Thor's Anvil

Chapter 28

“Leningrad,” said Hitler, as if he were spitting out the word like some vile phlegm in his throat. “Oh, my Generals are all so clever, so reasonable. In 1941 you tell me I must take Moscow to win the war, and we burned half that city to the ground! Then, in 1942 you tell me I must take Volgograd to win the war, and now that we reach the place, you want to chew on it like a dog with a bone and then throw it to Volkov! Now you tell me I must take Leningrad to win the war in 1943. Where does it end? When will my Generals finish something they start? The Russians are still in Moscow, they are still in Volgograd, and I will see both cities completely destroyed! Understand? I will not leave them to the enemy.”

It was really the first time Manstein had seen the rage in Hitler. In the past he had always been able to impose calm on these meetings, using a combination of flattery and reason to manage the Führer’s volatile nature. This time he could see that Hitler would not be mollified or reasoned with.

“Leningrad,” said Hitler, coming to some inner decision. “That is all well and good for the spring. As for Volgograd, we will find the troops required to finish the job, for that city will be taken this winter. This is a Führer Order! Look how they struggle to defend it? Can’t you see? It is a point of honor for them now, just as their stand at Kirov was last year. In Volgograd, they have invested all their foolish notions of duty, and their patriotic zeal to that decrepit Soviet State, the whore they call their motherland. Well I will have that city! I will destroy it completely, if for no other reason than the fact that Sergei Kirov, desperate as his situation is, still fights to keep it from falling into our hands.” Hitler smashed his fist down onto the map table, as if to hammer and crust the stubborn enemy he detested

He was breathing heavily now, then straightened, slowly composing himself, an unsteady hand running through the fall of dark hair on his brow. “Send for the transcribers. I will compose new orders, to be carried out immediately, and there will be no further discussion."

Hitler’s order was inscribed and circulated to all ranking officers, so there would be no uncertainty as to his wishes for the coming months.

All things considered, it was a more reasonable order than Manstein had feared. He would get his wish to withdraw Steiner’s Korps back under his overall command west of the Don, and Steiner’s failed promise to deliver the city was overlooked, if not forgotten by an increasingly brooding Führer. He would also see the fruitless drive into the hinterlands east of Voronezh halted, and plans being laid for what must surely be the coup de grace, the drive on Leningrad. Yet the onerous tasks ahead were the necessity of occupying the Donets Basin and Kuban, and Hitler would refuse to entertain any further discussion concerning Volgograd. He simply wanted the city taken, block by block.

The most interesting feature of this order was the complete restructuring of the Brandenburg Division, making it into a “square” Motorized Infantry Division with four regiments, which was the structure it had actually assumed in Fedorov’s history. To do so it was heavily reinforced with new forces raised in Germany, including a roundup of already existing commando units under overall control of the Abwehr. Each of the four regiments would include one full battalion of specialists in, demolitions, infiltration, and urban warfare. A call went out to all units in the Army to forward the names of suitable candidates to OKW.

Manstein made good use of the tanks received through the dissolution of the Brandenburg Panzer Regiment, using them to flesh out depleted companies in the other SS divisions. And all the mechanized transport, largely Spw-251 halftracks, mobile flak, Marders, and other AFVs that had lifted the two former Panzergrenadier Regiments in the division, were also used to restore lost or damaged vehicles in the other SS units. There were plenty of trucks to repay the Brandenburgers and keep them mobile, and plenty of towed guns to deliver, but the Panzergrenadiers in Steiner’s Korps needed those halftracks. The facelift, carried out with lightning speed and given the highest possible priority, would see Brandenburg Division soon brought up to strength for the task ahead.

Of the nine regular infantry Divisions assigned to the Army of the Volga, the 75th, 87th, 102nd and 129th were already east of the Don holding positions along the river itself and the aqueduct. In the next two weeks, as the remaining units arrived to relieve Steiner’s SS Korps, Manstein continued his offensive north from Kalach against the Soviet 24th Army, his objective being to clear the west bank of the Don and by so doing relieve both the 102nd and 129th Divisions of that defensive duty, making them available as reserve units for the city fight.

