There's a story [1] about russian soldiers at some points of war being assigned one rifle per two infantrymen. The idea was that one guy would get the rifle and

There's a story [1] about russian soldiers at some points of war being assigned one rifle per two infantrymen. The idea was that one guy would get the rifle and the other one would be a "spare", waiting for the first one to die. He was also free to pick up a rifle from one of other people already dead on the ground. BTW I suspect that the widely portrayed in media horror of being in the attack boat on D-Day was something of a common occurence for Soviet soldiers. They were routinely ordered to perform near-suicidal attacks, as Stalin's strategy was "strength in numbers". That's how he "achievied" the record number of casualities across all countries in the war. [1] Can't find it right now, so I can't say how accurate it was, or how widespread.