Krymov had not written to his wife for some time. There had been ‘no chance to send a letter’. Now appreciating the gravity of the present situation, he felt ‘a written letter might somehow get through to you, an unwritten one would clearly disappear without trace’. He glanced at the soldiers all around, sleeping with full equipment, rifles and machine guns cradled in their arms, only belts unbuckled for comfort, and laboriously attempted to write in the poor light. He described the battlefield night sky about him: ‘wonderful golden twigs,’ he wrote, created by flares ‘grew vertically into the darkness’.
‘These star-like embers of light crept – then abruptly somersaulted – over the vastness of the Steppe and were then extinguished, until another broke out, high up, in another position.’(1)
As the Germans drove into the pocket, sub-pockets were created, which in turn were smothered in hard fighting. Jewgenlij Dolmatowski, with a Russian press company, was isolated in just such an enclave. ‘We were surrounded, I believe, by soldiers called grenadiers,’ he said. Few asked for quarter which was not freely given. ‘It ended in hand-to-hand fighting,’ continued Dolmatowski, ‘during which I was thrown to the ground, and virtually held down by my hands and feet.’ He likened the desperate mêlée to ‘fighting like children’ but ‘actually, it was to the last’. They were totally outfought. ‘I have never had such a thrashing in my life,’ he admitted, ‘even as a child – never!’ Afterwards ‘we were then taken off to the prison camps’.(2)
Russian units marched and counter-marched through the confusion inside the pocket, constantly seeking a way out. Local inhabitants, aghast at the prospect of impending German occupation, looked on in despair. Major Krymov described the scene on evacuating a village as they retired deeper into the shrinking pocket.
‘Anxious, serious faces of collective farmers. Soft words from the women. Clipped phrases from the officers. Engine sounds. Horses neighing. “Heads up comrades, we’ll be back”… “Back soon” … “Come back” … “How are we going to defeat the Germans?” … “Now if we don’t come, others will, take care”… “A little fresh water for my field flask?” “Thank you” … “We’ll be back, if not us, then others just as good. And the German parasites will go down like flies”… “Take care friends!” “No, not farewell, simply goodbye.”’
As logistic units attempted to march towards the centre of the pocket, combat units reorganising and regrouping for a break-out marched the other way. Units became entangled. ‘The pocket has been constricted to an appalling degree,’ observed Krymov, ‘nobody can move now, in any direction.’ The decisive phase of the battle was anticipated within hours.
‘Without doubt the soldiers will break out of the pocket, but how, and at what price? This is the issue that preoccupies the various unit commanders.’(3)
Belated attempts to break out of the pocket during the night of 17/18 September were broken up by the Germans.
The Luftwaffe was meanwhile engaged in two vital tasks: tactical air-ground support for the advancing Panzers and interdicting the area of operations to block all Russian approaches to the pocket. Major Frank’s 3rd Panzer Division advance guard, for example, which achieved the decisive link-up at Lokhvitsa, was protected from a Soviet tank formation by Stuka dive-bombers which broke up an advance menacing one of its tenuously held bridgeheads.(4) For four weeks the Luftflotten systematically attacked all Soviet rail communications converging on the area of operations from the east and north-east. The northern part of the pocket was covered by Luftflotte 2’s IInd Fliegerkorps, while Vth Fliegerkorps from Luftflotte 4 attacked in the south. Strafing and bombing attacks were mounted against stations, bridges, defiles and locomotives and trains. Soviet reinforcements for Marshal Budenny’s armies were blocked and lines of retreat disrupted. Fearful punishment was meted out to Russian vehicle traffic jams unable to manoeuvre within the pocket.(5)
Bad weather hampered close formation attacks, which were substituted by isolated and group sorties. These kept railway lines in the battle area permanently cut. Repeated Bf110 strafing runs cut 20 to 30 trains marooned along one section of railway track to ribbons. Large formation-size Russian units did not appear on the roads until forced to concentrate in order to break out. As soon as they committed themselves, they were – in the words of the Luftflotten commander – ‘relentlessly attacked with devastating results’.(6) Gabriel Temkin, serving in a Russian labour battalion, remembered:
‘The Luftwaffe’s favourite places for dropping bombs, especially incendiary ones, were forested areas close to main roads. Not seeing, but expecting, and rightly so, that the woods were providing resting places for army units and their horses, German planes were bombing them, particularly at nightfall.’
