During the night of 14th September the whole defence front was
creaking so badly that Rodimtsev's division had to be sent into
action by battalion, immediately the men had formed up after
disembarking from the ferries. The result was that it was dispersed
over a wide area and many of the men were soon cut off in the strange
wilderness of smoke and rubble in which they found themselves at
daybreak. Yet even among these the stubborn refusal of the Russian to
surrender while he still has ammunition played its part in
dislocating the German advance. The account of a member of the 3rd
Company of the 42nd Regiment, though its somewhat self-consciously
heroic style may jar on Western ears, deserves to be quoted at length
because of its relevance to the conditions of street fighting and the
spirit of the defenders. At one point they found themselves cut off.
. . . We moved back, occupying one building after another,
turning them into strongholds. A soldier would crawl out of an
occupied position only when the ground was on fire under him and his
clothes were smouldering. During the day the Germans managed to
occupy only two blocks.
At the crossroads of Krasnopiterskaya and Komsomolskaya Streets
we occupied a three-storey building on the corner. This was a good
position from which to fire on all comers and it became our last
defence. I ordered all entrances to be barricaded, and windows and
embrasures to be adapted so that we could fire through them with all
our remaining weapons.
At a narrow window of the semi-basement we placed the heavy
machine-gun with our emergency supply of ammunition—the last
belt of cartridges. I had decided to use it at the most critical
moment.
Two groups, six in each, went up to the third floor and the
garret. Their job was to break down walls, and prepare lumps of stone
and beams to throw at the Germans when they came up close. A place
for the seriously wounded was set aside in the basement. Our garrison
consisted of forty men. Difficult days began. . . . The basement was
full of wounded; only twelve men were still able to fight. There was
no water. All we had left in the way of food was a few pounds of
scorched grain; the Germans decided to beat us with starvation. Their
attacks stopped, but they kept up the fire from their heavy-calibre
machine-guns all the time. . . . The Germans attacked again. I ran
upstairs with my men and could see their thin, blackened and strained
faces, the bandages on their wounds, dirty and clotted with blood,
their guns held firmly in their hands. There was no fear in their
eyes. Lyuba Nesterenko, a nurse, was dying, with blood flowing from a
wound in her chest. She had a bandage in her hand. Before she died
she wanted to help to bind someone's wound, but she failed ...
The German attack was beaten off. In the silence that gathered
around us we could hear the bitter fighting going on for Matveyev
Kurgan and in the factory area of the city.
How could we help the men defending the city? How could we
divert from over there even a part of the enemy forces, which had
stopped attacking our building?
We decided to raise a red flag over the building, so that the
Nazis would not think we had given up. But we had no red material.
Understanding what we wanted to do, one of the men who was severely
wounded took off his bloody vest and, after wiping the blood off his
wound with it, handed it over to me.
The Germans shouted through a megaphone: "Russians!
Surrender! You'll die just the same!"
At that moment a red flag rose over our building.
"Bark, you dogs! We've still got a long time to live!"
shouted my orderly, Kozhushko.
We beat off the next attack with stones, firing occasionally
and throwing our last grenades. Suddenly from behind a blank wall,
from the rear, came the grind of a tank's caterpillar tracks. We had
no antitank grenades. All we had left was one antitank rifle with
three rounds. I handed this rifle to an antitank man, Berdyshev, and
sent him out through the back to fire at the tank pointblank. But
before he could get into position he was captured by German
tommy-gunners. What Berdyshev told the Germans I don't know, but I
can guess that he led them up the garden path, because an hour later
they started to attack at precisely that point where I had put my
machine-gun with its emergency belt of cartridges.
This time, reckoning that we had run out of ammunition, they
came impudently out of their shelter, standing up and shouting. They
came down the street in a column.
