I Am an Anti-Tank Rifleman. Tank Destroyers

A new front-line action thriller from the author of bestsellers “Terror Hunters Against Tigers” and “The Commander of a Penal Company.” The first novel about one of the most dangerous military professions—tank destroyers.

“Long barrel—short life,” they said at the front about crews serving anti-tank guns. But the life expectancy of the tank destroyer teams was even less. Anti-tank rifles of the Degtyaryov and Simonov systems were deployed massively on the front lines during the war’s harshest period, at the end of 1941, when catastrophic artillery losses forced command to rely on this simple, cheap weapon. But for every victory—for every tank destroyed—the PTR crews paid with heavy blood. To knock out a German panzer even from its side, tank destroyers needed to let it get close—100 to 200 meters—whereas tank crews could shoot PTR positions from afar, with impunity, from long distances. The chances of tank destroyers shrank even further in the second year of the war, when the Germans sharply increased the protection of their armored vehicles. Now anti-tank rifles couldn’t penetrate German armor even at point-blank range. They had to shoot at the tracks, fuel tanks, viewing devices, and even the barrels of tank guns—then finish off the damaged panzers with grenades and bottles of incendiary mixture…

This book is a tribute to the kamikaze men of the Great Patriotic War—those who, at the cost of their own lives, carried out the merciless order: “The main thing is to knock out the tanks from the Germans!”