Reading Gogun’s major historical study, I kept recalling our family chronicles. The author tells how, in 1946–1947, during preparations for a new world war, army authorities, while freely demobilizing high-ranking officers, sought at the same time to retain combat officers of the lower or middle ranks — with the main emphasis, first and foremost, on field artillery. So it was with my father as well. In 1937, when he was a 14-year-old boy, he was sent off to the camps. Five years later, having miraculously survived, he volunteered for the front and spent the entire war on the front line, commanding an anti-tank 45-mm gun. He was wounded three times. A decorated veteran. In 1947, after a decade of state-imposed captivity, he tried in vain to be demobilized — but they would not release him: «We need officers with front-line experience». He was let go only after, in one of his countless applications, he dared to mention his sentence under Article 58 of the Criminal Code for «counterrevolutionary activity», which he had concealed in army forms («At the time I considered it necessary to keep that hidden»).
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