How about a nice little dive through the ice in a big ole' KV-1 for fun? "I have more impressions of the KV, when we took the counteroffensive. Our brigade was taking Ruza. We got to the town on January 21st. The city itself was on a hill on another, on the western bank of the river by the same name, and our bank was gently sloping. The infantry was pushed to the ground by enemy fire and wouldn't advance. In all, we had four KV tanks in the brigade, and the rest were T-26s and BTs. That is to say, I was like a grenadier. These little tanks didn't play a role, they burned like candles, but the Germans still did not have the means to burn KV tanks from the front. So, the division commander, to which the 20th Tank Brigade had been attached, ordered "Send forward a KV tank to cover the infantry, so that it would come out onto the ice and attack Ruza." And the battalion commander said, -"Son, you are going to drive on ice." -"Well, you do know that the tank weighs 48 tons and it's January 21st, which means that the ice isn't 40 centimeters thick yet and it won't hold." I say. -"Son, make sure you don't drive far, so when you start to sink, you'll still have time to jump out." We had to carry out the order, otherwise the infantry wouldn't advance and would not take Ruza. I said to the driver, Miroshnikov, a former actor from the Voroshilovograd theatre, who was four years older than me (he never called me "Comrade Lieutenant," but always: "come on, lieutenant, come on, lieutenant." I considered this normal because I had only just arrived, and he fought from the western borders and already had the Order of the Red Banner). -"Miroshnikov, you just make sure to put the transmission in neutral if we go to the bottom so that when they pull out the tank, it won't drag out, but will roll on its caterpillar tracks. -"I know this, Lieutenant, I know." And I say to the rest of the crew members, -"Don't close the upper hatch." If we sink, we could still push it out and bail out. And so it happened. We went 7-8 meters and then - the tank sank to the bottom. We had enough strenght in our tank overalls, padded jackets, and felt boots to bail out so the water was up to our necks, because the tank was 2.8 meters tall, and I was 1.65 meters, so it was clear that if it sank, I would've drowned as well. The infantry had already seized the enemy bank, so there was no machine gun fire from that side. Then they stripped us naked right there on the bank and wrapped us each in a sheepskin coat and sent us to the grove, gave us a glass of vodka each, and said, "Sleep!" We slept through the night, and in the morning the commander of the repair brigade woke me up and said, "Bondar', let's go to Moscow for some cable to pull out the tank. They gave us a truck and we went to the place where the Cathedral of Christ the Savior is today. There were small coils of American cable - very light and very durable, we rolled this coil to the truck and by the evening returned to the Ruza again, the sappers hooked up our tank, pulled it out, dried it out, replaced the batteries, and already in three days I was on the offensive again. So now whenever I go to Christ the Savior with my family, I say, "Keep in mind that there, where the Cathedral of Christ the Savior now stands, in '42 I took a coil of American cable there." -- Aleksandr Bodnar (on the ever excellent http://www.iremember.ru site)
