In spite of that, there were already 8 battalions of Volkov’s best troops lined up north of Spartanovka, and the ground they held was ground the German assault battalions did not have to cover. By dawn on the 18th of November, the Germans had fought their way through yet another graveyard, the cemetery west of the town. They were intent on pushing past the western side of the town, towards the balka that marked a natural northern boundary for Volgograd.
Just beyond it was the Tractor Factory, and after holding for another day, Chuikov could see that Spartanovka was inevitably going to be flanked and cut off. The only way he could stop that persistent German drive was to yield ground, and so on the night of 19 NOV, he ordered the Samara Rifles to pull back out of the wooded country where they had been fighting and reestablish their lines along the balka. The new defensive front now ran west about five kilometers to reach the positions of the10th NKVD Brigade screening the Tractor Worker’s Settlement.
As for the plight of the 193rd Rifle Division south of the NKVD troops, Smekhotvorov reported penetrations to either side of his division, which was now in considerable disarray. It was the primary force covering the ground approaching the Barrikady Factory, and the Worker’s Settlement for that plant had already been overrun about seven kilometers west of the factory site.
One thing led to another.
The collapse of the193rd compromised the flank of Gurtiev’s 308th Siberian on its southern flank, and now the Worker’s Settlement for the Red October Factory was also threatened. The outer defenses of the entire northern industrial sector of the city was slowly yielding to the hammer blows, one after another on Thor’s Anvil. Only at Mamayev Kurgan was there any good news, where the counterattack of the13th Guards had swept the Germans from the hilltop and stopped that serious penetration to the heart of the city. All the battle lines south of that had been forced to yield ground and consolidate, but they were holding.
These first five days fighting finally concluded the preliminaries. The Germans had to ease up the pressure and rest the troops, assessing their own losses and meeting to plan the next phase of the battle. Before them lay the names of places that had become famous in Fedorov’s history of these events, the Factory District in the north; the Rail Plaza, Power Station, and Central Depots in the center, where key sites like Pavlov’s House, Univermag Department Store, the Central Bank, Red Square and the Gorki Theater would soon be tested again under the hammer of war.
In the south, two of Shumilov’s divisions still held half of Yelshanka, and two more were battling in Novo Kirovka. In the heart of that segment of the city lay the new Steel Foundry Plant, just north of the dry Yelshanka River. Behind the division lines, closer to the Volga, the citizen militias were fortifying another string of would be famous places, the Saw Mills of the Lumber Trust, Balka Causeway, the Cannery, Lumber Yards, and a tall solid concrete structure with multiple chimneys that would come to be called the Grain Elevator.
The misery and mayhem of war in Volgograd had many names, and many faces. Soon those faces would be drawn and gaunt, fringed by any rag of clothing to be found in a vain attempt to stave off the terrible cold.
Chapter 30
3rd Battalion, 513th Grenadier Regiment in the 294th Division was advancing with newfound exuberance. They had been a part of the southern pincer movement that had so bedeviled the Soviet 193rd Rifle Division, moving into the suburbs just north of the Red October Worker’s Settlement. At one point, they became mixed in with units from the 24th Division to the south, but soon they found resistance slackening, the streets quiet and relatively empty. Sensing a trap, they probed cautiously for over an hour, then realized the enemy was simply not there.
“Come on men!” said Stumpfeld. “Let’s get through to the rail line.” The going was easy, the platoons and squads moving in quick dashes along the streets, and meeting only occasional resistance from a local with a hunting rifle or an old pistol. They pushed through a bombed out block, the victim of Stuka strikes the previous day, and were elated to find they had reached the main rail line that ran north towards the factory district from the Tennis Racquet.
They were now no more than two kilometers west of the Red October Factory, where Chuikov sat with his headquarters staff, and virtually no garrison of any kind. But there was a reason for that. Stumpfeld’s Battalion had been noticed two hours earlier, and the garrison, the entire 39th Guards Regiment of the 13th Division, had fanned out and started moving west towards that rail line. They would soon be joined by two battalions of the 56th Tank Brigade, rushing north at Chuikov’s behest.
The rumble of approaching armor finally dampened the spirits of the Grenadiers, metal demons grinding their way forward, impervious to rifle and MG fire. The tanks halted in the relatively open ground around the rail tracks, then the turrets turned, and they began blasting away that the buildings where Stumpfeld’s men crouched low on defense. They remained stubbornly beyond the range of the few Panzerfausts the men had, and so the order was passed to begin withdrawing, house by house, so the battalion could get back into the urban area out of that merciless tank fire.
“Get on the radio,” said Stumpfeld to at Lieutenant. “Tell them we’ve reached the rail line, but the enemy has brought up tanks. We need support.”
They fell back through the bombed out block, where they made contact with German troops on their left, a battalion of the 24th Infantry that had become totally lost in the maze of narrow streets and was now separated from its division. It was already in a hot firefight with those Russian Guardsmen, and beyond their position the sound of artillery, machineguns and mortars rumbled to the north.
“Our boys are giving them hell up there,” said Stumpfeld. That was the Russian 193rd Rifle Division sector that they had been trying to encircle and destroy. “We ran them right out of bed in that worker’s settlement last night, and now they get no breakfast.”
His talk was covering over the stress of the battle; his fingers unsteady as he fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette. Somehow those few minutes, leaning against a broken stone wall and smoking, restored his calm. He passed the butt off to the Lieutenant, who took it gratefully.
“Come on then, I want to see what the ground looks like on our right.” Stumpfeld peered over the wall, grateful the tanks had not followed them into the broken neighborhood, though he could hear the thrum of their engines in the distance. He stood up, and as he did so, he seemed to quiver, his legs twitching. Lieutenant Meyers looked up, and saw a hole in his forehead; then Stumpfeld simply keeled over and fell with a heavy thud.
“Hauptmann!” He instinctively reached for the other man, but he knew he was dead, and that he would soon be as cold as that heartless ground. So now Meyers was in charge of III Battalion, and after passing a moment to compose himself, he mirrored the sad work of ‘Graveyard Heintz,’ as the men of his division had come to call him. He had to search the pockets of his fallen officer and find maps, letters, anything that should not be left behind. Then he would call for two men to come up and get the man’s body. There was obviously a sniper out there somewhere, and he made a mental note about that cigarette. The smoke and aroma could have given their position away, and of course, like most really good officers, Stumpfeld always led from the front.