Stalingrad

by Stalingrad- The City that Defeated the Third Reich (epub)

  The division was to make its stand at this factory. Behind them was the cold, dark Volga. Two regiments defended the factory, and a third defended the area of a deep hollow that ran through the factory complex toward the river. The Ravine of Death, as it was known to the men and officers of the regiment. Yes—behind them was the ice-covered Volga, behind them lay the fate of Russia. The division was to fight to the death.

  Vasily Grossman in Stalingrad, 1942

  That which had been dispersed over two fronts during the 1914–1918 world war, and which in the past year had been brought to bear on Russia alone along a 3,000-km front, had now been brought down like a sledge hammer on one point: Stalingrad and the Caucasus. And as if that weren’t enough, here, in Stalingrad, the Germans had again increased the pressure of their offensive. While no longer increasing the intensity of their offensive in the southern and central parts of the city, they were directing the full firepower of countless mortar batteries and thousands of guns and aircraft on the northern part of the city and on the factory still standing at the center of the industrial area. The Germans presumed that men were by nature incapable of withstanding such strain, that no hearts or nerves could survive this wild hell of flame and shrieking metal, of trembling earth and frenzied air. Here, concentrated in one place, was the entire diabolical arsenal of German militarism: superheavy and flame-throwing tanks, six-barreled mortar tubes, fleets of dive bombers with wailing sirens, anti-personnel and high-explosive bombs. Here the sub-machine gunners had explosive rounds, and artillery- and mortarmen had incendiary shells. Here was all of the German artillery, from the small-caliber antitank weapons to the heavy long-range guns. Here both day and night were lit by fires and flares, here both day and night were dark from the smoke of burning buildings and German smoke grenades. Here the roar of battle was as dense as the soil, and the brief moments of silence were still more terrifying and ominous. And while the world bows before the heroism of the Soviet armies, who themselves speak with admiration of the defenders of Stalingrad, here, in Stalingrad itself, the soldiers say with reverence:

  “What we do is nothing. But those guys holding the factories—they’re something else!”

  To the soldier, the phrase “in the line of the main drive” carries dread. No words are more terrifying in war. It was no accident that Colonel Gurtyev’s Siberian division was the one defending the factory on this gloomy autumn morning. The Siberians are hardy people, stern, accustomed to cold and hardship, taciturn, ordered and disciplined, and blunt-spoken. The Siberians are a reliable, sturdy lot. In strict silence they hacked into the stony earth, cut embrasures in the workshop walls, and constructed bunkers, trenches, and communication lines.

  Colonel Gurtyev, a lean fifty-year-old, had abandoned his second-year studies at the St. Petersburg Polytechnical Institute to volunteer in the Russo-German war in 1914. He served in the artillery and saw action against the Germans at Warsaw, Baranovichi, and Chartorysk. He has devoted twenty-eight years of his life to military matters—both to actual fighting and to the training of officers. His two sons are also taking part in this war; both are lieutenants. His daughter, a university student, and his wife remain in far-off Omsk. On this solemn, terrible day, the colonel thought about his sons and wife and daughter, and about the dozens of young officers he had trained, and about his long, labor-filled, and modest life. Yes, the time had come when the principles of military science, morality, and duty—all that he had steadfastly taught his sons, students and comrades—would be put to the test. The colonel looked with emotion into the faces of his Siberian soldiers—men from Omsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Barnaul—at those with whom he was destined to repel the enemy’s attack.

  The Siberians moving into that great line of defense had been well prepared. The division had been well schooled before coming to the front. Colonel Gurtyev had trained his men carefully and cleverly, and was ruthlessly critical. No matter how harsh the training—long marches, simulated night attacks, sitting in trenches while tanks are driven over you, the long marches—he knew that war itself would be a great deal harsher and more difficult. He believed in the perseverance and strength of the Siberian regiments. He had tested these qualities during their long march, which they had completed almost without incident: there had just been one soldier who had accidentally dropped his rifle from a moving troop train. The soldier had then jumped off, snatched up his rifle, and ran the three kilometers to the next station to catch up with his train. Gurtyev had further tested his regiment’s staunchness on the steppe near Stalingrad, where these untried men calmly fought off a surprise attack by thirty German tanks. And he had further tested their endurance during the final march to Stalingrad when they covered a distance of two hundred kilometers over two days. Nevertheless, the colonel looked anxiously into the faces of these soldiers who had come to the main line of defense, and who were now in the line of the main drive.

