by Stalingrad- The City that Defeated the Third Reich (epub)
Junior Lieutenant Ilya Mironovich Brysin (Sapper platoon commander, independent field engineering battalion, 308th Rifle Division): At 2:00 A.M. [October 28] I got the order from Lieutenant Pavlov to attack. By that time we had only nine men. There was a rampart we couldn’t climb over. Pavlov went ahead while I supported. The Germans had superior numbers, and they destroyed nearly all of Pavlov’s group. Only two came back: Kostyuchenko and Barannikov. When I heard that Lieutenant Pavlov was killed and all his men were lost, Kostyuchenko and Barannikov joined my group.
On the 28th at 6:00 P.M. I put observers on the second floor of a building: Dudnikov and Kayukov.102 Me and Sergeant Pavlov took up position in another building, and my men were nearby. At dawn I could see the Germans standing on a hill, yelling: “Come on, Rus, give up! To the Volga!” I was at a loss, didn’t know what to do. Then my men ran back to me from the other buildings. But Dudnikov and Kayukov couldn’t get down from the second floor because a mortar had destroyed the staircase. I could see that I only had seven men, and I decided to go to the riverbank, where there were entrenchments. We ran in that direction. The Germans occupied the first and second buildings we’d been in. We took up a defensive position twenty meters from the Germans and twenty meters from the water. I didn’t tell my men that two of our own were in that building. My men were tough, they didn’t panic. They had some antitank grenades. They started chucking them at the Germans so they could get out of there. Once there was a smokescreen they ran out and regrouped by me. After a while Dudnikov and Kayukov showed up. They’d managed to get away from the Germans. We were really glad to see them.
Pioneers in the 308th Rifle Division: (left to right) Ilya Brysin, Yefim Dudnikov, and Alexei Pavlov
Private Yefim Yefimovich Dudnikov (Sapper platoon, independent sapper battalion, 308th Rifle Regiment): We were always together, me and Private Kayukov. We made ourselves a two-man firing trench. It was tough digging because of the slag, so we took these chunks of rock to make something like a shield and dug down a little bit, so you could shoot on your knees. I noticed a German sniper on the day that Skripka was killed. The sniper was hiding in a pile of rocks and blown-up reinforced concrete. He kept changing positions in the rocks, but there was nowhere else for him to go. I had a German rifle with a good sight, but the few times I shot at him I missed. Toward evening the German sniper decided to move to the building next door. I was watching him the whole time through my binoculars. That’s when I shot and killed him. Me and Kayukov spent the night in a crater. Turns out we were only a few meters away from the Germans. They made a run for it when it started getting dark. I shot at them. I killed one, Kayukov killed another, and the third one got away. When it was dark I went up to them: one was an officer, the other a soldier. I took a flare gun and a revolver off them and crawled back to our crater.
After a while we got an order from Brysin, telling us when we were to attack, when me and Kayukov were to get back to the building and take up positions on the rampart. But then the Germans attacked, and we had to get up to the second floor. Then a mortar hit and destroyed the staircase. I don’t know how it happened, but we were on our own. We were hoping that our buddies were down below, but they weren’t. We could hear Germans yelling all around. We started throwing grenades, but it was tough because there was a wall in the way. Then we decided to get down from the second floor. The ceiling was bombed through, the metal bars were broken. We tied two German ponchos to one rod and climbed down one by one. We walked quietly down the corridor. I looked out and wanted to run to join the others, but then I saw some Germans dragging something five or six meters away. I threw two grenades at them and ran back into the building. They started to panic. While they were still confused, Kayukov ran to join the others, and I stayed in the building by myself. I ran down the corridor, peeked in another door—there’s Germans there too. I could tell that there were too many of them for me to do anything. I crawled around this pile of rock, made a run for it, and reached the second building. From there I was able to get back to Brysin. Everyone was very happy to see me.
