The worst thing about war is seeing your friends killed – WWII veteran

RT presents War Witness – a special project dedicated to the 65th anniversary of the Victory in the Second World War.

“Life at war – it speaks for itself,” said Vladimir Dyabin, squadron commander in the Soviet army. “There is nothing tougher in the whole world. Cold, constant sleep deprivation, stress provoked by shelling, air raids. But the worse thing was seeing your soldiers, your comrades, your friends, being killed.”

George Fujimore, tech sergeant and linguist in the US army, volunteered to serve when his wife was pregnant.

“I got my assignment at MacArthur’s headquarters and went up the coast, all the way up to Manila. We liberated the Japanese prison camp, American soldiers and civilians. From there we went up to Luzon because there were about 45,000 Japanese soldiers up there,” Fujimore said.

Nikita Krivocheine was a young boy, the son of a Russian émigré family, at the time the Germans invaded France.

“On the morning of June 22nd, 1941, I recall it very vividly, Hitler’s speech came on the radio. I can still hear it in my head, since his intonated yells were very distinct,” Krivocheine recalls. “It was then, on June 22nd, 1941, when I, as a seven-year-old boy, answered the doorbell, literally hours after the speech. And saw two gun barrels looking at me. It was the Gestapo. My father came out with his hands up. And in front of my eyes they took him away for the first time. Those who were considered part of the Russian Diaspora, the Russian colony in France, were imprisoned in the Compienne camp, from which everyone, except the Jews, was released several months later.”