by Stalingrad- The City that Defeated the Third Reich (epub)
Senior Lieutenant Vasily Petrovich Kalinin (Deputy chief of staff for reconnaissance, 347th Rifle Regiment): On October 16–17 our combat formations and rear positions were taking a lot of heavy fire from enemy mortars, machine guns, and airplanes. The bombs made the earth groan. The bombing started up again the morning of the 17th, and they launched an attack at about 2:00 P.M. Right then I was in a bunker, on the telephone. I was asking about the condition of our units and about enemy activity. They told me that enemy machine-gun and mortar fire had stopped. I started transferring movements of enemy firepower from my situation map to my notebook where I keep track of these things. I lit a cigarette, and right then I could hear the sound of engines. I rushed out and heard the rumbling of tanks coming from the railway line. I ran to the command observation post, which was about three or four hundred meters away. I could see about ten tanks approaching in dispersed formation. The enemy had managed to take out the observation post, which I still hadn’t been informed of. Down below there were antitank soldiers from a neighboring unit. I went down to them and grabbed an antitank rifle. It had been raining a lot the day before, and because of someone’s lax standards, the rifle was rusty. I got the thing set up and aimed at a tank. I fired, but was short by a hundred meters or so. Then I lined up the coarse sight and hit the tank head-on. It started sparking like an arc welder. But I could see that it was still coming and that its turret was rotating. I adjusted my aim, thinking that I could hit him first, but we ended up firing at the same time. I hit their gas tank, and their shell hit the upper gable of the building.
The tank caught fire, and after three or four minutes it went up like a box of matches. I saw another tank come out from the same building and try to tow the first. I shot the second tank when it had just come out, and it too caught fire. After I’d set two tanks on fire I thought I’d change my position in this building. I saw another tank coming out. I wanted to take my weapon and see what was going on at the command post, so I got out of there, and right then the tank shot straight at me, hit my antitank rifle and bent it out of shape. I hadn’t managed to shoot first. Anyway, it was slow going because of all the rust: after I fired I’d have to open the lock with my foot, which made it difficult and slowed down my rate of fire. I was stunned from the shell, and I felt a sharp pain and sort of lost consciousness for a while. There were clouds of dust everywhere and I couldn’t see anything. I thought, I’ve got to get out of here or he’ll finish me off. Nothing from the command post, as if there was no one there. I took my rifle, my runner took some cartridges, and we left. On the way I helped a wounded soldier and ordered the runner to get him out of there. He carried him off and returned with more armor-piercing cartridges, which I’d told him to get. I was stunned, couldn’t hear much, my hands were bloody. The tanks were advancing slowly, with a group of submachine gunners right behind. When I shot, the infantry ran down into a ravine that leads to a cemetery. The runner pointed out that the tank was crossing the railway line and was [sic] meters away from the command post. I grabbed my antitank rifle and shot the front section of the tank nine times, but I couldn’t get through the armor. I decided to shoot at his side, and I let him have it. The tank stopped moving but kept shooting. Then I took an antitank grenade and a petrol bomb, and I told the runner to open fire if they opened the hatch. The tank commander opened the hatch, and the runner shot at him. I crawled up to the tank, threw the bottle and then the grenade. The tank caught fire. [ . . . ]
Someone showed me that a tank was coming, but the antitank gun was two hundred meters away. I rushed toward the tank. I thought it was just a small tank, I’d take care of it quickly. But you know, this tank was coming at us on an asphalt road, it had broken through our defenses and was coming at us from the rear. The tank came up and started shooting at our combat formations as it collected his own men and sent them back from the front line. Then I took thirteen men. It wasn’t easy working out the boundaries between the Germans’ positions and our own, and we were often mistaken about who was where. I crawled to the next building, where there was a fork in the railway line, and I set up my antitank rifle. I shot twice, and the fourth tank caught fire. There was a tank down past the school, too far away. I didn’t think I could reach it, but I thought I’d try. It turned out that I was out of cartridges, and I didn’t know how to reload the antitank rifle because I’d never had to learn. I was really annoyed that I couldn’t open the rifle. Then I accidentally pushed a button that opened the chamber, and I put in the cartridges. There were tanks in the area where the others were on fire, and one tank was firing at the building I was in. I listened, and I could hear someone else shooting at the tank with another antitank rifle. There were sparks, but nothing was taking. Then I crawled across the railway line with my rifle, climbed down into the ravine, and went the 150 meters to their forward line, about a hundred meters from the tank. “Now,” I thought, “I’m going to get you if it’s the last thing I do.” I fired once, then twice—nothing. I got closer and fired again, but the rifle couldn’t penetrate the armor. I fired twelve times from every direction. It wouldn’t burn. Then I crawled back with my rifle, took a runner to carry a grenade and a petrol bomb, and then we crawled back to my last position near the tank. We were about forty meters away. Only one chance to get this right. I crawled up closer, tossed one at the front of the tank. It immediately caught fire. I took advantage of this and threw two grenades, before hurrying back to our own forward positions with my runner.
