Tigers East (Kirov Series Book 25)

by John Schettler

  “Balck is turning over his positions outside Rostov to infantry,” the General told him. “Would you feel better if his division were back in theater reserve?”

  Damn, thought Steiner. I wish I had that division at hand now. The Russians found the one weak point on our line, the Kirov Gap. But what to do here? Reports were coming in rapidly. Totenkopf was also under heavy attack. And more enemy tank units were on the main road to Oblivskaya. The division had also been hit on its left flank, prompting Eicke to send most of the panzer regiment there to counterattack. Now it seemed that was nothing more than a flanking maneuver intended as a diversion. The main attack was coming right down that road.

  Now Steiner looked for any reserve he could find. There was a pioneer battalion at Kalach, and he sent for it immediately, ordering it west on the road to Surovinko. Yet that single battalion and the Stugs he had just sent to Hauptmann Beck would not be anywhere near enough. Beck was correct. He would need a full division, and the only way to get one would be to call off his offensive towards Golubinskaya. He notified General Gille in the 5th SS and told him to suspend operations immediately and get back to the main road.

  “But were just outside the town now. They are blowing the bridges as we speak!”

  “Good enough. Turn that operation over to the 75th Infantry. I need your division back here as soon as possible, and bring the heavy guns with you from 11th Army. This is serious. Now move!”

  “Alright, we’re coming. I’ll have my division on the road south to Kalach by first light.”

  Part X

  Echos of Fire

  “No earthly act escapes its eternal echoes,

  echoes more substantial than the acts themselves.”

  — Geoffrey Wood

  Chapter 28

  Eicke’s 3rd SS Division had been holding a wide segment of the line extending just over 20 kilometers when the main weight of the Russian offensive finally struck the division like a great wave. As Zhukov had predicted, Totenkopf stood like a rock resisting the initial surge until the front curved and bent around it. On the left flank, three rifle divisions and supporting light tanks and cavalry pushed down the road past Aleksandrov. It finally reached a tributary stream some ten kilometers south of the top arc of the division front. On the right flank, the 1st Guard Tank Corps reinforced by three heavy tank brigades was attempting to bypass the division in the gap that had been screened by Hauptmann Beck and his armored cars.

  Now, on the morning of the second day, the Soviets threw two more javelins at the stalwart SS shield. The first was General Volsky’s 4th Mech Corps. (No relation to the Admiral we have all come to know so well.) This powerful formation was also reinforced by three heavy tank brigades, and it was trying to pierce the defensive arc at its apex, which was centered right on the main road to Oblivskaya. Two more rifle divisions and supporting units also pressured the line between that point and the Kirov Gap to the east, so Totenkopf was now facing the weight of over six enemy divisions, an entire army by Soviet standards, or a force that would be the equivalent of a typical German Panzer Korps.

  It could not hold, nor did Eicke think it wise to even try to hold in the face of that attack. He knew he had to be stubborn, buy as much time as he could, but he also knew that his only defense would be to trade space for that time, and slowly fight a withdrawal back towards the River Chir. The next possible defensive line was seven kilometers south at the village of Alekseyevskiy, where another stream ran east to west. It had two hills anchoring either flank, and the main road ran right through that town. He gave the order to fall back to that line at 10 AM, his Panzergrenadiers withdrawing behind a light screen of AT guns. Everything got back safely, except the pioneers, which were too heavily engaged.

  Eicke was on the radio to that unit, listening to the sound of heavy fighting. He could hear the armor, the sound of the metal treads grinding, the harsh crack of their main guns. The shouts of his men fighting clawed at him. He heard a Panzerfaust fire, an explosion, the growl of some massive unseen engine, then the sharp report of a submachinegun before the line went dead, the command post overrun and radio ground to pulp beneath the tracks of a 45-ton tank. No one in that company of the Pioneer Battalion would return. He handed the headset to the radio man, and pulled on his gloves. They had a hard morning’s work ahead of them, and there would be no breakfast.

