by Stalingrad- The City that Defeated the Third Reich (epub)
On September 18 we got our orders: our group, such as it was, was to attack and occupy Hill 143.6. Our soldiers were in great spirits. They’d been there for two days and held back the German onslaught. That really raised their spirits. We didn’t have any casualties. We’d only had casualties on the first day. On September 17 the girls managed to get through to the ravine and carry back the wounded. We worked all night long.
On September 18 we attacked.
Dmitri Andrianovich Petrakov (Commissar in the 339th Rifle Regiment): September 18 marked the peak of our efforts to take the hill, and we still had about ten kilometers of even terrain to get there. I’d been with the company on several attacks, and we’d suffered great losses. On September 18 we were ordered to take the hill. [ . . . ] Our orders were to reach the battalion’s position that night no matter what and to get to work—bearing in mind that the artillery preparation would begin at five o’clock—and then we’d attack at night. We made our way through literally all of the trenches. Our men only had tracer rounds to shoot with. We got them fed and explained the importance of these hills, and we promised them decorations: an Order of the Red Star for a captured German soldier, the Order of the Red Banner for an officer, and the Order of Lenin for whoever gets to the top first. Many of the men said that even this wouldn’t encourage them to take prisoners—as soon as they found a German, he’d be a goner. We were assigned an artillery regiment and two Katyusha rocket battalions, in addition to our own battalion. Then we started to fire on the Germans, going on the offensive at six o’clock.95
Major General Leonty Nikolayevich Gurtyev (Commander of the 308th Rifle Division): We didn’t complete every part of our mission, but we did take those hills.
We were summoned by the front commander, comrade Malenkov,96 and Yeryomenko, and they talked with us until the beginning of the attack. After we took those hills they didn’t have much to say against our division.
It’s not easy to say why we didn’t complete the mission. Maybe it’s because we didn’t get any help from the neighboring units on our left. But you’ve got to know the overall situation in the sector. Generally, though, we didn’t catch a lot of flak over it, which I’ve got to say is something to be proud of, because there were people at that time who did. [ . . . ]
The blocking detachment didn’t get any work on our account. There were isolated cases of desertion and self-mutilation, but nothing on a large scale. [ . . . ] Most of the soldiers carried themselves well and bravely. You might even say that they weren’t restrained enough: once they got going, you couldn’t hold them back. [ . . . ]
Interestingly, we acquired these hills via a committee decision. We’d taken possession of Hill 143.8, but our neighbor thought that he had taken it. I told General Moskalenko97 that I had taken Hill 143.8, but he didn’t believe me. We ended up having to send over a surveyor, who got the hill back in our possession.
There was still more controversy and trouble with Hill 154.2. Our neighbor on the left was interfering, claiming that he was the one who’d taken it. His training battalion had taken the slope on our left, but our units were the ones that took the hill itself. Their chief of staff was Shulgin, who I’d served with before, but we nearly came to blows over this hill. [ . . . ] On September 26–27 we were pulled back and sent to Stalingrad. We marched for three days.
Lieutenant Colonel Afanasy Matveyevich Svirin (Deputy commander for political affairs, 308th Rifle Division): On September 27 we got the order to withdraw from the front line, and on the 28th we got the order to leave for Stalingrad, and to be there by the 30th at the latest. We took a look at the map: 250 kilometers. But orders are orders. Things ended up just as we’d hoped: we were going to Stalingrad. When people found out that we were going straight to Stalingrad, that we’d be crossing from the west to the east bank of the Volga and then right back to the west again, they took this news with joy.
