The train pulled into the station at Chern, which was short for the more tortuous name of Chernyshkovskiy. It was a town about 20 kilometers west on the rail line that ran from Steiner’s position and Morozovsk. A man got off the forward train car and pulled up his collar against the cold October wind. Two others followed him, their tall black boots stained with the brown earth and mud.
As he stepped away from the steamy engine with his officers in tow, Hermann Balck could already hear the sound of the battle he had come to join. The low mutter of artillery fire rolled on the evening fog. Three days ago, he had received a message with orders from General Manstein. 11th Panzer was to find any rolling stock available and board trains to come to the River Chir. As he looked at the shallow, muddy flow passing through Chern, something stirred in him, as if a faint memory was trying to surface from beneath that brown water.
Just another river, he thought, shaking the feeling off. Just another battle, only this time my division will be on defense again. That is the second time in the last few months, and something tells me the situation has taken a decided turn for the worse here.
Balck had sent two Panzergrenadier Battalions of his 110th Regiment, and two companies of Panthers, on ahead to Oblivskaya. The rest of the division was still coming up on the rail from the south. They would have to pass through Morozovsk before turning east. Balck had stopped there as well to confer with Manstein before he moved his division up.
“This is more trouble than the last time,” said Manstein. “I could smell it days ago, which is why I sent you those orders. Now you are here, and we can restore the situation. I sent two Schwerepanzer Brigades east earlier, but even they won’t be enough. The rail line is already cut east of Oblivskaya, so that is as far as you can go. It may be wise to disembark at Chern instead. Things are hot further down the line, and we need this rolling stock intact.”
“Very Well. I’ll risk sending a small kampfgruppe forward to Oblivskaya, but will do as you suggest with the rest of the division. What are we up against this time?”
“Their 4th Mech Corps is flanking the town to the left, and 1st Guard Tank Corps is doing the same on the right. Eicke’s 3rd SS is heavily engaged between those two envelopments.”
“They’re trying to pocket the division?” said Balck. “That would be like taking a tiger by the tail.”
“Perhaps so, but Eicke had a lot in front of him at the moment—the whole of the 4th Siberian Shock Army. Their 3rd Shock Army is leaning on the 46th Infantry Division just east of Eicke’s position, about 20 kilometers north of Chern. It’s water building up behind a dam, so you’ll have to keep an eye over your shoulder if you move east.”
“We need more infantry,” said Balck. “If that division should fail, then we’ll have a real mess here.”
Manstein nodded. “I’ve got two divisions heading our way as we speak. The 336th should arrive in a day or so, and the 305th a couple days later. It was all I could do to get those two. Halder has all the rest, the entire 17th Army tied up supporting the Voronezh operation. So we will have to make do with what we have.”
“Anything else I can expect?”
“Not at the moment. Wietersheim’s 14th Panzer Korps is fighting with their 2nd Shock Army. He’s given some ground, and if he can adjust his lines to cover the necessary frontage, I might be able to move the 9th Panzer this way.”
“What about 23rd Panzer—the rest of my little fire brigade from the Mars offensive. We danced fairly well together. Lengsfeld is back in command now after Mack was killed in August. He’s a sturdy right hand man.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” said Manstein, “but I cannot promise you anything more at the moment. It will again depend on how much infantry I can get south to the Rostov area to relieve Lengsfeld’s troops.”
“I understand,” said Balck. “Well Herr General, you can at least rely on me. The Ghost Division won’t let you down. So if you’ll excuse me,” he smiled, “I’d better go rescue Steiner and the rest of the SS Panzer Korps.”
* * *
Hauptmann Beck had fallen back to Surovinko, finally giving his weary battalion a little rest. The next morning, the 18th of October, 1st Guard Tank started its enveloping breakthrough west of Surovinko, and his men were needed. He looked around, needing ammunition and any stray equipment he could get his hands on. There was a single 88 mounted on a halftrack, and he commandeered it from the Wikings, then led his battalion west. He led third company towards the sound of fighting, leaving the other two to move along the road and take up positions on his left. They would never get there. They ran straight into the 18th Heavy Tank Brigade, its big assault guns grinding up the roadbed as it moved east towards Surovinko. The flank defense was itself flanked before it could even get into position, and Beck’s armored cars were not going to make any impression on those heavy tanks.
