In September and October 1942, the 308th Rifle Division, under the command of Leonty Gurtyev, saw almost uninterrupted combat. It fought at two key positions: first at the Kotluban heights,65 twenty-four miles northwest of Stalingrad, and later at the Barricades munitions plant in the city’s industrial district. The division, composed of ten thousand soldiers from Siberia, suffered heavy losses in the fighting. By the time the division was placed on reserve status in early November awaiting reinforcements, the roster had shrunk to 1,727 men, of whom in Chuikov’s estimation only a few hundred were fit for battle.66 These eight weeks of intense combat are described in the following conversational strand composed of interviews with commanders, political officers, foot soldiers, and nurses of the 308th Rifle Division.
The German panzer advance north of Stalingrad to the Volga on August 23 took the Soviets completely by surprise. It drove a wedge in the line of defense formed by the Southeastern and Stalingrad Fronts, enabling the 6th Army to cross the Don and disperse units from the 62nd Army in short order. Meanwhile, the 4th Panzer Army approached the city from the southwest, forming a pocket with the 6th Army that pushed the leftovers of the Soviet 64th Army eastward. On September 3 the spearheads of each army joined forces near Pitomnik on the western outskirts of Stalingrad. With Soviet troops still regrouping, the city was vulnerable to the combined German armies. The battle that the Soviets had planned for the fortified line of defense along the Don River would now take place along the Volga, under far worse conditions.
Stalin, who had been tracking these developments from Moscow, pressured his generals to take immediate action. On August 26, General Zhukov, the new deputy commander in chief of the Red Army, departed for Stalingrad, tasked with launching a diversionary attack by September 2. The 1st Guards Army, with support from the 24th and 66th Armies and from the 4th Tank Army, was to punch a hole in the Wehrmacht’s northern cordon stretching from the Don to the Volga, encircle the Germans, and link up with the beleaguered 62nd Army. Zhukov began preparations but objected to the time frame, which he regarded as too narrow, since several of the divisions planned for the offensive had yet to arrive. He believed that a coordinated attack could take place no sooner than September 6. On September 3 the front commander, Yeryomenko, reported to Stalin of heavy bombing in the city, signaling that the German armies were about to strike. In response Stalin cabled an urgent telegraph to Zhukov: “Stalingrad may be taken today or tomorrow if the Northern Army Group doesn’t offer immediate assistance. [ . . . ] Delay at this point is equal to a crime.”67 Zhukov had no choice but to launch the attack the following morning, with the additional units joining the next day.
Though Soviet troops outnumbered their opponents, they were at a disadvantage in several respects. The flat and treeless steppes offered no shelter, and the Soviet rifle divisions, lacking sufficient air and armored support, were exposed to German artillery fire and air attack. The German soldiers of the 76th and 113th Infantry Divisions had entrenched themselves in the balkas, deep gullies common in the region, making them hard to hit. What also proved fatal was Yeryomenko’s stubborn insistence on daytime fighting.68 Nevertheless, the Soviets were able to push two and a half miles into the five-mile deep cordon. On September 8 the 308th Rifle Division was taken off reserve status and deployed to Kotluban, at the heart of the offensive, in a bid to seize a strategic hill.
By September 10 Zhukov realized that the intended breakthrough would not succeed. He called Stalin to demand more troops and time for a “more concentrated blow.” Stalin summoned him to Moscow so they could deliberate the next move.69 On September 12 Zhukov, Chief of Staff Vasilevsky, and Stalin discussed how the Red Army could avoid imminent catastrophe. Zhukov wanted at minimum another army, more tanks, and an air force. He also presented ideas for a large-scale counteroffensive. It was here that the plan to encircle the Germans was hammered out.70
Meanwhile, the Kotluban offensive continued to exact a high toll. By September 15, as many as a third of the 250,000 soldiers were wounded or dead. On September 18, a second offensive began, this time with more troops and a new formation. The 308th Rifle Division had been absorbed by the 24th Army but continued to fight near Kotluban. During the heavy fighting on September 18–19, the Soviets suffered thirty-two thousand wounded and dead. Nevertheless, the operation succeeded in pinning down several German divisions and elements of the Luftwaffe, reducing the force of the German attack on Stalingrad.71
At the end of September, the worn-down 308th Rifle Division was posted to Stalingrad. After marching a hundred-mile detour around the front, they arrived at the eastern bank of the Volga on the night of October 1. They crossed in waves and entered the burning city with a mission to recapture the worker settlements in front of the Barricades munitions plant. On October 3 Paulus started a large offensive to capture the entire industrial district in the north. The advancing soldiers of the 24th Panzers had arrived at the Barricades plant on October 4 and decimated an entire regiment of the 308th Rifle Division. That evening Chuikov removed the remaining soldiers in the division from the line of fire.72 Stalin was not pleased. On October 5 he issued a strong rebuke to Yeryomenko: Stalingrad would fall if the sections of the city lost to the Germans were not retaken. “For that, it is necessary to turn each house and each street in Stalingrad into a fortress. Unfortunately, you haven’t been able to do that and continue surrendering block after block to the enemy. That shows you are acting poorly.”73
In mid-October fighting in the industrial district reached its zenith. On October 14 the Germans began a large-scale assault on the Stalingrad Tractor factory, with the aim of pushing southward along the Volga to the city center. On October 17 German soldiers infiltrated the Barricades munitions plant defended by the 308th Rifle Division. The following day a Stuka pilot summarized the fighting in his diary: “We were plowing over the burning ruin of Stalingrad all day. I don’t understand how people are still able to live in this hell, but the Russians are firmly lodged in the ruins, the cracks, the basements and the chaos of the distorted factory frames.”74
After ten days of fighting—participants on both sides described it as the most hellish of the battle—the 62nd Army had been pushed back to three shallow bridgeheads: a pocket held by Colonel Sergei Gorokhov’s group; the parts of the Barricades plant along the Volga (held by the soldiers of the 138th, 308th, 193rd, and 45th Rifle Divisions and of the 39th Guards Rifle Division); and a strip of land that stretched from the eastern edge of Mamayev Kurgan to the city center (held by the 284th Rifle Division and the 13th Guards Rifle Division).75 Altogether, these Soviet positions comprised around fifteen thousand able-bodied soldiers. By mid-November their number had shrunk by half.76 The wounded in the 308th Rifle Division had been carried off the battlefield and those remaining joined the 138th Rifle Division, who had assumed a hedgehog formation—their guns facing outward in all directions—on the banks of Volga under the command of Colonel Ivan Lyudnikov.77 On November 17, two days before Operation Uranus commenced, Hitler gave up hope of taking Stalingrad before winter. Instead, he urged his commanders “to take at least the areas from the munitions plant and the steelworks to the Volga.”78
In April and May 1943, the Moscow historians interviewed twenty-four members of the 308th Rifle Division who fought at Stalingrad—from Commander Leonty Gurtyev and Divisional Commissar Afanasy Svirin to military engineers, switchboard operators, and nurses. The interviews provide vivid depictions of combat and death, both inside and outside the city. Above all, they show how the division persevered despite constant attrition. This was partly due to the division’s self-confidence and the troops’ loyalty to their commander. But it was also helped by the political officers, whose entreaties and encouragement provided a moral compass amid the tumult of battle. Again and again, they called on soldiers to show their mettle and uncover the hero within. If someone died while performing a heroic act—such as the nurse Lyolya Novikova, of whom Captain Ivan Maksin spoke—the example spurred on others to hate the enemy and sacrifice themselves for their country. Many of the interviews attest to how deeply the political conditioning the soldiers received informed their speech and behavior. Medic Nina Kokorina emulated the war heroes celebrated in her Komsomol group. The infantrymen Vasily Boltenko and Vasily Kalinin seem to have internalized the message that the inner strength of the Soviet soldier could prevail in the duel between man and machine that characterized the contest between the Red Army and the Wehrmacht. Soviet military training told soldiers that they could shoot down German aircraft or incapacitate a panzer through willpower alone. The confidence in the collective force of the soldiers finds symbolic expression in Fyodor Skvortsov’s description of how a human chain reestablished a broken telephone line.
