by Stalingrad- The City that Defeated the Third Reich (epub)
We got to Stalingrad on September 30, 1942. About ten kilometers out I could already see a massive wall of smoke, and the glow from the city was getting brighter as we approached. The entire city seemed to be on fire. The fires looked especially intense at the Red October factory and the oil refinery, which was right where our division was located. I got to the riverbank just as it was getting dark. Stalingrad looked particularly terrifying then. Everything was burning. Oil was flowing out of broken tanks at the refinery and coming down to the banks, and this wall of fire was reflected in the water, making flames appear still taller than they really were. It was a very difficult situation.
We crossed the river at night. The barge we were crossing on got shelled by the Germans. As it happened, the rope connecting us to the tug boat broke, and while the tug went to shore for another rope, we were anchored in the middle of the river with the Germans still shelling us. The whole crossing took us about two hours. We had wounded men on the barge. Mortar shells were exploding close by. The Germans were launching flares that completely lit up the river, but there was nothing we could do—that was particularly unpleasant.
On the night of October 1 we got to our regiment. The next morning I went out to the front line to get to know all the combat units in our sector. I saw all kinds of terrible things there. At the very end of September the Germans bombed our division’s positions, especially the refinery, which we were defending. Many of our men were killed: they lay out in the open all over the place, lots of dead bodies in craters, and there were a lot of dead civilians—women and children by the boats, by the buildings, all over the place.
I headed straight for the Metiz factory.112 It was on fire. There was a smell of burning and of dead bodies; it was hot, dusty, smoky—that’s what it was like there. There was fighting going on in 1st Battalion’s sector.
I was with Petersky, the chief of staff, and Benesh, the commander of the 1st Battalion, and we surveyed the regiment’s entire sector, relocated our machine-gun emplacements in a way that made better sense and returned to our command post by the end of the day. The command post was located on the west bank about three or four hundred meters from the front line.
Starting from September 30, I was in Stalingrad for 152 days on end, never leaving. Very few people went back to the west bank for any reason. You could say that those five months I spent in Stalingrad were the equivalent of five years of normal life.
I learned that we had around five hundred casualties on the first day of fighting, and on October 5 we had 1,300 men. There were companies with only twenty to twenty-five men left.
In early October we were always having to repel counterattacks in two areas of our sector: the Metiz factory and the infamous Mamayev Kurgan, Hill 102.
Our forward line was around fifty to sixty meters away from the Germans, in some places up to one hundred meters. That kind of close distance was rare. It happened most often when we were fighting in the streets, which quickly led to the rise of the hand grenade. Attacks were usually repelled with grenades, along with other kinds of weapons. In our sector the Germans outnumbered us by a factor of five or six. We were basing that on our reconnaissance, observations, and information from other sources, and also the Germans were sending out wave after wave of squads. It wasn’t unusual for them to come at us four or five times a day.
[ . . . ] The toughest fighting in our sector broke out in mid-October. As a historian, I tried to draw comparisons to battles I know from history: Borodino, Verdun during the Imperialist War,113 but none of that was right because the scale of the conflict in Stalingrad makes it hard to compare it to anything. It seemed as if Stalingrad was breathing fire for days on end. Our Ilyushins114 did show up, but they took a lot of losses. The Messerschmitts shot them down quickly. The Germans suffered great losses from our U-2s at night, but that wasn’t until November. We called them the “gardeners,” and they did us a lot of good. They crossed the Volga from east to west, and before they got to enemy lines they cut their engines. Then they dropped their bombs. Once they were back on our side they started their engines again. That’s why the U-2 was so hard to catch. But the Germans bombed us at night too.
I remember once having to go to from the meatpacking plant115 to our command post. We’d just left when the Germans launched flares and started bombing us so much the buildings shook. The night raids really get to you. During the day you can see where they’re coming from and work out where the bombs are going, so you don’t get too worked up over it. You get used to it eventually.
By the way, it was here that I first saw our bombers attacking with Katyushas, though they didn’t come very often at all. On the whole, we had a very slight air presence in Stalingrad, and what we did have was weak. I couldn’t say why.
