by Stalingrad- The City that Defeated the Third Reich (epub)
A small number of us continued defending Stalingrad until the 21st. On the 21st I had just over a hundred men remaining. [ . . . ]
At around 10:00 P.M. on the 20th I got a written order from the commander of the 35th Division, comrade Colonel Dubyansky, which said: “To the commander of the 101st Guards Rifle Division, Lieutenant Colonel Gerasimov. Two battalions from the 92nd Rifle Brigade are coming to relieve you. Get written confirmation that you’ve transferred responsibility for the defense area, then continue defending that area together until further notice. [ . . . ]”
On the night of the 21st I received a second written order. By that time the enemy had already cut me off from my field units on our right flank and had reached the Volga. This meant that I’d been cut off from the divisional command post. The enemy came at us with a mortar battery, with heavy and light machine guns. It was 150–200 people altogether. They had artillery at their disposal from above the Volga and had cut us off from the divisional command post and the field units on the right.
I was handed this order by a messenger who had managed to slip through the German positions and was still in one piece. He was one of the soldiers we’d been given as reinforcements, and I can’t even remember his name. The order was from Colonel Dubyansky. Dubyansky also sent me some wine, a little vodka, and two cans of food—to help me keep going, seeing as we weren’t getting much in the way of food. Our food was being brought over in small boats.102 And so Lieutenant Colonel Gerasimov was hereby ordered to gather his remaining men and officers and go to the divisional command post in the area of the Tsaritsa River. At this time the divisional command post was on the Tsaritsa.
It was the most remarkable battle. I couldn’t do it again. At my absolute lowest moment I thought: if I don’t make it, others will come and tell our story. [ . . . ]
After getting the instructions from Colonel Dubyansky, the commander of the 35th Guards Division, I sent a runner to go get the commissar. Right then the commissar was with one of the units. He came, and we held a meeting in a dugout. I also had the deputy commander of the 131st Division and the commander of the 20th Rifle Brigade. We ate and drank together, of course. We’d been brought watermelons, sour cream, chickens, eggs, vodka, and fresh apples by boat. We ate well, drank, and started to discuss how we were going to break out. We needed to break through four hundred meters of German combat formations. Since I was the one who had been given the order, I was the one who was to lead the escape of these four staffs. I assumed command of the mission to get the remaining men from these three staffs [sic] out of there. The commanders suggested then that we make our way out in small groups of five or ten. We were surrounded and cut off from our units, the enemy had broken through both on our left flank, along the Volga, and on the right, and was also attacking from the main front lines. We had no choice. We had to force our way through their battle formations.
I rejected the idea of having the staffs leave in groups. That would be the end of whatever fighting strength we still had. We decided to fight our way out, using the element of surprise to underpin our plan of action. What were the reasons for this? The enemy was stronger. They had about two hundred men with mortars and machine guns, while I had around seventy, including the commanders. [ . . . ] We gathered all the remaining men and officers, and I told them our mission. We started crawling our way toward the forward edge of the enemy defenses. I placed a heavy machine gun on my left flank to cover the rail line and prevent the enemy from bringing replacements down to the Volga.
The machine gunner had three belts of ammunition. He was alone. He had no number two. He was in position. I began moving the remaining men and staffs. The Germans spotted us, and we were subjected to heavy machine-gun and rifle fire. Then they sent up flares, and then there was heavy mortar fire. The men were barely visible. I started giving the order to quickly move up to the German combat formations. We made it there. I had to encourage the men to move forward. I ran forward with the commissar and primed two grenades.
What saved us? A railcar was burning on the other side of the German formations, which meant that we could see them while they had a hard time seeing us, because the Germans were looking from the same side as the light. I took advantage of this and immediately pushed everyone into the attack, running out in front with the commissar with pistol drawn, yelling: “Attack! For the motherland! Forward!” and “Comrades, not one step back, only forward!” There were fifteen or so Germans in a large crater. About thirty meters away. I threw a grenade, then a second. You could hear them howling, crying. They yelled: “Rus, Rus!” My men saw me toss the grenade and started running. The flares and mortars had stopped, there was only submachine-gun fire and hand grenades.
When I ran forward, all the soldiers and staff members ran after me. Everyone got tangled up together—us and the Germans—and we were fighting hand to hand. With bayonets. It was dark: you’d run up to someone, see they were one of your own, then move on to the next one. If he was in a short jacket, that meant he was German. Grenades were being used too. They really did throw a lot of hand grenades at us, but we gave as good as we got. We took out more than a hundred of them. Everyone was mixed up, you couldn’t make out a thing. Some yelled: “For the motherland!” Others yelled “For Stalin!” Some swore. The whole time I was yelling: “Move forward, stay with me, to the Volga!” You could hear the Germans screaming, their wounded were moaning. Ours would say: “I’m hit, take me with you.” Wounded Germans were howling. It was a nightmare.