Private Fyodor Maximovich Skvortsov (Telephone operator, 308th Rifle Division): There were bombs and shells going off all the time. They would sever our communications, and we didn’t have enough wire. We had to make connections with used wires. This affected the sound quality, but it still did the job. One time during an enemy attack our communications suddenly stopped working. A submachine gunner had crawled up to our line and cut our wire into bits. I started reconnecting the line, and he started shooting at me. I lay down by the railway, stayed put about fifteen minutes, and then crawled back to the command post, the communication line still intact. [ . . . ]
One time I had to run a current through a bare rod. The current went right up my arm and through my teeth. There were times when we used barbed wire. You can even complete a circuit by stringing together a few men holding hands.
Senior Sergeant Nina Mikhailovna Kokorina (Nurse, assistant deputy for political affairs, 347th Rifle Regiment): At first our medical company was on the island. The girls had a lot of work to do there. It was eight hundred meters over the island to the ferry, and we took the wounded only as far as the shore. From there they were taken and loaded onto boats, then carried with straps or stretchers to the regimental aid station on the sand. [ . . . ] We couldn’t build fires, so everything had to be done in the dark. There were some first aid workers who did nothing but carry the wounded. The island was under a constant mortar barrage because the enemy knew that our support units were here and that our reinforcements were coming through this island. [ . . . ]
They forced us back on October 18. We had to move back together with the battalion command post. The Germans had cut off the regimental command post, and we didn’t know where our regiment was. We went straight to a workshop at the Barricades factory. This was the morning of October 19. We spent the day there, because it was impossible to get the wounded across the river. [ . . . ]
That evening it turned out that we were surrounded. We spent a whole night and day at the Barricades factory, but we had no chance of leaving because there was nowhere to go, the enemy had set up machine guns all around, they were even throwing grenades. The Germans had come within five meters of us. We used grenades just like the soldiers. That night we decided to fight our way out of there. There were a lot of Germans, according to the intelligence report, and there wasn’t that many of us. So we had to use our brains. We knocked out an enormous hole in one of the walls of the workshop, and we all crawled out through this hole to escape without losing anyone. We made it to the r
iverbank. [ . . . ] On October 21 I was wounded on the riverbank and got sent to the medical battalion. At first they were going to send me eighty kilometers away from our field hospital, but there were rumors that our unit was leaving; I was afraid I’d be separated from my unit, so I simply ran away from the field hospital and went to our command post. They packed me off that very night because there was no way they could let me stay—I had a serious head injury. I was wounded when there was a direct hit to our bunker, and battalion commander Posylkin was wounded at the same time. He had to be packed off too. I haven’t been back to Stalingrad since October 21.
