I was called up for military service in the summer of 1940
and was assigned, as they said in the draft office, to the heavy artillery.
When we joined the crew, they brought us to Uritsky Square, Palace Square.
We took the oath and moved to the barge. Where next?
They brought us to Kronshtadt. And started to allocate us.
Many people were allocated to islands, in Khanka,
but I didn't know these guys.
I was recalled later and was allocated to Marat.
By the beginning of World War II,
battleship Marat and two similar-class ships
were the biggest and most powerful units of the Soviet Navy.
In World of Warships, players can meet Marat’s sister ship,
Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya.
These ships were constructed before the revolution,
but were greatly modernized in the 1930s.
They were equipped with 305-mm guns
and an artillery system that was quite advanced for that time,
and continued to be a dangerous weapon in 1941, as well.
By the beginning of the war,
one of the three battleships was included in the Black Sea Fleet,
the other two—Marat and Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya—were in the Baltic Sea.
…Oktyabrskaya. It was a typical one.
If we were staying in the harbor,
motor boats came there to take us back after a leave.
These battleships were so similar
that our guys could confuse them with each other.
I had a friend, whom I still remember, Pashka Kapustin.
So he took the wrong motor boat, came to Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya,
and passed the watch crew.
He came to the berth deck—berths were the same—
and started to climb up to a berth.
Somebody grabbed his leg: "Where are you going? Who the hell are you?"
He answered: "It's my berth. —Where are you? —Where am I?
—On Marat, of course. —No, you are on Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya.
Simple as that. They were so similar that he got them confused.
From September 9, 1941, battleship Marat
was blasting through the German troops advancing on Leningrad.
The return fire of the Wehrmacht artillery
and German aviation attacks on the battleship were no less intense.
War, war, war, war.
Just like it’s described in the book,
every second one or two shells exploded— in water, on deck, or hit the board.
And one shell— not one, two—hit our bridge.
But we had shells under the bridge. And they all burst into flame.
But there was no explosion, there were fireworks.
Because there was no barrel to guide them,
these shells were just shooting like fireworks around and above.
The Commander told us: "Take shelter!"
But what shelter did we have?
There was only an elevator cab on our bridge.
And this cab was made of roofing sheets.
So everyone rushed to the other side, to nowhere…
I mean, they stood behind the cab, the elevator cab.
As for me, I wasn't standing, I was sitting with two clips in my hands.
And when I woke up, there was nobody… on deck.
What's up? I jumped up ashamed—
everyone had gone to conduct a mission somewhere, and I…
What happened to me?
I probably fell asleep.
And I know the reason. I read a scientific paper
that when bearing a heavy stress a person can feel sleepy.
And being involved in a shooting like this, it's terrifying…
And I saw my commander, lieutenant, who shouted: "Take the hose!"
I quickly ran to the other board, grabbed the hose out of his hands,
and moved to the ladder, dragging this hose behind me.
And the next moment I felt a blow, I fell down and then jumped up.
While falling down, I saw a body, my commander's body—
he was wearing a leather raglan, and smoke was escaping from it.
I was standing and feeling cold, and I was scared to look at my leg.
Then I felt blood drooling down my leg.
Where to go? I couldn’t see anyone.
My commander was lying shredded to pieces, a shell hit him.
I was probably five meters from him.
But being a soldier,
I decided to go upstairs thinking that my crew was there.
Severely damaged during the shelling on September 16,
the battleship was moved to Kronshtadt for repairs.
Here, on September 23, a fateful attack of German dive bombers took place.
Two bombs, each weighing nearly half a ton,
hit it in the foremast area at almost the same time.
The forward superstructure, masts, and forward pipe fell down.
Worse still, a detonation occurred in the powder room of the main turrets,
which destroyed both the turret and the entire forward end of the ship.
More than three hundred people died, and the battleship ran aground.
So the entire turret perished. And all the mast.
Who was there? There was all of command,
including the commander, the commissar, all the combat commanders.
They all died. And all the mast.
Guys who fell into the water said that there were signalmen,
searchlight operators, range-finder operators on the top of the ship.
And then an explosion occurred—
stokers, engineers, and everyone inboard died.
The ship broke away up to the second turret and sank.
I probably said to myself that I could have been with them,
but I was taken to hospital.
And what awaited me? We were under fire the whole way.
Until the war ended and the Germans were suppressed,
I thought that I was temporary here, I had an enemy.
Regardless of the most severe and almost fatal damages,
the battleship's combat capability was partially restored after several weeks.
And by the end of October, its main battery guns opened fire again.
Having become a stationary floating battery,
the battleship continued to launch tonnes of metal and explosives
to the enemy lines until January 1944 when the Leningrad Blockade was lifted.