  By noon he had one regiment on Hill 469 about 8 kilometers east of the road, a second regiment at Alekseyevskiy, and only on the left did he have a concern, for his Panzer Regiment had taken too long to extricate itself from the three rifle division assault being mounted by 3rd Shock Army. That offensive stretched much further west, all along the front of the 46th Infantry Division, but the Soviets were only masking the line there, and not pressing hard.

  The drama of the morning again saw Hauptmann Beck on the stage. He had reached the hamlet of Kirov late the previous night, but he did not get much sleep. The Soviets continued to press a night attack, which is to say they kept the tanks and vehicles of 1st Guard Tank Corps moving on that road in spite of the darkness. They reached the village, and Beck was pushed out easily enough by 24 T-34s and numerous lighter T-70s in the lead brigade of the corps. He fell back two kilometers, in the shadow of Hill 495 that overlooked the road, and there he heard the growl of armor, but it was already behind him.

  “Zuber!” he called to a Lieutenant. “Take your platoon back to see what’s going on. If they’ve already got round our flank, then we move to Osinovka.”

  But the noise was not from Russian tanks. Beck was most gratified when Zuber reported he had come up on a small column of Stug-III assault guns. “And they have three Marders!” he called on the radio.

  “Alright then,” said Beck. “We’ll try to delay here for a few hours more. Get those Marders up to block the road!”

  Beck had blown the bridge over the shallow river at the village, but the tanks were able to ford easily enough, though with some delay. One of his 234s knocked out the lead T-34 with a good side shot, but then his troops began to take heavy fire as that brigade deployed. Behind it he could see a long column of heavy tanks, 18 KV-IIs and six more T-34s on their right, with a few SU-76 assault guns. There were still two more brigades behind that, and one by one they thundered up that road, forcing him to fall back east of a balka that fed the river. His men fought a losing duel for ninety minutes, but by 2PM the Russians had pushed right on through, and were half way down the road to Osinovka, which was only another seven kilometers to Steiner’s HQ at Surovinko.

  The General could hear the fighting, and he knew that single Sturm Battalion he had sent up would not hold long. The entire headquarters staff was already packing everything up, the trucks being hastily loaded to move east. He had already decided that if the Russians got through, he was going east to join the main body of his Panzer Korps. Then a Kubelwagon came racing up the street, halting quickly. A man stepped out that Steiner immediately recognized, General Hansen of the 11th Army. There was another main road about five kilometers east of the one running through Osinovka, and Hansen had his headquarters up that road in a bunker the Army engineers had built for him near a small makeshift airstrip at Lobakin.

  “Steiner!” he called. “I’ve been all morning on the road. The Russians overran our HQ site last night and I only just escaped in time. They have tanks south of Lobakin by now. They are pushing right through the 299th. 87th and 129th Divisions are still holding their original positions, but I’ve ordered them to get ready to move. This is going to get very messy.”

  Steiner kept looking at his watch. Where was Gille with his Wiking Division? The lead elements were still 20 kilometers to the east, with the division column strung out on the road all the way back to Kalach. They would get there soon, but would the Russians reach Surovinko first?

  Like bad news, good news can also arrive when least expected. That day it came on the whistle of a train, which prompted both men to turn their heads west. They could see the white smoke of the l
ocomotive puffing up into the grey sky, and soon the squeal of the wheels cut through the mid-morning cold in greeting. It was a nice little gift from Eric Manstein. The moment he learned of the enemy counterattack, he gave orders that the Army reserve should sent up anything they had and get it on the rail line east to Steiner.

  What they had was the 501st Schwerepanzer Brigade, with 24 of the new Lions equipped with an 88mm gun. Eight more of the new heavy assault AT guns, known as the Elephant, and making an early debut in this history. Those plus six light Leopards, three Brumbars and three more Grille SPGs made for a very powerful right hand punch. These were special armored vehicles, all new designs that had been reserved for the heavy brigades. This one had been regrouping to the rear with the arrival of these new tanks, and was returning in the nick of time, the transport engineers already working at the mounting chains and getting the steel rails placed to disembark the heavy tanks.

