The Last Battle: The Classic History of the Battle for Berlin by Ryan Cornelius

Author:Ryan, Cornelius [Ryan, Cornelius]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9780684803296
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 1966-01-01T07:00:00+00:00

The Last Battle

Part Five THE BATTLE

Along the first Belorussian Front, in the deep darkness of the forests, there was complete silence. Beneath the pines and camouflage netting the guns were lined up for mile after mile and stepped back caliber by caliber. The mortars were in front. Behind them were tanks, their long rifles elevated. Next came self-propelled guns and, following these, batteries of light and heavy artillery. Along the rear were four hundred Katushkas—multi-barreled rocket launchers capable of firing sixteen projectiles simultaneously. And massed in the Kustrin bridgehead on the Oder’s western bank were the searchlights. Everywhere now in these last few minutes before the attack the men of Marshal Georgi Zhukov’s armies waited for zero hour--4 A.m.

Captain Sergei Golbov’s mouth was dry. With each passing moment it seemed to him that the stillness was becoming more intense. He was with troops north of Kustrin on the eastern bank of the Oder, at a point where the flooded river was almost five hundred yards wide.

Around him, he would later relate, were “swarms of assault troops,

lines of tanks, platoons of engineers with sections of pontoon bridges

and rubber boats. Everywhere the bank of the river was jammed with men

and equipment and yet there was complete silence.” Golbov could sense

“the soldiers almost trembling with excitement—like horses trembling

before the hunt.” He kept telling himself that “somehow I had to

survive this day, for

there was so much I had to write.” Over and over he kept repeating, “This is no time to die.”

In the center, troops were jammed into the bridgehead on the river’s western bank. This key lodgment—it was now thirty miles long and ten miles deep—which the Russians had wrested from General Busse in late March, was to be the springboard for Zhukov’s drive on Berlin. From here the men of the crack Eighth Guards Army would launch the assault. Once they seized the critical Seelow Heights directly ahead and slightly to the west, the armor would follow. Guards Lieutenant Vladimir Rozanov, 21-year-old leader of an artillery reconnaissance section, stood on the west bank near the Red Army girls who would operate the searchlights. Rozanov was sure that the lights would drive the Germans mad; he could hardly wait for the girls to switch them on.

In one respect, however, Rozanov was unusually concerned about the forthcoming attack. His father was with Marshal Koniev’s forces to the south. The young officer was angry with his father; the older man had not written the family in two years. Nevertheless, he had high hopes that they might meet in Berlin—and perhaps go home together after the battle. Although he was fed up with the war, Rozanov was glad to be on hand for the last great assault. But the waiting was almost unbearable.

Farther along the bridgehead, Gun Crew Chief Sergeant Nikolai Svishchev stood by his battery. A veteran of many artillery barrages, he knew what to expect. At the moment the firing began, he had warned his crew, “roar at the top of your voices to equalize the pressure, for the noise will be terrific.

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