The World War II Chronicles by William Craig

Author:William Craig
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504046176
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2017-05-05T04:00:00+00:00

In the aftermath of the battle around Ostrov, the German Sixth Army counted its booty: “more than fifty-seven thousand prisoners, more than one thousand tanks destroyed.”

As a result, General Paulus saluted his men with a special message: “The Russian Sixty-second Army and great parts of the First Tank Army are destroyed.… Thanks to a brave advance … the possibility of this victory was set … We proudly think of the fallen … on to the next task set by the Führer.…”

Despite the fantastic success of Paulus’s forces in crushing the last Russian resistance west of the Don, the most immediate danger to Stalingrad was the Fourth Panzer Army, which was swinging northeast to join the assault on the city. Any advance they made would be along a major highway and rail line, and they had no rivers to cross.

It was logical then, that the commander of the Fourth Panzer Army, horse-faced “Papa” Hoth, should relish his new assignment. His scouts had already worked their way to within twenty miles of Stalingrad’s outskirts and with luck, Hoth hoped to beat Paulus into the city. Even the latest intelligence reports of stiffening Soviet resistance at the low range of hills crossing the railroad and highway near Abganerovo just south of the city did not worry him. He was confident he could not be stopped.

Most of the Russian stragglers retreating toward Stalingrad would have agreed with this estimate of the situation. Disillusioned, desperate, they had been reduced to fighting each other for scraps of food and water—especially water, which was scarce on the barren steppe. At precious watering holes they found another enemy had been there before them: the Kalmucks, natives to the region and intensely anti-Communist, had thrown dead animals into the wells. The poisoned water quickly killed unwary drinkers.

One retreating Russian soldier, curly-haired Lt. Hersch Gurewicz, forgot his thirst as he dove into a ditch for the third time that day. The Stukas were back, like prehistoric birds, circling impudently, searching for carrion below. Gurewicz was exhausted. Chased by the Germans for more than a year, he had begun to wonder where it would all end. Just twenty-one years old, a native of Mogilev near the Polish border, he had first joined the Red Army in 1940 during the war with the Finns. Then, his mother had been a Communist party member, working for the military. His father taught violin at the Rimsky-Korsakov School of Music in Mogilev. The German invasion had brought death to both his mother and sister, who were tracked down and slain as partisans; his father and brother disappeared into the army and Hersch had been unable to locate them since.

Now in the ditch fifty miles southwest of Stalingrad, Gurewicz was a hardened veteran. He could tell by the sound of a shell whether it was close or meant for someone behind him; he knew the exact moment to run for cover when bombers began to hurtle down out of the sun. He knew other things, too, like the price of desertion.

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