The first interviews, with Mikhail Ingor and Nina Kokorina, took place in Moscow on April 30, 1943; the remaining ones occurred between May 11 and 14 in the village of Laptyevo.
THE SPEAKERS (in the order they appear)
Gurtyev, Leonty Nikolayevich—Major general, commander of the 308th Rifle Division
Kokorina, Nina Mikhailovna—Senior sergeant, medical company nurse, assistant deputy for political affairs for the medical company of the 347th Rifle Regiment
Belugin, Vasily Georgievich—Major, commissar in the 347th Rifle Regiment
Smirnov, Alexei Stepanovich—Lieutenant colonel, chief of the divisional political section
Ryvkin, Semyon Solomonovich—Captain, commander of an independent field engineering battalion
Svirin, Afanasy Matveyevich—Lieutenant colonel, deputy divisional commander for political affairs
Petrakov, Dmitri Andrianovich—Commissar in the 339th Rifle Regiment
Maksin, Ivan Vasilievich—Captain, chief of the divisional political section in charge of the Komsomol
Boltenko, Vasily Yakovlevich—Junior lieutenant, platoon commander, and deputy battalion commander for combat units of the 347th Rifle Regiment
Seleznev, Gavriil Grigorievich—Private, field engineering battalion
Stoylik, Anna Kipriyanovna—Nurse, medical company platoon commander
Vlasov, Mikhail Petrovich—Senior lieutenant, commissar in the artillery battalion of the 351st Rifle Regiment (no date given)
Koshkarev, Alexander Fyodorovich—Party bureau secretary, 339th Rifle Regiment
Kushnaryov, Ivan Antonovich—Lieutenant colonel, commander of the 339th Rifle Regiment
Chamov, Andrei Sergeyevich—Lieutenant colonel, commander of the 347th Rifle Regiment
Kalinin, Vasily Petrovich—Senior lieutenant, deputy chief of staff for intelligence, 347th Rifle Regiment
Skvortsov, Fyodor Maksimovich—Private, telephone operator
Sovchinsky, Vladimir Makarovich—Major, deputy commander for political affairs, 339th Rifle Regiment
Brysin, Ilya Mironovich—Junior lieutenant, sapper platoon commander, independent field engineering battalion
Dudnikov, Yefim Yefimovich—Private, sapper platoon, independent field engineering battalion
Ingor, Mikhail Lazarevich—Captain, politruk, 347th Rifle Regiment
Trifonov, Alexander Pavlovich—politruk, 1011th Artillery Regiment
Stepanov, Alexander Dmitriyevich—Battalion commissar, 1011th Artillery Regiment
Fugenfirov, Genrikh Aronovich—Commander of the 1011th Artillery Regiment79
Major General Leonty Nikolayevich Gurtyev (Commander of the 308th Rifle Division):80 The division was made up of Siberians for the most part. [ . . . ] Our unit was recruited in March, April, May. In May we set off for the training camp. We left there in early June and went to the Saratov region. For a while we stayed at Karamyshevka, near the Tatishchevo rail station, where we completed our combat training.
There we were visited by representatives from the region and from the People’s Commissariat of Defense. [ . . . ] In July comrade Voroshilov came and spent two days with us. We conducted a join exercise with the 120th Division. Comrade Voroshilov was pleased with our division, met with our command staff, and gave instructions regarding weaknesses that needed attention. Then he gathered the divisional commanders and the chiefs of staff of the regiments on their own, got to know them, sat with them for two hours in one of the classrooms, talked with them, and then he left. Not long afterward we were sent to the front.
Senior Sergeant Nina Mikhailovna Kokorina (Nurse, assistant deputy for political affairs, 347th Rifle Regiment): I finished [school] in 1941. I’d been planning to go to Sverdlovsk University, but then the war broke out. I got a letter from my sister who had already volunteered. She was headed to the Volkhov Front. I don’t know where she is now. My older brother is also at the front, got transferred from the east. My father is at home, works at the Gosrybtrest81 fish factory. My mother, grandmother, and younger brother stayed at home. All of them are in Tobolsk.
Nurse Nina Kokorina
When I got that letter from my sister, I went home to tell my mother I was going to nursing school. I became a member of the Komsomol there in 1939. In October [1941] I completed nursing school. We tried to sign up after graduation, but they wouldn’t take us. “Come back again when you turn nineteen.” I wrote a letter to comrade Stalin. They showed me the letter with his decision: to be sent to the front immediately. I was also working with the Red Cross.82 Sixty of us went to the enlistment office after we learned that a detail was going to arrive, and we all signed a petition. They took about forty-five of us girls, mostly medical orderlies. Then we came to this unit.
I’d also like to talk about when we left. I’ll never forget that moment. Usually when they come to see you off, it’s nothing but tears. Our mothers stayed strong, it was amazing. In one of her letters Mama said that women often say to her: “Anna Vasilievna, you’ve sent two daughters and a son to the front—how are you still happy?” She answers them: “I didn’t raise them to stay at home.”83
Major Vasily Georgievich Belugin (Commissar in the 347th Rifle Regiment): I was born in 1897. I’ve been a member of the party since 1919. The first time I joined the army was in 1916. I was in the old army for nine months until 1917. In December 1916 I was arrested for spreading revolutionary propaganda and weakening army morale. They released me in February 1917. In September 1917 I started working as an inspector in the bakers’ union. In 1918 I was drafted into the Rogozhsko-Semyonov battalion. From August 1919 to 1924 I worked for special departments in the Cheka and GPU.84 At the same time I began my studies. In 1931 I finished technical college and worked as the head of the personnel department at the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy,85 then as director of the Industrial Transport Institute for the People’s Commissariat of Heavy Industry, and then I was named director of the All-Union Industrial Academy by order of the Central Committee in 1935. After that I was sent to work at the People’s Commissariat until the beginning of the war. On June 22 I tendered my resignation so I could volunteer for the army.
The Moscow city and regional party committees approved my application on the 25th, so I was free to go. I volunteered, and my daughter accompanied me. She was nineteen. She was carrying a duffel bag when she came to the station to see me off. She’d made up her mind to come with me. No matter what I said she wouldn’t leave the station, she just kept asking over and again for me to take her along. At that time we were approached by a member of the military council of the Siberian Military District. Once he understood the situation, he said: “Just let her go.” I asked whether I could really take her with me. “You both can and should.” And so the two of us set off together.