Pure birch forests, which, Temkin confessed, ‘I never before or after saw,’ were consumed in the flames. ‘The burning greyish-white trees were turning reddish, as if blushing and ashamed of what was going on.’ As he observed the inferno he became aware of a peculiarly pungent smell. ‘For the first time,’ Temkin said ‘I smelled burnt flesh.’ He was unable to distinguish whether it was men or horses.(7)
Stuka dive-bombers were employed to shatter resistance in the pocket. Between 12 and 21 September, Vth Fliegerkorps flew 1,422 sorties, dropping 567,650kg of bombs and 96 incendiary Type 36 devices. Results were impressive: 23 tanks, 2,171 vehicles, 6 Flak batteries, 52 railway trains and 28 locomotives were destroyed. In addition, 355 vehicles were damaged and 41 put out of action alongside 36 trains. Railway lines were cut in 18 places and a bridge destroyed. Soviet losses included 65 aircraft shot down and 42 destroyed on the ground. Luftwaffe losses, by comparison, were slight, with 17 aircraft destroyed and 14 damaged, costing 18 missing aircrew and 9 dead.(8)
German infantry divisions moved in to eliminate any remaining resistance. On 19 September Fritz Köhler’s motorised infantry unit was still north of the River Desna. At midday he heard the radio Sondermeldung that the link-up with Army Group South had been achieved and four Soviet armies surrounded. After an afternoon of ‘routine work’ they heard a further announcement that the city of Kiev had fallen. Three days later he was in action with an advance guard hastily dug in to repel break-out attempts near Lokhvitsa. As six T-34 tanks moved towards them, Köhler realised they ‘had been seen’. His lorry-borne unit had only recently dismounted and consequently ‘had not dug in very far’. German 37mm anti-tank and 105mm field guns directly engaged the tanks, but the ‘rounds ricocheted straight off’. One German gun after the other was knocked out during the unstoppable advance, which drove over and crushed wrecked guns and the bodies of the hapless crews. The last German guns abruptly withdrew, leaving the infantry unprotected. Köhler nervously glanced above the parapet of his shell-scrape as:
‘The tanks drove right up next to our position. We experienced some very uncomfortable minutes. One crunched by about five metres from my foxhole and even stopped now and again. I hunched myself up and made myself as tiny as possible, hardly breathing. Finally the armoured vehicle drove on, but it was a moment I will certainly never forget.’
The threatened section of the line was restored with the arrival of 88mm guns and Pioniers who laid mines. Köhler commented, ‘luckily there were no [enemy] infantrymen sitting on the tanks, otherwise few of us would have seen that evening’.(9)
The German 45th Division, already badly mauled at Brest-Litovsk, began to arrive at Priluki, 120km east of Kiev, on the eastern edge of the pocket. Like so many other divisions, it had endured a steady attrition rate as it marched eastward. At Brest-Litovsk it had lost more men than during the entire French campaign. Between 1 and 6 September, 40 more soldiers were killed and a further two officers and 23 men between 9 and 13 September. Pouring rain slowed their rate of advance to 4.5km per day. They were under the command of Second Army advancing on the pocket from the north. Its commander relayed the situation in an order of the day on 10 September:
‘Bitter enemy resistance, terrible roads and constant rain have not st
opped you… This advance has enabled you to contribute to the possible realisation of a battle of annihilation, which will begin within the next few days. We will surround the enemy from all sides and destroy him.’(10)
As the 45th Division entered the line the outline of the pocket had been reduced to a diameter of about 40km. It was subsequently attached to Sixth Army belonging to Army Group South, forming part of a group of eight German divisions tasked with forcing the beleaguered surviving Russian divisions to surrender. On 20 September 45th Division was set astride the Yagolin gap on the eastern side of the perimeter, which became a focal point for Russian escape attempts. As the first battalions started arriving on 22 September, the Russian attacks began.