I don’t know why, but almost everyone in the division had diarrhea. We were drinking unboiled water, and the Volga was polluted with oil, dead bodies, bits of wood, and so on. The diarrhea was wearing everyone out. I had it myself. General Chuikov, the army commander, had this cook called Boris who joked that he could cure us with his general’s dry rusks. General Chuikov had made his command post in the same place as ours, and his kitchen and ours had amalgamated, which is why he was saying that.
In mid-October we reinforced our front line. The Germans weren’t pressing us on Mamayev Kurgan. Actually it was us who was pressing them. Mamayev Kurgan was divided into two areas. The eastern [slope] was ours, and they held on to the western slopes, and on top of that the Germans had the water tanks, or the “devil’s domes,” as they were known. They had their main observation posts in those tanks, and all their artillery observers were safe inside, even though they were right on our front line. So the Germans were in control of the dominant position on the hill. And that’s why the subsequent battle for Mamayev Kurgan was really a battle for these tanks. Whoever controlled the water tanks controlled Mamayev Kurgan.
[ . . . ]
We were never short of ammunition. The ammunition supply weakened only when the Volga started icing over, but until then we always felt that we had enough. Our supply of ammunition was brought across from the east bank on rickety little boats. Our divisional relay point was on the east bank. Each regiment had to transport its own food and supplies across the river. The army had a forward supply unit on the west bank, but it did little to keep us supplied with ammunition.
We had orders from Chuikov and the divisional commander saying that we needed to have our own way of getting across the river. All the barges were broken up, burned, and sunk. There were even large cutters sticking nose-up on the riverbank. The only means of transport we had was these tiny boats. At first our regiment had seven boats, but then this went up to ten, and then we got two pontoons—actually, one part of a pontoon. We jokingly called these boats Korobkov’s flotilla. Korobkov was the deputy chief of staff for logistics, the one who created this “flotilla.” He’s a former teacher and school principal, a great organizer and administrator. He’s alive and well, and was given the Medal for Battle Merit. Those rickety boats were the best way we had of crossing the Volga.
I remembered how, back in 1918, comrade Stalin issued an order to remove all the vessels from the river near Stalingrad and send them to the north. That was at the most critical period when the Germans were approaching the city, and we could not fall back.116 When I was in Stalingrad we didn’t have any way of crossing the river, and we never had such an order. Sometimes the cutters would come at night to evacuate the wounded. That was only up until the ice came. After that, all of our clothing, ammunition, equipment, the wounded—everything was taken on those small boats. We couldn’t use any other form of transport to supply the regiment because even these rickety boats were getting shot at by mortars and machine guns, and a barge definitely would have been shot up. So the most durable transport turned out to be these tiny boats.
The Volga started icing over on November 9 and was frozen solid by December 17. We were completely fed up with it. This was the hardest ti
me for our army. It was really difficult for the boats to make their way there and back through the ice floes. They’d get stuck, people would be having to move from one little block of ice to the next. There were times when the current took the boats downriver toward the German shore, and then they’d have to either ditch the boat or dump the cargo and try to steer the boat out of danger. One of our boats was taken about three kilometers past Stalingrad, and we were looking for our men for five days. On the whole, the “beautiful Volga” tried our patience and got on our nerves. We did not love the Volga back then. In the morning everyone would ask: Has it frozen over yet? And the Germans, as we learned from prisoners, were also anxiously hoping that the Volga would ice over soon. They knew we were having difficulties, and their plan was to make use of the ice for an offensive.
On November 11 the Germans launched an attack on the sector of the Metiz factory, but nothing came of it.