We had to take the long way. We started telling people the traditions of the defense of Tsaritsyn. In Stalingrad we made comrade Stalin’s role in the defense of Tsaritsyn the fundamental pillar of our political work, along with that of comrades Voroshilov and Parkhomenko. When Malenkov and Zhukov visited us, they said that comrade Stalin had said that Stalingrad would not surrender, no matter the cost. You can die, but you cannot leave Stalingrad. Later they explained why. Beyond Stalingrad was the steppe, then Kuybyshev and Moscow. We repeated all of this to the soldiers and warned them what would happen if we surrendered Stalingrad. [ . . . ]
Before our crossing to the west bank there were meetings in every regiment, battalion, and company. We said: “Take a look—Stalingrad. There are the factories, and there is the Volga, the wide Russian river, and over there are the buildings of Stalingrad, the city where the great Stalin once lived. Our division came into being on the banks of the long, gray Irtysh River, and now we come to the wide banks of this Russian river, the Volga. Back there we learned, and now we’re going to put that learning into practice. It was here that comrade Stalin once gave the order for all the rafts and boats to be moved away from the bank so that they wouldn’t trouble the men or inspire fear. We too have crossed to the west bank of the Volga, and we too are sending back all of the boats, so that they don’t trouble the men, who must only go forward.”
That was how the meetings went, always on a high ideological and political level, and the soldiers came forward and swore that they would defend Stalingrad to the very end.
Major General Leonty Nikolayevich Gurtyev (Commander of the 308th Rifle Division): By daybreak we were still ferrying everyone across, and I was gone to army HQ. We ended up having to move into an area that was being bombed by the Germans. This didn’t turn out well. Some of us moved along the embankment, including me and my commanders, Stafeyev, Smirnov, my adjutant, and the NKVD chief. Others took an indirect route. It was not going to be easy for us to reach our destination safely. We had about three kilometers to go. The enemy spotted us. This narrow strip of land along the riverbank—the only land still held by Soviet forces by the time we reached Stalingrad—the enemy could see all of it from the height he occupied. We weren’t in formation, but the enemy still spotted us and started bombing so we couldn’t get through. There were German submachine gunners in this museum-type building, and we were under fire from various mortars. By the time we got to where we were going we’d lost two or three dozen men.
All day long I was busy with reconnaissance matters and the line. My sapper battalion, communications battalion, mortar battalion, and the 351st Regiment had come here with me. Two of my regiments were still on the west [sic] bank. [ . . . ] The 351st Regiment held the line at the Silikat factory. Our regiments were around 300–350 people. The enemy concentrated artillery fire on them, bombed them from planes, and they kept on fighting.
I personally led the 351st Regiment to our initial positions at night, when we still hadn’t gotten our bearings in this area. At army HQ we were assigned guides from the division already there. At first we advanced successfully and took over the entire Silikat factory. We’d already made it to its western walls. We stopped after some heavy fire from the Germans, who had now gone on the offensive. All day we were under heavy enemy fire, we’d been taking losses since that morning, and the regiment was weary from the march. There were a lot of wounded in the regiment. Their chief of communications came to me at my command post in the Gastronom store. He was the last one. He was frightened as he ran up to me. He reported that everyone in the regiment was dead. I gave him one of my officers and sent him back to Markelov with a message. He didn’t make it back. Afterwards the 339th Rifle Regiment moved in here, and then the fighting went on both day and night against superior enemy forces.
Lieutenant Colonel Alexei Stepanovich Smirnov (Chief of the divisional political section): The 351st Regiment was lost on October 5. [ . . . ] On October 4 this sector had to be held no matter what. We got an order saying that the regiment had to stay put. At around 11:00 P.M., Markelov, the regiment’s commander,
was killed. Frolov took command of the regiment and kept up the defense. Eventually the Germans managed to surround the regiment and destroy it completely. Only two men escaped the encirclement, but apparently they’d run away, so I sent them back. We got word on how the regiment fought from regimental commander Frolov.
Lieutenant Colonel Afanasy Matveyevich Svirin (Deputy commander for political affairs, 308th Rifle Division): There were eleven men left in the regiment. The last of them to fall was regimental commissar Frolov, and the regimental commander was severely wounded. Those eleven soldiers had survived because they’d been sent on errands to divisional HQ, regimental HQ, and so on. [ . . . ]
We felt very bad about Colonel Mikhalyov, the 339th Rifle Regiment’s chief of staff, who died together with the entire staff. He was a remarkable officer, competent and strict, and he was well-liked in the regiment. The young nurses talked about him as if he were their own father. You could follow him anywhere, follow any order.
