Hitler Moves East, 1941-1943 (31 page)

The Russians proved themselves masters of rapidly improvised defence, especially in the wintry forests and swamps. Four months earlier the forces they employed outside Moscow would very probably have been smashed by the German divisions. But against the overextended, down-at-heel, and half-frozen German spearheads, lacking armour and heavy weapons, the Russians were strong enough. The old adage was proved true once more: it is the last battalion

that matters. The best illustration was provided by the fighting for the motor highway.

The motor highway from Smolensk was the shortest, the fastest, and the best route into Moscow. Where it threaded its way between the Nara Lakes, together with the old postal road, east of the Shelkovka-Dorokhovo crossroads, the Russians had dug in and blocked this most important artery of the German offensive.

In vain did 4th Panzer Group, together with General Fahrmbacher's VII Corps, try to break through the barrier running from the Nara Lakes via the motor highway and the postal road to the Moskva bend. The 267th Infantry Division from Hanover, fighting north of the Moskva, was stuck in deep snow and bitter cold. The experienced 197th Infantry Division, known as the "Highway Clearing Division," and the Bavarian 7th Infantry Division tried unsuccessfully, together with the gallant French Legion, to break the enemy's stubborn resistance along the Nara Lakes-motor highway-postal road—Lake Poletskoye—Moskva bend line by bypassing it on the left. But the neck of land at Kubinka remained barred.

In order to gain the modern motor highway to Moscow after all, at a point south-east of Naro-Fominsk, Field-Marshal von Kluge on 1st December mounted a bold operation with
XX
Infantry Corps of his Fourth Army, at its junction with Fourth Panzer Group.

It very nearly came off. Colonel P. A. Zhilin, the official Soviet military writer, reports in his book
The Most Important Operations of the Great Fatherland War:

At the beginning of December the enemy made his last attempt at breaking through to the capital from the West. For this purpose the tanks and the motorized and infantry divisions of his Fourth Army were concentrated in the Naro-Forminsk area. The enemy succeeded in penetrating deep into our defensive positions.

That was exactly what happened. Kluge intended to gain the motor highway behind the Nara Lakes by means of a sweeping encircling movement, and then to cover its flank. Towards 0500 hours on 1st December the XX Corps under General Materna mounted its attack against the motor highway east of Naro-Fominsk with 3rd Motorized Infantry Division, 103rd, 258th, and the reinforced 292nd Infantry Divisions—the main effort being with 258th Infantry Division, which already held the bridge over the Nara at Tashirovo. In sub-zero weather the extensive field fortifications southeast and north of the town were pierced. The 292nd Infantry Division, reinforced by units of 27th Panzer Regiment, 19th Armoured Division, wheeled to the north. Colonel Hahne gained Akulovo with his headquarters troops and 2nd Battalion, 507th Infantry Regiment; this village was only four miles from the motor highway and 35 miles from Moscow.

On the right wing of
XX
Corps the 183rd Infantry Division fought its way right up to the motor highway west of Shalamovo with two battalions of 330th Infantry Regiment on 2nd December, and dug in for all-round defence. On the morning of 3rd December 330th Infantry Regiment, without being pressed by the enemy, was ordered to withdraw to its starting positions on the Nara, south of Naro-Fominsk.

The 3rd Motorized Infantry Division and 258th Infantry Division launched an outflanking attack against Naro- Fominsk. The temperature was 34 degrees below zero Centigrade, and there was an icy wind which made the troops' bones ache. The first instances occurred of men throwing themselves down in the snow, crying, "I can't go on." The battalions shrank more and more—through frost injuries rather than enemy action. Some battalions were down to eighty men.

In the Brandenburg 3rd Motorized Infantry Division the 1st Battalion, 29th Infantry Regiment, lost all its company commanders during the first few days of fighting. The 5th Company, which started this final offensive with seventy men, had only twenty-eight men left by the first evening. The company commander was wounded, the two sergeants had been killed, and of the other nine NCOs four had been killed and three wounded. Nevertheless the 29th Infantry Regiment took Naro-Fominsk and drove another three miles to the east along the highway. But then the attack ground to a standstill at 38 degrees below zero Centigrade.