  “Thank God for small favors,” Steiner breathed to Hansen. “Those tanks will hold until the Wiking Division gets here.”

  General Gille arrived within the hour, at the head of his long column, a motorcycle infantry company rattling in right behind him. General Koch of the 299th Division straggled in a few minutes later.

  “Well,” said Steiner with a wry grin. “When the Generals all come for lunch, you know things are either very good, or very bad. Koch?”

  “My entire division is disintegrating,” said the sallow faced General. He had been hit hard by the three divisions of the 2nd Guard Rifle Corps, and had both 24th and 25th Tank Corps enveloping his right, with the big push through the Kirov gap enveloping his left. Now his division sagged like a deflating Zepplin, and it was coming crashing down on the road between Surovinko and Kalach. The General himself was the first burning remnant. Behind him the division artillery and one battalion of the 527th Grenadier Regiment had reached Osinovka just seven klicks north.

  Koch pointed to the heavy Lions being unloaded. “If we had a few of those growlers there, we might have held,” he said, obviously shamed in the company of the Armee Commander and the other SS men. Steiner could see it, and gave him some face.

  “It can’t be helped,” he said. “Totenkopf is fighting for its life to the northeast. This was a much bigger offensive than the last one. How they managed it with all the chaos up near Voronezh eludes me, but now we must deal with it.”

  “What do you propose to do with those Schwerepanzers?” asked Hansen. He was a highly decorated officer that had come over from 16th Armee when Manstein became overall commander of Armeegruppe South. His health was poor, and the fight his men were in now did not help his morale.

  Steiner was looking at his map now, his dark brows heavy over flashing eyes. His old favorite division was finally arriving. He had been instrumental in forming the SS divisions, and Wiking in particular. Now he was finally getting some cards in hand that he could begin playing, but the situation was far from secure.

  “Very well,” he said. “It is likely that one or both of their mechanized columns will get through to the road and rail lines we depend on. We know what they want, what they are driving for, so I will meet them head on. General Gille, deploy your division to shield our position here at Surovinko. With the addition of the 501st, your motorized division is now an SS Panzer Division. Congratulations, you hold Surovinko. As for Eicke and the Totenkopf Division, he is still well forward, but it would probably be better if he moved south to screen Oblivskaya. That will be my order this afternoon. General Koch, assemble anything that manages to get safely south and form a Kampfgruppe east of Surovinko on the road. I will call on you later. General Hansen, as the other two divisions up north have their flank exposed, they should fold back to form a new defensive front here. On the left, 46th Division will have to fall back and screen Chern.”

  “What about the troops east of the Don?” asked Gille.

  “That’s where they stay,” said Steiner. “The only good news I have this morning, aside from those heavy tanks out there, is the fact that Das Reich and Leibstandarte have nearly completed their objectives. The former is well north of Golubinskaya, and the latter has already reached Vertyachi and has now turned east as we originally planned. So we control the ground east of both their bridges over the Don, and the Fusilier MC Company of the Brandenburgers has just radioed to report they have reached the main rail line. Gentlemen, we are successfully isolating Volgograd, and I will not pull those units out.”

  “Yes, but if we can’t hold this rail line open than they are isolating us,” said Hansen with a warning evident in his tone.

  “That may be,” said Steiner. “So we will now fight to prevent that. Manstein tells me the 502nd Schwerepanzer Brigade is right behind this one. It should arrive on the late afternoon train, and I will leave it at Oblivskaya. Eicke has lost a good many panzers and he will need armor support. Alright, let’s get busy.”

  The main road leading south to Surovinko ran right over the high ground at Hill 472, and that was where Gille posted his Westland Regiment. They had been the reserve element in the drive on Golubinskaya, and so they were the first to withdraw. Now they were on that hill, digging in with a company of AT guns. And like bad weather arriving right on schedule, Nesterov’s Tank Brigade of the 24th Tank Corps was the first to come down that road. Polyakov’s Brigade was right behind him, and as he saw the leading brigade deploying to engage, he decided to swing left, where a secondary road ran along a stream running south to the Chir. Kolypov’s Brigade veered right, and it ran into the 1st Westland Battalion. The battle for Hill 472 had begun, late on the 17th of October.