  Gurtyev believed in his officers. His chief of staff, the young and indefatigable Colonel Tarasov, could plan complex battles day and night, poring over maps in a bunker as it quaked under the blasts. His directness and merciless judgment, his way of looking facts in the face, of seeking the truth in any military situation, no matter how bitter it might be, were all founded on a faith that was strong as iron. In this lean young man, who had the face, speech, and hands of a peasant, dwelled an indomitable force of thought and spirit. Svirin, Gurtyev’s second-in-command and chief political officer, had a strong will, a sharp mind, and an ascetic modesty; he could stay calm, cheerful and smiling at times when smiling was beyond the power of even the calmest and most cheerful of men. Regimental commanders Markelov, Mikhalyov, and Chamov were the colonel’s pride: he trusted them as he did himself. Everyone in the division spoke with love and admiration of Chamov’s quiet courage, of Markelov’s unbending will, and of the remarkable kindness of Mikhalyov, the regiment’s favorite, a tender and sympathetic man who cared for his subordinates like a father and simply did not know the meaning of fear. Yet it was still with anxiety that Colonel Gurtyev looked into the faces of his officers, for he knew what it meant to be in the line of the main drive, to hold this great line in defense of the city of Stalingrad.

  “Can they take it? Will they hold out?” the colonel was thinking. Barely had the division managed to dig trenches into Stalingrad’s rocky soil and establish their headquarters in a deep tunnel bored into a sandy cliff along the Volga, barely had they managed to run communication lines and begin the tap-tap-tapping of radio transmitters linking their command posts to the heavy artillery over on the east bank—barely had the night’s darkness yielded to the light of dawn when the Germans opened fire. For eight hours on end the Ju-87s dive-bombed their defenses. For eight hours, without a moment’s rest, came wave upon wave of German aircraft. For eight hours their sirens howled, their bombs whistled, the earth shook, and the remains of brick buildings tumbled to the ground. For eight hours the air hung heavy with smoke and dust while lethal shell splinters whistled by. If ever you have heard the shriek of air made incandescent by an exploding bomb, if ever you have experienced a lightning ten-minute German air raid, then you will have some idea of what it must be like to be subjected to eight hours of unrelenting attacks by German dive-bombers.

  For eight hours the Siberians threw everything they had at the German aircraft. A feeling akin to despair must have possessed the Germans. The factory was burning. It was shrouded with black dust and smoke—and yet from it still came the crackle of rifle fire, the roar of machine-gun volleys, the quick bursts of antitank rifles, and the measured firing of the antiaircraft guns. The Germans brought in their heavy regimental mortars and artillery. The monotonous sputtering of mortars and the screams of the shells joined the wailing sirens and the rumbling bomb blasts. In grim, austere silence the soldiers of the Red Army buried their fallen comrades. This was their first day, their housewarming. The German artillery and mortar batteries continued through the night.

  That night at his command p
ost Colonel Gurtyev met two old friends he hadn’t seen in over twenty years. At last parting they were young, unmarried men, but now they were gray and wrinkled. Two commanded divisions, the third a tank brigade. When they embraced one another, everyone nearby—their chiefs and staffs and adjutants, the majors from the operations section—could see tears in the eyes of these gray-haired men. “What are the chances!” they said. And there was in fact something majestic and touching about this meeting of old friends at this dread hour, amid the burning factory buildings and the ruins of Stalingrad. They must have all been on the right path, for it had brought them together once more as they fulfilled this great and difficult duty.

