Faithin Omaha eBook Collection

Download or read book Penalty Strike written by Alexander V. Pyl'cyn and published by Stackpole Books. This book was released on 2009-04-28 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Extremely rare (possibly the only) book-length account of a Soviet penal unit in World War II Gritty, intense style conveys the brutality of war on the Eastern Front Composed of convicts--soldiers who conducted "unauthorized retreats," former Soviet POWs deemed untrustworthy, and Gulag prisoners--the Red Army's penal units received the most difficult, dangerous assignments, such as breaking through the enemy's defenses. So punishing was life in these units that officers in regular formations threatened to send recalcitrant troops to penal battalions. Alexander Pyl'cyn led his penal unit through the Soviets' massive offensive in the summer of 1944, the Vistula-Oder operation into eastern Germany, and the bitter assault on Berlin in 1945. He survived the war, but 80 percent of his men did not.