This is the third chapter in A Soldier’s Duty, 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 …