  That was also the first day in many weeks that supplies had not been delivered to the depot at Surovinko. They reached Oblivskaya, but the Russians had pushed recon units south of Hill 361, eight kilometers northeast of that town, and they cut the rail where it passed through the woodland near Kovalenski. A truck convoy was organized, with the service troops unloading the train that delivered 502nd Schwerepanzer, then moving supplies into trucks to move to Surovinko. This road left the town and dipped several kilometers south of the River Chir, and it had not yet been cut. Yet as soon as he learned the rail line had been cut, Steiner realized that 3rd SS must be very hard pressed. It simply did not have enough troops to stand firm in the center north of Oblivskaya and still cover both flanks. The Russians were flowing around it like water seeking the path of least resistance.

  There was now a seven kilometer wide gap between Oblivskaya and Surovinko, and that was where 1st Guard tank was heading. The Russian Corps Commanders had exercised uncharacteristic initiative in this attack. Perhaps it was the lesson of Operation Mars that taught them better, but this time they were not trying to simply plow through the German front. Instead, they utilized their mobility to seek weak points in the line to exploit, and to ebb around those flanks in any division front they encountered. Eicke needed more help, and Steiner thought he knew where he could find it.

  He got on the radio to one last lost sheep from his corps, the Reichsführer Sturm Brigade that was posted to the far left of this sector. This was a unit that would have been organized much later and served in Italy, but with the big buildup of the SS Panzer Korps for Barbarossa, it came to life much earlier.

  “Obersturmbannführer Gesele,” he said. “What’s going on in your sector? You haven’t reported.”

  “Because there is very little to report,” said Gesele. “We’ve got only light pressure on this flank. The 46th Infantry has fallen back a little, but it is not under attack.”

  “Can it hold that flank if I move your brigade?”

  “At the moment I see no threat here, and besides, we are 40 Kilometers north of the Chir. All they have in front of us is infantry and they would take days to threaten anything, even if the front was undefended.”

  “Alright, I need your brigade at Oblivskaya. Totenkopf is hard pressed there and they are getting round the right flank. Go and see what you can do to clear the rail line.”

 
As the day progressed on the 17th, the situation was fast becoming desperate. The Wiking Division was now heavily engaged by the 2nd Guards Rifle Corps, and the tanks and infantry of the 24th Tank Corps had taken the apex of Hill 472, though the Grenadiers still fought stubbornly on the lower slopes to the south. The rail line was cut on their left, and the Russians were now at the Chir, which was not a major water obstacle, being no more than 30 to 60 yards wide at any given point. If they could cut the main road at Hill 417 some 8 kilometers southwest of Surovinko, then everything to the east would be effectively cut off, just as Hansen had warned.

  The divisions fighting in the Volgograd sector had already noticed the supply trucks arriving that day were lightly loaded, taking things that were mainly still in reserve at their divisions headquarters. A typical German division in offensive mode could consume up to 300 tons of supplies per day, and that was fairly economical relative to their Western counterparts. Yet these were no ordinary German divisions. Had they been at full strength, a typical SS division might use 500 tons per day. That was a lot of truckloads.

  Low on supply, the Brandenburgers halted late in the day, needing fuel and ammunition. 1st SS continued to push and broke through to their north to catch Soviet rail crews trying to repair the line that had been cut earlier by German recon units. Grossdeutschland put in one good attack on the center of the enemy line, but otherwise, events there were slowing. It had been raining again, and there was mud, increasing cold, and weariness to contend with in addition to the enemy. So it was that a Korps that should have cut through this Soviet defense like a knife when it was at full strength, now struggled to make small gains of three or four kilometers per day.

  Then the situation changed.

  Chapter 29