I put the last belt in the heavy machine-gun at the
semi-basement window and sent the whole of the 250 bullets into the
yelling, dirty-grey Nazi mob. I was wounded in the hand but did not
let go of the machine-gun. Heaps of bodies littered the ground. The
Germans still alive ran for cover in panic. An hour later they led
our antitank rifleman on to a heap of ruins and shot him in front of
our eyes, for having shown them the way to my machine-gun.
There were no more attacks. An avalanche of shells fell on the
building. The Germans stormed at us with every possible kind of
weapon. We couldn't raise our heads.
Again we heard the ominous sound of tanks. From behind a
neighbouring block stocky German tanks began to crawl out. This,
clearly, was the end. The guardsmen said good-bye to one another.
With a dagger my orderly scratched on a brick wall: "Rodimtsev's
guardsmen fought and died for their country here."
On 21st September both sides were prostrate with exhaustion. The
Germans had cleared the whole of the Tsaritsa river bed and
established their guns a few yards from the central landing stage.
They had also carved out a large section, about a mile and a half
square, of the built-up area behind the Stalingrad No. 1 Station,
lying between the Tsaritsa and the Krutoy gully. Chuikov had been
forced to move his headquarters out of the Tsaritsyn bunker to
Matveyev-Kurgan, and with the central landing stage area neutralised,
the garrison was now dependent on the factory ferries at the northern
end of the town.
At this stage the Germans were perilously close to gaining control
of the whole southern half of the city, up to the Krutoy gully at
least, as only one Russian unit, the 92nd Infantry Brigade, was left
fighting south of the Tsaritsa. But Hoth's forces were being
seriously impeded by a number of isolated centres of resistance which
had been left behind in the first armoured rush on 13th and 14th
September. These were mostly centred around the giant grain
elevators, and in one case we have available the diaries of men who
took part on either side in a particular engagement.
First, the German:
September 16th. Our battalion, plus tanks, is attacking the
elevator, from which smoke is pouring—the grain in it is
burning, the Russians seem to have set light to it themselves.
Barbarism. The battalion is suffering heavy losses. There are not
more than sixty men left in each company. The elevator is occupied
not by men but by devils that no flames or bullets can destroy.
September 18th. Fighting is going on inside the elevator. The
Russians inside are condemned men; the battalion commander says: "The
commissars have ordered those men to die in the elevator."
If all the buildings of Stalingrad are defended like this, then
none of our soldiers will get back to Germany. I had a letter from
Elsa today. She's expecting me home when victory's won.
September 20th. The battle for the elevator is still going on.
The Russians are firing on all sides. We stay in our cellar; you
can't go out into the street. Sergeant-Major Nuschke was killed today
running across a street. Poor fellow, he's got three children.
September 22nd. Russian resistance in the elevator has been
broken. Our troops are advancing towards the Volga. We found about
forty Russians dead in the elevator building. Half of them were
wearing naval uniform—sea devils. One prisoner was captured,
seriously wounded, who can't speak, or is shamming.
The "seriously wounded" prisoner was Andrey Khozyaynov,
of the Marine Infantry Brigade, and his version conveys a remarkable
impression of the character of the Stalingrad street fighting, where
the individual courage and tenacity of a few soldiers and junior
N.C.O.'s, often out of touch and given up for lost by their own high
command, could affect the whole development of the battle.
Our brigade was ferried over the Volga during the night of
September 16 and at dawn on the 17th it was already in action.
I remember that on the night of1 the 17th, after fierce
fighting, I was called to the battalion command post and given the
order to take a platoon of machine-gunners to the grain elevator and,
together with the men already in action there, to hold it come what
may. We arrived that night and presented ourselves to the garrison
commander. At that time the elevator was being defended by a
battalion of not more than thirty to thirty-five guardsmen, together
with the wounded, some slightly, some seriously, whom they had not
yet been able to send back to the rear.
The guardsmen were very pleased to see us arrive, and
immediately began pouring out jokes and witticisms. Eighteen
well-armed men had arrived in our platoon. We had two medium
machine-guns and one light machine-gun, two antitank rifles, three
tommy-guns and radio equipment.