Private Fyodor Maximovich Skvortsov (Telephone operator, 308th Rifle Division): On the 22nd the 351st Regiment started to retreat. The regimental commander wrote a note to the general saying that the regiment wanted to pull back. This note was taken to the command post, and from there Tarasov ordered me to deliver it to the general. I set off with machine-gun fire and mortar shells coming from all around. Everything was coming apart, buildings were falling down. I crawled about three hundred meters to the general and handed him the message. The general refused to retreat and kept his men where they were, but it wasn’t long before we had to leave anyway because we were out of options.
Major Vladimir Makarovich Sovchinsky (Deputy commander for political affairs, 339th Rifle Division): On October 22 we received an address from the Military Council of the Stalingrad Front to all communists and defenders of Stalingrad. We started to go through this address in the units. Party members were brought together in the workshop for an all-regimental meeting. There were around seven or eight people. We didn’t manage to get through everything because the enemy launched an attack on the workshops. All the communists, including the party bureau secretary, who had only just arrived, were dismissed. It was ordered that a party member must be in each workshop and that no one was to leave without permission. We held the workshops for two days. At one of them, half of the shop was ours, and the other half was the enemy’s. We’d never used as much ammunition as we did on those days. When we ran out of cartridges, we used F-1 grenades. We had a lot of casualties. There were around three or four people left per battalion.
Anna Kipriyanovna Stoylik (Nurse, medical company platoon commander, 308th Rifle Division): We were right on the riverbank on [October] 26. The enemy was shelling us, heavy mortar fire. There was no chance of escape. This one soldier got hit. I ran over to him. The enemy had just begun firing rapidly all at once. I ducked into a bunker, and then I jumped out. This one mortar man nearby was hit in six places. I stripped him and dressed his wounds, but I didn’t have enough strength to get him out. Then Robinova ran over, and together we dragged him to the bunker. He came to and asked us for water. Getting water from the Volga meant passing through open ground, which meant that the soldiers’ canteens were empty. I ran to the river for water, carried it back, gave it to the wounded man, and left him in the bunker. At night I used a tarp to drag him the two kilometers to the medical company. We didn’t have any stretchers. We’d tie up the corners of a tarp and carry the wounded out on our shoulders. The Germans were sweeping the ravines with mortar and submachine-gun fire. [ . . . ] In Stalingrad I carried out ninety-seven wounded altogether. [ . . . ] For my work I was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.
Lieutenant Colonel Andrei Sergeyevich Chamov (Commander of the 347th Rifle Regiment): On October 27 the enemy spent the day carrying out a massive barrage of artillery and mortar fire, along with aerial bombardment. The aerial preparations typically began at dawn and stopped, according to all our data, at 6:30 and 6:45 P.M. A German attack was usually expected at that time. At 12:30 I heard from the command post of the divisional commander that there was going to be a “concert.” Indeed, this “concert” began at 12:40 P.M. and lasted until 1:20 P.M., forty minutes long. This was the artillery preparation. Then our own artillery, which was on the other side of the Volga, started firing intensively. As a result of this concentrated, competent, and well-planned artillery fire, every attempt by the Germans to advance further was paralyzed. Their communications were cut off, their firepower crushed, and for two hours after the artillery preparation there was no sound of mortar or machine-gun fire. It went completely quiet.
Major Vasily Georgievich Belugin (Commissar in the 347th Rifle Regiment): October 27 was a day I’ll never forget. The enemy started acting up early in the morning. They unleashed a constant barrage of fire from artillery, mortars, machine guns, submachine guns, and rifles; they scattered bombs like peas from the sky; and through this assault on both the physical body and the spirit, the enemy was able to unhinge even the most battle-hardened of men. The soldiers said this was hell. I remember a picture of hell from Dante’s Divine Comedy. In that hell people could celebrate at a wedding and at least feel okay. But here, when mortar fragments, stone, sand, and dirt are always coming down on you deep in your trench; when your eardrums feel like they’ve burst because of the exploding shells and mortars; when you stick the handle of a shovel out of your trench for only a second before it’s hit by a sniper’s bullet—try repelling an enemy attack in conditions like that.