Captain Semyon Solomonovich Ryvkin (Commander of an independent field engineering battalion): The battalion was set up in March 1942. On March 25 we celebrated our one-year anniversary. I was with the battalion right at its formation. Most of the people were Siberians. Inexperienced youths with no combat experience. We worked with them for a long time. After two months of training we all went to the front, so we were actually working with these soldiers for about five months. By then every one of them could be trusted with all sorts of combat missions.
Senior Sergeant Nina Mikhailovna Kokorina (Nurse, assistant deputy for political affairs, 347th Rifle Regiment): We were very thoroughly trained by General Gurtyev. Nearly every day we were marching thirty to sixty kilometers. There were days when you’d never get dry after it rained, when you’d have just gotten to sleep and the alarm would go off. When you hear it, you get up and go again. The girls held up wonderfully. Sometimes we’d be on the go for three days running, no rest, and we were always singing songs. During halts we danced. Regimental commander Mikhailov really liked our medical company.
Lieutenant Colonel Afanasy Matveyevich Svirin (Deputy commander for political affairs, 308th Rifle Division): The division’s previous commissar had been removed. General Medvedyev came and told me I had fifteen minutes: An airplane was waiting at the airfield, he said, and it was taking me to the 308th Division, which was on its way to the front. A car came and took me to the airfield. We went directly to the air base in Omsk. On June 10 we arrived in Saratov. Now I had to get to know the division’s political staff. A week later we held a party meeting, where we discussed our party-political work and the objectives of the party organization. I gave a report on the status of the party-political work and set a number of specific tasks—what needed to be done and how—so that the division would be completely prepared. The work of the party organization was to be the basis of everything. The first issue concerned everyday welfare—namely, the operation of the mess hall. After the party meeting we inspected the mess hall and discovered a number of shortcomings. We outlined several measures that would address this. The next problem concerned the soldiers’ hygiene. They needed to wash, to get clean clothes. These questions were dealt with sensibly. Finally there was the question of the division’s combat training. For this we undertook a wide range of party-political work. This work took the form of meetings at the regiment and company level, and quite a lot of people would come to take part and speak on a number of issues.
During combat training we set ourselves the task of eliminating the soldiers’ fear of tanks, and also of planes—issues that we soon enough had to deal with in reality.
What practical methods are there for eliminating a fear of tanks?
First of all, we made each antitank soldier aware of the merciless power and strength of their antitank gun. We gave each soldier the chance to shoot through some metal plates we picked up from the railway. Every soldier convinced himself that a tank could be penetrated and that he was well able to handle his antitank gun. As for the other aspect, what we did was drive tanks over the soldiers as they crouched down in trenches. They were reassured that these narrow trenches provided a safe location, and afterward they could get out and throw grenades.
We also educated them using the examples of the courageous men at Sebastapol, who threw themselves under tanks in groups of five, and of the heroic deeds of Panfilov’s men, the twenty-eight who kept an avalanche of vehicles at bay. [ . . . ]
We taught them our Russian military traditions. We often quoted our great military leaders, who said that to protect your wives and children you must defend the fatherland, you must give everything to defend the fatherland. We told them about the heroic deeds of Ivan Susanin and gave many other examples from the history of the Russian people. All of this enters the consciousness of every soldier, giving him confidence in our victory. Several times on the road I gave speeches on the challenges that our soldiers would be facing in upcoming battles. Other party workers spoke too. Whenever we stopped we held discussions, gave lectures and reports. We did all this so they would arrive at the front in a state of full combat and political readiness. [ . . . ]
Political deputy of the divisional command, Lieutenant Colonel Afanasy Svirin
About the fear of planes—we knew we were going to the front, and that we’d come across them even before we got there. We drove home the idea that it wasn’t just antiaircraft artillery that could hit planes. You can also shoot one with a rifle, submachine gun, or antitank weapon. We gave examples from newspapers of planes being shot down by rifle fire, and made it perfectly clear that the fear of planes was something they must eliminate in themselves.
Our third task was to get them all, and especially the Komsomol members, to shoot well. During our combat training period we had around three thousand Komsomol members. We set them a goal: a quarter of them to become snipers, and the rest to qualify at no less than “good” or “excellent.” [ . . . ]
Before deploying to the front we conducted a great amount of party-political work. We held a meeting of all the political staff where we set ourselves the task of reaching the front without losing a single soldier or political worker on the way. We also held Komsomol meetings in the companies. Because of this work, we arrived at the front without having a single deserter. There was one incident where a private from our headquarters company dropped his weapon. The commander of the headquarters battery told us that the soldier had lost his carbine about three kilometers back. We sent him back to look for it, and after about five hours he returned, drenched in sweat, with his carbine. That’s how we managed not to lose anyone. We brought twelve thousand people to the front. It took seven days.
Major General Leonty Nikolayevich Gurtyev (Commander of the 308th Rifle Division): Our disembarkation point was Kumalga.86 Some of us got off at Kumalga, and the rest got off at various locations to the north and south, and then we regrouped. We arrived safely. Only one train had been shot at, and one platoon commander was wounded. We gathered at Kumalga and then marched toward the village of Eterevskaya. From there we set off toward Kotluban and Samokhvalovka.87 For several days we marched without incident. It was a rather difficult march. It was hot, and because we didn’t have much time we were covering great distances, and our transportation was delayed. We were always in column formation. We deployed quickly and got there safely. At one point we lost a few men and four horses. [ . . . ]
In the first couple of days our division suffered very heavy losses. We lost a lot of people to enemy aircraft. A lot of shrapnel wounds. We also lost men from heavy enemy mortar fire. Within a few days more than five thousand men were treated by the medical battalion. All day, from dawn till dusk, there were fifteen to twenty, or as many as forty enemy aircraft, and that whole time we were being shelled by mortars. We didn’t have many planes. They joined the fight, but only for general missions. The Luftwaffe was in control of the skies.
Lieutenant Colonel Afanasy Matveyevich Svirin (Deputy commander for political affairs, 308th Rifle Division): On September 1–2 we came to the area of Kotluban. For a few days our division was under the command of the Stavka, but then we were made part of 24th Army. Then we got the order about combat operations in the area of Kotluban. We were ordered to attack at night. Before our departure we held meetings again in all the regiments and battalions. Comrade Yudin, a representative of the Central Committee, gave a speech, as did many other political workers, myself included.
Airplanes were prowling everywhere, illuminating the area all around. We often had to interrupt our meetings. It was as if the enemy had found out about our meetings, were lighting the area with flares and then dropping bombs. Comrade Yudin had come from Moscow only to end up in this mess, and we were the ones who were told to protect him. After our speeches the soldiers pledged that they would carry out their orders, liberate Stalingrad, and link up with the Stalingrad units. The group decided to send a letter to comrade Stalin in which every regiment swore that when these Siberian soldiers were ordered into battle they would give everything they had to execute those orders and defeat the enemy.
That morning when the division left for battle it was good spirits all around, you couldn’t help feeling uplifted.