The 305th, 336th and 294th were the first three units sent over the bridge at Kalach, taking up positions held by the Wiking Division and Grossdeutschland Division nearest to Volkov’s 4th Army in the south. The Brandenburgers remained opposite the main city center, and the 24th, 294th and eventually the 170th moved to the north, relieving both 1st and 2nd SS. They were joined near the Volga Bridge by Volkov’s 11th Guards.

Hitler’s wish for specialized engineers was also taken to heart, and fresh units were combed from other Army Korps to constitute new Assault Pioneer Battalions. Instead of tanks, all the assault gun units that had been in the SS Korps, and all its special engineering units and heavy artillery, remained behind when Steiner departed. So the redistribution of forces created a leaner, infantry heavy force to reduce the city, and moved all the superb mobile divisions out of that meat grinder to the open steppe country where they could now ply their deadly craft of the mobile art of war.

Nothing further was discussed about Leningrad, though Hitler took all that Manstein had said to heart, and began ruminating inwardly on the battle ahead for the coming spring. If the fall of Volgograd and the capture of Rostov and the Donets Basin did not force the Russians to capitulate by January 1st, he had every intention of taking Manstein’s advice to heart, and quietly instructed Halder to begin a transfer of panzer units from the vicinity of Voronezh to a central reserve north of Minsk as he had specified in number 9 of his order. The German Army would not sit idle during the long winter ahead. They would take this time to rebuild, redeploy, and to guard against possible enemy counteroffensives, as Manstein had warned.

On the Soviet Side, Chuikov took advantage of the major shift in the enemy camp, using the time to raise more recruits from the remnants of the city’s able bodied population. Even women and girls were conscripted, trained in the use of AA guns and sent to crew batteries all along the Volga near the key ferry sites. While nothing was getting in via the river any longer, the Soviets still had a large bridgehead on Sarpinsky Island, and complete control of the significant mass of Denezhny Island. Their advantage in gunboat flotillas made them masters of the river in and around those islands, though the boats would mainly patrol at night to avoid enemy shore batteries.

Though the city itself was bruised and bombed, its four factories continued to work, including one that was not present in Fedorov’s history, the Steel Foundry in the heart of Novo Kirovka. The Russians were still building guns, producing ammunition, and even constructing tanks, though the output was small from the Tractor Factory. Chuikov would not receive any more reinforcements from the outside either, though Zhukov was quietly moving in divisions to shore up the aqueduct line, which now included the 99th, 116th and 332nd Rifle Divisions, and the newly arrived 284th “Tomsk” Division sent by Karpov. To these he added one newly reformed Tank Corps, the 13th.

West of the Don, the withdrawal of 1st Tank Army, and Volsky’s 4th Mech Corps, put an end to the Operation Saturn. A master of the indirect approach, Manstein’s move into the gap north of Surovinko compelled Zhukov to move those forces. A lesser General might have left them near Morozovsk, but this was something Zhukov could not afford to do. The Shock Armies held their positions until Manstein began to press them. In the face of any determined German thrust, they had orders to withdraw in as good order as possible. The premature offensives had done much to delay the fall of Volgograd, but they had not been able to hold the hard won ground they earned, nor could they stop Manstein from methodically moving in the railroad crews to make good all they had spoiled on the lines leading east over the Don.

Yet after losing 2nd Guards Rifle Corps, half of 9th Corps, and both 24th and 25th Tank Corps, Zhukov wanted to keep all his remaining mobile forces in reserve. Somewhere, somehow, he still had to mount a winter offensive in 1942. The previous year it had come late, but achieved good results. This year it would be late as well. It would come, as Manstein had predicted, from the fattened units that had been on the lines west of Moscow, and its object was the capture of Smolensk.

Yet forewarned is forearmed. Halder had agreed with Manstein’s assessment concerning Smolensk, and so he moved most of Hoth’s Panzer Army west from Voronezh to stand in reserve there. They would be instrumental in frustrating Zhukov’s attack, a fast moving mobile reserve that was still in good enough shape to do the job. After that battle, he would then move Hoth to a position north of Minsk, and those divisions would go into static mode as they began to refit and replace old equipment. His staff was already working on the plans for Operation Untergang—the ‘Downfall’ planned for the final blow against the Soviet Union in 1943.

