a Russian officer's spare account of the invasion of Germany in WWII
Henry Berry, writer, editor, consultant, 01/31/2006

These memoirs written a few years after the author's 50-year career in the Russian Army 'are a look back at the life of a typical member of the Red Army' in World War II. Bessonov was an officer in a tank detachment but lower-ranking field officers such as he was at the time were out in front of their men in advances and engagements. The memoir is shorn of any heroics or sentimentality. Nor does its author focus on himself any more than necessary to make for a sense of continuity or set the scene for the reader. The style is like an officer's 'after-action report'--in this case one long report--going little beyond what happened to be read by others for purposes of intelligence-gathering or a comprehensive military history. 'We came under fire from three German assault guns, which turned out to be some 50 metres from us. We had to take cover behind trees, as the assault guns fired at almost very single soldier.' For the reader, such spareness makes in seem he is almost participating in the action. In battle, there's no time or occasion to think or feel really--only sheer action and reaction, the way the former officer writes. Bessonov joined the Red Army at the climatic 1943 battle of Kursk dooming Nazi Germany to eventual defeat on the Eastern Front. But it wasn't until two years later that the author and his tank crews and accompanying infantrymen victoriously enterered Berlin. In his plainly-written, though gripping war memoir, Bessonov brings the reader every step of the conflict-filled way.