At dawn a German tank carrying a white flag approached from the
south. We wondered what could have happened. Two men emerged from the
tank, a Nazi officer and an interpreter. Through the interpreter the
officer tried to persuade us to surrender to the "heroic German
army," as defence was useless and we would not be able to hold
our position any longer. "Better to surrender the elevator,"
affirmed the German officer. "If you refuse you will be dealt
with without mercy. In an hour's time we will bomb you out of
existence."
"What impudence," we thought, and gave the Nazi
lieutenant a brief answer: "Tell all your Nazis to go to hell! .
. . You can go back, but only on foot."
The German tank tried to beat a retreat, but a salvo from our
two antitank rifles stopped it.
Enemy tanks and infantry, approximately ten times our numbers,
soon launched an attack from south and west. After the first attack
was beaten back, a second began, then a third, while a reconnaissance
"pilot" plane circled over us. It corrected the fire and
reported our position. In all, ten attacks were beaten off on
September 18.
We economised on ammunition, as it was a long way, and
difficult, to bring up more.
In the elevator the grain was on fire, the water in the
machine-guns evaporated, the wounded were thirsty, but there was no
water nearby. This was how we defended ourselves twenty-four hours a
day for three days. Heat, smoke, thirst—all our lips were
cracked. During the day many of us climbed up to the highest points
in the elevator and from there fired on the Germans; at night we came
down and made a defensive ring round the building. Our radio
equipment had been put out of action on the very first day. We had no
contact with our units.
September 20 arrived. At noon twelve enemy tanks came up from
the south and west. We had already run out of ammunition for our
antitank rifles, and we had no grenades left. The tanks approached
the elevator from two sides and began to fire at our garrison at
pointblank range. But no one flinched. Our machine-guns and
tommy-guns continued to fire at the enemy's infantry, preventing them
from entering the elevator. Then a Maxim, together with a gunner, was
blown up by a shell, and the casing of the second Maxim was hit by
shrapnel, bending the barrel. We were left with one light
machine-gun.
The explosions were shattering the concrete; the grain was in
flames. We could not see one another for dust and smoke, but we
cheered one another with shouts.
German tommy-gunners appeared from behind the tanks. There were
about 150-200 of them. They attacked very cautiously, throwing
grenades in front of them. We were able to catch some of the grenades
and throw them back.
On the west side of the elevator the Germans managed to enter
the building, but we immediately turned our guns on the parts they
had occupied.
Fighting flared up inside the building. We sensed and heard the
enemy soldiers' breath and footsteps, but we could not see them in
the smoke. We fired at sounds.
At night, during a short lull, we counted our ammunition. There
did not seem to be much left: one and a half drums for the
machine-gun, twenty to twenty-five rounds for each tommy-gun, and
eight to ten rounds for each rifle.
To defend ourselves with that amount of ammunition was
impossible. We were surrounded. We decided to break out to the south,
to the area of Beketovka, as there were enemy tanks to the north and
east of the elevator.
During the night of the 20th, covered by our one tommy-gun, we
set off. To begin with all went well; the Germans were not expecting
us here. We passed through the gully and crossed the railway line,
then stumbled on an enemy mortar battery which had only just taken up
position under cover of darkness.
We overturned the three mortars and a truck-load of bombs. The
Germans scattered, leaving behind seven dead, abandoning not only
their weapons, but their bread and water. And we were fainting with
thirst. "Something to drink! Something to drink!" was all
we could think about. We drank our fill in the darkness. We then ate
the bread we had captured from the Germans and went on. But alas,
what then happened to my comrades I don't know, because the next
thing I remember was opening my eyes on September 25 or 26. I was in
a dark, damp cellar, feeling as though I were covered with some kind
of oil. I had no tunic on and no shoe on my right foot. My hands and
legs would not obey me at all; my head was singing.