STALINGRAD                                                               -October 1942- told by Isaak Kobylyanskiy

After seven weeks of training and being reinforced, the 300th Rifle Infantry Division was sent to the front. This included Soviet, Isaak Kobylyanskiy, who had just been appointed guncrew commander of the 1049th Rifle Regiment's first gun - a 76 mm regimental cannon.

76mm regimental cannon, 1927 model.

It took three days to reach the city of Kamyskin by rail from the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Republic. The 300th Rifle Division would have to complete the rest of the 200 km [125 miles] journey by truck.     "Everybody was amazed, when a long column of quite new trucks arrived," Kobylyanskiy recalls.      His excited comrades remarked that the trucks were " 'so different from Soviet trucks and much bigger than ours!' " They also asked " 'Where are they from? Who built them?' " One of the trucks' drivers answered them. They're Studebakers, he said, and they've been shipped from the US to here as a part of the 'lend-lease' program.

A US Lend-Lease Studebaker from 1943 found in 1998 in Russia!

"There was an overcast sky all day long and no German planes were seen or heard," Kobylyanskiy says. "About 20 km [12.5 miles] to our destination, strange sounds resembling remote rumble of thunder began to be heard. Everybody understood: it was the echo of the battle for Stalingrad."

The frontline against fascism - Stalingrad and the Volga River.

Kobylyanskiy and his battery spent a day inside "skillfully decorated" loghouses of an "old traditional Russian village with [a] single street" before heading off for battle. 2 kilometers [a mile and some] from the village of Verkhnye-Pogromnoye (now the city of Volzhskiy) was the Volga River - the Soviet Union's frontline against Hitler and the Axis.         "It was a gloomy afternoon... This time we drove very slowly along an extremely bumpy dirt road. It was growing more and more dark, but according to the order, all lights were off. Finally, we reached the edge of a forrest that stretched almost to the bank of the river."          The Studebakers could go no further and left the Soviet artillerymen to move their guns into place by "human traction".          "It was so difficult in the darkness! Unfortunately, a thick rain began. Only officers were to have waterproof capes, so in a quite short while, our military greatcoats got wet."          Emplacements for the guns were dug, foxholes and dugouts were made, guns were camouflaged and put into place, and telephone wires were all laid out within an hour before dawn. The exhausted Soviets, including Kobylyanskiy, went to take a nap in  nearby dugout while two sentries were on duty.

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE THIS STORY