Stalingrad
Page 43
An interesting thing happened on October 18. I was in good spirits. As I was looking out over the city I could sense the whole of Stalingrad, and I started thinking about Tsaritsyn, the defense of Tsaritsyn, which I’d only recently given a lecture on at the pedagogical institute. And now here I was defending Stalingrad myself. I told my comrades about these recollections, and I told them how in 1918 Mamayev Kurgan was comrade Stalin’s command and observation post. Not many of them knew that. They knew that Stalin had been in Tsaritsyn, that he defended Tsaritsyn, but they didn’t know any details. Benesh wanted to know more. He dragged me into the bunker of Lieutenant Litvenenko, where about fifteen people had gathered, and I began telling them about the defense of Tsaritsyn. I delivered an ad hoc lecture for an hour. The story was still fresh in my mind and well suited to the occasion. When they were leaving the bunker, they all wanted to see the trenches from 1918. Benesh used this story, and he asked me to tell other companies about the defense of Tsaritsyn. Afterward the men better understood the symbolic meaning of the defense of Stalingrad. The fact that Stalin had been here went deep into the hearts of these men, and it inspired them. Benesh wanted to take Mamayev Kurgan all the more after hearing that story. We jokingly referred to Mamayev Kurgan as the sacred place, the place where Stalin had been.
On November 20 our division and the entire 62nd Army got the order to attack. The men and officers received that order with great enthusiasm. [ . . . ] Our regiment was the unit from the division that was slated to attack Mamayev Kurgan and the water tanks. Benesh was gone by then. Zhidkikh was now the commander of 1st Battalion. 2nd Battalion was in the Metiz factory, and 3rd Battalion was advancing with us on the south slope of the hill. But the most important task was to be completed by the 1st Battalion of the 1047th Regiment. By then we’d already developed some new offensive tactics. We understood by then that small assault groups were much more successful. All the battalions and regiments attacked in small assault groups, and that was the only way we could attack, even though Mamayev Kurgan was like being out in the country more than in a city or even a village.
The first attacks were unsuccessful, and we were taking a lot of casualties. The men threw themselves into the assault. Officers broke every rule and ran out in front, but they were still unsuccessful. Out of twenty men in the battalion only four or five would be left. The rest were either killed or wounded. We attacked three or four times that day, at different times of the day: early morning and sunset, during the day and at night. We tried everything and had nothing to show for it. In those early days we attacked with tanks. Two tanks went behind the water tanks—one was destroyed, the other went missing. Our three remaining tanks were immobilized. One broke down, and the other two were on fire.
Incidentally, not much was accomplished during our heaviest stage of artillery preparation. Our artillery support was often inaccurate, and there was some friendly fire. On the 20th, 21st, 22nd, 23rd, 24th, and 25th we were fighting constantly for the water tanks. I spent the first few days at our headquarters. The commander and chief of staff were there the whole time. On the 26, 27th, and 28th, I was on the front line at an observation post with the battalion commander, Lieutenant Ustyuzhanin. Three battalions attacked the water tanks over the course of five or six days. We hit them from the sides. On the sixth day we managed to move about two hundred meters north of the water tanks and pose a real threat. That weakened the Germans’ position. Now we could strike them on their flanks. 3rd Battalion moved to the south where they could hit them from the side, and 2nd Battalion was to the west of the water tanks, where they could hit them straight-on. That way we were able to hit them from three sides, but even with that we still weren’t able to take the water tanks. Then, on January 10, 1943, we took them, and Mamayev Kurgan was ours. We wanted to know what these things were like in terms of their layout. I also climbed into these tanks. The walls were made of reinforced concrete, about a meter thick, and they were buried in dirt on the outside so that they looked less like tanks than hills. There were two of these, with partitions on the inside, where the water had been. They’d cut a lot of embrasures in the tanks, and these were hard to get at. The whole thing was a pillbox the Germans had set up for artillery. They had at least twenty machine guns there. There were great positions for the German snipers, who killed a lot of our officers. [ . . . ]
The first snow came to Stalingrad on the 28th. The day before there’d been wind and rain. Our overcoats were frozen solid. Everyone was cold and miserable. Lieutenant Salnikov, 1st Battalion’s deputy commander for operations, was sent to the front line to make sure everything was in order. He ended up crawling from one trench to another trying to encourage the men. They got ten men as reinforcements. They brought them breakfast at dawn. Salnikov promised that they’d be getting their winter gear that day, and he ordered company commander Shevelyov to prepare for the attack. We were supposed to attack together with the division’s training battalion, which was attached to us, and with the 1st Battalion of the 1043rd Regiment. When everything was nearly ready, Salnikov went out to the front line. He wanted to take another look to see that all the men were where they needed to be. It was already light out. A German sniper took aim and shot Salnikov in the head. And that’s how Salnikov, one of our most loyal Old Bolsheviks, was killed.
