Today there were two topics. Artillery shelling and how to behave in captivity. How to behave in captivity is quite a difficult topic, and I think it’s better not to share what they told us there publicly.
The second topic was artillery shelling. It was taught by instructor San. A man who has had at least one experience of his entire brigade being “wiped out.”
You are sitting in a trench and artillery shelling begins. As eyewitnesses have described, you lie in the trench and pray that nothing will hit you. If, for example, you hear a mine whistling, you have a maximum of one second to take cover. You don’t look for a place, you just lie down where you are as quickly as possible. In the case of a tank shot, you first see the explosion and then hear the shot.
I remembered how another man told me how they were under artillery fire for three days. He said that the first day was more or less normal. The second day was very difficult, especially psychologically. On the third day, when the enemy had already taken good aim and began to hit even more accurately, it felt like every explosion took a piece of your soul.
When the artillery fire starts, all the defenders of the trench hide as much as possible. But a few people have to stay at the observation posts to prevent the enemy infantry from approaching. These people were called different things. Some said they were heroes, while others smiled and said they were just “reckless.” Some, also with a smile, said that they were the ones who were not to be pitied.
If the artillery fire suddenly stopped and silence suddenly fell, it was an alarming signal. It meant that enemy infantry could be advancing.
It was hard for me to hear this. It was hard for me to understand how people survive in such situations. I asked my brother-in-arms Yaroslav about this, and he calmly replied, “Well, not everyone survives.”
In theory, it may seem simple—when there is artillery fire, you hide, and when it stops, you shoot at the advancing infantry.
But it’s one thing to shoot at targets in a calm environment at a shooting range. It’s quite another when you’re being shelled and could even be concussed. And then you have to get out and kill all the advancing infantry. At the same time, you realize that the shelling could start again at any moment.
After that, we had a short practical exercise. It was aimed at teaching us how to bring ourselves back to a normal and stable state after artillery fire. If you don’t control yourself, you can easily fall into a state of panic.
We were divided into two groups. At first, the first group was defending the trench, and the second was storming it. And then vice versa. During the assault, thanks to smoke and loud firecrackers, they tried to simulate artillery fire.
To be honest, the simulation was probably about 0.5% effective, or even less. So, of course, we didn’t panic or anything like that.
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