When someone mentions Italian faction as on Eastern front, I always remember that story of Soviet tank commander about Italian Army in USSR
(remember those vehicle skins from "Make War not Love" event?)
The brigade moved further and we got stuck in Verbyakovka for three days, while the maintenance technicians were digging around in the machine. Some general showed up who ordered me to move my tank to the outskirts for a watch “to prevent any bloody one to break in”. The tank was knocked down, but as a firing point it was quite effective.
When we got repaired we caught up with our troops. We arrived in the area; I will never forget the Cossack hamlet Khlebny. 3 km from there was another hamlet named Petrovsky. It was also occupied by Soviet tanks, but not those of our brigade. Between those two hamlets, which lay on hills, there was lowland.
Early in the morning the 8th Italian army was passing along that lowland in an enormous thick crowd saving itself from the encirclement. When the Italian vanguard units aligned with us we heard the command being distributed along our columns: “Go forward! Crush them!" Then we tore into them from both flanks!
I have never seen a mess as that one. We literally ground the Italian army into the soil. You should have looked into our eyes to see how much anger and hatred we had then! So we were squashing those Italians like bugs. It was winter; our tanks were painted in white color. When we disengaged from the battle the tanks below the turrets were red as if had floated in blood. I looked at the tracks: hands and fragments of skulls were stuck here and there. The spectacle was appalling.
We captured crowds of POWs that day. After that elimination the 8th Italian army literally ceased to exist. At least, I never saw a single Italian at the front after that.
- Otroschenkov Sergei Andreyevich - Captain, commander of T-34 tank.
stolen from http://iremember.ru/en/memoirs/tankers/otroschenkov-sergei-andreyevich/
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