Stalingrad by Theodor Plievier

Author:Theodor Plievier
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 2011-12-20T05:00:00+00:00

All this took place while the Russian artillery was hurling thousands of tons of searing metal into the pocket and while the whole front broke into flames. Men were crushed, roasted, suffocated, torn to pieces, buried or tossed forty yards into the air. Buildings collapsed; the earth seethed. Radio messages were dictated and sent out. New battalions were recruited from dugouts filled with dying men. A flute was played. A man was shot. Combat groups were wiped out and others—the men squeezed into crevices, their faces pressed against the ground—others survived and waited for the end of the barrage.

The gunfire lasted for thirty minutes. Then came three and a half hours of concentrated fire from mortars and rockets. There then remained three hours to darkness—three hours of infantry and tank attacks. The men of Dollwang's and Latte's groups had had experience with previous terrible barrages in the Don Bend, at the Kasachi Hills, and near the Rossoshka valley. They knew what dugouts and fortified lines meant at such times. And so, when the signal flares mounted into the sky and the artillery began its work of annihilation, they left the positions they had occupied during the night and sought refuge in crevices and holes to the rear. From there they watched the roofs of the dugouts, the fortifications, and the barbed-wire entanglements go flying into the air. They themselves suffered few losses from artillery fire. But the mortar and rocket fire proved all the more costly; they lost almost half their personnel. Even so, almost all the men who fell were new to the fighting, soldiers picked up out of repair crews and supply units during the march from Pitomnik to Voroponovo.

Three and a half hours of mortar fire!

Theoretically, Dollwang knew what that meant. He knew that the man who could not endure the incessant screeching, whistling, and hissing and the cloudburst of pattering splinters and who ran out into the sea of smoke that was being fed constantly by more falling shells—in nine cases out of ten he would be killed or wounded and lost to his unit. Battalions that lost their nerve under mortar fire had as many as ninety per cent casualties; others who stuck it out during the same bombardment in crevices and shell holes had escaped with losses of only three per cent. Dollwang was familiar with the theory and he knew that to overcome the urge to jump up during a long shelling it was necessary to cling to the ground, to grip it with all your might. Now, for the first time, he had an opportunity to observe the demoralizing effect of such attacks on his own nerves, from the way his little finger twitched to the complete breakdown of his whole nervous system and a panicky longing to jump to his feet. From his hole he could not see the hollow in the snow some five hundred yards away, but he could see whole schools of shells rising up out of the

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