They ordered us to take Hills 132, 154.2, and 143.8, and the 339th and 347th Rifle Regiments moved in with artillery support. We’d been promised tank support for the offensive but hadn’t gotten any, so on the 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th our regiments attacked these hills without tanks. These hills were of great importance because they commanded a view of the entire city. Comrade Stalin knew these hills,88 and we set ourselves the task of taking them no matter what. Also, these hills would allow further advancement on Gumrak and eventual contact with the people in Stalingrad.
The hills were taken on September 19. Holding them wasn’t easy, but we held out until the 27th.
Dmitri Andrianovich Petrakov (Commissar in the 339th Rifle Regiment): On September 4, 1942, we were Lesnichestvo, in the Stalingrad region. We got the order to set out for the Kotluban station. We were on the march from the 5th to the 8th, around three hundred kilometers, and by daybreak on the 9th we reached the Kotluban station. That is when the air raids began. It was a massed air raid. Our regiment didn’t have a chance to break formation, so we were still marching in a long column when they started dropping bombs and pounding us with mortars and artillery. That was when we joined the battle. We didn’t have any intel beforehand. The area was completely flat and open, and only thing we could see in front of us was the hills, where the enemy was firing at us from his entrenchments. People started to dig in right then and there. We deployed in combat formations and began the assault of Hill 143.9 and Hill 154.2. There were lot of casualties.
That evening 2nd Battalion led the first attack wave and pressed the enemy. That first day we lost about 50 percent of our staff, and nearly all of the political staff. A German sniper and two tank operators remained in some shot-out tanks to keep an eye on 2nd Battalion, but when the battalion advanced those Germans were left behind. We saw someone from the political command staff aiming at the Germans. The Germans eventually worked out that they were being shot at from behind.
That evening something terrible happened. Men were rushing into a ravine without knowing where they were. The division lost about a thousand men altogether. The political workers had to work all night under fire.
Senior Sergeant Nina Mikhailovna Kokorina (Nurse, assistant deputy for political affairs, 347th Rifle Regiment): On our way to Stalingrad we covered 260 kilometers in three days. We did wonderfully on this trip. The girls always kept up with the soldiers. We’d march, ford rivers. The soldiers were often getting sores on their feet. We treated them. The girls were being thanked nearly every day.
We arrived in the area of the Kotluban station. I’ll never forget that first day. The attack began at five o’clock. There were two hills: 143.8 and 154.2. A few divisions had come before us, but none of them could take these hills. This was on September 10. It’s not something you’re used to, you don’t understand it. You can’t imagine what war is like. This was when the Germans threw their planes into the battle and started bombing our positions. We went around one of the hills and down into a ravine. That’s where we took our first casualties. We could feel it immediately. Before that, I didn’t really sense that this was something serious. It was like we were in training. The first casualty was from an antitank company. I rushed over to him. His guts were all coming out. I put everything back inside and bandaged him up. [ . . . ]
A German submachine gunner wearing a Red Army uniform infiltrated our ranks. He didn’t shoot at the soldiers or medics, but he immediately shot the first officer who appeared.
Lieutenant Tarnyuk, the battalion commander, ordered me to go dress the wounded and see where the shooting was coming from. I crawled to the right of 2nd Battalion’s position and noticed that someone was shooting toward us from that direction. Then I saw this private run off, and after a little while the shooting was coming from the left. I determined roughly where he was shooting from. There was a wounded soldier from 3rd Platoon. I sent him to report what I’d seen. I stayed behind to keep an eye on the gunner and our soldiers. While the soldier was gone, the submachine gunner disappeared and climbed into a tank that was blocking our path, about five hundred meters from the ravine. He took out the commander of 8th Company. My platoon commander, Ganchenko, took command. Half our platoon went there. But the enemy was covering a large area, we couldn’t cross it. Ganchenko ordered his men to go around the tank and kill that submachine gunner. They carried out his order quickly.
Nearly all the girls in our battalion were sent up for medals.
I want to talk about Sonya Fateyeva, who was wounded in that battle. She was from Tobolsk. Such a tall and robust girl. This one time in class, when we were still in Yazykovka, this officer showed up, and when she brought her hand down on his shoulder he lost his balance and fell over. We thought very highly of her. A wonderful girl, so friendly. If she saw that someone was a bit down, she’d make them feel better right away.
The Germans had been bombing our ravine since 5:00 P.M. I decided to try slipping through the firing line to get to our people. And I made it. There I discovered that Motya Gurina, a medic, had been wounded. The Germans had the area covered with mortar fire, and there were also airplanes and shelling. I’d nearly gotten to the last trenches. I could see a medic lying there. I crawled over and saw that it was Sofya. Her head was bandaged. She’d been shot in the head, no exit wound. Our sergeant major had tended to her. She’d been brought there from the front line. I don’t know how she made her way through the no-man’s-land.
I asked her: “Sofya, what happened?” “Well, I got hit. Lost a lot of blood.” I said: “You’ve got to get to the ravine.” She said—and I’ll never forget it—“I know that life is there, but I’m not going.” I didn’t try to order her. I didn’t have the right to.
Captain Ivan Vasilievich Maksin (Chief of the divisional political section in charge of the Komsomol): As a Komsomol worker, and having earlier been an educator of secondary school students, I strove to make myself into a true frontline Komsomol worker. I used the examples of Arnold Meri,89 Ilya Kuzin,90 and Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya91—Komsomol members who proved themselves to be heroes of the Patriotic War—in order to bring out the very best in people. In this way I made myself into a true frontline soldier while at the same time teaching the model of these heroic Komsomol members during discussions with Komsomol subunits and organizations, discussions with female members. [ . . . ]
The situation we found ourselves in near Kotluban made it quite difficult to maintain order among the Komsomol members, and our leaders were not always active in our Komsomol organizations. Comrade Sheiko was the model of a true Komsomol organizer. Every day he knew when and how many of our members were out of action, whether they were wounded, killed, sick, and so on. Every evening the Komsomol would sum up the day’s work. They would gather at an appointed place, usually after heavy fighting, during a moment of relative calm, and determine the outcomes of the day’s fighting: how many casualties there were in which Komsomol organization, how many were left, which heroic deeds were carried out by whom in what organization. At this meeting we summarized the Komsomol members’ heroic deeds, and then we developed a plan for publicizing them, so that these heroes could be known throughout the Komsomol. Members of the regimental bureau went back to their units, to the lowest-level Komsomol organizations, and relayed the topics and outcomes of the meeting, and the heroic spirit of the Komsomol, to the masses, to the front. We gathered small groups of Komsomol members in trenches, on the front lines, sometimes at night, and we reported the outcomes of the meeting and told them about the heroic deeds of members from other Komsomol units. The very next day everyone in the Komsomol knew who among them was a hero of the day.
These gatherings where we announced the heroes of the day—both men and women—one good example would be one that Bureau Secretary Sheiko himself convened at a medical company after the death of Lyolya Novikova, who was a member of the Komsomol, a hero, and a posthumous recipient of the Order of the Red Banner.
Everyone knew Lyolya Novikova. She didn’t immediately inspire the confidence that she would later show herself worthy of at the front. She looked more like a ballerina. During combat training she wore high heels. She worked as a draftsman, but she was always so eager to go to the front lines. Because she didn’t want to pursue her main profession, many people thought that she lacked discipline. But she kept asking to serve in the battalion as a medic so she could carry the wounded back from the front line. Her lack of discipline ended up being the very reason she was sent to the front.
