Rssential for any researching the Soviet military experience during the second world war.

books:


	• PENALTY STRIKE: The Memoirs of a Red Army Penal Company Commander 1943-45 (Soviet Memories of War) Alexander Pyl'cyn Helion and Company Ltd., 2006 - 240 pages average customer review:based on 5 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Rssential for any researching the Soviet military experience during the second world war.

Alexander V. Pyl'cyn's PENALTY STRIKE: THE MEMOIRS OF A RED ARMY PENAL COMPANY COMMANDER, 1943-45 is also essential reading for any who would understand the WW2 experience from the Soviet participant's viewpoint: again a participant's vivid memories are plumbed: this time from a company commander's viewpoint. The author and his unit participated in the 1944 soviet summer offensive program and the final assault on Berlin: his accounts of penal companies and battalions offer vivid insights into the foundations of a penal battalion's operations. Both are essential for any researching the Soviet military experience during the second world war.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

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The Only WWII Red Army Memoir on Punishment Units

This interesting and insightful book is the only War World II memoir written by an officer of the Soviet Army's World War II penal or punishment formations.

Some 422,700 Red Army soldiers served in punishment battalions during World War II. Few survived service in such formations, which one specialist of the Soviet Army described as "forlorn," "deadly," and "soul destroying."

Alexander Pyl'cyn served as a platoon commmander and deputy commander of the 8th Independent Penal Battalion. He and his battalion fought in Byelorussia, Poland and Germany, ending the war in Berlin. Wounded three times during the war, Pyl'cyn's description of life and death in a penal battalion is powerful. He and his company carried out the most difficult and dangerous missions on any sector to which they were assigned and were frequently in the lead of Red Army breakthroughs of the German lines. Suffering casualty rates of some 80 percent, he and his men usually accomplished their mission.

"Penalty Strike" is not an easy read, though it is very well written. The text is dense and packed full of people, places, and battles. Still, the author manages to clearly and powerfully convey to the reader what it meant to be a Soviet soldier on the Eastern Front in World War. II. And many parts of the story are moving, especially when dealing with close friends killed in battle or Pyl'cyn's courtship with a Red Army nurse, whom he later married.

Those interested in the Red Army or the Eastern Front in World War II will find this book an important contribution to the literature.

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Excellent Account of a Red Army Penal Battalion at War

As a lieutenant, the author in December 1943 was assigned to lead a platoon in a Red Army "Officer Penal Battalion". He describes the organization, training, equipment of his battalion, and the personalities he recalls, in great and fascinating detail. Essentially, Officer Penal Battalions were shock troops used to infiltrate through or breach holes in German defensive lines. The "Officer Prisoners" fought to redeem their honor and freedom after being arrested and convicted of crimes against the State. If the officer prisoners survived and fought with honor, they were often freed and reinstated to officer status, depending on the personality and quirks of the commander of the army to which the penal battalion was attached. The author was not a convicted offender; he was part of the cadre assigned to lead this unit into combat. As a platoon leader, his deputy in one battle was a lieutenant colonel who had commanded an infantry regiment with distinction before running afoul of the State. He freely admits his unit sometimes captured, interrogated, and executed German prisoners of war, because when operating behind enemy lines in his words, "What else could we do?" This is a harsh book on the nature of close in infantry combat and the soldiers who wage it. Mercy is an alien concept when you are outnumbered and slugging it out with pistol, submachine gun, grenades, and entrenching tool against German soldiers at night inside an enemy trench. Readers interested in Soviet accounts of the infantryman's war during the last years of WWII will find this one of the best books on the subject. The author tells a candid story, one chock full of fascinating details and chilling memories, quite well. Heroism, cowardice, and luck fill the pages. This book is so well written, one can almost smell the cordite and hear the sounds of the advancing German assault guns as the author and his comrades fight like lions to repulse counterattack after counterattack in the Narev Bridgehead, October 1944.

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worth it for EF junkies

I have read the Russian version of the book - it is reasonably well written memoir which dispels a whole lot of legend about Soviet penal units (big bad commissars with revolvers shooting every one at the slightest hint of fear, sanding people without the weapons in battle etc). Well worth the money.

Excellent reference about a fairly obscure topic

This book was written by a man who experienced life in a penal unit firsthand, and offers a unique perspective. He debunks several misconceptions about such units, while simultaneously providing an excellent account of daily life as an officer leading a unit of Shtrafniks. Pyl'cyn displays great personal bravery on a number of occasions. The only downside to this book is that, as the memoir of a junior officer, it does not give a big-picture perspective of the role of penal units in the war. I think it would be greatly aided by a companion piece written as a scholarly study of such units.

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The focus of this book are the author's vivid memories of service as a company commander in a Red Army officers' penal battalion on the Eastern Front 1944-45.

During this time, he and his unit participated in the 1944 Soviet summer offensive Operation 'Bagration', the Vistula-Oder operation into eastern Germany, and the final assault on Berlin.

The stories of penal companies and battalions in the Red Army gave birth to legends about men who rushed to the attack across minefields against German machine-guns with one rifle per three men. The author of this book knows from his own experience what a penal battalion is. A common threat during the war, "I will send you to a penal battalion!" meant nothing to him. He was there.

He was a platoon commander and later a commander of an officers' penal company. He was a senior lieutenant having a degraded regiment commander as a second-in-command. He and his company had to carry out the most difficult and dangerous operations in order to break through the enemy defenses. With more than 80% of the men lost his company succeeded in completing their missions. The horrors of war, the hand-to-hand fights with a desperately struggling enemy are described in this book along with a story of a strong feeling between the young officer and a hospital nurse Rita. Thanks to Alexander Rita was appointed a nurse in the penal battalion. She saved dozens of soldiers, carrying them from the battlefield under enemy fire. It was Rita who saved Alexander Pyl'cyn from death, when he was badly wounded near Berlin. She became his wife in the last months of the war. The author is brilliant at detailing the way of life and personal relations in the war. In this horrible slaughter cowardice and treason went side by side with friendship and heroism. In these inhuman conditions people remained as they were: they lived, they laughed, they loved.

Key sales points: High-quality memoirs from Soviet soldiers who served on the Eastern Front are rare - rarer still are firsthand accounts of the Red Army's penal battalions / The author's intense and exciting style produces a fluid and highly-readable account of the brutal reality of war in the East during its most bitter final phase / Includes the author's experiences during the storming of Berlin 1945, and his battlefield romance with Rita, the battalion's nurse, and his future wife.

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