We attacked again at ten o’clock on the 28th, but we didn’t take the tanks that time either. The training battalion was almost completely destroyed—there were only a few men left. You could say that after that attack our division’s training battalion ceased to exist. Some of the commanders were sent to our regiment, some to divisional HQ. [ . . . ]
The offensives in December were also pretty rough. We had very few gains, but our operations in the city did finally contain the enemy, and that was important for the units attacking from the west: to prevent the enemy from maneuvering now that they were encircled.
Our regiment was sent over to the northern slopes of Mamayev Kurgan. We were defending the area between the railway line, which lay on the east side of the hill, and the water tanks. In November our regiment’s path to Mamayev Kurgan was obstructed by those water tanks we weren’t able to take. Now what was in our way was the Unnamed Height, which was one of the heights on the north side of Mamayev Kurgan. We had to take this height, and anyway it was keeping us from taking the tanks. It was a bit taller than the other heights, and the Germans were very solidly entrenched there, with no fewer than thirty machine guns and a whole system of communication trenches and bunkers. What’s more, they had a nice approach to the hill where they had clean lines of sight from their many bunkers. At night they would slip out and improve their defenses, and, when necessary, send in reinforcements.
On January 12–13 the 1043rd and 1045th regiments finally took the water tanks and began moving toward the western slopes of Mamayev Kurgan. The Germans dominated Mamayev Kurgan from that Unnamed Height, so we had to take that height.
1st Battalion’s commander at the time was Captain Zhidkikh, and his deputy was Lieutenant Bolvachyov.
For one whole day we got ready to storm the height. Small assault teams were formed. At 1:00 P.M. on January 14, these assault teams attacked the pillboxes and bunkers in waves from the front and a little from the right flank.
I was at 2nd Battalion’s command post, about seventy meters from the forward edge, on the railway line. Small groups went into the attack, forty men in total. The Germans obviously outnumbered us, both in men and machine guns. We had more mortars. Until 1:00 P.M. it was just the usual shooting from both sides. It was a cold, frosty day. We didn’t have any artillery preparation. It was quiet all around. You could tell that the Germans were holed up in their bunkers, not expecting an attack, since it was an unusual time for an attack. We had five cannons set out in the open. They started shooting at the bunkers where there was smoke. The attack was delayed by half an hour. One group of submachine gunners in white camouflage ran the hundred meters and rushed the German trenches, splitting up and a
ttacking the bunkers from both ends. The Germans jumped out of the bunkers, and our men found themselves right up next to them. One assault group was led by Private Antonov, another group was led by Sergeant Kudryavtsev, the third by Lieutenant Babayev, and the fourth group by Lieutenant Maksimov. All of them distinguished themselves that day and in the coming battles.
I felt like this wasn’t real fighting, that this was all just for practice. After four months in Stalingrad we had become so used to danger, so numbed by danger, that it often seemed as if these were just exercises rather than combat. This time was like that: it felt like a training mission. Our men were wearing white camouflage, but the Germans didn’t have any, and you could easily pick out their dark figures. You could see people’s breaths in the cold air.