  The German artillery rumbled through the night, and the sun had barely risen over the battle-scarred earth when forty dive-bombers appeared, and again the sirens began wailing, and again a black cloud of dust and smoke rose over the factory, covering the earth, the workshops, and the broken boxcars. Even the tall smokestacks sank down into the black fog. That morning Markelov’s regiment emerged from its dugouts. In anticipation of a decisive blow from the Germans, he left his cover, his sanctuary, his trenches; he left his concrete and stone bunkers and attacked. His battalions advanced through mountains of slag, through ruined buildings, past the factory’s granite administration offices, past the rail line, through the park on the outskirts of the city. From above came the full fury of the Luftwaffe. An iron wind struck them in the face, yet they kept moving forward. The enemy was likely possessed by a superstitious fear: Are these men coming towards us? Are these mortals?

  They were mortal indeed. Markelov’s regiment advanced one kilometer, took up new positions, and dug in. Only in Stalingrad does one know what a kilometer truly means: one thousand meters, one hundred thousand centimeters. That night the Germans attacked the regiment in overwhelming force. Battalions of German infantry, heavy tanks, and mortars showered the regiment’s positions in a hail of lead. Drunken submachine-gunners crept forward like madmen. The story of how Markelov’s regiment fought will be told by the corpses of the Red Army men and by their comrades who listened to the clatter of Russian machine guns and the blasts of Russian grenades for two nights and one day. The story of this fight will be told by burned-out German tanks and by the long rows of crosses topped with German helmets, arranged by platoon, company, and battalion. Markelov’s men were indeed mortal, and while few of them made it out alive, every one of them had done his duty.

  On day three the German aircraft hovered over the division for not eight but twelve hours. They remained there after dark, when the Stukas’ sirens howled out from the deep blackness of the night sky, and high-explosive bombs rained down onto the flaming red earth like the heavy and regular blow of a hammer. German artillery and mortars hit the division from dawn until dusk. One hundred German artillery regiments were operating in Stalingrad. Sometimes the Germans fired heavy barrages, and at night they maintained a devastating and methodical rate of fire. The artillery worked together with the trench mortar batteries. Several times a day the German guns and mortars would fall silent, and the crushing force of the dive bombers would disappear. Then came an uncanny silence. The lookouts would shout “Attention!” and the men at the outposts would grab their petrol bombs, anti-tank soldiers would open canvas bags of armor-piercing bullets, machine-gunners would wipe down their weapons, grenadiers would reach for their boxes of grenades. These brief moments of silence did not signify a respite. This merely preceded the attack. Soon the German tanks would come, indicated by hundreds of clanking tracks and the low roar of their engines, and the lieutenant would yell: “This is it, comrades! Submachine gunners coming in on our left flank!

  Sometimes the Germans would come as close as thirty to forty meters, and the Siberians could see their dirty faces and torn greatcoats, hear them shout threatening words in mangled Russian. After the Germans were pushed back, the bombers returned, and the artillery and mortar batteries would once again send barrage after barrage onto the division.

  Much of the credit for repelling the German assaults should go to our artillery. Fugenfirov, commander of the artillery regiment, and the commanders of his battalions and batteries were present on the front line together with the battalions and companies of the division. They were in radio communication with the firing positions, where dozens of powerful long-range guns on the east bank breathed in unison with the infantry, sharing their anxieties, misfortunes, and joys. The artillery worked wonders. It covered the infantry positions in a cloak of steel. It tore apart like cardboard boxes those superheavy German tanks that the anti-tank crews couldn’t handle. Like a sword the artillery cut down the German infantry who used their tanks as cover. The artillery blew up their ammo dumps and sent German mortar batteries into the air. Nowhere else in the war has the infantry felt the friendship and power of the artillery or as they have in Stalingrad.