The Germans helped him in this planning by suspending most offensive operations through the early weeks of November. 2nd Panzer Armee under Model stopped at Anna, about 100 kilometers east of Voronezh. Hoth’s 3rd Panzer Armee would never come to its support now. In those two weeks of November, the Germans instead focused on reducing the Voronezh Pocket, which put an end to 14 more Soviet divisions. Then, rather than leaving a big bulge in the line that would point 2nd Panzer Armee nowhere, the Germans pulled back to the line of the Don in the Voronezh sector, and Model’s 2nd Panzer Army began to refit for the Spring.

The German Army of the Volga would not be fully supplied until December 1st, but the redistribution of divisions specified by Führer Directive 46 would be completed on schedule. It meant that Halder had to reluctantly give up precious infantry, but Hitler promised him that many more divisions were being raised to make up for the transfer orders.

The war was now going to move off in another dangerous direction, and it remained to be seen as to whether the Soviet Union could survive the loss of the Donets, and then the Kuban, if Manstein could work his will to carry out Hitler’s orders in the south. In the meantime, the specialists and pioneers began slipping potato masher grenades into their belt lines and shouldering their demolitions and flame throwers. The battle for the city of Volgograd was only just beginning.

Chapter 29

On the night of November 15th, even while the division itself was still reorganizing, the first assault groups of the Brandenburg Division began to slip forward over the ground that had been won and held by Grossdeutschland Division. Now the emblem of the ghostly mask and sword of steel would try the Soviet defense on the northern fringe of Novo Kirovka. The Russian Special Worker Brigade 160 had been moved up to infiltrate back into that area, and their 1st Battalion suddenly found itself surrounded on three sides as the expert commando teams poured out of the cemeteries where Hörnlein’s men had fought like the spirits of the fallen. They moved with great stealth, infiltrating silently through the suburbs.

The leading elements of the 1st Brandenburg Regiment continued on through the city, penetrating largely unchallenged all the way to a wide open area known as Resurrection Plaza, very near the main road and rail line leading north into Central Volgograd. Their presence there wasn’t discovered until about 2 AM, when artillery fire began to drop sporadically on the plaza itself.

Guriev’s 39th Guards had set up headquarters in the Univermag Department store, a major supply depot for Chuikov’s army. He had positioned his three battalions there, at the Nail Factory, and at the Gorki Theater. Now those last two were ordered to move over the partially frozen stream that separated Central Volgograd from the neighborhoods to the south.

2nd Brandenburg Regiment had been posted at the Hospital Hörnlein had taken, and its spirits arose from the small adjoining cemetery. The Russians had reoccupied some of the ground in the city Hörnlein had fought for, and now their lines were two kilometers west of the Nail Factory and the small 1st of May Plaza. That salient had been too deep to hold during the German reorganization, but now 2nd Regiment came to reclaim it. They found a very solid defense there, including tanks from the 56th Tank Brigade, and had to radio Division HQ to request Marders and Sturmgeschutz support.

3rd Regiment came out of the hard won Army Barracks near the Kirov Airfield where so many men of the Russian 196th Rifle Division had fought and died two weeks earlier. They pushed east towards the settlement of Mamayev, about five kilometers from the famous hill it was named after. No artillery prep was made for any of these attacks, and fires were held until the Brandenburg commando teams had achieved maximum infiltration, and identified targets to be shelled. Then the boom of artillery fire to the north resounded over the stillness of the city, a diversionary attack that had been planned by the newly arrived 24th Infantry Division. The 72nd Division that had relieved Leibstandarte also renewed the attack against the Samara Rifles, and those were the only actions authorized that night. The big push was scheduled to jump off at dawn, with every division on the line planning a series of blows designed to place the enemy defenses under maximum strain.

