Barbarossa Through Soviet Eyes: The First Twenty-Four Hours by Drabkin Artem

Author:Drabkin, Artem [Drabkin, Artem]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781844684670
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2012-07-19T00:00:00+00:00

As the Red Army entered the war largely undeployed, most units located in the European part of the USSR didn’t engage the enemy on the first day: some learned that war had broken out via radio broadcasts; others when they found themselves at the sharp end of German air strikes; but most divisions passed the first day of Barbarossa relatively quietly. Nevertheless, certain divisions had been previously assigned to hold defences at the border. One such outfit was the 24th Rifle Division, whose Commander, Kuz’ma Galitsky, remembered:

It began to grow lighter. As the reader already knows, by that time, Army HQ had completed transmission of the battle alarm order. But our division, as well as some others, which had also lost communications with the Army HQ, knew nothing about it. Suddenly, some time after 04.00 hours, the telephone rang, and I heard the anxious voice of Major Portnov: ‘Comrade General, Fascist aircraft are bombing Lida and the aerodromes of the 11th Aviation Division. There are fires in the town and at the aerodrome.’ My mind was seared by the alarming thought: the war! Lida was 120 – 150km from the border, measured from the so-called Suwałki Salient. If it was bombed, it could not be a mere provocation. Yet there was no communication with Army HQ. What should be done? A decision came straightaway: it would be better to be accountable for the unsubstantiated mobilization of the first echelon of troops by alarm than to have done nothing. And so I issued Portnov an order:

‘Send a reconnaissance group to Lida in motorcars and a half of the medical unit to assist the wounded. Immediately begin to mobilize the first echelon of the regiment in the camp. Bring materiel and ammo from Volozhin by vehicles, maintain communications with me.’9

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