  In the space of a month the Germans launched 117 assaults on the regiments of the Siberian division. On one terrible day the German infantry and tanks attacked twenty-three times. All twenty-three attacks were repelled. On all but three days that month German aircraft circled overhead for ten to twelve hours. This took place along a front line about one and a half to two kilometers long. All of mankind could be deafened by this noise; an entire nation could be consumed and annihilated by this fire and metal. The Germans thought that they could break the morale of the Siberian regiments. They thought they had subjected these men to something beyond the limits of what human hearts and nerves can withstand. But surprisingly these men did not waver, nor did they lose their minds or heart or nerves; they instead grew stronger and more at ease. These reserved, sturdy Siberians became even more grim and reserved. The men’s cheeks were sunken, and there was a sullen look in their eyes. Here, in the line of the German’s main drive, even during those brief moments of rest, you could not hear singing or music, nor any friendly banter. Here the men endured superhuman conditions. There were times when they had not slept for three or four days on end; once, while talking to his men, the gray Colonel Gurtyev was pained to hear one soldier say quietly: “We’ve got everything we need, comrade colonel—nine hundred grams of bread, and they’re bringing us hot meals in thermoses twice a day, even though we don’t feel like eating.”

  Gurtyev loved and respected his men, and he knew that if a soldier “doesn’t feel like eating” then he really must be having a hard time of it. But now Gurtyev was content. He knew that there was no force on earth that could move these Siberian regiments from their positions. Both man and officer were enriched by this great and brutal experience of war. Their defenses were strengthened and better than before. In front of the factory workshops rose a vast system of engineering works: bunkers, communication trenches, foxholes. These defenses extended far beyond the workshops. The men learned to maneuver quickly underground, to concentrate or scatter, to use the communication lines to move from warehouse to trench and back again, depending on where the attacking German tanks and infantry appeared.

  Along with experience came moral steeling. The division had transformed itself into a wonderfully complete and unified body. The men themselves couldn’t sense the psychological changes they had undergone during this month-long residence in hell, on the leading edge of the great defense of Stalingrad. They thought they were just as they’d always been. During the odd spare moment they’d wash themselves in underground bathhouses, and they still received their hot meals in thermoses. Makarevich and Karnaukhov, who, unshaven, looked like simple country postmen, would come to the front line under fire with their leather satchels, bearing newspapers and letters from far-off Omsk, Tyumen, Tobolsk, and Krasnoyask. As before, they thought about their work as carpenters, blacksmiths, and peasants.

  They jokingly named the six-barreled German mortar the Fool, and they called the wailing dive-bombers the Screechers or the Musicians. The men believed they were still the same; only the new arrivals from the lower bank looked at them with reverence and awe. It is only from some di
stance that one could appreciate the iron strength of these Siberians, their indifference to death, their calm determination to endure their difficult lot: to continue to defend Stalingrad to the very end.

  Heroism had become the norm. Heroism was the style of this division and its men, a commonplace and daily habit. Heroism was everywhere and in everything. Not only in the feats of the soldiers, but even in the work of the cooks, who peeled potatoes under the burning flames of incendiary shells. Great heroism was seen in the work of the female medics, schoolgirls from Tobolsk—Tonya Yegorova, Zoya Kalganova, Vera Kalyada, Nadya Kasterina, Lyolya Novikova, and many of their friends—who bandaged and carried water to the wounded in the pitch of battle. Yes—from an outsider’s perspective, heroism could be seen in each of these men’s routine actions, such as when Khamitsky, a communications platoon commander, was sitting calmly, reading a book as a dozen howling dive-bombers pounded the ground; or when Batrakov, a commuications officer, carefully wiped his glasses, filled his field bag with dispatches, and set off for his twelve-kilometer journey along the Ravine of Death with the calm disposition of a man departing for his Sunday constitutional; or when the gunner Kolosov, after being buried up to his neck in dirt and debris in his bunker, turned to deputy commander Svirin and burst out laughing; or when the staff typist Klava Kopylova, a stout ruddy-cheeked girl, started typing a field order in a bunker only to be buried and dug back out, after which she went to do her typing in another bunker, was again buried and dug out, and then finally completed the document in a third bunker before taking it to the divisional commander for his signature. These were the sorts of people who were in the line of the main drive.