I Fought in the Penal Battalion. "Redeem with Blood!"

As they went into the attack, they didn’t cry “Hooray!” or “For the Motherland! For Stalin!” They carried out the order at any cost, regardless of losses. And those who survived kept silent about their wartime past for almost half a century…

This book collects the recollections of veterans who fought in the penal battalions and penal companies of the Red Army. This is the “trench truth” of front-line men who fell under Stalin’s Order No. 227 “Not one step back!”—both the commanders of the penal units and the men marked for death from the “variable contingent” who “redeemed their guilt with blood.”