As the cold skies began to lighten, there came a roar of many guns opening fire in the north. Most were Volkov’s heavy shore batteries, now beginning to pound Rynok, where the 2nd Volga Rifles was still stubbornly defending. Three more battalions of the 11th Guards moved over the Volga Bridge and now Volkov’s best troops threw themselves at the balka just north of Spartanovka, where the stolid Soviet 13th Guards would meet them man to man.

West of that position near the river, most of the assault pioneers and heavy Sturmgeschutz companies left behind by Steiner were now massed in one great shock group. They pushed to break through the lines of the Samara Rifles, backed by the whoosh of Nebelwerfers and the pounding explosions from those 150mm rockets. Even the newly arrived 170th Division that had relieved Das Reich got into the act, making a concerted attack on the Big Mushroom position. It had been probed the previous night, but the leading German companies had been thrown back by shock groups of Soviet SMG troops. Now the Germans came for the Mushroom with a much heavier attack, two full battalions reinforced by a company of the division pioneers.

The forces assembled here were much better suited to the city fighting, lighter equipped, but able to move through the rubble strewn streets, and into all the buildings and cellars. Furthermore, many of these divisions had fought during the reduction of the Kirov Pocket and Bryansk, where they got a good taste of what street fighting was like. Now they were putting that experience to very good use.

There were good penetrations at many points. 24th Infantry was able to drive the enemy from the Airfield Settlement about six kilometers north of the Kirov Flight School. 305th Infantry pushed about 1000 meters into Yelshanka. The 336th just to its north was now fighting in the outskirts of Novo Kirovka, but it was the elite Brandenburg Division, the specialist, commando teams, demolition squads, and gritty veteran Sergeants that made the difference.

1st Regiment had cleared all the neighborhoods around Resurrection Plaza, controlling that place before they ran into a very tough battalion of the 154th Naval Brigade. Elements of the 2nd Regiment had almost regained the last of the ground formerly taken by Grossdeutschland Division, and they were now about a thousand meters from the 1st of May Plaza. Yet the most dramatic breakthrough of the day came from 3rd Brandenburg Regiment.

That storm group had fought its way into Mamayev settlement, battling Soviet Tanks supporting the remnants of the 196th Rifle Division. They swept through most of that neighborhood, and the commandos found a way though and over a balka running along the western knees of Mamayev Kurgan. On they went, the assault teams leading the way as they climbed, and then they realized the vital central hill was not yet heavily garrisoned.

Hauptmann Behrmann radioed for support, and the fast moving Motorcycle Recon Company raced to the scene, waved through the gap that had been cleared by the commandos. The men dismounted, moving up to join the sections that had already scaled the heights, and as darkness fell, they reached the top, gunning down a few surprised artillery observation posts. There they stood on Hill 102, the men gazing out at the long agony of the city stretching north and south. There was no electricity, except in one small segment of Novo Kirovka to the south. But fires raged all through the city, and the evening sky was glowing red, the smell of burning wood thick on the air. They could make out the outlines of the battle lines, seeing the wink of gunfire, and the explosions of grenades and small mortar rounds. It seemed from that high point that they had just captured the whole of the city, but their mastery of that promontory would be brief.

The field phones rattled and rang in Chuikov’s headquarters and Borzov, the commander of the hapless 196th Rifle Division, was soon bawling on the line.

“They have got around my division to the north,” he exclaimed. “I think they have men on Mamayev! The road into the Tsarista Gorge is completely open!”

“Alright, alright,” said Chuikov, trying to calm the other man down. “I sent Special Brigade 124 that way late this afternoon. They should be approaching the north slope of the hill by now, from the Kirov Flight School. Don’t worry. I have a solution to the problem.”

That solution was going to be the 137th Tank Brigade again. It had fallen back to a reserve position and received new tanks from the factory. Now all three battalions were rolling through the thickening darkness towards the blackened bald height of Mamayev. A battalion of the 154th Naval Brigade had to spread out along a two kilometer front to try and screen the gap Borzov had warned about, and another regiment of the 13th Guards was ordered to leave its reserve position in the Red October Factory and prepare to counterattack that hill the following morning.

