I can never forget the first mass attack by Russian infantry which I experienced just after we came into the line during August 1941. I could not believe that in the Second World War the tactics of the First Great War could still be used by any one of the major combatants. The whole assault was so ineptly handled that I found it difficult to believe that it was being carried out by a professional Army and this incompetence reinforced the belief held at that time by many German officers, that the Red Army was being handled no differently to the Tzarist Army. It was the same old steamroller.