[ . . . ] We took a second German prisoner and brought him to regimental HQ. This was the first one we got to talk in Stalingrad. He was a private. He was wounded, and so the men brought him in on a stretcher, but since it was November and the men still hadn’t gotten gloves, they kept dropping the stretcher to warm their hands. He had internal injuries, but since this was our first captured German, they started to revive him. The doctor, Krasnov, tried hard to bring him back so he could be questioned. And he did get better, even managed to say that he was a private 1st class in the 216th Regiment, but we didn’t get anything else out of him. He died. The second prisoner had more to say. We learned that our division was up against the Germans’ 295th Division. That prisoner was very disrespectful and defiant. He came right out and said he was a member of the Nazi party. We sent him to our army HQ, after which he was sent to front HQ. He still considered himself a winner and didn’t let on that he was anything other than happy. Though he did tell us how difficult things were for them with clothing at this time. By the end of November we’d already gotten our winter uniforms, but the Germans still hadn’t gotten theirs by the end of the battle, though they did keep hoping that they would. [ . . . ]
The snipers in our regiment played an important role in our active defense of Stalingrad. The snipers appeared in Colonel Metelyov’s regiment during the heaviest fighting for Stalingrad, in October. The pioneers of the sniper movement in the regiment were Alexander Kalentyev—a Siberian from the Urals—and the sailor Vasily Zaytsev, who is now a Hero of Soviet Union. Altogether there were forty-eight snipers in the regiment. During the fighting in Stalingrad, in the streets and on Mamayev Kurgan, they eliminated 1,278 Germans. The role of leader for these forty or so best snipers in the regiment belonged, of course, to Vasily Zaytsev. He was an excellent shot, and he quickly perfected the art of sniping and of being a lone warrior. He actually did the job of a regimental instructor, and he went around to all the units in the regiment. Soon he had a lot of students. The most successful sniper movement was developed in Captain Kotov’s 2nd Battalion. That battalion was defending the Metiz factory on the southern slope of Mamayev Kurgan. There was this sense that every soldier and officer in Stalingrad was itching to kill as many Germans as possible. In Stalingrad people felt a particularly intense hatred for the Germans. That was one of the reasons for the sniper movement in our regiment. There were a lot of soldiers who wanted to become snipers, which is why we had snipers using ordinary rifles rather than sniper rifles. Zaytsev would take the best of them, and his main selection criteria were courage, resourcefulness, and composure. Zaytsev went around to the units in the regiment and questioned their commanders, observed the men on the front line, and selected his snipers. Then he trained them. After showing them the scope and doing some target practice, Zaytsev would take his marksmen out to the firing positions. Zaytsev developed the surest and most reliable way to train snipers: he demonstrated what a sniper does right on the front line.
A lot of people went to the front line on their own initiative. Krasnov, the doctor, would sneak out there—he had a count of eight dead Germans.
Izvekov, a medic, would be dressing the wounded in a bunker on the front line, and then he’d run over to the firing positions and shoot at the Germans with his rifle. His count was twenty-one dead Germans.
Zekov, a medic from the 2nd Battalion, became a sniper, so then he had two qualifications: he was a medic and a sniper. His count was forty-five dead Germans. He was given the Order of the Red Star. He had one unfortunate incident—he killed one of our own pilots. One of our fighter planes rammed a German bomber. Two men came down in parachutes. The first one came down on our side. He was on fire, and there was a trail of smoke coming up from his parachute. We didn’t know whether he was one of us or one of them, and as he got closer to the ground they could hear him screaming. Zekov had a deadly hatred of the Germans, and he decided that this was the German pilot. He shot at him and killed the man in the parachute, who turned out to be our own pilot, twice decorated. Zekov was absolutely crushed, and it affected the regiment deeply. We buried the dead pilot. Zekov was tried and given a ten-year sentence, which was to be served out on the front line. Zekov was brave and energetic, a real fighter. Being a medic didn’t really suit him. While serving out his sentence on the front line, he started eliminating Germans together with Zaytsev, and by the end of the battle he’d killed forty-five Germans. His criminal record was wiped clean, and they gave him the Order of the Red Star.
Even the commander’s adjutants would sneak out to try their hand at sniping.
As soon as the chief of staff got to the front line, he would shoot every one of the machine guns. This was also something I did myself. We’d often have to inspect the machine-gun nests. You’d go to the front line for inspections, to check the battalion’s combat readiness and, above all, the automatic weapons. I loved shooting the machine guns.