Cavalry Feldwebel Max Kuhnert had also arrived at the periphery of the ring surrounding the Kiev pocket. The perimeter, he could see, ‘was closing fast, but this only made the Russian forces in and around Kiev all the more determined to throw everything into the battle’. Positioned behind a Panzer division, Kuhnert admitted, ‘luckily for us’ only ‘strays of the Russian armour got through’. He ruefully reflected, ‘we were then in a fine pickle’, and ‘wished myself many kilometres away’.
‘We were utterly helpless in those situations. Warfare against tanks we had hardly practised because it was not our job on horseback. The best we could do was to get out of the way, seeking cover in the wooded areas, and hope for the best.’(11)
Massed Soviet break-out attempts often resulted in thinly distributed German mobile units being surrounded themselves. These were reduced to adopting an Igel (literally island or hedgehog) all-round defence position, from which they fought for their very lives. Walter Oqueka participated in the earlier Uman encirclement, and was a crew member of a 20mm Flak 38 mounted on a half-track chassis. His unit’s role was air defence, not to fight the ‘grey-green colossus’ Soviet tanks that suddenly appeared on their front.
‘“T-34” – hissed the gun commander between tightly compressed lips. The T-34, we had all heard about these tanks, amazing things – which meant not good for us. We were hardly likely to win any prizes with the 37mm “Wehrmacht door-knocker” [anti-tank gun], and certainly not against these monsters. How were we supposed to knock out these great lumps with our pathetic [20mm] calibre?’
Oqueka’s battery commander, Oberleutnant Rossman, ordered them to concentrate automatic fire on the tracks of the advancing T-34s. Nobody was optimistic as to the likely outcome, but there remained little else they could do. Oqueka ‘clenched his teeth and decided they would sell their skins as dearly as possible’. They held their fire until the tanks had approached to within 200m. A burst of fire smashed the track of the leading T-34, which began to turn helplessly around on the same spot. Guns were then ordered to concentrate fire at the turret. Even before the first magazine emptied, the turret lid flipped open and a white flag appeared. The Russian crew clambered out and were taken prisoner. Meanwhile the cone of 20mm fire was switched to the left and another T-34 similarly disabled.
Instead of surrendering, the crew of this vehicle chose to fight with small arms as they emerged. They were cut to pieces by multiple impacts of 20mm cannon explosions which sparked and spluttered around the hull. Other tanks met the same fate. Crews were scythed down at any sign of resistance. The rest of the T-34s turned back. It was inconceivable to Oqueka and the other gun crews that their insignificant calibre cannon could have triumphed against tanks considered the heaviest and best of their type. ‘Our nervous tension was released in a triumphant yell,’ Oqueka exclaimed, ‘as if we were eight-year-old kids playing cowboys and indians!’
They moved forward curiously to examine the results of their handiwork and discovered that, apart from cut caterpillar treads and damage to drive and sprocket wheels, there was nothing to explain the abrupt abandonment of the tanks. ‘Not until the prisoners were questioned did the riddle become clear,’ explained Oqueka. The answer lay in the resonant din produced by multiple 20mm strikes on cast steel turrets, which had the effect of transforming them into ‘huge bells’.
‘Continuous explosions on the turret had produced a hellish noise which had grown louder from explosion to explosion. The sound had swollen beyond the realms of tolerance and had virtually driven the crews insane.’
