Hitler Moves East, 1941-1943 (71 page)

The man who had once changed the 99th Rifle Division from the most notorious riffraff in the Red Army into a crack unit had now been chosen to save the two surrounded Armies.

Before dawn on 21st March Vlasov was flown into the Volkhov pocket and assumed command of the seventeen divisions and eight brigades in the forests between Chudovo and Lyuban. He immediately set about battering down the bolted door from inside.

At the same hour as Vlasov had summoned his unit commanders to a forester's cabin east of Finev-Lug to discuss the bursting of the German ring of encirclement around the Soviet Second Striking Army on the Volkhav, some hundred miles to the south-east the German Colonel Ilgen reported at Lieutenant-General Zorn's headquarters in Fedorovka in the Demyansk pocket to learn the plan for breaking through the Russian ring around the six German divisions in the Demyansk pocket. It was a strange parallel.

"Today's the first day of spring, Herr General," Colonel Ilgen said with a smile. General Zorn was standing outside the crooked wooden building which served as the Corps Group's headquarters. "Spring indeed," he grunted, "with two feet of snow and 30 degrees below."

"Well, that's what spring's like in Demyansk," Ilgen grinned. "You're right," Zorn nodded. "But joking apart, Ilgen, I hope the frost continues for a while. Once the thaw comes the mud will be terrible—not a wheel will be able to turn. And Seydlitz has got to get here before then."

The crimson disc of the morning sun broke through the haze of the new day. From the distance, from the sector of 290th Infantry Division at Kalitkino and of the Combat Group Eicke at the extreme western point of the pocket, came the flashes of Soviet heavy artillery. Zorn glanced at his watch. "0730," he said. "Now Seydlitz is mounting his attack."

At that moment, 25 miles away, south-east of Staraya Russa, the guns opened up along a six-mile front. They put down a heavy barrage. Stukas roared and screamed above the Russian lines. And then the regiments of General von Seydlitz-Kurzbach's Corps Group charged ahead—just as in the old days of the summer offensive. "Operation Bridge- building," the German offensive to relieve II Corps in the Demyansk pocket, had begun. The ring around Count

Brock-dorff's Corps had been closed for forty-one days. Only 25 miles separated "the county" from the German main fighting-line. The encircled six divisions had to defend a front line of nearly 190 miles: they were clearly not strong enough to hold a continuous line everywhere, and many sectors were defended only by intermittent strongpoints.

Apart from their numerical weakness, the defenders were suffering from the exceedingly tight food situation. The 96,000 men and roughly 20,000 horses had to be supplied by air. Rations had been reduced nearly by half.

Obviously the supply planes could not carry any hay or straw for the horses. Thus, in spite of the ingenuity of their attendants, the animals were getting thinner and thinner. The rotten straw of the wrecked peasant shacks was no adequate substitute for fodder. True, the animals were supplied with tree bark, pine branches and needles, reeds, and beans, but this did not assuage their hunger. They ate the sand and died of sand colic. They went down with mange, founder, and other diseases. The veterinary surgeons fought for every animal's life, but frequently the
coup de grâce
was all they could prescribe. Thus the horses performed their last service in the field kitchens. The Russian civilian population inside the pocket used to come and collect the bones and entrails. Nothing was left, except the hooves.

All this was now to end. General von Seydlitz-Kurzbach was mounting his attack from Staraya Russa, in the strength of four divisions, in order to blast a corridor through to the Demyansk pocket and reunite the cut-off divisions with the main fighting-line.

Meanwhile in the western salient of the pocket the "Corps Group Zorn" had been formed: at the appropriate moment it was to launch a break-out—"Operation Gangway"—in order to meet Seydlitz's divisions half-way. The spearhead of this operation was to be provided by Colonel Ilgen's regiment, which had been put together from various battalions of the surrounded divisions.

"What then is the general plan, Herr General, and when is zero hour?" Colonel Ilgen asked.