Head of the political department of the 308th Rifle Division, Lieutenant Colonel Alexei Smirnov
On October 6 I got a message from Mikhalyov requesting that I reconcile him with Sandin, the regimental commissar. I knew Mikhaylov well and decided to take Varshavchik, our chief of political affairs, and go to the regiment immediately. But we’d gone no more than fifty meters when we came across a messenger from the divisional commander with a request to come resolve some kind of argument. I went, and I got held up with the commander and two majors trying to determine the exact positions of our units. I’d just passed through the door on my way to the regiment when I got the report that a bomb had hit them directly, killing the entire staff of the 339th Rifle Regiment. Seventeen people died, including a representative from army HQ.
Alexander Fyodorovich Koshkarev (Party bureau secretary, 339th Rifle Regiment): Our unit arrived in Stalingrad, and we were ferried to the west bank of the Volga on October 1 and 2. [ . . . ] On the night from the 2nd to the 3rd our subunit took over the main defense at the Airport Garden. We were able to equip our defensive lines at night. Enemy aircraft were constantly in operation during the day. From the 3rd to the 4th our units continued entrenching and improving our defenses.
Our regimental HQ was in the Gastronom building. To the left of that building was the Airport Garden, where our battalion was located. The special units were to the right of the building (a company of submachine gunners, a group of antitank riflemen). We had no artillery, they were still coming. Divisional HQ had been in this building, but they left on the night of the 3rd because the Germans were trying to shell the building.
On October 4 the Germans launched an attack on our combat units in the Airport Garden and on this building that housed our regimental staff and subunits of the headquarters company. At around eleven o’clock, fifteen tanks and infantry launched a heavy assault. The Germans were constantly trying to break through our defenses on the right side. [ . . . ] On October 4 the fighting continued all day long. Our units held their ground, and the building that the Germans were pressing on stayed in our hands. Lieutenant Shonin, a Komsomol member, demonstrated exceptional heroism there.98 He’d applied for admission to the party, but we didn’t get a chance to take him: he was killed on the 5th. He’d taken out three tanks himself.
Lieutenant Colonel Mikhalyov
By nightfall we had left the Gastronom building because we thought it was a bad idea to stay there. We’d lost some of our soldiers and officers, and we knew that the Germans wanted to take the building at any price, but we didn’t get any reinforcements. We moved to a new place about 100–150 meters down from the factory clinic, a T-shaped building. [ . . . ] During a planning meeting of the unit commanders, a bomb fell directly on the headquarters, and everyone there was killed: the regimental commander and commissar, the chief of staff, two deputy regimental commanders, the deputy chief of the political department, a senior battalion commissar, a front representative, an adjutant, and others. I just happened to be away because I was supposed to go across the Volga for some documents. The survivors included me, Zhigalin,99 and Fugenfirov.100 Zhigalin took command. I hadn’t been in the regiment for long. I knew Zhigalin and asked him to take command, and we established communication with the battalions and with divisional HQ. I remained at the building to organize the work of digging out bodies.
Major Vasily Georgievich Belugin (Commissar in the 347th Rifle Regiment): On the evening of October 19 I reported to the divisional commander and told him that I had recovered and wished to resume my duties. After the commander’s warm and joyful greeting, and the heartfelt reception from Commissar Svirin and all the staff workers, I felt inspired with a renewed courage and certainty in our just cause, in our resistance.
Lieutenant Boris Shonin
They brought me up to speed on the situation. “This is quite different than it was at Kotluban at Hill 154.2,” Colonel Gurtyev told me. “By the way, did you know we had a dispute over Hill 154.2? Everyone was denying that we took it, and we had to drag out a whole army commission to set the record straight. It’s too bad you weren’t there. Things are different here. Take a look—the Volga is fifty meters back, and the enemy is 150 meters in front of us. Not a lot of room to maneuver! Every day this two-hundred-meter strip is peppered with any number of shells, mortars, bullets. We’re used to it, but you’ve been laid up in a quiet hospital. Wait, don’t go to the regiment, stay with us for a while.”
