All along the line the Soviet artillery roared. Tanks surged forward followed by the motorized infantry regiments. The cavalry divisions thundered after them, sabers drawn and gleaming in the summer sun. Ponderous rifle divisions followed, wave after wave of Soviet infantry swarming around the German regiments of the line, which were now in a fight for their lives.
A frantic radio call came in from General Kempf to Steiner at his headquarters near Oblivskaya. He was with the last of his Korps units, minus the two Panzer Divisions, and he was moving southwest, ordered to follow the SS with its supporting infantry divisions.
“Steiner! Do you realize what’s happening? My column is 60 kilometers south of the Don front, and a Soviet motorcycle regiment just came up on our rear. They are behind us!”
Steiner was shocked. The infantry shield screening all those Soviet bridgeheads had been pierced south of Veshenskaya, and the Russians had sent the 17th Tank Corps and 5th Cavalry Corps right on through.
“Where are your panzers?”
“11th and 23rd are still south of Boguchar, but Balck radioed and told me a goddamned tank brigade just came up on his position 35 kilometers south of the city. There’s a big attack there as well.”
“Damn!” Steiner swore, his forehead red with anger. Then he realized the danger that thrust represented.
“They want Kantirmirovka. If they take that, it cuts the rail line into Millerovo, and there goes the last of my supplies. You must stop them there. Turn your entire column around and get back up there. I don’t need your infantry here now. The 42nd Korps arrived two days ago. Just hold that rail hub. Understand?”
“Alright, but you had better look to your north flank. Hansen called to report the 54th Korps is under attack there—all along the line. This is a big offensive.”
“It can’t be that big,” said Steiner dismissively. “It’s probably nothing more than a spoiling attack to take the pressure off our push for the Volga. You’ll see.”
“Well what about those troops behind my column?”
“Go around them! Just protect that railhead.”
Kempf heard the line go dead, and threw down the radio handset in disgust. He reached for his gloves, pulling them on slowly. “Go around them, he tells me. I’ve got bridging equipment, Nebelwerfers and artillery regiments, a mortar battalion, and my lead division is already well to the east. I’ve only the 57th Infantry Division here, but go around them we will.”
He quickly found a staff Leutnant. “Get everything turned around. We move back to Kantirmirovka at once.”
The tank unit that had the misfortune of running right up on the 11th Panzer Division as it did was the Soviet 10th Brigade. There, another man was pulling on his leather gloves, one Hermann Balck, one of Germany’s most able panzer leaders. Wounded seven times in the first war, Balck had survived to join the Inspectorate of Motorized Troops before the war. He rode with Guderian in France, spearheading the crossing of the Meuse, then fought well in Russia with his fighting 11th. He would later be noted for his incredible defense against the Soviet 5th Tank Army along the River Chir during the winter counterattack that encircled Paulus and his 6th Army, killing over 1000 Soviet tanks in the defense, and basically stopping the entire Army. In fact, no other German division ever matched the 11th panzer when it came to confirmed enemy tank kills. Now here was a summer counterattack, most unexpected, and it aimed to do the very same thing to Steiner’s SS Korps that the winter attack had done to Paulus.
“What in God’s name is that?” Balck squinted through his field glasses, pointing at the oncoming Russian tanks. Then his mind raced to the only possible conclusion. His division was laagered 40 kilometers south of Boguchar, and if those were Soviet tanks, it meant they had broken through the 4th Infantry Korps line there, at least in one place. Yet knowing the German infantry well, he realized that they would have pulled in their flanks if hit with a really big attack, and adopted a defensive formation known as the hedgehog.
“Hauptmann,” he ordered. “Kill those tanks!”
With that order Balck would begin an odyssey of brilliant defensive maneuvers that would live up to the division moniker of Gespensterdivision—the Ghost Division, one of the most effective Panzer Divisions of the war. The division insignia often bore the image of a ghost, and now that spirit would begin haunting the Soviets like a demon from hell.
Part III
The Ghost Division
“Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn't even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.”
Chapter 7
It had come from nowhere, appearing behind British infantry in France, shocking them with the speed of its movement, and the determination of its troops. It was there that the division first was given the nom du guerre of the ‘Ghost Division,’ renowned for its valor, skill in battle, and yet also for the honorable way in which it fought. Prisoners were always treated fairly, enemy officers respected, cease fires honored to allow removal of wounded men on the field. Patton would later exclaim that the 11th Panzer was “the fairest and bravest” of all the German divisions he had encountered in the war.
Its commander had a quicksilver mind for maneuver in battle, that one man in every hundred with the warrior’s soul, and complete mastery of the art of violence that became the energy of war. He was a dynamic and active defender, yet also fierce in the attack. In Fedorov’s history, Hermann Balck had been one of the very few men to receive the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, joining Erwin Rommel in that honor. Born to a military family in Prussia, his father was highly decorated, and a master of strategy and tactics, rising to the Imperial General Staff.
Like father, like son. Now he was about to step out from behind his father’s shadow and fight what would later be noted as one of the most brilliant tactical defenses ever conducted. It was Balck who first suggested to Guderian that tanks should always fight in mixed battlegroups with supporting infantry and other weapons. In effect, he was the originator of the concept of the German Kampfgruppe, and he put that doctrine to use immediately He organized a counterattack with his 15th Panzer Regiment, a unit that had just been fitted out with a good number of the newest Panther V tanks in one battalion. The remainder were Pz IV-F2s, but they were bolstered by 18 of the heavier Lions that had already gained a fearsome reputation wherever they appeared on the front.
Balck took companies of Panzergrenadiers, mated them with platoons of armor, added in mobile flak guns and SPGs, and sent them off to battle, He held one regiment of his infantry in hand, forming a defensive front, and then studded it with his AT guns. Then he sent the Kampfgruppen sweeping out on his flanks. One built on the fast moving recon battalion would seek out the line of enemy advance, relay the information by radio, and then the KGs would swoop in like vultures. Just as the Russians stopped to engage one such attack, another fast moving KG would suddenly appear on its flank or rear. The Ghosts were out in force that day, steel grey specters haunting the steppes.
Learning that a Soviet Cavalry division was following these enemy tanks south, he shifted his Panzergrenadier regiment west, assigned it several SPG batteries, and told it to drive the remaining horsemen back. Then, knowing he was now the center of the defensive line, and his right flank was hanging on thin air, he quickly organized several Kampfgruppen. One was formed from his pioneer battalion reinforced with several companies of AA guns. He would use it as a quick holding force on one flank.