Chuikov’s immediate solution was more direct. He had big guns in fortified positions all along the shore from that factory to Central Volgograd to the south. There were batteries in the Mill near the 9th of January Square, in the old Railroad Bureau building, in the Metalworks near the Locomotive Depot and in the Steel Plant at the heart of the winding curve of rail lines known as the Tennis Racquet. Minutes later they were all given orders to blast the top of that hill, and the men of that recon company were soon diving for any cover they could find. The Germans had snuck into the pantry and raided a cupboard they should not have been able to reach that day. It was only the skill of those infiltration teams that allowed them to slip through and put men on that hill, but now they would have to pay the piper. Some of the howitzers in those batteries were as big as 305mm.

The Germans could not stay on that high, exposed hill under that fire, and the MC Company withdrew, making contact with the commandos about a thousand meters down the west slope of the hill. Along the way they had briefly engaged worker troops from the 124th Special Brigade, but they were special in the wrong way, mostly untrained and ill-armed men from the Red October Settlement. Yet they were good for filling gaps in the line with human flesh and bone, and the enemy did not know what their caliber was yet.

Studying his map, Chuikov could see how bold this German attack was. The unit that had reached that hill was special in the right way, and he knew he had to send the very best units he had to secure that position. He was planning a swift right cross with the 137th Tank Brigade, which swung up through the Kirov Flight School to hit the enemy flank and attempt to cut that incursion off. Then three battalions of the 13th Guards assembled near the water cisterns on the eastern slope of the hill, ready to attack. Meanwhile, his men on the hill were now directing fire from those heavy guns along the river.

When that attack came, the Russian Guardsmen rushed up the hill with a shout, cresting the scorched and barren crown, where not even snow could blot out the burning laceration of war. They leapt to the attack, charging down the far side of the hill, submachineguns chopping in the cold air. The German Recon Company was quickly pushed back, and within 20 minutes, Chuikov was again the master of Mamayev Kurgan, with the enemy clinging to positions on the lower western slopes

That crisis at least addressed for the moment, Chuikov took in the rest of the reports from his staff. 193rd Rifle Division was having trouble near the Barrikady Worker’s Settlement and was requesting reinforcements. The 10th NKVD sector was quiet so he ordered them to send over a machinegun battalion, but it would not be enough. Five companies of the 41st and 46th German Pioneer Battalions had stormed into the settlement, overrunning a battalion of the 193rd Divisional artillery, and a company of mortars. The men of the103rd were too slow to react, the German Pioneers too precise in their attacks, and too determined. It was yet another crisis point that would grow in the hours ahead.

Then the real trouble started. That heavy German Assault Pioneer group west of Spartanovka was finally breaking through on the rightmost flank of the Samara Rifles. The Germans had put together a big kampfgruppe there, with units from the 72nd Infantry, three assault gun companies, and a lot of engineers. They had reached the edge of the cemetery just outside the western edge of the town, right where Chuikov had moved the artillery of the 13th Guards Division. Now those guns would have to move again, which meant there would be no supporting fires from them for at least the next few hours.

The regiment of the 13th Guards he had sent to stop Volkov’s Guardsmen had stood like a stone wall north of Spartanovka for three days, but now their positions were slowly being flanked to the west. He reluctantly sent them an order to withdraw 500 meters, and said goodbye to Volkov’s men with a good barrage from the powerful Guards Mortar Battalion. The Volga Rifles still held all of Rynok, but now the gap between them and the rest of the defenders was another 500 meters wider, and over ground he never expected to see his men set foot on again. There were too many men coming over that bridge from Volkov’s 5th Army each night after dark. So by day he had his artillerymen register their fire with spotting rounds, so he could saturate the bridge with punishing fire that night.

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.

Angry, Meyers crawled back a safe distance, looking for the Battalion mortar teams. They had a good number of the small 5cm version, and several 8cm Granatwerfers. He wanted to put fire on the enemy to discourage any further attack, and those mortars were his only ranged firepower. When the men started dropping the shells into those tubes, his eyes narrowed. Payback, he thought.