Zaytsev taught his men individually, in groups, and also at meetings of the sniper detachment. The sniper detachment raised the level of our defenses even more, strengthening our resistance. In a very short span of time our snipers brought heavy losses to the enemy, forced them to keep low, and kept them from moving about in the open. Another reason the snipers did so well was that they spent extended periods of time covering literally every approach, every bunker and trench. The second a German tried to take a look around, he’d get a bullet from one of our men. Colonel Metelyov’s regiment was famous in Stalingrad and on the entire Stalingrad Front for being a sniper regiment. The exploits of our regiment’s snipers were constantly being written about in the papers. That encouraged and inspired the snipers, and also got word of their experiences to soldiers in other units. Zaytsev was a skilled agitator: he was a strong and persuasive speaker. Since he was a member of the Komsomol bureau, he would tour the subunits on Komsomol business, and at the same time he promoted the sniper movement.
The daily reinforcement of our forward defensive line played a major role in the active defense of Stalingrad. I, for example, was moved from regimental headquarters and specially assigned to the 1st Battalion at Mamayev Kurgan. The battalion commander was Lieutenant Georgy Benesh. I was there at Mamayev Kurgan every two or three days, and the two of us were always busy strengthening the front line. [ . . . ]
Commander Benesh was a truly brave man: a scout, a sniper, and an excellent tactician. He never thought about death, he laughed at death. When he was asked whether he was afraid of dying, he said that he carried death around with him up until the fighting at Kiev, and after Kiev he banished it from his heart. This one time, the two of us were on our way to the front line. We climbed up Mamayev Kurgan and came under German machine-gun fire. We had to lie down. I yelled at him: “Get down!” He was always cracking jokes and he said to me with a laugh: “If Benesh is going to die fighting for Stalingrad, then he’s going to die on his feet.” He liked messing with people. When we made it to the front line, I couldn’t see anyone around, but Benesh was all ready to shoot his sniper rifle. I put up the periscope and started looking. They started shooting m
y periscope right away, the Germans were following us that closely. I moved to another location. But Benesh popped out and started shooting. I saw that he’d taken off his cap and was looking over the top of the periscope. A German jumped out from behind a tank and started running for the water tank. Benesh got him. He said that made eleven Germans he’d killed.
I was out with him several times, both during the day and at night, and he never had any regard for his safety. You could say it was criminal, how little he took care of himself. And he died for nothing, he died stupidly. He was moving from one building to another, and he was killed by a random mortar shell. He’d been with the medic Rada Zavadskaya. He told her: “You and me, Rada, defending Stalingrad.” Benesh was a poet. He was Vasily Grossman’s step-nephew. He’d recently asked me to look for Grossman, but I never managed to do it. Benesh was nominated for a medal, and the order for his promotion and decoration came three days after he died. He was decorated for the fighting at Kastornaya.117 On the subject of Grossman I should say that when he spoke with our regimental commander, he didn’t so much as ask about Benesh, and he showed no interest in his diary.118 His diary was burned. There were a lot of complaints in it about cowardly commanders, and a lot of poetry and outspoken words. Benesh was buried in a cemetery on the riverbank. Since then that cemetery has been known as the burial place for the commanders of the 1047th Regiment.119
[Interview continues, May 8, 1943]
No one wanted to take Mamayev Kurgan as much as Benesh, and no one talked about it as often. I remember how you could go up to him at night, “Let’s go to the front,” and he’d say: “Let’s go.” He was always going there.
The men in Batyuk’s division were the only ones at Mamayev Kurgan from September 21 to January 12. We took heavy losses there. The Germans wanted to push us off the hill completely. We wanted to take those water tanks at any cost because Mamayev Kurgan was the dominant height in the city. On a clear day you could see it about ten kilometers away. It rose about eighty meters above Stalingrad. At the beginning we were having to shoot upward. That’s the most hazardous and awkward combat situation: the reverse slope defense. It’s impossible to set up a successful fire plan. We were constantly having to try to get up to that ridge, and we considered it a victory if we managed to push the Germans back to gain five to seven meters in a night. [ . . . ]