Antonov burst into the trench, grabbed a rifle by the barrel, and started hitting Germans in the head left and right. By the way, we didn’t use bayonets in Stalingrad, all of them got tossed aside. I ordered our big guns to shoot just above the Germans’ heads to cut off any approaching groups. Then men took Antonov’s gun-swinging as a sign to cease fire. A sniper yelled at me, telling me to stop shooting.
Through my binoculars I could see Antonov beating the Germans, and Kudryavtsev’s group coming from the opposite direction and throwing grenades at the Germans in their trenches. That’s when the intense grenade fight began. Then Maksimov’s group threw themselves into the fight. The whole thing took about fifteen to twenty minutes. The Germans still hadn’t had time to recover and hadn’t really started shooting. It seemed strange that there was all this hand-to-hand combat, that the Germans weren’t shooting. There wasn’t any fire from our side, either, nothing from the machine guns or mortars. But that was because we didn’t want hit our own men. All the fighting took place in the German trenches.
When our men went up the hill in their camouflage, the Germans threw reinforcements at them from above. Then our machine guns, mortars, and artillery opened fire, and that kept the Germans from holding them back. That day we took most of the height, but not all of it.
[ . . . ] We took possession of the entire hill on January 16. We knocked the Germans back down the western slopes. The fighting lasted two days. Afterward we raised a red flag with the words: “For the Motherland, for Stalin!” The slogan was written by the regiment’s propagandist, Captain Rakityansky. [ . . . ]
“The Red Flag Flies on Mamayev Kurgan,” 1943. Photographer: Georgy Zelma
We said it was a historic day: January 26, the day we met up with the Don Front. An unforgettable day, an unforgettable meeting. I was at regimental HQ. It wasn’t easy staying at headquarters when both the commander and chief of staff had left for the front line. I couldn’t leave because I was on the phone with the observation post.
At 10:00 A.M. I heard from 1st Battalion’s observation post that Shavrin, a scout, had seen nine tanks approaching Mamayev Kurgan from the northwest. We had the idea that these ought to be ours, but we were worried that maybe the Germans might be trying their luck, disguising themselves in our uniforms. It was impossible to know right away whose tanks they were. After a few minutes the scout said now it was fourteen tanks. Then he saw a red flag on the lead vehicle, and we knew right away that those tanks were Russian, not German.’ We’d put up red flags on the Unnamed Height, on the water tanks, and on the boxcars. That way approaching units would be able to identify us. Everyone was on their guard then. We were nearing the historic moment when the two fronts came together.
At 11:00 A.M. Captain Kotov, commander of 2nd Battalion, reported that his men had gone up to the lead vehicle. The men greeted one another and exchanged kisses, and for a moment they forgot about the war. It seemed as if we weren’t at war. I asked whose unit it was. Captain Kotov said that it was the lead vehicle of a Colonel Nezhinsky. Then he sent his major to meet our regimental commanders. The meeting took place at the flag pole on the Unnamed Height. There was also a meeting on the western slopes of Mamayev Kurgan. A brief rally was organized, and they were officially received by our division’s political chief, Colonel Tkachenko. They wrote about this in Pravda.
When this meeting took place between the two fronts—the 62nd Army and the Don Front—the encircled enemy forces were split in half. From then on there were two encircled groups: a southern group in the center of the city and a northern group, centered on the Barricades factory. The commander of the Don Front had apparently decided to destroy these groups in turn. First it was to be the southern group in the center of the city, which was much stronger and was rumored to be where Paulus was, which turned out to be the case. [ . . . ]
On January 28 we finished the operation, and by order of the divisional commanders our regiment was sent to the northern slopes of the Long Ravine near Ryazhskaya and Artillery streets. Our mission was to break the enemy defenses in the Long Ravine and move toward the center of the city along the railway line.