The only progress made towards the east was on the division's left, in the area of 258th Infantry Division. There a mobile combat group under the command of Anti-aircraft Battalion 611, operating on the division's left wing, punched

its way through to the north-east, via Barkhatovo and Kut-mevo, to Podazinskiy. Indeed, the "advanced detachment Bracht," with Motorized Reconnaissance Battalion 53, 1st Company, Panzerjâger Battalion 258, two platoons of 1st Company Anti-aircraft Battalion 611, and a few self-propelled guns, succeeded in getting as far as Yushkovo, to the left of the highway. From there it was only 27 miles to the Kremlin.

On the other side of the road was the village of Burzevo. This miserable place with its thirty thatched houses on the far side of a snow-covered drill square was the target of the spearheads of 258th Infantry Division.

In the late afternoon of 2nd December the 3rd Battalion, 478th Infantry Regiment, likewise penetrated into the village of Burzevo along the Naro-Fominsk to Moscow road. Units of 2nd Battalion had been holding their ground desperately for several hours against enemy attacks. The twenty-five or thirty straw-covered houses of the little village exercised a mesmeric attraction on the troops. The smoke rising straight into the icy sky from their chimneys promised hot stoves. There was nothing the men longed for more than a little warmth. They had spent the previous night in the old concrete pillboxes of a tank training ground west of the village, and had been caught there by a sudden drop of temperature to 35 degrees below zero Centigrade.

The collective farmers had been using those pillboxes as chickenhouses. The chickens had gone, but the fleas stayed behind. It was an appalling night. The only way to escape from the fleas was to cower behind the chunks of concrete. And there the frost was lurking. Before the men realized it their fingers had turned white and their toes were frozen into insensitivity inside their boots. In the morning thirty men reported at the medical post, some of them with serious frostbite. But there was no point even in taking the boots off—the skin would merely be left behind frozen to the insoles together with the rags they had wrapped their feet in. There were no medical supplies for the treatment of frostbite. Nor was there any transport to take the casualties to the main dressing station. Thus the frost-bitten men remained with their units and longed for the warm houses of Burzevo.

The battalion had launched its attack at dawn, without artillery preparation. They were supported by three self- propelled guns and one 8-8-cm. anti-aircraft gun. The Russians in their positions outside and in Burzevo were clearly also suffering from the cold. They were equally badly supplied with winter clothing as the German troops, and seemed unwilling to engage in any major fighting. The Russian wounded and those who surrendered were patently under the influence of vodka. They maintained that behind them there were no further defences this side of Moscow, except for a few antiaircraft positions. At two points only did the Russians try to set fire to the village. The terrible meaning of Stalin's scorched-earth order was first made apparent.

Major Staedtke reduced sentries and pickets to the bare minimum and allowed the rest of his men to go into the houses with their warm stoves. There they sat, crouched, or lay, crowded together like sardines with the Russian civilian population. They piled bricks into the stoves. And every hour, as a few men went out to relieve the sentries, they would take a brick with them—but not to warm their feet or hands. The heat had to be saved for something more important. The hot bricks were wrapped in rags and placed on the locks of the machine-guns to prevent the oil from freezing. If a Russian suddenly emerged behind a snow hummock, where he might have lain for hours, the sentries could not afford a jammed gun. Thus they carted their hot bricks and stones outside every hour to keep their weapons warm. Those who had been relieved and came inside felt as though they were entering paradise.

But paradise was short-lived—six hours in all. The OC 258th Infantry Division withdrew the reinforced 478th Infantry Regiment to Yushkovo; the 3rd Battalion covered the movement as the rearguard. At 2200 hours the Russians made another attack with T-34s. They knew what they wanted. Systematically they fired at the straw roofs to set the houses on fire. Then they broke into the village. Fighting continued in the light of the burning farmhouses. The 8-8-cm. gun finished off two Soviet tanks, but then received a direct hit itself. Self-propelled guns and T-34s chased each other among the blazing houses. The infantry lay in the gardens, behind baking ovens, and in storage cellars. Second Lieutenant Bossert, with an assault detachment of 9th Company, tackled the T-34s with old Russian anti-tank mines.

