The author of this book is one of those three percent of front-line soldiers who, having received baptism of fire in the summer of 1941, lived to see Victory. He broke out of the “cauldrons”, defended the Luga line and the Road of Life, participated in the bloody assaults on the Sinyavinsky Heights (where only five soldiers remained from his entire battery), and fought from Taman to Prague. He fought as a sapper, in the infantry, as a gunner in artillery, and as a commander of a Su-76 self-propelled gun in the only Cossack Plastun division in the entire Red Army. “Yes, our self-propelled guns had weaknesses. This is not as powerful as we would like, bulletproof armor, the fire hazard of a gasoline engine and an open conning tower. It did not protect against small fire from above or from throwing grenades. All this had to be taken into account in battle. Because of the tarpaulin roof, talkative people assigned rude nicknames to our Su-76s: “bare-assed Ferdinand” or “bitch.” Although, on the other hand, the same open wheelhouse was convenient to work with, eliminated the problem of gas contamination in the fighting compartment when firing, and it was easy to leave the damaged installation. Therefore, many self-propelled gunners were in love with the SU-76, we affectionately called it “cracker.” This book is the real “trench truth” of a front-line soldier who had only three chances out of a hundred to stay alive, but who won at “Russian roulette” against death, wounded in battles, but not burned alive.