September 11, 1942 was the division’s heaviest day of fighting, especially for the 339th Rifle Regiment. For many hours of intense fighting Lyolya Novikova displayed exceptional heroism. She tended to the wounded and dragged them to back to cover while under heavy machine-gun and mortar fire, never considering which unit or company they were from. That day she used more than fifty packs of bandages, one pack for every wounded soldier, meaning that she dressed and recovered fifty wounded men and officers from the battlefield. That evening she came back from the field. I’d been in that regiment before, during combat training, and the two of us had a conversation: “Lyolya, you’re a good Komsomol member, you’re well educated, and you’ve got real talent for reciting poetry. If only you were more disciplined you would be able to join the party. We would recommend you. Show us you can do it.” She said that she couldn’t join the party because she hadn’t yet proved herself in battle. “I don’t know how I’ll do in really heavy combat,” she said. “If I do well at the front and prove myself, I’ll join the party, but first I’ve got to get to the front.” She got what she wanted.
Her sleeves were rolled up when she returned from the heavy fighting, and her forearms were plastered with dried blood clear up to her elbows, and there was nowhere to wash because of a problem with the water situation, not just for washing but for drinking as well. She came back to us at sunset, by which time I’d already got word of her display of heroism in battle. The men nearly had to drag her away from the heavy fighting. The first thing she said when she arrived was: “Now I can ask that you enroll me in the party. Now that I’ve proved myself, proved that I’ll never be afraid of heavy combat.” She was so delighted as she told us about the shells and bullets flying around her, and how the soldiers would yell: “Help me, sister!” And about how she dragged the wounded soldiers from the field. She was full of these impressions from that life at the front, and she begged so earnestly to be enrolled as a member of the party.
There was more heavy fighting the next day. The battalion commander, whose life Lyolya Novikova had saved when she dragged him out of harm’s way at night, gave her a pistol. She slung it over her shoulder and set off for her second day of heavy combat. Two hours into the fight she was shot by a German submachine gun: three bullets to the head. And Lyolya was dead.
So when comrade Sheiko came to the company’s Komsomol organization, the first item on the agenda was this, the heroic deeds of Lyolya Novikova. I should also mention that this was an exemplary meeting as far as the education of Komsomol members is concerned. Comrade Sheiko entered the room. All the Komsomol members stood up. He greeted them and said: “This meeting of the medical company Komsomol is now in session. There is one item for today’s agenda: the heroic deeds of Komsomol member Lyolya Novikova.” After bringing the meeting to order, he rose to speak, seeing as he knew what she had done and was able to tell the story. First he asked everyone to rise and honor the memory of Lyolya Novikova, a hero who was killed in action while fighting the German aggressors. Everyone stood up, many with tears in their eyes, and everyone felt bad for Lyolya. She’d been so cheerful and lively. Comrade Sheiko recounted her heroic deeds. Then some young women spoke, and they vowed to fight the Germans just as Lyolya had. After these oaths, the Komsomol meeting resolved that all its members would prove themselves worthy of the memory of Lyolya Novikova as they fought the German occupiers of their socialist motherland. The meeting likewise resolved to ask the party bureau to accept her application, to take her into the ranks of the Bolsheviks and count her among the members of the Communist party.
The heroic deeds of Lyolya Novikova immediately became the heritage of Komsomol members in all the regimental organizations. There were articles about Lyolya Novikova in our frontline and divisional newspapers, including one that I wrote. Afterward the Komsomol petitioned for her posthumous decoration. Lyolya Novikova was posthumously awarded the Order of the Red Banner. We wrote her mother a heartfelt letter, but there was no reply because she had since been evacuated from Voronezh.
Lieutenant Colonel Afanasy Matveyevich Svirin (Deputy commander for political affairs, 308th Rifle Division): In Kotluban, on Hill 154.2, we encountered tanks for the first time. There were about forty of them. On September 17 my divisional commander and I were at the observation post. The tanks were moving toward the 351st and 347th Regiments. I called two instructors from the political section, told them to go provide moral support to the antitank units before they engaged the tanks, to help them stay firm. They accepted their orders and tried to convince everyone to fight to the death, to not let those tanks past. We opened fire as soon as the tanks came, gave them a heavy barrage of antitank fire. All of the regiment’s artillery was there on that hill, and we took out about a dozen tanks right then. The rest of them turned around and went back. The tanks were on fire for everyone to see, and every soldier could see for himself that tanks weren’t all that scary if you took the fight to them. While the soldiers were in their slit trenches, we told them that the guys in a tank can’t see someone in a trench, and within five meters they can’t even shoot at him. After that we began our assault of the hill.
Major Vasily Georgievich Belugin (Commissar in the 347th Rifle Regiment): The 347th Rifle Regiment had been placed in reserve to support the divisional commander. The regimental commander and I had put in five long months of productive work getting this regiment well trained, and we could not agree to our assignment in this order of battle. We had a detailed plan of how the division could complete its objectives, and on September 10 we took these suggestions to the divisional commander. Our plan was accepted, the 351st Regiment was held back, and we became part of the main strike force. Our mission was to attack and defeat the enemy on Hill 154.2, take control of the hill, and then move on to Brovkin and Novaya Nadezhda. On September 18 we set about completing this mission. [ . . . ] We dug in under the cover of darkness, and despite the horrific amounts of enemy fire that morning of September 18—and with the men in exceptionally high spirts—we took Hill 154.2 in one strong push.
1st and 2nd Battalions went on to complete the regiment’s next tasks. They attacked Brovkin and Novaya Nadezhda, and by eleven o’clock they’d taken Brovkin and continued further, despite heavy losses. 3rd Battalion secured our gains by organizing a defensive perimeter of Hill 154.2. This Hill commanded a view of the entire area. You could see eight to ten kilometers away from there. From 10:00 A.M. there was enemy mortar and artillery fire that almost never stopped, and a whole fleet of low-flying aircraft coming in groups of ten to fifteen bombed us until dark without ever letting up. They dropped an incredible amount of deadly metal.
[ . . . ] A report from the observation post said that more than twenty enemy vehicles had arrived and were unloading infantry. Enemy infantry units were getting into battle formations before our eyes. The first enemy counterattack had begun. This is where our commander’s plan was revealed. Regimental commander Barkovsky threw everything he had at the enemy column: all of 3rd Battalion’s firepower, including the reserves. The regiment’s mortar company on Hill 154.2 had already shot the last shells from their third ammunition reserve. Vasily Boltenko brought up his 45mm guns to the firing line and started to set the enemy vehicles on fire.
Junior Lieutenant Vasily Yakovlevich Boltenko (Platoon commander and deputy battalion commander for combat units of the 347th Rifle Regiment): The fighting moved to a hill that was of great significance: Hill 154.2. The 347th Rifle Regiment was tasked with fighting for this hill from the 17th to the 18th. The situation was grim, and there was a large concentration of enemy forces. I was with 1st Battalion during these fights. Heavy enemy fire was coming from our right flank. As soon as the gunner fired at the bunker, the breach man was killed. Our battery commander was killed two hundred meters away from me. My helmet was hit by a projectile.
