[Ex-Services News]

DISTRICT ASSOCIATIONS

District Associations have been formed in Kandy, Matale and Uva to broadbase activities of SLESA. This process is now extended to the Trincomalee District. List of ex-service personnel from the three services are being processed and a meeting will be convened shortly. It is expected to expand this programme to Gampaha, Kalutara and Galle districts in the near future.

SRI LANKA NAVAL ASSOCIATION - 33RD AGM

The 33rd Annual General Meeting of the Sri Lanka Naval Association will be held on April 21 at 10 am at the Vijithapura Hall, Sri Lanka Ex-Servicemen's Institute, 29, Bristol Street, Colombo 1.

Contact 011 2212599 during week days for details.

Memoirs of a War Veteran Bogan Regiment takes Reichstag

The Battalion Commander ordered them to consolidate their position. They squatted in front of the windows and opened fire. Abyzov saw Kiselyov next to him. He (Kiselyov) had taken Ivanov's place. He asked Abyzov "What date is it today?"

"What difference does it make? I think it's the 30th Abyzov replied smiling. A faustpatron (bomb) exploded behind them. Abyzov was deafened by the din and could hear nothing.

He put the palm of his hand to his ear and jumped on one leg, just like after bathing. It did not help. He opened fire just to hear some sort of sound, but he could hardly hear the shots. Another Soviet tank was on fire. It was burning in a side street. They saw the tanker-men open the hatch and escape through it on to the pavement.

One of them was in flames. Rolling on the ground he tried to extinguish the fire. One of the boys jumped out of the window to help the tank-man, who was killed by the same burst.

After daybreak senior Lieutenant Chevelcha, young Communist League Organizer of the regiment, reached their company. He was a tall, slim lad with rosy cheeks, wearing clean white under-collar. The buckle of his belt was shining. He cried out to them from the threshold; "Comrades of the Bogan Regiment! Our troops have taken the Reichstag, Hurrah!"

Though there was still a din in Abyzov's ears, these were the first words that reached him after the damned faustpatron exploded.

The men began to clear and someone fired a few rounds into the air. Chevelcha was offered a chair in front of a broken mirror. Somebody asked him if he would like a hair-cut or a shave.

They laughed, soon all this the smoke, soot, brick dust that filled the air and drying up the throat would end. Then they would have real hair cut and a real shave. But first a nice long sleep, so much as then in Berlin.

However, their festive mood was dispelled as soon as they started moving. This time they had to tear through German sub-machine gun fire in the yard and not in the streets.

They climbed over all sorts of improvised barriers, returning fire from behind corners, from behind battered half demolished walls. The whole neighborhood was in ruins. Their Air Force had done a thorough good job there. The Germans fought with frenzy of the doomed.

In one of the yards a man from the 2nd platoon called Abyzov, who remembered him because he took him (Abyzov) for a ride in a captured Opal Car on the autobahn (super highway). Abyzov had forgotten his name, it was either Salnikov or Sotnikov.

To be continued ...