Conceived in the mind of the British Captain McClintock in 1912, the long tubes housed explosives that could be slid forward as sections of fresh pipe were added from the rear. It allowed a sapper to crouch low, and push the explosive charges toward the obstacle to be attacked and cleared. Volkov’s men called these brave sappers the “Chimney Sweeps,” clearing out the soot of the enemy defense, and they were to be the fire and smoke at the other end of that chimney, as the full division was poised to push on over that bridge.
It had been thoroughly checked the previous night to see that no enemy demolition charges had been mounted. They were reasonably assured that the span was cleared out to at least the mid-point, but no one was entirely certain whether the western end was wired. They had studied the big supports with fine telescopes for years, looking for any sign of a charge being mounted that might be big enough to destroy the bridge. None was ever seen. In the event of a demolition from smaller, more hastily mounted explosives, it was not really thought that the massive girders could be brought down. That would take careful placement, and considerable engineering. Yet the road bed itself might be severely damaged or destroyed by smaller charges, and so behind the sappers came men pushing metal plating on small carts if the attackers needed to lay down new bedding.
As this was going on, the Orenburg Marines were already on their barges, grateful for the heavy mist and fog over the river. The thick airs would even dampen the growl of the barge engines, and they hoped to get very close to the western shore before their bold attack was actually discovered. Nothing like this had been attempted since well before the war, and the last time it had ended in disaster for the attackers. So the men were justifiably edgy. The barges slipped away from the concrete quays, and the Marines were soon taking what seemed like the longest ride of their lives. South of the bridge, the river widened considerably.
As the barges reached the midpoint of the river, the fog was at its thickest and they remained unseen. Now the men could hear the mutter of battle growing ever louder, for the Germans were achingly close to the bridge, with the armored cars of the Recon Battalion in De Führer Regiment no more than a thousand meters from the western bunker defenses.
The fighting was raging all along the Surchaya Balka south of Rynok, where the Saratov Sapper Regiment had come down the river road from the north to attack the enemy penetration towards the bridge. On the other side of that reaching thrust, the tanks of the 137th Brigade and now the full weight of that regiment of the 13th Guards was being thrown at the Germans. The Russians were desperately trying to pull that hand from the throat of the city, for that was their last overland life line. Even the excess factory workers had been mustered into a brigade and they were marching to the scene from the tractor worker’s settlement.
The entire sector near the western end of the bridge was erupting with artillery fire from every quarter. Powerful rounds were landing, some exploding high up in the metal framework, the black smoke leaving an angry weal in the grey sky, the shrapnel raining down on the sappers and riflemen on the bridge. The span was only wide enough to permit a reinforced company to be at the point of attack at any given time, and so the operation was a little like feeding a sturdy wood beam into a saw mill.
Volkov’s engineers and guardsmen pushed those Bangalore torpedoes forward under machinegun fire and heavy guns in the fortified bunkers. When they were mowed down, the metal torpedoes clattering to the steel bedding of the bridge, others would bravely come forward to take their place. But it was no place for the soft flesh of a man to be that hour. The western end of that bridge was a place where only steel and concrete could survive the terrible rain of fire being put in from every side. Some rounds striking the bunkers sent big shattered fragments up into the sky, stunning and deafening the men inside. Yet they shook themselves to life and fought on, the blood running from their busted eardrums.
It was then that the noses of the first assault barges slipped into a clear spot on the river, and a watchful sentry near Mechetka Landing in Spartanovka rushed to give warning. Minutes later the sound of a siren cranked up and began to wail on the cold morning air, like the wheezing breath of the defenders as two hands pressed that choking attack from both sides of the river.
3rd Battalion of the 13th Guards had been moving along the shoreline towards the bridge, rushing to stop those German armored cars, the men bringing the AT rifles to the front of the column. Then the sirens alerted them to the danger, and officers looked to see the first assault barges coming up onto the sandy river banks, about 1000 meters south of the bridge. There was a small cove there, but it was a dangerous spot, overlooked by a fortified position that those Marines had undoubtedly come to attack. The armored cars would have to wait. The Soviets could not allow an enemy landing behind them.
The sharp report of gunfire from the south caught Lieutenant Anton Kuzmich Dragan’s attention, and he turned to see that two Soviet river boat flotillas were emerging from the fork of the river as it flowed around the long fish shaped body of Denezhny Island. They were obviously firing at other assault barges another two kilometers to the south, so these landings were bigger than they seemed. His men were already rushing to set up their machineguns and mortars, and the riflemen fell prone on a low ridge. They would have a decided advantage on the attackers from that higher elevation.
The Marines landed, rushing onto a sward of scrubby undergrowth as the Soviet machineguns opened fire. Many were cut down in the water as they leapt into the shallows from the barges. Lieutenant Dragan was crouching low, directing the fire, even as his own men came under artillery barrage from the east bank. Now a second enemy battalion that had landed unopposed to the south was working its way towards his flank, and behind him, the German Panzergrenadiers had finally broken through behind those armored cars. They were already firing at the rear of the concrete fortifications guarding the bridge.
The first waves from those barges were completely stopped, but then the Germans played a trump card. Dragan heard the growl of heavy engines, thinking some of the armored cars must have broken through to his position, but when he looked, he saw instead a dangerous looking hunk of armor approaching from the rear, then another, then two more.
They were heavy assault guns the Germans called the Sturmpanzer IV. In the months ahead, those that fought against them would call them the Brummbär, or Grouch, and it was an ornery beast indeed. Only a very few of these had been made, but here were 24 of them, collected into a heavy assault battalion and played out in this critical moment to bring devastating support fire to the German attack. A squat grey beast, its squarish main gun housing had 100mm frontal armor, through which a short barreled 150mm howitzer protruded like a sawed off heavy shotgun. When they fired at close quarters, the roar of that gun was ear splitting, and the Brummbärs began blasting away at Dragan’s battalion, driving his men from that ridge. Just when it seemed that the Guardsmen would drive the Orenburg Marines into the river, the sudden appearance of this heavy armor turned the tide of the entire battle.
Das Reich, heavily reinforced by the SS assault engineers and all those Sturmpanzers, had now driven a hard steel spike right through the seam between the Volga and Samara Rifles. The former was holed up in Rynok, its lines extending back through the Big Mushroom to the Aqueduct, the latter was holding ground west of Spartanovka. That regiment of the 13th Guards was down near the river, locked in a desperate battle with enemy Marines, tanks, infantry and armored cars. Meanwhile, Volkov’s 12th Guards kept hurling one battalion after another at the central fortification that defended the bridge, and now the Brummbärs were slamming 150mm rounds into the concrete walls and blasting at the heavy iron doors to the rear. The sound of each heavy round striking them rang out like a great bell, tolling out some inevitable doom.