Armageddon - Max Hastings [183]
Schörner’s first report to OKH was a catalogue of woes: “Thousands of soldiers are fleeing in the region of Litzmanstadt [Lodz], especially support, police and administrative units. Numerous vehicles—even armoured ones—are being abandoned. Measures to halt this tide have so far proved fruitless . . . I must demand urgent assistance to restore order in the rear areas. The enemy’s breakthrough can be checked only by rounding up every man in uniform who is running away.”
The famous General Walther Nehring of XXIV Panzer Corps performed one of the most notable feats of the Polish campaign. He withdrew his forces in a series of night marches punctuated by fierce local battles with Russian troops. Nehring’s men encountered terrible scenes, where Russian columns had smashed through columns of trekking refugees, leaving roads strewn for miles with shattered humanity and vehicles. When they reached the Pilica river, they found a single small bridge which they reinforced with tree trunks, to carry trucks and light armour. Finally, they drove two tanks into the water under the bridge, to reinforce it for the passage of Panzer IVs. Many vehicles were lost when they ran out of fuel, but on 22 January the vanguard of Nehring’s force reached the comparative safety of the Warthe river, after covering 150 miles in eleven days. Other units trickled in during the days that followed. Coolness, luck and exceptionally shrewd map-reading by their commander had enabled them to sidestep the main Russian forces. Nehring’s units were finally able to cross the Oder westwards at Glogau.
The Russians were now advancing up to forty miles a day, exceeding the most optimistic estimates of the Stavka. Yet in the exhilaration of such a dash, with the enemy fleeing in disarray, death came upon many men unexpectedly. Lieutenant Vasily Kudryashov was driving at full speed down a long, empty Polish road in a tank column behind his company commander, Victor Prasolov. For hours they had not heard or seen gunfire, nor any sign of the enemy. Kudryashov was leaning on his turret hatch, smoking. Prasolov was sitting on top of his T-34, singing exuberantly, though no one including himself could hear his words above the roar of the engines. The column emerged from a forest into open fields on both sides of the road. A German tank concealed behind a haystack a thousand yards away fired a single shot which struck Prasolov’s tank. A shrapnel splinter neatly severed the commander’s head. Kudryashov, behind him, stared in horror as it bounced among the shell fragments on the road.
Captain Abram Skuratovsky, a signals officer, finished supervising the laying of telephone lines fifteen miles behind the front one morning and prepared to drive back to corps headquarters. A group of pretty girl soldiers begged a lift. The unit’s deputy political officer said peremptorily: “I’ll take the girls—you take the men and lead the way.” Their little column of vehicles had just set off when the Luftwaffe made one of its rare appearances. Four German aircraft strafed the column. Skuratovsky and most of his men sprang out of their trucks and ran hard for the fields. A bomb scored a direct hit on the commissar’s staff car. The planes disappeared. Badly shaken, Skuratovsky stood smoking a cigarette and contemplating the dreadful wreckage on the road. Suddenly the divisional commander drove up, and sprang out. “Fuck you!” he shouted. “Is this your idea of being an officer? Don’t just stand there looking at wreckage—get the road cleared!” The signallers dragged out the bodies of the