The basic thought:
(Google translate)
WEAPONS
Penalty infantry battalion usually has five of the company commander and consisted of three rifle, machine gun, mortar and mouth. Armed with machine-gun company - 12 heavy machine guns, armed with mortar - 6 82-mm mortars. In the rifle companies of machine guns Degtereva - from 3 to 9 in each group. Sometimes, in the penal battalion antitank platoon added armed with two anti-tank guns. At the end of the war, penal, like other soldiers of the Red Army used everywhere in the battle trophy faustpatrony.
In his book "Free Kick" Alexander Pyltsyn recalls: "I want to draw attention to the fact that our battalion was constantly replenished with new weapons in sufficient numbers. We have not yet been widely applied in the armed forces new machines instead of PCA RPE. We have obtained new anti-tank guns SSS-C (ie, Simonovsky) with pyatizaryadnym store. In general, a lack of weapons we have never experienced ...
.... In the military penal companies, when their number exceeded one thousand times as I have already told many years after the war, the officer Vladimir G. Mikhailov, the commander of such a company then in the 64th Army, there were occasions when you simply do not have time to bring up the right number of weapons and then, if before you urgently combat tasks did not have time to re-armament, one was given a rifle and the other - hostile reception from them. Testify that it does not apply to officers Shtrafbat. Weapons, including the most modern, there is always enough. "
Another recollection of a front of armed officers penal battalions "were supposed to trehlineyku, shoot from which to attack - things torment. We had to stop and juggle bolt after each shot ... ... But lucky - got a shotgun, self-cocking and shorter trehlineyki and a half times. Automata penalty box was not supposed to. But in every platoon had only one light machine gun. Ammo is also allowed to take, who, as it can carry. In other parts were given to each of five to ten pieces, no more. "
But in the companies of the penalty and in fact, with arms "was not a gift", and received his penal basically just before the battle (as a rule, only rifles). Here are a few memories of soldiers passed punitive company:
"Shtrafroty - five rounds per rifle, thirty by machine gun, as a rule, German, - and that's all the ammunition."
"I do not know how it happened ... I just remember that before the first attack, they gave us ten rounds per rifle. And then I stand, I click the shutter, shooting, and I have no ammunition."
"I got into shtrafrotu, where we had about 150 people. We were only armed with rifles. No machines, no machine guns, we did not have."
"Arms trophy was used everywhere, and it was very popular. Sergeant hand over weapons drop-out system, but it is a" ledger "his looks and asks:" What are you out there fighting for? Statements on all the weapons company has long passed ". A trophy without a gun - at the end of the war - it is difficult to imagine any infantry commander. It was a craze."
But again, I stress once again that life is - it is relative. So look for comparison to the "Blackshirts" moving to the completion of ordinary field pieces. Think and Feel ...
Well, so I was not accused of worn-out cliches like, "Oh, we know ... the corpses had stopped, the Germans with their bare hands tore at the throat," I will answer - words from a song you can not throw. Rifles actually missing. Only in the context of the military disaster and confusion of the initial period of war, chaos typically Russian in all spheres of life, they have not always been there, where they were most needed. And why were fighting - that is. Requests for short truce to bringing up ammunition to the Germans did not offer.
And not we alone, Sivolap, yes nekultyapistye this suffering.
Here is what General Gorev: "... It's happened many times in the German army. For example, Lt. CF Brand to found his diary he wrote us that he was sent into battle at Kursk, and they had one rifle for three ".
This - not forty-first summer near Mogilev in the Red Army. This summer 1943, the Kursk - in the Wehrmacht.