I took a minute to catch my breath. Then I spotted a machine gun and tossed a grenade at it, destroying the gun and its crew. Then we went on the offensive, and Private Kostyuchenko got hit. He was wounded and faint from losing so much blood, but he kept shooting, even with his left arm dead at his side. He threw grenades and went on attacking the fascists until the very end. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. He displayed exceptional discipline and self-sacrifice in battle. I bandaged him up. He gave me his gun and three F-1 grenades. Then he was taken to the field hospital.
I made quick use of those grenades. I could see Pavlov and Kayukov running toward me with a satchel of grenades. I was glad to see this. Kayukov and me were friends, if we weren’t together in combat we missed one another. I yelled, “Come on, hurry up!” A German machine gun was covering the open space between the building and the rampart, but they had to get across. Pavlov lay down in the rocks, and Kayukov started running, but he got hit in the abdomen and spine. I crawled over to him quickly, gave him my hand and dragged him along a little way. Then I crawled under him to get him on my back and carried him out. They tried to bandage him up three times, but it was no use. He was dead. [ . . . ]
Kayukov lost his cap when he got hit, so I gave him mine, and I put on my helmet. Then I decided to go back for that cap because the helmet was uncomfortable. Right then a bomb went off, and I was so stunned that I had trouble hearing for days. Shells were exploding all around, and there was a constant rumble from them—but me and Brysin wanted something to eat. We got some black bread. Several of our men were wounded at that time.
Junior Lieutenant Ilya Mironovich Brysin (Sapper platoon commander, independent field engineering battalion, 308th Rifle Division): At ten o’clock on October 28 there were three of us left: me, Dudnikov, and Glushakov. I was summoned by a company commander from 2nd Battalion, 347th Rifle Regiment. I hadn’t shaved in a while, and I had a big mustache. The commander named me Sergeant Mustache: “Mustache, go scout out the Germans’ locations and find out where their firing positions are.” I wanted to point out that you can’t go on reconnaissance during the day—it’s light, and everything can be seen—but orders are orders, so I went out on reconnaissance with two of my men, Dudnikov and Glushakov. We hooked up with the 10th Regiment, 37th Division.
They showed me where the Germans were. I went back to report the situation to company commander Kuznetsov. I’d discovered the location of their firing positions from the second floor, where I watched them setting up mortars and machine guns on the square. Lieutenant Kuznetsov, the company commander, instructed me to take out those firing positions. I told Dudnikov and Glushakov what we had to do. We got some grenades and ammunition and set off for the 10th Regiment, 37th Division. We found six men in the regiment and one field-grade officer. I told him I was on my way to complete this mission, and I asked if he would help by providing covering fire. That was around midday. We sat for a while and smoked, and they gave me some good advice. My two comrades and I agreed on the plan. I took off my overcoat and crawled forward. I climbed up this high point where I could see the railroad, where there was a big crater with a trench that led into a dugout. There were two machine guns by the crater. I crawled about three meters to the rail line and wanted to go into the crater. But I looked into the trench and saw the Germans. First I threw an F-1 grenade, then another, and then I crawled down into the trench. Both of the Germans were dead. I waved at Dudnikov and Glushakov to tell them to come. We took a satchel from the Germans that had pictures and papers, and we hid all of it under the tracks.
I started thinking about how to take out the mortar, which was [sic] meters away from the machine gun crater. I decided to go forward again. I had Dudnikov and Glushakov crawl into the crater and provide supporting fire. I set off. There were German snipers in the area, and I hadn’t gone more than a few dozen meters when a sniper landed a shot on my helmet. I turned back. I
started out again and crawled like that for two hours. Then I started to throw grenades, and Glushakov killed a sniper with his rifle. I took out the mortar with some grenades and started crawling back. Later we returned and took the German corpses. I had them brought back to regimental HQ, and I went to the company commander to tell him that his orders had been carried out. They let me get some rest in the bunker, seeing as I hadn’t slept in four days. [ . . . ] I didn’t get a chance to sleep because this regiment engineer arrived after us, and he was going to help defend the headquarters because they didn’t have enough men. So we went to regimental HQ and defended it. [ . . . ] In the three days from October 26 to October 29, my platoon eliminated eighty-seven soldiers, four machine guns, and a mortar, and we killed one sniper and one officer. I killed twenty-five Fritzes myself. I was given the Order of the Red Banner.
