A fluent German speaker, Captain Dyatlenko was transferred to the 7th Department of the Stalingrad Front in the autumn of 1942 to help with the interrogations of German prisoners of war [REF].
Dyatlenko had no idea of the sort of behaviour that was expected of a truce envoy, later admitting that all he knew of the necessary protocols came from Solovyov's play Field Marshal Kutuzov [REF].