Half a dozen of the blotchy monsters were lying motionless in the village street, smouldering. But two of the three German self-propelled guns were also out of action. One of them stood in flames just outside the garden where Dr Sievers, of the Medical Corps, had organized his regimental dressing station in a potato store cellar. Pingel, his medical NCO, was ceaselessly injecting morphia or SEE—a combination of Sco-polamin, Eukodal, and Ephetonin—in

order to relieve the pain of the wounded. He carried his equipment in his trouser pocket because otherwise the ampoules would freeze up. Of course, it was not sterile—but what was the point of asepsis in those conditions? The main thing was to help the wounded lying on the ground in such weather.

When the day dawned the 23rd Battalion was still hanging on to the ruins of Yushkovo. Six T-34s lay in the village, gutted or shot up. The Russian infantry did not come again. The attack had been repulsed. But it was also clear that there could be no question of a further advance towards Moscow. The men were finished. Seventy seriously wounded were lying in the icy potato cellars. The order came through to abandon Yushkovo and to withdraw again behind the Nara. It was the hour when the whole of Fourth Army suspended its offensive and recalled its spearheads to the starting-lines.

Dr Sievers ordered the wounded to be loaded on the horse-drawn carts which had arrived in the line at night with ammunition and food supplies. But there was not enough room for them. The shattered vehicles were likewise loaded with wounded and hitched like sledges to the tractor of the 8-8-cm. gun. The most serious cases were placed on the self-propelled guns. The dead had to be left behind, unburied. It was almost a Napoleonic retreat.

The columns had no sooner left the village than the Russians began shelling them. Hits were scored among the columns. The horses drawing two carts of wounded fell. The carts overturned. The wounded cried out desperately for help. Suddenly the silhouettes of Soviet tanks appeared on the edge of the wood in front.

"Russian tanks!" There was panic. Escape was the only thought. For the first time Dr Sievers drew his pistol. "Pingel, Bockholt, over here!" The three men—the doctor and the two medical NCOs—positioned themselves across the road, their pistols drawn. The gesture was enough. Abruptly, reason once more prevailed. The wounded were loaded on the carts again. Twelve men harnessed themselves to each of the carts. Pingel led one of them and Bockholt the other.

At a trot they made for the patch of wood where the last self-propelled gun had gone into position and where the horse-drawn columns were waiting for them. On 4th December they were back behind the Nara river.

On 5th December the assault formations of Third Panzer Army and Fourth Panzer Group on the left wing of Army Group Centre were engaged in heavy offensive fighting along a wide arc north and north-west of Moscow. On the Moskva-Volga Canal, just over 40 miles north of the Kremlin, the 7th Panzer Division held its barrier position west of Yakhroma. About 25 miles farther south the combat group Westhoven of 1st Panzer Division, operating in conjunction with units of 23rd Infantry Division, was attacking via Belyy Rast towards the south-east and east in the direction of the canal crossing north of Lobnya. The Motorcycle Battalion, reinforced by tanks and artillery, took Kusayevo, a little over a mile west of the canal and about 20 miles north of the Kremlin, in the late afternoon. At Gorki, Katyushki, and Krasnaya Polyana —at their most easterly point still about 10 miles from Moscow—the troops of the Viennese 2nd Panzer Division were engaged in bitter fighting. The same kind of heavy defensive fighting was also going on in the neighbouring sectors, with XLVI Panzer Corps and XL Panzer Corps, as well as IX and VII Infantry Corps of Fourth Panzer Group.

At Katyushki—one of the most south-easterly advanced strongpoints of 2nd Panzer Division—units of the 2nd Rifle Brigade, the reinforced 1st Battalion, 304th Rifle Regiment, under Major Buck, were engaged in fierce fighting.

Katyushki was so near Moscow that through his trench telescope in the loft of the farmhouse by the churchyard Major Buck was able to watch the life in the streets of the city. It all seemed within arm's reach; But their reach was too short. Their strength was insufficient.

On 4th December a few more winter coats arrived and a few pairs of long, thick woollen stockings. Over the radio, simultaneously, came the announcement: "Attention, frost warning. Temperatures will drop to 35 degrees below zero Centigrade." By no means yet had all the men of 1st Battalion been issued with overcoats. There were also many days when they scarcely got a mouthful of hot food. But even that was not the worst. The worst was the shortage of weapons and ammunition. The Panzerjâgers had only two 5-cm. anti-tank guns left per troop, and the artillery regiment was down to one-third of its guns. With this kind of equipment they were expected to capture Moscow In 30 to 40 degrees below zero Centigrade.