Snipers had a way of getting to a man like that. They sat out there somewhere in the broken buildings, as quiet and unseen as the death they brought to their enemies. But it was not the way Meyers wanted to die in battle. It seemed so inglorious. It was death by stealth and ambush, from an enemy that would not show his face. Yet that was just one private little slice of war. It wasn’t the slashing maneuver of Balck’s Panzer Regiment flanking his enemy when the Ghost Division appeared out of the morning mist like phantoms. There was no dash, or valor, or honor in that kind of a fight. It was war at its gritty heart, just men with rifles, in a haunted and broken city, creeping about from one blasted building to another trying to kill one another.

Stumpfeld’s radio call had not gone unheeded. As sunset neared, he had friendly battalions to either side, and the enemy attack had been halted. The breakthrough his battalion had led, and the gap they had found, had just become a new wrinkle in the front, sealed off by the 39th Regiment of the Guards and those T-34s. One of the first things Lieutenant Meyers did was to take stock of what he had left. There were still 17 of the 27 squads the battalion had started with.

Penetrations like the one Stumpfeld had led his men into had the effect of forcing the enemy to adjust their lines. Most of the open country west of the city had been yielded to the enemy, and now the defenders were being compressed into the long flat stretch of the city itself. As they did so, the strength of that defense hardened. The first offensive blows of Thor’s Hammer had beaten down the irregularities in the lines, but as it compressed, the metal on that anvil was beginning to show its strength.

Meyers had his satisfaction for the death of his commanding officer when he ordered that mortar barrage. But the Russians answered it with the heavy howitzers of their shore battery firing from the Metalworks in Petroleum Syndicate 1. Both sides could throw stones, but the rounds the Russians sent in literally shook the ground when they fell. Meyers and his men endured a five-minute pounding from four BR-18 305mm Howitzers. One squad position in a house a twenty yards to his left took a direct hit, and the structure just blew apart. When the dust and smoke settled, Meyers’ squad count was down to 16.

“So now the real fighting begins,” said Shumilov. “The belly war. Our men will be crawling around in the rubble and snow from this point forward. And the front lines, if they can be called that, will be the floors between levels in any given house or building.”

“True,” said Chuikov. “City fighting is a special kind of fighting. Things are settled here not by strength, but by skill, resourcefulness and swiftness. The buildings in a city are like breakwaters. So we must hold firmly to strong buildings, and establish small garrisons in them capable of all around fire in case they become encircled. The fighting will go on in those buildings—for a cellar, for a room, for every corner is a corridor.” Those were words he would recall and write again in his memoirs after the war, at least in Fedorov’s history. Whether he would remember them in this recounting of events, or ever live to write them down, remained unsettled.

“Everything here is a matter of feet and yards now, not miles. We must wage a bitter fight for every house, workshop, water tower, railway embankment, wall, cellar and every pile of ruins. We have given them all the ground we can afford to yield.”

“What about Yelshanka?” said Shumilov. “I’ve got the better part of two divisions holding that, and 90 percent of that front is now being manned by Volkov’s dogs. Then the Germans bunched up, and they’ve been trying to cut through to the causeway near the Cannery for the last two days.”

“That is what they will continue to do,” said Chuikov. “They want to reach the Volga wherever they can, and cut our defense into smaller isolated pockets. But as long as we control the ferry sites, I can still move troops at night from one place to another. So it really doesn’t matter where we make a stand. One broken building is as good as another.”

Shumilov nodded. “What will become of it?” he asked. “Can Rokossovsky get through to us any longer?”

Chuikov smiled. “Have you looked at a map of the front lines to the north lately? The Germans pushed east of Voronezh before we finally stopped them. Then the line runs down along the Don towards the Chir now after Zhukov’s counteroffensive has ended. On the other side, the Volga reaches north, and Volkov controls the east bank there as far as Samara. The whole front line looks like a deep well, leading right here to Volgograd. And here we sit, like a pair of frogs at the bottom of that well, croaking at one another in the night. No, Mikhail Stepanovich, Zhukov moved 13th Tank Corps behind 65th Army, but let us not fool ourselves. There will be no further counterattacks here to try and save us.”