Beck got hold of a company commander with the 501st Brigade on the radio. He had been backing up the 2nd Company of the Wiking Recon Battalion defending on this flank, and they were now being fronted by a Guards Rifle Brigade. The infantry could be held for a time, but not those heavy tanks. It would take the long barrels of those VK-88 Lions to do the job, and they immediately pulled out and shifted four kilometers south.
By the time they arrived on the scene, the entire 1st Guards tank Corps had gone around that flank and was now pushing east up the road to Surovinko, just two kilometers outside the town. Beck was in a fight for his life again, and behind him he could hear all Steiner’s artillery firing off a steady barrage to the north, where the pressure continued relentlessly. Seven Russian divisions were now in a death grip with the Wiking Division, and the 501st Schwerepanzer Brigade. The fighting was now no more than five klicks from the town where Steiner sat, and he was giving orders that any supplies and loose equipment that could be moved should be loaded onto the Korps transport pool trucks and sent east to Kalach. He wanted as much support as possible for the units that were now cut off, as he had not yet been informed of Balck’s arrival, and did not know if the Soviets could be stopped. Then he heard the train pull in.
The arrival of those two battalions of Panzergrenadiers Balck had sent forward on the trains at some risk was very timely. The engineers were just finishing offloading the last of the two tank companies, when a brigade of Soviet cavalry came charging haphazardly into the eastern edge of the town. Actually, it was fleeing more than charging. It had been trying to cross the Chir near Kovalenski, six kilometers east, and was suddenly surprised by the Lions of 1st Schwerepanzer Company of the 502nd Brigade. The cavalry scattered, machineguns rattling after them, and most fled west along the rail line and came rushing right into Balck’s forward Kampfgruppe.
The carnage that followed was gruesome. Balck’s seasoned Panzergrenadiers deployed quickly and went right into the attack. MG 32s and 42s gunned the horsemen down, their mounts rearing under fire, falling and dying. Then the tank companies came up, armored horses that the cavalry could not hope to withstand. Those that survived fled northeast towards a tributary that flowed down to the Chir through the hamlet of Kyzl-Aul. If Balck had not risked that deployment, those horsemen would have come right in the east end of town and found a major supply depot at the train station.
Audacity has its merits in time of crisis.
The rest of Balck’s division was sorely needed. The Soviet attack continued through the night of the 18th, which was very uncharacteristic, and at dawn another big push was mounted by all flanking units. Steiner would have no breakfast that morning in Surovinko. The Guardsmen of the 1st Motor Rifle Brigade had moved south of his position and began infiltrating the town. By 11 AM on the 19th Steiner’s HQ defense company was engaged with the Russian troops just three blocks away. He had no choice but to move east, hoping the road was still open there.
There was now no point in holding a town that was so badly compromised. Its remaining supplies had been trucked east the previous day, and now it remained to be seen whether the Wiking Division coul
d withdraw from the ever compressing pocket of defense that it had thrown up in the last two days.
When Balck learned how bad the situation was, he spurred on. “Come on men! A night march is good for soul, and it saves blood! We move out immediately.”
Manstein promised to keep him advised on any reports he received. Now he had some bad news for him. The 46th Infantry Division was having trouble west of Oblivskaya. When Steiner pulled out the Reichsführer Brigade, elements of the 3rd Shock Army had slipped through the gap in the line and compromised the 46th Division flank. Now Balck realized that, before he could do anything about Steiner’s situation at Surovinko, he had to clean up the mess west of Oblivskaya.
Thankfully, the news that General Walther Lucht was bringing in the 336th Division that morning was very well received. That division could help stabilize the left flank, but it would be some time getting into position. Given operational authority, he got on the radio to General Haccius with the 46th and asked him to fall back and try to form a hedgehog position with the remainder of his division. Then he went looking for his incomparable Hauser in the recon battalion.
