Penalty Strike: The Memoirs of a Red Army Penal Company Commander, 1943-45

by Alexander V. Pyl'cyn

Overview

• Extremely rare (possibly the only) book-length account of a Soviet penal unit in World War II • Gritty, intense style conveys the brutality of war on the Eastern Front Composed of convicts—soldiers who conducted "unauthorized retreats," former Soviet POWs deemed untrustworthy, and Gulag prisoners—the Red Army's penal units received the most difficult, dangerous assignments, such as breaking through the enemy's defenses. So punishing was life in these units that officers in regular formations threatened to send recalcitrant troops to penal battalions. Alexander Pyl'cyn led his penal unit through the Soviets' massive offensive in the summer of 1944, the Vistula-Oder operation into eastern Germany, and the bitter assault on Berlin in 1945. He survived the war, but 80 percent of his men did not.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811735995
Publisher:	Stackpole Books
Publication date:	04/28/2009
Series:	Stackpole Military History Series
Pages:	206
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Alexander Pyl'cyn, drafted into the Red Army at eighteen in 1941 and wounded three times, earned the Order of the Red Banner, the Order of the Great Patriotic War, and the Order of the Red Star for his actions during the war. He lives in St. Petersburg, Russia.