With his walking-stick General Zorn drew the outline of the Demyansk pocket in the snow. Left of it he drew an arc indicating the main front at Staraya Russa. "Count Brockdorff has informed me that Seydlitz's Group is mounting its attack from the Staraya Russa front with four divisions." And General Zorn added four arrows to his sketch-map in the snow.

"Here"—he indicated the two arrows in the middle—"are the Silesian 8th and the Württemberg 5th Jäger Divisions, carrying the main weight of the attack. Both these divisions were brought to the Eastern Front from France at the beginning of the year, and both have experience of active service. The Ulm Jägers, in particular, fought superbly well in the heavy battles at Staraya Russa at the beginning of February." Zorn pointed his stick to the right and to the left. "The flanks of the relief attack will be covered by 329th Infantry Division on the right and 122nd Infantry Division on the left. Seydlitz's Jäger Divisions will be aiming directly at this point, the westernmost point of our pocket, at Kalitkino and Vasilkovo. The moment he gets to the Lovat crossing at Ramushevo, along the Staraya Russa- Demyansk road—in other words, when he is still 8 miles away—we attack. Your task, Ilgen, will be to tear open the Russian positions outside our pocket and to reach the Lovat at Ramushevo."

Ilgen nodded. The snow was sparkling under the morning sun. From afar came the rumble of guns. An orderly came running from the building: "Telephone, Herr General."

At first everything went according to plan. After the preliminary artillery bombardment and the concentrated use of Stukas, Seydlitz's offensive moved smoothly, just as during the first few weeks of the Blitzkrieg. Presently, however, the difficulties began. The wintry forest and scrub east of Staraya Russa slowed down the momentum of the advance. Russian defences in depth, consisting of five systems of positions, had to be pierced. Progress was only a step at a time

—and that required courage and cunning, and blood and tears. No quarter was given. The fighting continued for four weeks. It began in a temperature of 30 degrees below, over swamps frozen as hard as stone. A few days later the

thermometer rose to freezing-point. The thaw came. Everything sank into the morass.

By the end of March the temperature was down again to 20 degrees below. In daytime there were heavy snowfalls, and at night the swamps and forests were swept by icy spring gales which instantly froze any living thing that had not sought shelter in a cave, in a hut, in a hole in the ground, or under hurriedly felled tree-trunks.

In April the weather broke for good. Snow and ice melted. The water was knee-deep on the roads. The men waded waist-deep through the icy swamps and marshes. Rafts had to be built for the heavy machine-guns from branches of trees and bushes, or otherwise they would disappear in the mud.

The wounded had to be laid on stretchers made of branches, or else they would have drowned. Anything that weighed anything—rifles, horses, and men—sank into the swamp. The men's uniforms were sodden. And in the thick scrub the enemy was lurking. The Russians too suffered greatly from the mud. Their heavy tanks were unable to intervene, and their artillery was immobilized.

On 12th April Seydlitz's spearheads caught sight of the shattered towers of Ramushevo, rising like a mirage through the haze and smoke. They had reached their objective. "Operation Bridge-building," they knew, would stand or fall with the possession of Ramushevo. For this small town controlled the road and the crossing over the Lovat, which, now the spring thaw had set in, was once more a major obstacle.

The following day Colonel Ilgen was severely wounded while reconnoitring in preparation for his attack. His regiment, for whose attack he had made the most painstaking preparations, was taken over by Lieutenant-Colonel von Borries.

The attack was mounted at dawn on 14th April.

Six days later, on 20th April, the battalions reached the first houses of Ramushevo on the eastern bank of the Lovat at nightfall. The forward units consisted of the reinforced SS Panzerjäger Battalion of the "Death's Head" Regiment under Hauptsturmführer [Rank in Waffen. SS equivalent to major.] Bockman.

