Someone please explain this to me

[Soldier]

Broken and rattled sounds good to me. The fact that this HQ unit is moving in the "open" and suddenly finds it's self under enemy fire, is enough to freak those boys out..
Especially Russian officer. They were not extremely brave.. :-) Sending conscripts into frontal and fruitless attacks, training friendly machine guns at their backs, was their favorite tactic. It helped to assure, that they, instead of the privates, would survive the war, etc..

Anyway, the key here, is the open terrain. Like in no place to hide.. :-)