“13th Tank Corps? What about the Shock Armies?”

“They are being pulled out. 65th and 66th Armies are extending their lines, and consolidating near the Don. Don’t you see? We’re too deep in that well. Anything Zhukov sends is just throwing good money after bad. What more will they do here? They threw four Shock Armies at the Germans—pushed all the way to Nizhne Chirskaya, but they could not hold that ground for more than two weeks. So here we will sit. We’ll both be named Heroes of the Soviet Union, and that will be that. Don’t expect any relief from the rest of the Army. The most we will get from here on out will be the grateful thanks of the nation.”

“Damn….” Shumilov swore quietly. “Now I regret yielding all that ground south of the Don. If we could have held Volkov back on the old fortification lines, then Zhukov’s attack would have had the SS in a bag for sure!”

“Which would have meant nothing,” said Chuikov. “You saw how quickly they broke through. They probably sent every reserve unit they had in the south to do so, but they stopped that last operation Zhukov mounted. What was it called? Saturn. Well, he’s running out of planets, isn’t he? So here we sit.”

“Then there will be no winter offensive?”

“Oh, I never said that. No, those Shock Armies must be going somewhere if they are pulling them north of the Don. And Steiner’s SS went somewhere too. They are in the Donbass now, and the Donets Basin. They want to clear that area, and take Rostov. We’re just a boil on their backside. That’s why they pulled out all but one of their really good divisions. But the fact that they left the Brandenburgers here is a very clear message.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean they intend to take this city, stupid as that might seem. They wouldn’t leave a good division like that here unless they meant to finish the job. Hitler must have insisted on it. No General worth the name would put ten divisions into this mess, at least not willingly.”

“We put ten here,” said Shumilov.

“Which is why they put ten in—tit for tat.” Chuikov leaned back, running his broad hand over that lion’s mane of curly dark hair. The rumble of distant artillery fire intervened, and both men sat listening to it for some time.

“So then,” said Shumilov at last. “We fight like the men in the Kirov Pocket fought, and like the 2nd Guards fought in Voronezh.”

“Yes,” said Chuikov, “and like the men in the Donets Basin and Rostov will fight, and after that the Army of the Kuban. All we are doing here is being stubborn. As long as we are here, then they need to leave those ten divisions here with us. So like I said, we fight now for every building—every room.”

Shumilov nodded, but there was a vacant, empty look in his eyes. “How long can we hold, Vasily—not just here in the city, but out there?”

“Who knows? Zhukov is moving those Shock Armies, so he has something left up his sleeve. I think they will attack near Voronezh. That penetration all the way to Anna was quite alarming. If the Germans drive due east in the spring, they could go all the way to Saratov. Then everything in the well on that map will be yet another big pocket, three times the size of the Kirov Pocket. I don’t think Zhukov can let that happen. So he must attack somewhere this winter to take the pressure off… Somewhere….”

He was going to attack somewhere, and right where Chuikov, not Manstein, had called it. In fact, the warning the German General put in during his last visit to OKH had been enough to prompt Hitler to strongly reinforce the Smolensk sector as part of the general redistribution of forces he had ordered. But every place strengthened was another place that had to be weakened. Army Group Don had been strongly reinforced to stop the orbits of Zhukov’s planetary offensives. They had struck like successive blows, Mars was the spoiling attack, Uranus the daring drive to the Chir and into the Don Bend; then Saturn had even greater aspirations of breaking through between Tatsinskaya and Morozovsk to relieve the men trapped in the Donets Basin, but that hope was never realized.

Chuikov was correct, and now the offensive hopes would have to be directed elsewhere. His stoic nihilism had seen the whole of it, and he knew his fate was now to sit there and endure those hammer blows, to be the stubborn anvil, while the army fought elsewhere… Somewhere….

Zhukov was not quite done for the Winter of 1942. There were still planets orbiting in his mind, and the greatest of them he had saved for the last throw of the dice this year—Operation Jupiter.