On the far bank the western part of the town was blazing. Tracer bullets streaked through the night. The noise of battle came over the river. The river was in full spate and more than a thousand yards wide. It was impossible to see what was happening on the far side: the smoke, the dust, and the glare of the fires reduced visibility to nil. It was the same throughout the next day.

Seydlitz's companies were fighting furiously for a stretch of riverbank. At nightfall Borries's men caught sight of figures with German steel helmets waving from the other side. "They're here! They're here!"

The time was 1830 hours on 21st April 1942. Only the turbulent Lovat now separated the corridor which would reunite the encircled regiments with the main fighting-line. Demyansk, the powerful breakwater on the Valday Hills, had performed its duty. For several months six German divisions had barred the way to the Soviet Armies. Now they were once more part of a continuous front.

And what was the situation at Kholm, 55 miles farther south?

For the past hundred days General Scherer's combat group with about 5000 men had been holding the road junction in the middle of the vast swampy area, the strongpoint and crossing on the upper Lovat, commanding both the river and the hinterland. Kholm, the only solid point in the torn front line between Velikiye Luki and Demyansk, the bolt on the backdoor to the Sixteenth Army, was halting the Soviet drive to the west just as Demyansk was holding the Soviet wedge driving to the south.

The small provincial town with its 12,000 inhabitants had become a front-line town overnight. Supply troops and scattered units of divisions of the line had been organized for its defence. Major-General Scherer, the commander of 281st Local Defence Division, had been appointed Fortress Commandant. His instructions were to hold Kholm at all costs.

Kholm was held. Its defence has gone down in military history as the story of a highly creditable performance, a story

of courage, military improvisation, and soldierly bearing.

The Combat Group Scherer was a motley crowd. It consisted of units of 123rd Infantry Division, of the 218th Infantry Division, which had only just been transferred to the Eastern Front from Denmark, and of the 553rd Infantry Regiment, 329th Infantry Division. There were also Mountain Jägers from Carinthia and Styria organized as Commando 8, then the 3rd Battalion, 1st Luftwaffe Field Regiment, and the Reserve Police Battalion 65 of 285th Local Defence Division. There was even a naval motor-transport unit. From these groups of varying sizes Colonel Manitius, commanding 386th Infantry Regiment belonging to 218th Infantry Division, the Operations Commandant, moulded an efficient fighting force of which he himself was the soul and inspiration.

On 28th January Kholm was fully encircled. Parts of the Machine-gun Battalion 10 managed to get inside the pocket a little later, but behind them the trap sprang shut for good.

The fortress area measured barely a square mile, and later shrank to only about half a square mile. It was held by 5000 to 5500 men. In parts, the front of the pocket ran right through the middle of the town. The men knew every house, every ruin, every tree, and every bomb-crater between the northern cemetery, the hairpin bend, the GPU prison, and the police-station ravine. These were the four most notorious strongpoints of the fortress. The town was being besieged by three Soviet rifle divisions, who charged day after day.

The defenders could be supplied only from the air. In a field outside the front of the pocket, in no-man's land, sappers built a makeshift airstrip measuring 70 by 25 yards. Every single landing was an adventure. And most of the JU-52s were damaged in the attempt. Before long the field was dotted with wrecks of aircraft. The Luftwaffe therefore switched over to sending personnel and heavy equipment by freight-carrying gliders and dropping foodstuffs and ammunition in containers.

Anxious minutes invariably followed the appearance of a JU or two with gliders from over the edge of the forest in the west. If the gliders were cast off only a few seconds too soon they would land among the Russians. Even if a g'ider touched down in the correct spot an ever-ready assault detachment had to secure the precious consignment as quickly as possible. For, needless to say, the Soviets were also lying in wait for these prizes. Frequently the two sides would race each other to the point where the freighter had crash-landed.

Eighty freight gliders landed in the Kholm pocket. Twenty-seven JUs were lost in the supply runs. But being entirely supplied by air was not the most typical or most unusual thing about Kholm. Far stranger still was the fact that Kholm was a fortress without artillery.