“Hauptmann,” he said quickly. “I need you on the left. Get to this town, Popov, and hold it. 46th Infantry is falling back to the right of that town, and 336th Infantry should be coming up on the left soon. I’ll get them posted to cover Chern. Hold that position until I call code blue. Then come east on the road to Oblivskaya. If I give you code red, then you are to move to a position southwest of the town. That will be the assembly point for our division if we have to dance. In the meantime, I have to go kill a tank brigade or two. Good luck!”
Balck’s first order of business that day was to shore up and secure the left flank of the army. He reasoned that he could not hope to counterattack east unless the threat to the general line of communications running back through Chern to Morozovsk and Tatsinskaya was neutralized. At that moment, the chief threat to the left of Oblivskaya was Volsky’s 4th Mech Corps. It had taken some time to get south, getting hung up in a firefight with Beck and the SS recon units at Popov, the very place Hansen was now closing on with the division recon battalion.
Now Balck recalled the troops he had slipped into Oblivskaya by rail just in time to stop that haphazard cavalry incursion. He wanted both fists, a full division attack, in any engagement he undertook. Volsky’s 4th Mech was next on his dance card. Schwerepanzer 502 was already dueling with this formidable force, and they had identified a new Russian tank, very strong, with powerful long range fire and very good armor. This was the new Kirov tank that Beck had run across earlier, and it was going to be a dangerous opponent in this and any other engagement where the Soviets could deploy credible numbers of this new AFV.
Volsky’s recon battalion had been in the lead, pushing through Popov before it ran into a firestorm. Hansen’s battalion had just reached the town to stop that advance, and not long after, Balck’s troops came in from three sides. With him, he brought a company of heavy Elephants that was on the main road to Oblivskaya, grinding its way toward the enemy with that impenetrable 200mm frontal armor, nearly eight inches thick. Also called the ‘Ferdinand’ by the Germans, it was a true Panzerjager, with a new updated 88mm gun with higher muzzle velocity and better penetrating power than the original 88. It could tear right through the best armor the enemy had.
The Elephants went head to head with the new Kirov heavy tanks, and in a close range duel, the extra 90mm of frontal armor they possessed over their adversary mattered a great deal. Their one liability was the fact that the Ferdinand was a fixed mounted gun, with no turret, so it had to be facing the target directly to get good hits. In the narrow streets of Popov, that was not a factor. Seven of 24 Kirovs were knocked out, the brigade forced back to reorganize. Balck’s Lions then engaged the 55th Tank Brigade, mostly T-34s, and killed eight of 36 tanks, and a heavy KV-II. Volsky’s Corps was pushed back, but the Russians operated with newfound skill. The 86th Mech Brigade fell back, regrouping, and then came forward again with the tanks for another try. They joined the 11th Heavy Tank Brigade for a counterattack on 5th and 6th companies of Balck’s Panzer Regiment.
At the same time, the throaty shouts of Uraaaaah were heard to the west, and 61st Pioneer Battalion saw a thick wave of Russian infantry charging the left flank of the action. A battalion of 111th Panzergrenadiers was already in a hot firefight with the Russian 356th Rifle Division, and now three more regiments were rushing the flank. These were troops of the 3rd Siberian Shock Army, a formation that had been advancing to cover the right flank of the Soviet attack, occupying ground given up by the 46th Infantry as it withdrew. When The Germans halted their withdrawal, effecting a linkup with 336th Division on their left, the 3rd Shock Army massed four rifle divisions to surge against the line. Another column, the 2nd Shock Group, was strung out for miles on the road south to Morozovsk, where Eric Manstein stooped over the maps with increasing concern.
His Army HQ and supply center at Morozovsk was now under direct threat, and now he made a risky decision. This is what they want, he reasoned. This is the whole intent of this attack, Morozovsk, Oblivskaya, Surovinko. They could turn south and west towards the Donets, but I do not think they have the force to go that far. So I am ordering Wietersheim to disengage the 9th Panzer Division and send it here. In the meantime, how to defend this city?
I have three battalions of reserve infantry here, an engineer battalion and some machinegun troops with the Luftwaffe service ground troops and flak. That should be enough to form a screen that could delay the enemy advance. It will have to do.