When I attacked, the Germans stopped firing their rifles and submachine guns, they started fighting only with bayonets and hand grenades. It seems that they’d run out of ammunition, shot all their cartridges, and there wasn’t time to reload during the attack. We were also running low. I remember this one lieutenant with a submachine gun whose strap got torn. He grabbed the gun by the barrel and started hitting them in the head with it. The Germans started running. We ran after them. This one German was running behind me. Lieutenant Kulinich says: “Comrade Colonel, a German.”
I shot him with my submachine gun, and he dropped. He was running without anything, not even a rifle. This was where Lieutenant Panichkin was killed.
When I threw those two grenades I could see what kind of fight this was going to be. I grabbed a third grenade from my pocket, took my pistol in my left hand, and pulled the pin. There was a group of five to eight Germans. I had just turned around and was about to throw my grenade when a German threw his own grenade, hitting me in the chest. Before it exploded there were sparks: the detonator was burning. It bounced off my chest and ended up about five meters away. I only had time to cover my face with my hands. I should have got down, but I was a bit dazed. Then the grenade went off, and I got hit in my right forearm—two fragments—and above the knee of my left leg.
Then the commissar yelled “Hurrah!” And it was right at that moment that a bullet grazed his tongue, knocked out some teeth, and exited through his chin. A second bullet hit his left cheekbone. He cried out: “Alexander Akimovich, I’m hit.”
I said: “Me too. Can you walk?”
“Yes.”
“Go on, then. I’ll go get some of the others.”
Lieutenant Kulinich said he’d also been hit.
I’ve got to tell you about Private Gulyutkin. When my adjutant Shikhanov went missing on the 8th, I took Gulyutkin, a submachine gunner, as his replacement. He was a small, nondescript, skinny kid, born in 1921 or 1922. Throughout all of the fighting—we went on the attack three times—he was always right behind me, didn’t leave my side for a second. He was always concerned for my safety and would warn me: “Comrade Colonel, you’re risking your life, you could get yourself killed—we’d be worse off without our commander.”
In one of those attacks, in the area of the sawmill, where we were reinforced by comrade Nazarov’s sapper company, I gave the order to attack the enemy. The company commander couldn’t get his men to move. They were under heavy fire from mortars, machine guns, sub
machine guns. This was in the evening. The buildings were on fire. My hat blew away in the wind. I was going around without it, and I asked them: “Why aren’t you moving forward?” I drew my pistol.
“Move out!” I yelled. “Attack at once!” The enemy had come to 150 meters from our positions.
But they wouldn’t go. I ran out in front of the company, stood there with pistol in hand: “Comrades, follow me! Let’s go! Attack! Hurrah!”
They looked at me. You could see a kind of smile appearing on their faces. They all got up, and the entire company followed me on the attack. Private Gulyutkin said: “Don’t run out in front, there’s machine guns.”
He always kept himself between me and the enemy, shielding me with his own body. When I yelled “Forward!” he got caught up in the moment, picked up his weapon, and yelled: “Forward!” But then he realized what he was doing and said: “You can’t go any farther, it’s too dangerous.”
There was nothing else I could do, so on I went.
Gulyutkin held on to my left sleeve to make sure he didn’t lose me. He held his submachine gun with his other hand as he shielded me with his body. He got wounded in both arms. The same grenade got both of us. When I talk about him, I always think of what a singularly loyal person he was.
When the grenade got us, he didn’t say “I’m hit!” but rather: “Are you alive, comrade Colonel?”
“Yes,” I said.
I fell over when I got hit. He thought I was dead. I said: “I’m alive. How about you?”
He said: “Hit in the arm, not bad.”
He kept at my side with his wounded arm, trying to shield me. I got angry, and said: “Back off, I can’t lead with you so close.”
And he said: “Yes, you should go first.”
Up ahead, everyone was beginning to break through to where our sailors103 were. I’d been leading the battle for forty minutes without having my wounds seen to. Some of us had got through, and others were still fighting. Finally I reached the sailors, where I was met by the commander of a machine-gun platoon from the 92nd Brigade. He asked me where everyone was. We got a group of eighteen men and sent them back with this platoon commander. They went back to the battle, where they provided covering fire to get the remaining men and the wounded out of there.
I was feeling faint because I’d gone forty minutes without being bandaged. I’d been yelling, my throat was dry after I got hit, I was thirsty. A sailor brought me some water in a helmet. I drank nearly all of it even though it smelled like oil. Then they called a medical assistant to dress my wounds. We were back with our comrades. We started to fall back to the divisional command post. By then I wasn’t able to walk. The commissar and I had to be carried. We arrived at the command post and reported to the divisional commander that our staff had gotten out. I gave my report by way of messenger because I still had half a kilometer left to go. I was given permission to move to the other side of the Volga and put my men under the command of Lieutenant Pavlov. The division was withdrawn from the front line on the 25th. I’d already been taken on the 23rd to a hospital in Saratov. All that first night in a proper bed I was still fighting the Germans. [ . . . ]
Throughout the fighting Panichkin was always at my side. He was a brave commander. If you asked him to take some men and get them into position, he would do it right when you wanted and then report back. Especially brave. He died in that battle and was nominated for a decoration. Gulyutkin was also sent up for a decoration.