Our guns didn’t retreat after the infantry had taken the hill. I had two Kazakhs drag the guns. Regimental commander Barkovsky was near the hill when eight German tanks came on the counterattack. I disabled two of them, and some antitank riflemen got the rest. They were all ours. The one tank I shot three times, and two shots stopped the other one dead in its tracks.
Senior Sergeant Vasily Boltenko, recipient of the Order of the Patriotic War, First Class
Major Vasily Georgievich Belugin (Commissar in the 347th Rifle Regiment): A new threat was moving in from the left flank: a formation of thirty enemy tanks was slowly advancing on Hill 154.2. Enemy infantry were following close behind. Submachine gunners were on top of the tanks. The regimental commander decided to use everything we had on that hill. With weapon in hand, he had us take the firing positions of the neighboring division’s mortar company. I got about ten antitank rifles. Major Barkovsky, the regimental commander, wanted to set up some powerful close-range machine-gun fire.92 He gathered all the antitank guns, checked them over himself, indicated the targets, and right at that moment he was mortally wounded. He wanted to tell us something but couldn’t finish what he was saying. [ . . . ]
The tanks were getting closer. I called Igor Mirokhin, the chief of staff and regiment favorite: “Well, my friend, the regiment’s yours. Remember back in Cheremushka when you said, ‘I’ll be on staff for a year or two, and then they’ll trust me with a regiment.’ It’s only been two months!” “I hereby take command of the regiment.” Igor Mirokhin checked the firing positions and then used his antitank rifle to shoot at the tanks from the foxhole next to mine.
Dive-bombers and low-flying planes attacked our hill like ravens. But that wasn’t the most important thing. The most important thing was to stop that first tank. Then everything else would fall into place. Igor Mirokhin was an excellent shot. He was the first one in our division to shoot down a Messerschmitt with an antitank rifle. And now he shot at the tank on the right and stopped it with his first shot, and with the second shot he set the middle tank on fire. It’s a shame the cartridges for antitank guns aren’t lubricated. Getting them out of the magazine can be difficult. “You need a shovel.” And Igor Mirokhin used his entrenching tool to open the lock, fired, and then a third enemy tank burst into flames. Two hundred meters. At 150 meters the enemy changed his battle formations. The flanking tanks came into the main line and began moving right up to the front line. Igor Mirokhin stopped a fourth tank. “Come on, let’s see some fire!” The tank caught fire. And on his sixth shot at the fifth tank, the two shots converged: Mirokhin’s and that of the enemy tank. And that was it for Mirokhin. It hit him right in the head. This excellent man, this brave warrior, this soldier with nerves of steel, was decapitated instantly. His brains were all over me.
Four and a half hours of this infernal attack! Four and a half hours of such superhuman effort! I took command of the regiment. Our 45mm guns and the antitank rifle platoon had completely routed the enemy. The tank attack had been repelled.
It was getting dark. I started to bring together the commanders. It was quiet on the hill. A handful of submachine gunners, ten men, two antitank rifles, and fourteen mortars, only one of which was working. I decided to report our situation to divisional command immediately. A representative of the 1st Guards Army, a battalion commissar whose name I can’t remember, was sent to division as a messenger for the 347th Rifle Regiment.
Tanks were burning all around like giant candles. We had to assist the wounded right away. We had to get help from division right away.
The fight continued at the same level of intensity until the 19th. Division brought its reserves into battle. The antitank battalion and the training battalion got into combat formations. Heads of departments, a chemical platoon, a sapper platoon, artillery horsemen—everyone fought directly as soldiers on the front line.
On the 19th Colonel Gurtyev, the divisional commander, came over to my command post. He was directly leading the battle together with Svirin, the divisional commissar. They give the preliminary signal to attack. What was going on? There was no indication that the commander of the training battalion had got the order. Did it get to him in time? Get him on the line right now! There’s no connection. Despite their best efforts the signalmen were unable to reestablish communication. Again and again the communication line was cut off by enemy fire.
“Belugin, have you got someone you can count on?” asked Gurtyev. “We’re attacking in five minutes. The training battalion is located over there.” He pointed to the northwest. “We’ve got to find the training battalion and get them my message.”
I called Seligeyev. A long-distance runner, a member of Spartak.93 He’d also been known to repeatedly cover a hundred kilometers a day during combat training. His mission was to get the order to the commander of the training battalion, and also to report back to say whether the order had been carried out.
Seligeyev crawled off in that direction to carry out the divisional commander’s order. I still don’t know how he covered that kilometer and a half so quickly, but he got back in time to report to the commander with written confirmation that the training battalion commander had received the orders and would begin attacking as planned.
A red flare shot up into the sky. The artillery extended its fire in depth. The attack began. The special units hung back. They were pushed forward. The attack was successful. We had finally secured the hills.
I was wounded during the attack, and on September 19 at five o’clock my daughter Maya pulled me into a tent. She told me joyfully that the order had been carried out, and she whispered to me: “You’ll get better and be back here in no time.”
I ended up in a field hospital.
Senior Sergeant Nina Mikhailovna Kokorina (Nurse, assistant deputy for political affairs, 347th Rifle Regiment): On September 1 [sic] we took up defensive positions. We did this at night, and apparently we’d come quite close to the German positions. It was me, Zina Reshetova, Anya Shuvanova, and two other girls, Roshina and Arkhatova, and were on guard duty, protecting our commanders. At dawn we heard a shout from the German side: Halt! It turned out that we were surrounded on three sides. The ravine we were in had only one narrow way out, and it was being covered by a tank and was occupied by German submachine gunners. We were almost surrounded, with no chance of help. There were maybe sixteen of us left, no more. We stayed there until September 18. Didn’t get food or water for two days. There were a lot of wounded. It was impossible to get them out. We dressed their wounds. There were canteens with water rations. We gave this water to the wounded, looked after them, dug a little trench. The Germans were closing in. On September 17 we asked for reinforcements but none came. The regimental commander ordered our battalion to hold our positions. The whole battalion stayed and did not leave.
We had to do a lot of work with the soldiers. Many of the soldiers were doubting themselves, unsure whether we could take it. We talked with them. You’d crawl into a trench and start telling them about the heroic deeds of soldiers and officers. We’d tell them about Private Kosykh,94 who was part of a group of six Komsomol members that held back an assault of sixty Germans. That was in our own battalion. He let the Germans come within ten meters, and then started throwing grenades. Meanwhile a machine gun was shooting at them from their flank. He took a soldier, Yefimov, and sneaked over to the trench where the shooting was coming from. When he got there he chucked in a few grenades and yelled: “Battalion, after me!” Six men (the supposed battalion) followed him. He brought back two German machine guns, a lot of rifles, and thirty prisoners. Now he’s on a course for senior lieutenants. He was given the Order of the Red Star. Those are the kinds of things we talked about.
On September 18 we got our orders: our group, such as it was, was to attack and occupy Hill 143.6. Our soldiers were in great spirits. They’d been there for two days and held back the German onslaught. That really raised their spirits. We didn’t have any casualties. We’d only had casualties on the first day. On September 17 the girls managed to get through to the ravine and carry back the wounded. We worked all night long.
On September 18 we attacked.
