Stalingrad - Antony Beevor [112]
‘The blunt, broad bows of the barges slowly crush the white beneath them, and behind them the black stretches of water are soon covered with a film of ice.’ Boats creaked under the pressure of the ice and hawsers snapped under the strain. Crossing the river became ‘like a Polar expedition’.
During the first ten days of November, German pressure was kept up with constant, small-scale attacks, sometimes with tanks. The fighting may have been in smaller groups, but it was still just as fierce. A company of the 347th Rifle Regiment, dug in only 200 yards forward of the Volga, was down to nine men when overrun on 6 November, but its commander, Lieutenant Andreev, rallied his survivors and they counter-attacked with sub-machine-guns. A group of reinforcements, arriving just in time, cut off the Germans, and saved the 62nd Army’s northern crossing point. The Russians carefully watched the German system of signalling with flares, and turned it to their own advantage by adapting their colour combinations using captured cartridges. One platoon commander was credited with having tricked German artillery into switching their fire at a critical moment on to their own troops.
With such narrow strips of no man’s land, desertion remained an escape of last resort, but now there were cases of German soldiers attempting to cross the lines. In the centre of the sector of 13th Guards Rifle Division, a German soldier slipped forward from one of their defended houses towards a Russian-held building. His action was clearly supported by some of his comrades, because they called out: ‘Rus! Don’t shoot!’ But when the man was halfway across no man’s land, a newly arrived Russian soldier fired from a second-floor window and hit him. The wounded German crawled on, also screaming out: ‘Rus! Don’t shoot!’ The Russian fired again, and this time killed him. His body lay there for the rest of the day. That night, a Russian patrol crawled forward, but found that the Germans had already sent their own party forward to retrieve his weapon and documents. The Soviet authorities decided that ‘more explanatory work’ was needed ‘to explain to soldiers that they should not shoot deserters straight away’. Troops were reminded of Order No. 55, which dealt with encouraging enemy deserters through good treatment. On the same sector, ‘it was noticed that German soldiers raised their hands above the trench in order to be wounded’. The political department was immediately instructed to step up propaganda activities with broadcasting and leaflets.
*
On 11 November, just before dawn, the final German assault began. Newly organized battle groups from the 71st, 79th, 100th, 295th, 305th and 389th Infantry Divisions, reinforced with four fresh pioneer battalions, attacked the remaining pockets of resistance. Even though most of the divisions were severely depleted by the recent fighting, it was still a massive concentration.
Once again, VIII Air Corps Stukas prepared the way, but General von Richthofen had lost almost all patience with what he regarded as ‘army conventionality’. At the beginning of the month, in a meeting with Paulus and Seydlitz, he had complained that ‘the artillery isn’t firing and the infantry isn’t making any use of our bombing attacks’. The Luftwaffe’s most spectacular achievement, on 11 November, was to bring down the factory chimneys, but once again they failed to crush the 62nd Army in its trenches and bunkers and cellars.
Batyuk’s Siberians fought desperately to retain their foothold on the Mamaev Kurgan, but the main point of the enemy thrust was half a mile further north, towards the Lazur chemical factory and the so-called ‘tennis racket’, a loop of railway track and sidings resembling that shape. The main force for this