Stalingrad - Antony Beevor [134]
That evening, staff at XIV Panzer Corps headquarters received the order to destroy ‘all items of equipment, files and vehicles that were not absolutely necessary’. They were to pull back across the Don towards Stalingrad. By the following day, 26 November, 16th Panzer Division and part of the 44th Infantry Division were among the last troops of Sixth Army left west of the Don. That night they crossed the bridge at Luchinsky to the Stalingrad side of the river. For the 16th Panzer Division, this was ‘the very same bridge that we had crossed twelve weeks before in our first attack on the city on the Volga’.
A company of panzer grenadiers from its 64th Panzer Grenadier Regiment covered the withdrawal under the command of Lieutenant von Mutius. Their task was to defend the bridge, allowing through stragglers until half past three in the morning, when the three-hundred-yard-long bridge across the Don was to be blown. At ten past three, the eager young Mutius admitted to his company sergeant-major, Oberfeldwebel Wallrawe, that he was ‘very proud’ to be ‘the last officer of the German Wehrmacht to cross this bridge’. Wallrawe made no comment. Twenty minutes later, with the panzer grenadiers back across to the east bank of the Don, the engineers blew the bridge. The Sixth Army was now sealed off between Don and Volga.
Triumph did not mellow the attitude of Red Army men towards their enemy. ‘I feel much better because we have started to destroy Germans,’ wrote one soldier to his wife on 26 November. ‘This was the moment when we began to beat the snakes. We are capturing plenty. We hardly have time to pass them on back to prison camps. Now they are starting to pay for our blood, and for the tears of our people, for insults and for robbery. I received winter uniform so don’t worry about me. Things go well here. Soon I will be home after the victory. Sending 500 roubles.’ Those still in hospital, recuperating from wounds received earlier, bitterly regretted missing the fighting. ‘The battles are strong and good now,’ wrote one Russian soldier to his wife, ‘and I am lying here missing all this.’
There were numerous Soviet claims of German atrocities that are hard to assess. Some, no doubt, were exaggerations or inventions for propaganda purposes, others were basically true. Advancing Soviet troops encountered women, children and old men evicted from their homes by the German Army, with their possessions on small sledges. Many had been robbed of their winter clothing. Vasily Grossman reported similar stories from the southern axis of advance. He wrote that Red Army soldiers searching their prisoners were angry to find on many the pathetic loot from peasant homes – ‘old women’s kerchiefs and earrings, linen and skirts, babies’ napkins and brightly coloured girls’ blouses. One soldier had twenty-two pairs of woollen stockings in his possession.’ Gaunt civilians came forward to tell of their suffering under German occupation. Every cow, every hen, and every sack of grain that could be found had been seized. Old men were flogged until they revealed where they had concealed their grain. Homesteads had been burned, with many civilians marched off for slave labour and the rest left to starve or freeze. Revenge was often exacted by small groups of