Inferno - Max Hastings [251]
Commanders drove units so far and fast that horses pulling baggage carts became too weary to eat their hay. Many animals lay dead by the roadside amid rows of hastily dug German graves, skulls, half-decayed corpses, abandoned sledges and burnt-out vehicles. “We march in the footsteps of war,” mused Kovalenko. “Chaos is majestic in its way. I contemplate this vista of destruction and death with pain and helplessness in my soul.”
As snow once more closed down the battlefield in the last months of 1943, the Russians held a large bridgehead beyond the Dnieper around Kiev, and another at Cherkassy. The Germans lost Smolensk on 25 September, and retained only an isolated foothold in the Crimea. On 6 November, the Russians took Kiev. Vasily Grossman described an encounter with infantrymen near the shattered city that day:
The deputy battalion commander, Lieutenant Surkov, has come to the command post. He hasn’t slept for six nights. His face is heavily bearded. One can see no tiredness in him, because he is still seized by the terrible excitement of fighting. In half an hour, perhaps, he will sink into sleep with a field bag under his head, and then it would be useless to try to wake him. But now his eyes are shining, and his voice sounds harsh and excited. This man, a history teacher before the war, seems to be carrying with him the glow of the Dnieper battle. He tells me about German counterattacks, about our attacks, about the runner whom he had to dig out of a trench three times, and who comes from the same area as he, and was once his pupil—Surkov had taught him history. Now, they are both participating in events about which history teachers will be telling their pupils a hundred years from now.
Over half the Soviet territory lost to Hitler since 1941 had been regained. By the end of 1943, the Soviet Union had suffered 77 percent of its total casualties in the entire conflict—something approaching 20 million dead. “The enemy’s front is broken!” wrote Kovalenko triumphantly on 20 September. “We are advancing. We are moving slowly, groping our way. Everywhere are traps, minefields. We’ve advanced 14 km during the day. There was a ‘little misunderstanding’ at 14.10. A group of our aircraft got confused and strafed our column. It was dismaying to see them firing at their own people. Men were wounded and killed. It is so bad.” He added on 3 October:
Our organisation both on the march and in action leaves much to be desired. In particular, infantry-artillery coordination is poor: the gunners fire at random. [We have suffered] colossal casualties. There are only sixty men left in each of our regiment’s battalions. What are we supposed to attack with? The Germans are resisting ferociously. Vlasov soldiers [Cossack renegades] are fighting alongside them. Dogmeat. Two have been captured, teenagers, born 1925. [We should] not mess about, but shoot the sons-of-bitches.
Three days later, he wrote: “We are advancing again, but with scant success—just a little progress here and there. We have few infantry, and are desperately short of shells. The Germans burn every village. Our reconnaissance units operating in their rear areas have led a lot of civilians out of the forest where they had been hiding. We seem stuck in the swamps. When shall we get out of here? Rain, mud.”
Capt. Nikolai Belov’s unit was in the same plight: “The weather and mud are dreadful. We face a winter amid forests and swamps. Today, we set off at 1000 and advanced about six kilometres in twenty-four hours. There is no ammunition. Rations are short because supplies have fallen behind. Many men are without boots.”
Few Russian soldiers saw much cause for rejoicing, because they knew how long the road to Berlin still was. An elderly officer named Ignatov wrote to his wife, complaining of the poor organisation of the army: “The soldiers with whom I fought in 1917–18 were much better disciplined. We receive completely untrained replacements. As a veteran of the old army, I know what a Russian soldier should be like; whenever I try