War Service
The corps fought a total 916 days in the war, and at different times it was in service on the Kalinin, the Leningrad and the 2nd Baltic Front. For 344 days, parts of the corps were engaged with German forces, but no significant gains were made. For the next 123 days, the formation was engaging in the Battle of Velikiye Luki where 13,000 of the 27,000 men were killed or wounded. Then, 37 days were spent in the Battle of Narva, and the final 69 days were devoted to the Battle of Courland. During the Battle of Narva in 1944, the artillery of the rifle corps fired on the 20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Estonian), consisting of Estonians fighting in the Waffen SS. The infantry of the corps was engaged in direct battle with the Estonians on the German side in the battles of Porkuni and Avinurme on 20 and 21 September 1944, where a detachment of the rifle corps murdered a number of wounded prisoners of war.
In total, 4100 settlements were captured by the 8th Estonian Rifle Corps. Of the whole rifle corps, one division, six regiments, and one battalion were decorated with an order. The 8th Estonian Rifle Corps was also given the honorific "Tallinn", and on June 28, 1945 the corps was renamed the 41st Guards Estonian Tallinn Rifle Corps. The two component divisions were also honored; the 7th became the 118th Guards Rifle Division and the 249th became the 122nd Guards Rifle Division. In 1946, both divisions were inactivated to provide personnel for other Soviet activities in the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic.
According to the 23 June 1945 decision of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, demobilization of the Red Army started. The first 8th Rifle Corps fighters were demobilized on 16 July 1945. By the end of 1946, 16,550 men were demobilized. Of those, 3,425 (20.7%) started to work in the administrative or legal bodies of the Soviet occupation regime (Communist Party, Komsomol, trade unions etc.).
Read more about this topic: 8th Estonian Rifle Corps
Famous quotes containing the words war and/or service:
“The funny part of it all is that relatively few people seem to go crazy, relatively few even a little crazy or even a little weird, relatively few, and those few because they have nothing to do that is to say they have nothing to do or they do not do anything that has anything to do with the war only with food and cold and little things like that.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“A man’s real faith is never contained in his creed, nor is his creed an article of his faith. The last is never adopted. This it is that permits him to smile ever, and to live even as bravely as he does. And yet he clings anxiously to his creed, as to a straw, thinking that that does him good service because his sheet anchor does not drag.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)