Dmitri Andrianovich Petrakov (Commissar in the 339th Rifle Regiment): September 18 marked the peak of our efforts to take the hill, and we still had about ten kilometers of even terrain to get there. I’d been with the company on several attacks, and we’d suffered great losses. On September 18 we were ordered to take the hill. [ . . . ] Our orders were to reach the battalion’s position that night no matter what and to get to work—bearing in mind that the artillery preparation would begin at five o’clock—and then we’d attack at night. We made our way through literally all of the trenches. Our men only had tracer rounds to shoot with. We got them fed and explained the importance of these hills, and we promised them decorations: an Order of the Red Star for a captured German soldier, the Order of the Red Banner for an officer, and the Order of Lenin for whoever gets to the top first. Many of the men said that even this wouldn’t encourage them to take prisoners—as soon as they found a German, he’d be a goner. We were assigned an artillery regiment and two Katyusha rocket battalions, in addition to our own battalion. Then we started to fire on the Germans, going on the offensive at six o’clock.95
Major General Leonty Nikolayevich Gurtyev (Commander of the 308th Rifle Division): We didn’t complete every part of our mission, but we did take those hills.
We were summoned by the front commander, comrade Malenkov,96 and Yeryomenko, and they talked with us until the beginning of the attack. After we took those hills they didn’t have much to say against our division.
It’s not easy to say why we didn’t complete the mission. Maybe it’s because we didn’t get any help from the neighboring units on our left. But you’ve got to know the overall situation in the sector. Generally, though, we didn’t catch a lot of flak over it, which I’ve got to say is something to be proud of, because there were people at that time who did. [ . . . ]
The blocking detachment didn’t get any work on our account. There were isolated cases of desertion and self-mutilation, but nothing on a large scale. [ . . . ] Most of the soldiers carried themselves well and bravely. You might even say that they weren’t restrained enough: once they got going, you couldn’t hold them back. [ . . . ]
Interestingly, we acquired these hills via a committee decision. We’d taken possession of Hill 143.8, but our neighbor thought that he had taken it. I told General Moskalenko97 that I had taken Hill 143.8, but he didn’t believe me. We ended up having to send over a surveyor, who got the hill back in our possession.
There was still more controversy and trouble with Hill 154.2. Our neighbor on the left was interfering, claiming that he was the one who’d taken it. His training battalion had taken the slope on our left, but our units were the ones that took the hill itself. Their chief of staff was Shulgin, who I’d served with before, but we nearly came to blows over this hill. [ . . . ] On September 26–27 we were pulled back and sent to Stalingrad. We marched for three days.
Lieutenant Colonel Afanasy Matveyevich Svirin (Deputy commander for political affairs, 308th Rifle Division): On September 27 we got the order to withdraw from the front line, and on the 28th we got the order to leave for Stalingrad, and to be there by the 30th at the latest. We took a look at the map: 250 kilometers. But orders are orders. Things ended up just as we’d hoped: we were going to Stalingrad. When people found out that we were going straight to Stalingrad, that we’d be crossing from the west to the east bank of the Volga and then right back to the west again, they took this news with joy.
We had to take the long way. We started telling people the traditions of the defense of Tsaritsyn. In Stalingrad we made comrade Stalin’s role in the defense of Tsaritsyn the fundamental pillar of our political work, along with that of comrades Voroshilov and Parkhomenko. When Malenkov and Zhukov visited us, they said that comrade Stalin had said that Stalingrad would not surrender, no matter the cost. You can die, but you cannot leave Stalingrad. Later they explained why. Beyond Stalingrad was the steppe, then Kuybyshev and Moscow. We repeated all of this to the soldiers and warned them what would happen if we surrendered Stalingrad. [ . . . ]
Before our crossing to the west bank there were meetings in every regiment, battalion, and company. We said: “Take a look—Stalingrad. There are the factories, and there is the Volga, the wide Russian river, and over there are the buildings of Stalingrad, the city where the great Stalin once lived. Our division came into being on the banks of the long, gray Irtysh River, and now we come to the wide banks of this Russian river, the Volga. Back there we learned, and now we’re going to put that learning into practice. It was here that comrade Stalin once gave the order for all the rafts and boats to be moved away from the bank so that they wouldn’t trouble the men or inspire fear. We too have crossed to the west bank of the Volga, and we too are sending back all of the boats, so that they don’t trouble the men, who must only go forward.”
That was how the meetings went, always on a high ideological and political level, and the soldiers came forward and swore that they would defend Stalingrad to the very end.
Major General Leonty Nikolayevich Gurtyev (Commander of the 308th Rifle Division): By daybreak we were still ferrying everyone across, and I was gone to army HQ. We ended up having to move into an area that was being bombed by the Germans. This didn’t turn out well. Some of us moved along the embankment, including me and my commanders, Stafeyev, Smirnov, my adjutant, and the NKVD chief. Others took an indirect route. It was not going to be easy for us to reach our destination safely. We had about three kilometers to go. The enemy spotted us. This narrow strip of land along the riverbank—the only land still held by Soviet forces by the time we reached Stalingrad—the enemy could see all of it from the height he occupied. We weren’t in formation, but the enemy still spotted us and started bombing so we couldn’t get through. There were German submachine gunners in this museum-type building, and we were under fire from various mortars. By the time we got to where we were going we’d lost two or three dozen men.
All day long I was busy with reconnaissance matters and the line. My sapper battalion, communications battalion, mortar battalion, and the 351st Regiment had come here with me. Two of my regiments were still on the west [sic] bank. [ . . . ] The 351st Regiment held the line at the Silikat factory. Our regiments were around 300–350 people. The enemy concentrated artillery fire on them, bombed them from planes, and they kept on fighting.
I personally led the 351st Regiment to our initial positions at night, when we still hadn’t gotten our bearings in this area. At army HQ we were assigned guides from the division already there. At first we advanced successfully and took over the entire Silikat factory. We’d already made it to its western walls. We stopped after some heavy fire from the Germans, who had now gone on the offensive. All day we were under heavy enemy fire, we’d been taking losses since that morning, and the regiment was weary from the march. There were a lot of wounded in the regiment. Their chief of communications came to me at my command post in the Gastronom store. He was the last one. He was frightened as he ran up to me. He reported that everyone in the regiment was dead. I gave him one of my officers and sent him back to Markelov with a message. He didn’t make it back. Afterwards the 339th Rifle Regiment moved in here, and then the fighting went on both day and night against superior enemy forces.
Lieutenant Colonel Alexei Stepanovich Smirnov (Chief of the divisional political section): The 351st Regiment was lost on October 5. [ . . . ] On October 4 this sector had to be held no matter what. We got an order saying that the regiment had to stay put. At around 11:00 P.M., Markelov, the regiment’s commander, was killed. Frolov took command of the regiment and kept up the defense. Eventually the Germans managed to surround the regiment and destroy it completely. Only two men escaped the encirclement, but apparently they’d run away, so I sent them back. We got word on how the regiment fought from regimental commander Frolov.