During the period of combat operations at Stalingrad the regiment eliminated about three thousand enemy personnel, about sixty tanks, three aircraft, about twenty-eight armored vehicles. We took out about 150 trucks, and also two mortar batteries and a dozen or so field guns.
We didn’t take any prisoners because our men and officers are trained paratroopers. When you’re behind enemy lines, you can’t take prisoners, you can only kill. That’s how our men were trained. Which is why our officers and soldiers didn’t take any prisoners, why they killed. Once Captain Teltsov said he’d captured eighteen men. I reported this to the divisional commander, who told me to send them along. I asked Teltsov where the prisoners were. He stood there, smiling, and said: “The report was mistaken, they’ve all been shot.”
It turns out that Teltsov had personally ordered them to be shot. In that whole period we had eight prisoners, including two officers: a pilot and a Romanian. The Red Army takes no prisoners. I got an earful from divisional commander Dubyansky: “Why didn’t you take any prisoners?”
Everyone had the same excuse: “They tried to escape, so we shot them.”
THE HISTORY INSTRUCTOR: CAPTAIN NIKOLAI AKSYONOV
Captain Nikolai Aksyonov and the sniper Vasily Zaytsev, the respondents in the following two interviews, both belonged to the Siberian 284th Rifle Division. (After showing exemplary valor in the battle of Stalingrad, it was renamed the 79th Red Banner Guards Division.) The division was formed in December 1941 from soldiers in the military districts of Tomsk, Novosibirsk, and Kemerovo.104 Following heavy losses in eastern Ukraine and outside Voronezh, the division was recalled to the Urals in early August 1942, where it replenished its ranks with new local recruits and several thousand sailors from the Pacific Fleet. On September 6, while the division was still conducting training exercises, its commander, Colonel Nikolai Batyuk, received the order to deploy immediately to the Stalingrad Front.105 The division reached Stalingrad on September 18; the Germans had already taken Mamayev Kurgan.106 The battle had also spread to the central ferry slip on the west bank of the Volga, forcing the division to cross at a spot to the north, near the Red October factory. On September 20 Batyuk’s soldiers were loaded onto barges and conveyed across the river. “Right off the bank” recalled Batyuk in his interview, “we received our combat objective and started fighting, not even knowing our bearings.”
Some of Batyuk’s men had the mission of retaking Mamayev Kurgan; others were to help the 13th Guards Division, which had been forced to move northward after the Germans captured the central ferry slip on September 22. The Soviets recaptured Mamayev Kurgan, but on September 28 it passed back into German hands. Batyuk’s soldiers nevertheless clung to the southern and eastern slopes of the hill, blocking the path to the industrial district and the Volga.107 The Red Army did not gain complete control of the hill until January 16, 1943.108
Divisional commander Nikolai Batyuk
Captain Aksyonov, a deputy regimental commander in the 284th Rifle Division, led a resupply unit into the burning city on September 30. He portrays the battles his regiment faced in minute detail: the defense of Mamayev Kurgan, the January offensive, and the defeat of the Germans. Before the war Aksyonov taught history at the Tomsk Pedagogical Institute, and he employed his historical knowledge to mobilize his soldiers. In the midst of the battle he recalled his lectures on the Civil War and the battle of Tsaritsyn. He told his troops how Joseph Stalin led the defense of the city from Mamayev Kurgan. Given in the regiment’s shelter at the foot of the hill, his talk was so rousing that some soldiers jumped up, eager to examine the trenches from 1918. From that point on the soldiers spoke of Mamayev Kurgan as a “sacred place, the place where Stalin had been.”109
This story shows how the cult of Stalin had morphed into a cult of military genius by the time the war began. Stalin was no longer just the best and most loyal student of Lenin; he single-handedly led Russia’s defense against the foreign invaders.110 Aksyonov was one of many eyewitnesses to promote Stalin’s military legend. In his interview he expresses delight that Stalin was promoted to Marshal of the Soviet Union in March 1943. Among the photographs he submitted to the Historical Commission (some of which he took himself) were several pictures of the building that housed the 10th Soviet Army during the battle of Tsaritsyn. One photo is a close-up of a bullet hole–riddled commemorative plaque informing visitors that comrades Stalin and Voroshilov worked in there in 1918.
Aksyonov’s testimony is vivid and detailed, and his account of the storming of M
amayev Kurgan has a cinematic quality. No less dramatic are his memories of September 30, 1942, the day he first entered the burning city, and of February 25, 1943, when after 149 uninterrupted days of fighting he crossed the Volga and was astonished to see an undamaged wooden house.
COMMISSION ON THE HISTORY OF THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR
May 5, 1943
Interview conducted by comrade Belkin
Stenography: comrade Laputina
Nikolai Nikitich AKSYONOV
Guards captain, 1047th Regiment, 79th Guards Red Banner Division
Deputy chief of staff for operations111
I was born in 1908 in the village of Podoynikova, in the Pankrushikhinsky district of the Altai region. I joined the army on September 8, 1941. I was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for my part in the defense of Stalingrad. Before the war I was a teacher at the Tomsk Pedagogical Institute.