Oqueka recalled the example of executions of indicted criminals in ancient China. Hapless individuals were incarcerated inside a huge bell which was hammered outside until the unfortunate victim expired. The 20mm gunners appreciated they were not totally defenceless when facing heavy tanks. Oqueka claimed his battery disabled 32 T-34 tanks before the end of the year, employing similar tactics.(12)
Other German sectors on the Kiev perimeter were not so fortunate. On the right wing of the 45th Infantry Division, Infantry Regiment 133 experienced ‘a lunatic and reckless cavalry attack which rode through our machine gun fire’. They were followed by ‘mass human-wave attacks, which we had not experienced until now’. Cossacks galloped through German outposts with drawn sabres, slashing down with such force that troops caught in the open had their helmets cleaved through to the skull. A segment of this epic Tolstoyian charge reached as far as the division headquarters at Yagolin before it was stopped. Behind the cavalry came a tightly compact triple-wave infantry assault, supported by heavy artillery fire. Four tank and three lorry-mounted infantry platoons were amongst them, suicidally driving directly against the division line. As they dismounted when blocked by a railway line atop an embankment facing the German positions, they were subjected to a withering storm of fire from co-ordinated artillery, anti-tank, machine gun and small arms fire. ‘The dead,’ according to the division report, ‘covered the length of the embankment in countless masses.’ Among them were women in uniform.
On 24 September the tidal wave of suicide assaults shifted against the 44th Division to the right and south of 45th Division. Russian troops exploiting inter-division boundary gaps penetrated into the rear positions, falling upon the logistic and artillery units that stood in the way. The 6th Battery of Artillery Regiment 98, occupying high ground at point 131, fired directly into waves of attacking Russian infantry, creating huge gashes in the advancing crowds. Undeterred, the remorseless mob swept into the German gun positions where furious hand-to-hand fighting developed. One German artillery piece was captured and hauled around to fire at its own division headquarters, wounding horses but missing personnel. At this moment in the struggle, one of those curious paradoxes of war occurred. While the chaotic and savage mêlée continued around the gun positions of 6th Battery, hardly 100m away columns of Russian infantry marched by moving eastwards, with rifles at the shoulder, as if on parade, oblivious to what was going on. They would have made all the difference and widened the breakthrough if they had been deployed to support the penetration struggling on their flank. The 45th Division padre, watching this in disbelief, remarked ‘they did not take the slightest notice of the clear route on offer over there, they were on another mission!’(13)
Fearful losses on both sides became increasingly apparent as the pocket was compressed. ‘I could not avoid seeing the truckfuls of young corpses,’ recalled Max Kuhnert following the advance. They were German.
‘It was just ghastly, and those were only a few from our immediate area. Blood was literally running down the side from the floorboards of the trucks, and the driver was, despite the heat, white as a sheet.’
Strewn along the roadsides were dismembered corpses. German soldiers were visibly affected at the sight of uniformed female Russian casualties. Kuhnert, inspecting a knocked out ‘60-tonner’ tank, saw that the flames had burned away the clothes of the driver and another crew member, a woman, hanging half out of a side door. She was probably a tank crew member but Kuhnert, uncomfortable with the concept of women fighting in uniform, surmised, ‘the Russians had apparently been so confident of their breakthrough that one had taken his wife or sweetheart into the large tank.’ Kuhnert was eating iron rations, which often contained a small tin of pork. As he prised i
t open with the tip of his bayonet and took his first mouthful, it coincided with the awful stench emanating from the tank.
‘Maybe I was simply too tired and the last few days for me as for many others, had been just too much. We had been in battle for 12 days; it was enough for anybody. Even so, for years to come whenever I tried to eat or wanted to eat tinned pork, I just couldn’t.’(14)
He was violently sick.
The reduction of the Kiev pocket was a battle of annihilation. As the Soviet divisions were cut to pieces, German casualties rose also. ‘Whose turn would it be today?’ was the unasked question vexing tired infantry as they roused themselves from a few hours’ sleep, often in woodland, before resuming the advance. ‘Pain, hunger and thirst took second place now,’ said one soldier, ‘with the ice-cold breath of death brushing our cheeks and sending shivers down our spines.’ It took five days to reduce the pocket. On the fourth day, 45th Infantry Division was attacking a heavily wooded feature in the Beresany area, pushing westwards toward Kiev. Heavy hand-to-hand fighting developed near Ssemjonowka against Soviet soldiers unusually armed with sub-machine guns and automatic weapons. There was no surrender.
War Without Garlands: Operation Barbarossa 1941-1942 Page 36