Every minute either Colonel Gurtyev or Commissar Svirin tried to convince me to stay a little longer. I remained their guest at the command post until late at night. “Stay with us a bit longer.” “No, I’m off.” “Off you go then. Chamov is the new commanding officer over there. Get to know him. It’s a difficult sector. Did you know that the 351st Regiment is gone? What’s left of them got transferred to 347th and 339th Rifle Regiments. None of their officers survived. Savkin died bravely right after Barkovsky. A wonderful commander, tireless fighter. Colonel Mikhalyov died, the commander of 339th Rifle Regiment. He died stupidly in a building that took a direct hit from a two-ton bomb. He was buried together with his staff workers.”
“Don’t use a building for a command post. Better to have it on open ground—but with plenty of camouflage. Buildings are dangerous. Use them as strong points and dig communication lines between them. Make forward exits that point toward the enemy, deep slit trenches, and use them. You’ve got to be cunning and change your firing positions often.”
And with those parting words I went to see my new commanding officer at the 347th Rifle Regiment.
Lieutenant Colonel Andrei Sergeyevich Chamov (Commander of the 347th Rifle Regiment): In Stalingrad our regiment took up the defense of the southern section of Airport Garden, Petrozavodskaya Street, and the southern section of the Barricades factory. We were up against the enemy’s 305th Infantry Division, which included the 276th, 277th, and 278th Regiments. On October 17 the enemy launched an aerial bombardment of our combat formations, in combination with a massive artillery and mortar barrage. It was clear that the enemy was going to advance and attack the sector our regiment had been ordered to defend.
By 10:00 A.M. enemy tanks broke through the sector on our left, where the 685th Infantry Regiment was, and continued along Buguruslyanka Street to my regiment’s command post. There were twenty tanks with submachine gunners.
At 11:00 A.M. another group of tanks broke though the southern perimeter of Airport Garden and the northern part of the Barricades factory, and they had us surrounded.
Fighting in Stalingrad’s industrial district, October 1942. Photographer: Georgy Samsonov
The divisional commander ordered me not to withdraw but to keep fighting inside the encirclement. [ . . . ] The men in our regiment’s antitank battery, commanded by Sergeant Boltenko, distinguished themselves in this fight. They took out six tanks. With his guns destroyed, his crew continued fighting from slit trenches, using antitank grenades and petrol bombs.
This fight left our regiment divided by the enemy, a
nd 1st Battalion was cut off from 2nd Battalion. About eight tanks attacked the 1st Battalion command post, which was located in a building at the Sormovskaya Power Station. Captain Zalipukhin was the commissar then. The German tanks destroyed the station. They shot at the doors and windows from sixty to seventy meters away. The building caught fire. They stormed the station—infantry at about company-strength. Zalipukhin, two medics, and two signal corps men were in the building. They repelled seven attacks from 4:00 P.M. to 7:00 P.M. Captain Zalipukhin himself killed thirty-two fascists with his pistol, some grenades, and a submachine gun. With this commissar in the lead, this group of soldiers kept up the fight for three hours in the power station under siege.
All of them were wounded, including Zalipukhin, but they did not leave that command post until I ordered them to. Zalipukhin carried the wounded battalion commander and chief of staff from the battlefield. The two medics and one of the signals corps men died in that building, asphyxiated by smoke.
At 6:00 P.M., some thirteen enemy tanks were approaching my command post, where our headquarters staff was located. They began firing directly at us from eighty to ninety meters away. We were taking submachine-gun fire at the same time. That was when our deputy chief of staff for reconnaissance, Lieutenant Vasily Kalinin, came back from a scouting mission. He crawled up to the command post, grabbed an antitank rifle, and went to fight the German tanks on his own. In twelve to fifteen minutes, he burned out five German tanks and disabled six. Then he took a group of seven submachine gunners to launch a counterattack against the paratroopers trying to break into the command post. This counterattack resulted in the deaths of more than a hundred fascists, and Kalinin advanced about 150 meters and dug in.