They took me from the aid station to a field hospital where I stayed two days, and then I went back to my unit, where I was taken care of by our medic. It wasn’t a serious wound. Later, when reinforcements arrived, I was put in command of a platoon. A pretty decent platoon. I instructed them in accordance with the experience I had already acquired in the Great Patriotic War.
After the battle on October 29 I submitted my application to the party, and now I’m a member.
Senior Lieutenant Vasily Petrovich Kalinin (Deputy chief of staff for reconnaissance, 347th Rifle Regiment): In just two days I destroyed seven tanks and their crews.
Captain Semyon Solomonovich Ryvkin (Commander of an independent field engineering battalion): Those of us who were still alive—thirty men—all of us were decorated. Eight received the Order of the Red Banner, three got the Order of the Red Star, and the rest got medals.
Captain Ivan Vasilievich Maksin (Chief of the divisional political section in charge of the Komsomol): There was also the heroic deed of Zoya Rokovanova, one of our Siberian Komsomol members. Zoya Rokovanova was a civilian typesetter working in the editorial offices of the regional newspaper.103 She volunteered for the army and came to our division with the same drive and desire to get to the front line as Lyolya Novikova had. She was brought in to work on our newspaper, but she wanted to be on the front line. And so here she was in Stalingrad with a medical company she’d joined, and they were holding a defensive line—a single building. There was only a handful of people left from her unit, including two midgrade Komsomol officers. [ . . . ] When the Germans came in overwhelming force to cut off and storm the building, Zoya Rokavanova and one of the officers kept throwing grenades at them from a window. The Germans took cover. Their path to the building was obstructed by these grenades, so they withdrew. A few minutes later the building was peppered with incendiary shells and caught fire. As smoke came pouring out of the windows of the building our units tried to break through the German blockade and get our people out of there, but we couldn’t do it. And when the Germans were coming right up to the building, our men could hear them yelling “Surrender, Rus!” to those who were still inside, and again they could see grenades being thrown down onto the Germans from the smoking window. Then it went quiet. All you could hear was the Germans yelling, but no one came out of the building to answer their awful cries.
Three days later we took the building back from the Germans and found the charred remains of these heroes, including Zoya Rokovanova, a patriot of the motherland, who remembered the words of Arnold Meri when he said that Komsomol members don’t retreat, that they don’t get taken prisoner, and that the only way they leave the battlefield is on a stretcher. Zoya Rokovanova fulfilled her duty. She knew that being a captive of the fascists would have been worse than death, and she decided to burn rather than be taken prisoner.
Lieutenant Colonel Afanasy Matveyevich Svirin (Deputy commander for political affairs, 308th Rifle Division): Daily bulletins from the Sovinformburo kept our soldiers informed of the operations of our forces on all fronts. They also knew about the work going on behind the front lines. We didn’t get newspapers often, but we had our own radio. We typed out the bulletins and sent out duplicates to the units.
Headlines in Komsomolskaya Pravda read “Hero of Stalingrad Boris Shonin,” November 15, 1942.
Each deputy political officer had the plan for the day’s political work. If there was going to be a battle the next day for some building or other, the political officer would write a plan that covered three points: (1) preparatory work before the battle, (2) work to be done during the battle, and (3) outcomes of the battle and conclusions drawn from it.
We often made use of press reports from England and America on the resilience of Stalingrad. We did everything we could to get these reports to all the men and officers. Each political worker tried to make the soldiers aware of everything that was being printed by our own press about Stalingrad. The party-political apparatus—comrades Sovchinsky, Belugin, Sidorov, Petrakov—and workers from the political division—comrades Kheruvimov, Polyansky, Maksin, Ingor, and others, could always be found in the trenches with the soldiers. The entire party-political apparatus was decorated for its work.
When I came to the unit the first thing I wanted to know about was the daily life of the soldiers, whether they were being fed. In Stalingrad we had our own bathhouse where we washed. I remember once when the general and I went there to bathe, and a locust104 came and started dropping bombs. We’d dug our bathhouse where Germans had buried their dead, and there was an awful stench of corpses. But despite that and the bombers we continued bathing.