We fought all day on the 28th and took a lot of casualties, but we didn’t take a single meter from the Germans. We’d come up against some of their long-standing defensive positions. The Long Ravine was fortified with many firing points and emplacements, the slopes were mined and covered in barbed wire, and we weren’t able to take it. [ . . . ] The divisional commander ordered us to do anything necessary to complete our mission, but we had only a few men.120 [ . . . ] The men were worn out. Some slept while the others manned the machine guns and other weapons. The battalion commanders also slept. [ . . . ] I looked after the men, made sure they were well fed and were getting enough to drink. We prepared all night. Ustyuzhanin and I had a clear idea how strong the German’s defenses were. We couldn’t overpower them by brute force, but we were betting that their morale was hanging by a thread. We needed to organize everything and prepare a coordinated attack so we could make a quick strike on the Germans, demoralize them, and take them prisoner. Other regiments were betting on the same thing.
The regimental commander sent me to our command post, where I acted on his behalf and explained our upcoming mission in detail, not as an order but as a decision for each battalion commander to make for himself. [ . . . ] Some of our scouts managed to get far behind enemy lines and chanced upon the German battalion commander’s command post, where he was with his adjutant. The other Germans were in bunkers on the front line. As soon as the adjutant jumped out and started shooting, our men started throwing grenades. Then the battalion commander came out with his hands in the air. He was a neat, robust officer in a greatcoat that didn’t fit well. And I’ve got to say, he was the only German wearing a greatcoat.
That was when the assault groups crossed the defensive lines, flanking the Germans and throwing grenades. That caught them off guard. They started running away one by one. When we found out we had the German commander, we took him to a high place, gave him a sheet, and ordered him to signal his men to surrender. It was getting light out. The German commander waved the sheet, telling his men to surrender. German soldiers started putting up their hands and giving themselves up by the dozen. Scouts and officers disarmed them and stacked their weapons in a pile. At first there were sixty men, and after some time more than a hundred had surrendered.
The 1043rd and 1045th Regiments came just in time to share the prisoners. That morning our regiment took 172 prisoners. At the time that was the most prisoners ever taken by a regiment. Afterward, though, there were still more. I took prisoners, took their weapons. Our guys had a bit of fun with them. The Germans were wrapped up in all kinds of things. One of them had a blanket on each foot. Others wore sheets and looked like scarecrows. We got them in formation and took them to our regimental command post. I gave a report to our divisional commander, and they congratulated us on our successes. I also reported this to army commander Chuikov when I passed by his command post.
Then a cameraman came and told us to climb up the steep bank. He chose the best place for filming, with Stalingrad in the background, and up front there were prisoners on the slope along with the battalion commander
in the bad coat. I was walking behind swinging a whip. That was one of the more interesting days in the history of our regiment.
We crossed the Long Ravine, and since there weren’t any strong enemy defenses we were able to move into the center of the city.
Our successes continued on January 30 as our division moved to the Ninth of January Square. The Germans were still holding out. There hadn’t been any instances of entire German regiments surrendering. They were broken, but still they weren’t surrendering entire units. The northern group even pushed back part of our encirclement, and there was a certain amount of danger. [ . . . ]
The Germans set up a perimeter defense around the Central Hotel. German officers were standing at all the entrances. They were incidents when they’d stick out a flag of surrender from the second floor, and when you went to get your prisoners they’d shoot from the other floors. After that we took a Polish prisoner who we were able to use as a truce envoy. He went about a dozen times and brought out groups of fifteen to twenty Germans. He was a good propagandist, and only too willing to pick out German officers and snipers to be shot.
On the 30th, at the end of the day, the divisional commander asked what should be done with that officers’ house: destroy it or leave it. The radio message was something like this: “Ask the commander what is to be done with their garrison at the Central Hotel: leave it or destroy it.” The army commander ordered us to destroy the garrison. What ended up happening was that we left some of our men, and the rest of the division moved in to occupy the central areas of the city and the train station. At 2:00 P.M. on the 31st the division reached the Stalingrad train station. We took the station and met the 64th Army, which was coming up to the center from the south. You could say that by 2:00 P.M. on the 31st, the southern group of encircled Germans was done for, but the officers in the Central Hotel were still holding out.