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A reminder that camels were EVERYWHERE at Stalingrad. Here's one copping a look at Vasily Grossman's newspaper.
Photo shows very proud camel looking at man reading newspaper
The 308th Rifle Division, formed on 21 March 1942 as part of the 1st Guards Army of the Soviet Red Army, started using a Bactrian camel brought over from Kazakhstan[2] which the soldiers called kuznechik (Russian for "grasshopper"), for transport of food and cookery material. It is said that the camel also made it easier for soldiers returning to the camp to locate their unit from the "tall and imposing animal, visible at a great distance".[3]
The 308th Rifle Division, in honor of its heroic performance, was renamed the 120th Guards Rifle Division and, as part of the 3rd Army of Rokossovsky’s Front], took active part in the Battle of Stalingrad under Colonel Leonty Gurtyev (where it defended the Barrikady factory), the liberation of Orel, Operation Bagration, the campaign for the recapture of Belarus, the East Prussian Offensive and finally the Battle of Berlin.
Kuznechik, carrying out its logistics duties in the rear, was to follow this mostly Siberian military formation all the way to Berlin, where its driver is said to have led the animal to the Reichstag to spit on the ruined building.[4]
Other sources relate that Kuznechik was killed in a 1945 German air raid, near the Baltic Sea.
salute to comrade Kuznechik