The political apparatus was not only occupied with propaganda. Many took part in battles and went on the attack. Petrakov, for one, fought and went on the attack, comrade Kheruvimov took part in a bayonet charge, and Major Sidorov, deputy commissar for political affairs, took out two tanks with an antitank rifle and annihilated many fascists. He and Kalinin were wounded in the same battle. I can’t think of a single political worker who didn’t play an active role in the fighting. [ . . . ]
The party committee worked right in the trenches, where they accepted new members into the party. We didn’t make our comrades on the front lines recite the Party’s formal rules and program. Acts of heroism were enough to prove your faith in the party and receive your card.
As part of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Red Army, we resolved to send a letter to comrade Stalin from the defenders of Stalingrad, which was signed by all the soldiers of the 62nd Army. There was heavy fighting going on when we did this. Our ranks were greatly reduced in number that day. Some three hundred wounded lay on the bank, but there weren’t enough boats to get them across, and it was risky on account of the bombing.
Chamov called and said he only had seventeen men left. A sapper battalion was sent over. They pushed the enemy back.
In Stalingrad we lived day by day. The Military Council [of the front] ordered us to hold out for another two days, and we stayed to the end. There wasn’t a single man among us who would have tried to cross to the other bank. In that entire period there were only twenty-four cases of desertion. I instructed the divisional prosecutor to keep an eye on certain people.
The first thing I’d do was ask the soldier whether he was getting enough to eat, was he getting his vodka, and then I’d get to talking with him about politics. Usually the soldier would say he was getting enough but didn’t have an appetite [ . . . ]
We put together the letter to comrade Stalin over four nights, moving from trench to trench. Every one of our soldiers signed the letter. I remember it was a cold night in October, raining and windy. You’d get to a trench, cover it with your overcoat to keep out the wind, light a match, and then read out the part with the soldier’s oath to comrade Stalin. And the soldier would sign the letter.
Captain Mikhail Lazarevich Ingor (Politruk, 347th Rifle Regiment): These men understood their commanders with barely a word, with a single glance. When they signed that letter, they knew they weren’t just writing their names. They were each writing: “Dear comrade Stalin, my name is Soldier so-and-so, I’ve killed how
ever many Germans, and I swear—and so on.”
Lieutenant Colonel Afanasy Matveyevich Svirin (Deputy commander for political affairs, 308th Rifle Division): We had a copy of the letter from the defenders of Tsaritsyn,105 and we distributed it as widely as possible. There were a few comrades still alive in Stalingrad who had signed that letter.
The words “stand like stone, for there is nothing for us beyond the Volga” were particularly moving for the soldiers. One soldier repeated those words, “There is nothing for us beyond the Volga,” with such intensity and sincerity that when I got home I thought: such patriotism, such love for this place where he is now, where comrade Stalin once was!
Here’s how we’d instruct the soldiers: “See that little hill over there? We’ve got to take it, even if it is little, because there’s a big hill on the other side, a great expanse of land, and there are houses and whole families. Every one of these little hills, even if they seem insignificant to us, is important because of what comes after.”
It wasn’t a coincidence that they fought for every window, every staircase. [ . . . ]
Our female medics really proved themselves. Back in Kotluban the girls dragged the wounded out under heavy mortar and artillery fire, and fire from the air. They didn’t want to dig in. Nothing frightened them, they’d sit cross-legged on the riverbank. You ask them, Why haven’t you dug in? They say, Why bother when we’re about to move forward?
Female medics are much better than men. They’re better at carrying out the wounded, better at dressing wounds, and they even carry the weapons of the wounded. About 40 percent of our girls have been decorated with orders or medals. Some five hundred of them have been decorated in this division.
This one girl, Stoylik, who used to work for the railway, acted so heroically and recklessly, she couldn’t have put herself more in harm’s way. She’s the one who pulled the wounded officers out of the water after their motor launch was destroyed.