He looked at the map, seeing the similarity to the advances the enemy made in their Operation Mars. They have learned, he thought. They now operate their mechanized units in pairs, and instead of frontal attack, they use their mobility to enfilade the flanks. They have enough infantry to swarm and fix the line of defense, even against good divisions like Totenkopf and the Wikings. And the appearance of these fresh Guards Rifle Divisions is unsettling as well. Those are tough troops, undoubtedly culled from the cadres of veterans that survived our onslaught last year. They fight night actions now, and do so with increasing skill. Their artillery is being augmented by these fast moving rocket batteries running with their mech units.
Yes, they have learned, and they have been very stubborn here, holding Steiner off for six weeks in the approach to Volgograd. At this rate, I may not be able to keep my promise to Hitler to deliver that city by Christmas. Where is my infantry? The last thing I want to do is order Steiner to get into a street fight with his SS divisions. If given a moment to breathe I will begin swapping out what remains of Hansen’s infantry, and replacing Steiner’s troops east of the Don. But I will need that breath of air first, and at the moment, Sergie Kirov’s boys have taken us by the throat.
Chapter 30
The Wikings had successfully pulled out of the arc defense they had north of Surovinko, and now they were heavily concentrated in and around the town itself. They destroyed the first Russian units to penetrate to the town center, the Motor Rifle Regiment of 1st Guard Tank, but now they were again facing strong armored attacks on both sides of the town. 24th Tank Corps, with the 81st Motorized Division, was trying to break through at Zirkovskiy, about 5 kilometers northeast of Surovinko. The main road east looped just south of that hamlet, and they were aiming to cut that vital artery by any means.
At the same time, the three tank Brigades of 1st Guard Tank, along with its heavy assault gun regiment, were now pushing into Surovinko from the west. It was like a steel vise, and the Wikings, with no tanks to speak of, would not have to rely solely on their infantry AT weapons and a few AT guns. The 501st Schwerepanzer Brigade Steiner had promised the division never reached Gille’s position, and it was still fighting along with the Reichsführer Brigade, just east of Oblivskaya.
A decision had to be made as to whether the division should continue to fight for the town, and Gille wasted little time. “Here we make our stand,” he said firmly. “Th
e Chir runs southeast from this town, and the banks are very marshy. It will not be easy for an armored force to envelop us on that flank, and the infantry is better off fighting in the town here than in the open ground east. So dig in, and fight!”
The boom of the division artillery pool thundered out a second as he said that, firing at the heavy regiments of the 3rd Guards Division. Had it just been that, the infantry of the Wiking Division against Russian ground troops, Gille had every confidence that his men could hold. But it wasn’t just that. The enemy had over a hundred tanks to his west, and now he learned that Zirkovskiy had been taken and the main road east to Kalach was already cut. He would have stayed and fought, but Steiner radioed to see what was going on, and immediately ordered him out.
“I need you to swing up and cover the left flank of the infantry, otherwise I will have visitors here in Kalach tonight for dinner, and it won’t be you! Now move!”
General Gille reluctantly countermanded his stand fast order, and now he called on his men to make a difficult withdrawal under heavy enemy pressure. That was not the only thing on Steiner’s mind. He still had the 75th, 87th and 129th Infantry Divisions, the 54th Korps in Hansen’s 11th Army. They were holding in a wide arc from the hard won Golubinskaya on the Don, and then west and south as far as Surovinko. That town was lost, and he could see no reason to hold all the ground between that place and Kalach. He rubbed his brow, thinking.
Infantry, he thought. That’s what I need here for street fighting. And my SS Divisions should be west of the Don smashing this Soviet offensive. They only have a few tank corps, but they have concentrated them between Surovinko and Oblivskaya, and that was enough. We fought hard for Golubinskaya, and yet, now that we control the east bank of the Don opposite those bridges, our purpose is still achieved in isolating Volgograd. If I pull Hansen’s men east of the Don, I have much more force here, and can probably then assign just one of those divisions to watch the river crossing points. The rest can mass for my attack on Volgograd.
Tigers East (Kirov Series Book 25) Page 25