Then came the climax. Everything was covered with dirt. Our firing positions were buried, our trenches fell in, our command post was destroyed. We had got out of the trenches only two minutes before, and at that moment we thought that this unstoppable avalanche of enemy manpower and machinery would crush us. But it didn’t. Silence—this was the strictest command: prepare yourself. Right now, right this second. Now pull yourself back together, get ready to fight, and even if you’re half dead, if you’ve only got one good arm, use it to shoot the enemy. Deal with that first one coming on the attack. Just deal with that first one. Your first shot will encourage your comrades.
And the silence of this unconditional command starts to lift the men out from their buried trenches, it starts to prepare them for the decisive battle. Everyone is thinking the same thing: this is it. “I’m not letting the enemy in my sector, there’s nowhere for me to fall back to. I told comrade Stalin that there’s no place for me on the east bank of the Volga. I signed a letter to comrade Stalin in my own hand saying that I would not take one step back, and that I would give all my strength and skill to fight for the motherland.”101 This is what everyone was thinking as they silently prepared themselves to repel the attack.
And then it started. The thundering of the first artillery salvo. Where was it coming from? And why? It was odd, unbelievable that this powerful salvo was coming from the east, from the east banks of the Volga. There was a second and third salvo, and then they began firing at will.
General Chuikov, commander of the 62nd Army, took on the full burden of repelling the enemy attack. A wise decision! He unleashed the firepower of his army’s entire artillery corps, hurling it toward his opponent’s main strike force. A thousand guns fired for forty minutes, during which time our soldiers—representatives of the 347th Rifle Regiment—were celebrating. They left their trenches, eyes wide, with big, tender smiles. Everyone understood that today the artillery was working for us. I’ve never seen or heard in my life such a monstrous force of artillery fire as what was unleashed on the enemy by our army commander. Everything burst into flame. The air was full of smoke, ash, dust, and rubble, and we celebrated this day’s victory. But what was the enemy up to now? He was all broken up, all his formations were destroyed, his leadership disrupted—there weren’t going to be any attacks or counterattacks today. We sent for our dinner, made tea. And during this artillery barrage the soldiers sat down to dinner.
The artillery stopped. There was a silence, the silence of victory. Until evening there wasn’t a single shot. Not one Fritz in the observation sector, not one aircraft.
But on November 1, when our regiment was pulled back to the east bank of the Volga, the soldiers felt no less of a burden, no less anxiety, than they felt on that unforgettable day. After we were relieved by a rifle regiment, the enemy broke through in our sector and reached the Volga. It took
a lot of strength, resources, and sacrifice to restore things.
Now when I think about the defense of Stalingrad I feel again like saying: “Great Mother Russia. You have a people who are unyielding, who love you, who for your beauty, Mother Russia, will give everything, even their own lives, if the army needs us to.”
Major General Leonty Nikolayevich Gurtyev (Commander of the 308th Rifle Division): On November 1 the Germans came at us all at once, and they could only be fought with artillery fire. The artillery batteries were directed from the west bank via radio. The artillery regiment fired reliably and supported the entire division. We were all, I think, satisfied with their work. Once they’d been firing for half an hour everything went quiet in our sector. The Germans really wanted to break into the area of the Barricades factory. They pressed particularly hard on a little ravine that led to the industrial area, and eventually, on about November 9–10, after we’d already left, they broke through, separating the 138th Division from the 95th. Divisional commander Lyudnikov, who was cut off on two sides, was in a difficult spot, and it was only when the river iced over that things improved somewhat.
Lieutenant Colonel Afanasy Matveyevich Svirin (Deputy commander for political affairs, 308th Rifle Division): [October] 28, 29, and November 2 were very difficult for us because there were so few of us remaining. We got a call from army asking about our men: Where are they? How many are there? How spread out? We said we had seventeen men covering a great distance.