussian Soil
Both Offensives Are the “Main” One
Destruction
Warsaw
In Germany
On Two Fronts
East Pomerania
From the Oder To the Elba
Happiness of a Soldier

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Ian Kummer

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