Hitler Moves East, 1941-1943 (94 page)

Schliep instantly grasped the situation, grabbed his interpreter, and rushed back into the shack. "Zenzeli station, station-master speaking," the interpreter said in Russian, with a broad grin.
"Da, da—da, tovarishch,"
he kept saying.

At the other end of the line was Astrakhan goods station. Astrakhan—the southern terminal of the A—A Line, the Astrakhan-Archangel line, the finishing-post of the war. The spearheads of the German forces were talking to Astrakhan over the telephone.

The traffic controller in Astrakhan wanted to know whether the oil train from Baku had passed through; a train in the opposite direction was waiting at the bypass point of Bassy.

A train in the opposite direction! The interpreter tried to persuade the comrade in Astrakhan to send it off at once. But this advice aroused the suspicions of the comrade in Astrakhan. He asked a few questions to trap his interlocutor. And the inexpert replies clearly justified his suspicions.

He started shouting and cursing terribly. At that the interpreter stopped play-acting and said, "Just you wait, Papushka

—we'll soon be in Astrakhan."

With the most obscene of Russian oaths the comrade in Astrakhan flung down the receiver. He did not therefore hear the bang two minutes later when the wooden station building of Zenzeli was blown up with a couple of high-explosive charges.

Second Lieutenant Schliep, who had lost all radio contact with Division ever since his first day out, now tried to reconnoitre towards Bassy. But evidently the station official in Astrakhan had raised the alarm. Soviet artillery and heavy machine-guns had taken up positions outside the village.

Schliep's long-range reconnaissance squad turned away, and on 17th September returned safe and sound to Utta. Still on the same day, Schliep made his report to Division, as well as to Colonel-General von Weichs, the C-in-C Army

Group B, who happened to be present at Lieutenant-General Henrici's headquarters. The 16th Motorized Infantry Division was now part of Army Group B.

Everybody breathed a sigh of relief. So far there was no danger yet from the steppe or the lower Volga—
i.e.,
the Caucasian flank. That was the main information brought back by the reconnaissance squads. It was important because, ever since the end of August, Army Group A had been trying to get the offensive on its left wing going again. Kleist's Panzer Army was to make an all-out effort to burst open the gate to Baku, in order to capture the Soviet oilfields and thus reach at least one of the key objectives of the summer offensive.

The last obstacle on the way to this objective was the Terek river, in front of which the armoured spearheads of Kleist's Army had come to a halt. Kleist once more tried his luck, and, indeed, this time the fortunes of war seemed to hold out the prospect of victory to the German Wehrmacht.

After consultation with the General Officer Commanding XL Panzer Corps, Colonel-General von Kleist pulled back the 3rd Panzer Division from the stubbornly defended Baksan valley in a skilful transversal manœuvre, and moved it behind the lines of 23rd Panzer Division eastward along the Terek. After fierce street fighting the division took Mozdok on 25th August. It next got a second combat group to mount a surprise river crossing at Ishcherskaya. This vital leap across the Terek was performed by the 394th Panzer Grenadier Regiment from Hamburg—formed in 1940— 41 from the Marburg 69th Motorized Infantry Regiment.

The date was 30th August 1942 and the time nearly 0300 hours. The assault-boats, the engineers, and the Panzer grenadiers were ready. They were merely waiting for the artillery barrage which was to cover their cossing operation.

At the appointed time it came: a distant rumbling in the rear, a howling whine overhead, and the crash of bursting shells on the enemy bank. For fully ten minutes this hail of fire from eighty-eight barrels beat down upon the Russian positions. That was ample time for the engineers and grenadiers. They sprang from behind cover and got the assault- boats into the water.

The first groups of 1st Battalion were being ferried across. But now the Russians were waking up. Their field guns, those excellent 'crash-boom' pieces, time and again put their shells on the German crossing-points. These field guns were among the most effective and most dangerous Soviet weapons.

The Terek, about 275 yards wide at the crossing-point, was a treacherous mountain river with a powerful current and swirling eddies. Fountains of white spume rose high all round the boats—near misses by enemy mortars.

Among the turbulent waves the small assault-boats were bobbing about, their bows high above the water, the grenadiers crouched low in the stern. Somehow they got through the inferno.

At the very beginning of the attack, while still on the German bank, the commander of 1st Battalion, Captain Freiherr von der Heyden-Rynsch, and his adjutant, Second Lieutenant Ziegler, were killed. Second Lieutenant Wurm also heeled over, mortally wounded. First Lieutenant Dürrholz, commanding 2nd Company, was wounded during the crossing and fell overboard into the river. He was listed missing believed killed.

An assault-boat swished round the bend. "Up—at the double!" Quick as lightning the next group jumped into the boat. "Three, four, five—one more," the engineer by the tiller counted them in. With a whine the motor sprang to life. They were off.

Shell-bursts to the right and left of them. The water seethed with spume and spray. The engineer by the tiller stood upright, unperturbed, steering the boat safely across the river. And there was the far bank. A slight curve, and the men leapt ashore.

Under the protective barrage of their own artillery the riflemen fought their way forward, yard by yard. The beginnings of a bridgehead had been gained—but they were no more than the beginnings. Very soon the enemy turned out to be stronger than had been assumed. The Soviets were well dug in along the edge of the village of Mundar-Yurt, and offering stubborn resistance. From well-prepared field positions, as well as an anti-tank ditch, they were keeping the

German grenadiers, who were lying in open ground, under constant heavy fire.

