Tank Destroyer Dog Handler

[desantnik]

Attached is a 2.7M Bravery Medal awarded to a tank-busting dog handler.
On this particular award order there was another similar citation to another individual.

For those who may not know, the Soviets experimented with training dogs equipped with a "backpack" full of explosives triggered by a tilt rod to run under tanks, thus creating a little WWII version of a "jihadi", albeit unwitting. The dogs were only fed under tanks and thus the ideal was that after starving the dogs, they would naturally run under the enemy tank in search of food.

It is noteworthy that neither human recipient was actually credited with destroying a tank, but was awarded for wounds received - testament to historical accounts that fortunately(?) the dogs were not very effective since they were scared by the sounds of the battlefield and the ominous tanks, as well as were equally prone to run and hide under Soviet tanks :idea so the program was stopped, resulting in happy, though malnourished dogs.