About the book: 2017 / This book is not just another (already the seventh) reissue of the bestseller “The Truth about Penal Battalions,” which sold record copies. The author not only supplemented his memoirs with new materials, but increased their volume by half and radically revised them. In fact, you have a new book in your hands. This is the most honest story about the combat path of the first of the penal battalions of the Red Army, in which Alexander Pyltsyn served as a “permanent officer” - they were selected not from the penal battalions, but from the best front-line commanders. This is the “trench truth "by an honored veteran, refuting slander against the Great Patriotic War and anti-Soviet fakes. If you do not need the false myths of the “anti-Stalinists,” but the true memories of a front-line soldier who went with his penal battalion from Belarus to Berlin, this book is for you!