In the afternoon Major Günther Pape, the young regimental commander, himself crossed the Terek with the operations staff of 394th Panzer Grenadier Regiment to see for himself what the situation was like. The main fighting-line was so arranged and the troops so organized that the bridgehead that had been gained could also be defended with what few forces were available.

Throughout five days the men of 394th Panzer Grenadier Regiment held out on the far bank of the Terek. They were fighting south of the 44th parallel. The only units farther south were the forward units of 1st Mountain Division in the Klydzh Valley, and they were nearly on the 43rd parallel—to be exact, at latitude 43 degrees 20 minutes, the most southerly point reached by the German forces on Soviet territory in the course of Operation Barbarossa.

In unfavourable country, without heavy equipment, Pape's men were facing a far superior and stubbornly fighting opponent. The regiment was tying down three Soviet divisions. This compelled the Soviets to withdraw troops from elsewhere. The bridgehead established by 3rd Panzer Division at considerable cost provided the prerequisite for the attack by the newly brought-up LII Army Corps. As a result, the lllth and 370th Infantry Divisions succeeded likewise in crossing the Terek at Mozdok and in establishing a further bridgehead. The 394th were thus able to abandon their unfavourable position.

But at Mozdok, as elsewhere, the forces lacked the strength to continue the offensive. The Russians were simply too strong, and the German troops were too few and too battle-weary. The last chance to conquer the Baku oilfields was allowed to slip by unused.

Just as in the western foothills of the Caucasus, by the Black Sea, so operations also ground to a standstill on the Terek. The front froze. Within a short distance of the target-line of the whole campaign the offensive vigour of Operation Barbarossa was spent. The Terek became the ultimate boundary of German military conquest.

In the defensive positions along the Terek, right among the battalions of 3rd Panzer Division at Ishcherskaya, a strange formation was fighting side by side with the German grenadiers —a Cossack unit. The manner in which Captain Zagorodnyy's Cossack squadron came to be fighting on the German side was typical of the war in the East.

When General Freiherr von Geyr's XL Panzer Corps had taken 18,000 prisoners at Millerovo in the summer, the greatest problem was: Who was going to take the Soviet prisoners to the rear? The shrunken units of the German divisions were unable to spare any men for such duties. It was then that Captain Kandutsch, the Corps Intelligence Officer, conceived the idea of separating the rather pro-German Kuban and Don Cossacks from the rest of the prisoners, mounting them on the countless stray horses that were wandering all over the place, and using them as an escort for the Red Army prisoners. The Cossacks, who had never been enamoured of Bolshevism, were delighted. In no time Captain Zagorodnyy had organized a squadron and moved off with the 18,000 Soviet prisoners. No one at Corps headquarters thought he would ever see Zagorodnyy or his Cossacks again.

But during the first week of September there was a knock at the Intelligence Officer's door at XL Panzer Corps headquarters in Russkiy on the Terek, and in stepped a colourfully attired Cossack officer and reported in broken German: "Captain Zagorodnyy with his squadron reporting for duty." Kan-dutsch was speechless. There he was landed with those Cossack's again.

What was to be done about those Cossacks? Kandutsch telephoned the Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-Colonel Carl Wagener. There was a lot of argument. Eventually it was decided that Zagorodnyy's men would be regrouped as Cossack Squadron 1/82, given four weeks' training, and then employed at the front.

It worked out very well. At the front, in the Ishcherskaya position, Captain Zagorodnyy enforced the strictest order and discipline. Only once, during the first night, did he find two trench sentries asleep. His pistol barked twice. Never again did a Cossack sleep on sentry duty, nor was there a single deserter.

The Captain's most reliable helper was the commander of his 1st Troop, Lieutenant Koban, a broad-shouldered Cossack who remained faithful to his squadron—as Zagorodnyy himself—to the very last. Whenever Koban was sick

his wife would take the troop's parade. This attractive, brave Cossack woman had ridden in her husband's troop from the start. Like any other Cossack, she would ride out on patrol. In the end she died with the squadron.

The squadron's death occurred in grim and tragic circumstances, thousands of miles away from their homeland, in the liberation of which they were hoping in 1942 to play their part; it occurred after many a hard and gallant action on the Eastern front.

Captain Kandutsch reports: "At the end of May 1944, when XL Panzer Corps was crossing the Rumanian frontier in a westerly direction, the Cossack squadron was ordered to be transferred to France. Deputizing for General von Knobels- dorff, the Corps Commander, Major Patow, the Corps Adjutant, said good-bye to the Cossacks. Captain Zagorodnyy at last received the Iron Cross 1st Class which he had coveted so passionately. He had thoroughly earned it. After that the Cossacks once more formed up in column—probably for the last time—for a march-past at the gallop. It was an unforgettable sight."

Six weeks later the squadron was caught in a heavy fighter-bomber raid near Saint-Lo in France, during the invasion, and was completely routed.

Only a few men escaped with their lives. They brought the news of the fate of the Cossacks to Germany. Among those killed were all the officers, as well as Lieutenant Koban's wife. But to this day the men of XL Panzer Corps have not forgotten their comrades-in-arms of many tough engagements.