Lieutenant Colonel Afanasy Matveyevich Svirin (Deputy commander for political affairs, 308th Rifle Division): There were eleven men left in the regiment. The last of them to fall was regimental commissar Frolov, and the regimental commander was severely wounded. Those eleven soldiers had survived because they’d been sent on errands to divisional HQ, regimental HQ, and so on. [ . . . ]
We felt very bad about Colonel Mikhalyov, the 339th Rifle Regiment’s chief of staff, who died together with the entire staff. He was a remarkable officer, competent and strict, and he was well-liked in the regiment. The young nurses talked about him as if he were their own father. You could follow him anywhere, follow any order.
Head of the political department of the 308th Rifle Division, Lieutenant Colonel Alexei Smirnov
On October 6 I got a message from Mikhalyov requesting that I reconcile him with Sandin, the regimental commissar. I knew Mikhaylov well and decided to take Varshavchik, our chief of political affairs, and go to the regiment immediately. But we’d gone no more than fifty meters when we came across a messenger from the divisional commander with a request to come resolve some kind of argument. I went, and I got held up with the commander and two majors trying to determine the exact positions of our units. I’d just passed through the door on my way to the regiment when I got the report that a bomb had hit them directly, killing the entire staff of the 339th Rifle Regiment. Seventeen people died, including a representative from army HQ.
Alexander Fyodorovich Koshkarev (Party bureau secretary, 339th Rifle Regiment): Our unit arrived in Stalingrad, and we were ferried to the west bank of the Volga on October 1 and 2. [ . . . ] On the night from the 2nd to the 3rd our subunit took over the main defense at the Airport Garden. We were able to equip our defensive lines at night. Enemy aircraft were constantly in operation during the day. From the 3rd to the 4th our units continued entrenching and improving our defenses.
Our regimental HQ was in the Gastronom building. To the left of that building was the Airport Garden, where our battalion was located. The special units were to the right of the building (a company of submachine gunners, a group of antitank riflemen). We had no artillery, they were still coming. Divisional HQ had been in this building, but they left on the night of the 3rd because the Germans were trying to shell the building.
On October 4 the Germans launched an attack on our combat units in the Airport Garden and on this building that housed our regimental staff and subunits of the headquarters company. At around eleven o’clock, fifteen tanks and infantry launched a heavy assault. The Germans were constantly trying to break through our defenses on the right side. [ . . . ] On October 4 the fighting continued all day long. Our units held their ground, and the building that the Germans were pressing on stayed in our hands. Lieutenant Shonin, a Komsomol member, demonstrated exceptional heroism there.98 He’d applied for admission to the party, but we didn’t get a chance to take him: he was killed on the 5th. He’d taken out three tanks himself.
Lieutenant Colonel Mikhalyov
By nightfall we had left the Gastronom building because we thought it was a bad idea to stay there. We’d lost some of our soldiers and officers, and we knew that the Germans wanted to take the building at any price, but we didn’t get any reinforcements. We moved to a new place about 100–150 meters down from the factory clinic, a T-shaped building. [ . . . ] During a planning meeting of the unit commanders, a bomb fell directly on the headquarters, and everyone there was killed: the regimental commander and commissar, the chief of staff, two deputy regimental commanders, the deputy chief of the political department, a senior battalion commissar, a front representative, an adjutant, and others. I just happened to be away because I was supposed to go across the Volga for some documents. The survivors included me, Zhigalin,99 and Fugenfirov.100Zhigalin took command. I hadn’t been in the regiment for long. I knew Zhigalin and asked him to take command, and we established communication with the battalions and with divisional HQ. I remained at the building to organize the work of digging out bodies.
Major Vasily Georgievich Belugin (Commissar in the 347th Rifle Regiment): On the evening of October 19 I reported to the divisional commander and told him that I had recovered and wished to resume my duties. After the commander’s warm and joyful greeting, and the heartfelt reception from Commissar Svirin and all the staff workers, I felt inspired with a renewed courage and certainty in our just cause, in our resistance.
Lieutenant Boris Shonin
They brought me up to speed on the situation. “This is quite different than it was at Kotluban at Hill 154.2,” Colonel Gurtyev told me. “By the way, did you know we had a dispute over Hill 154.2? Everyone was denying that we took it, and we had to drag out a whole army commission to set the record straight. It’s too bad you weren’t there. Things are different here. Take a look—the Volga is fifty meters back, and the enemy is 150 meters in front of us. Not a lot of room to maneuver! Every day this two-hundred-meter strip is peppered with any number of shells, mortars, bullets. We’re used to it, but you’ve been laid up in a quiet hospital. Wait, don’t go to the regiment, stay with us for a while.”
Every minute either Colonel Gurtyev or Commissar Svirin tried to convince me to stay a little longer. I remained their guest at the command post until late at night. “Stay with us a bit longer.” “No, I’m off.” “Off you go then. Chamov is the new commanding officer over there. Get to know him. It’s a difficult sector. Did you know that the 351st Regiment is gone? What’s left of them got transferred to 347th and 339th Rifle Regiments. None of their officers survived. Savkin died bravely right after Barkovsky. A wonderful commander, tireless fighter. Colonel Mikhalyov died, the commander of 339th Rifle Regiment. He died stupidly in a building that took a direct hit from a two-ton bomb. He was buried together with his staff workers.”
“Don’t use a building for a command post. Better to have it on open ground—but with plenty of camouflage. Buildings are dangerous. Use them as strong points and dig communication lines between them. Make forward exits that point toward the enemy, deep slit trenches, and use them. You’ve got to be cunning and change your firing positions often.”
And with those parting words I went to see my new commanding officer at the 347th Rifle Regiment.
Lieutenant Colonel Andrei Sergeyevich Chamov (Commander of the 347th Rifle Regiment): In Stalingrad our regiment took up the defense of the southern section of Airport Garden, Petrozavodskaya Street, and the southern section of the Barricades factory. We were up against the enemy’s 305th Infantry Division, which included the 276th, 277th, and 278th Regiments. On October 17 the enemy launched an aerial bombardment of our combat formations, in combination with a massive artillery and mortar barrage. It was clear that the enemy was going to advance and attack the sector our regiment had been ordered to defend.
By 10:00 A.M. enemy tanks broke through the sector on our left, where the 685th Infantry Regiment was, and continued along Buguruslyanka Street to my regiment’s command post. There were twenty tanks with submachine gunners.
At 11:00 A.M. another group of tanks broke though the southern perimeter of Airport Garden and the northern part of the Barricades factory, and they had us surrounded.
Fighting in Stalingrad’s industrial district, October 1942. Photographer: Georgy Samsonov
The divisional commander ordered me not to withdraw but to keep fighting inside the encirclement. [ . . . ] The men in our regiment’s antitank battery, commanded by Sergeant Boltenko, distinguished themselves in this fight. They took out six tanks. With his guns destroyed, his crew continued fighting from slit trenches, using antitank grenades and petrol bombs.
This fight left our regiment divided by the enemy, and 1st Battalion was cut off from 2nd Battalion. About eight tanks attacked the 1st Battalion command post, which was located in a building at the Sormovskaya Power Station. Captain Zalipukhin was the commissar then. The German tanks destroyed the station. They shot at the doors and windows from sixty to seventy meters away. The building caught fire. They stormed the station—infantry at about company-strength. Zalipukhin, two medics, and two signal corps men were in the building. They repelled seven attacks from 4:00 P.M. to 7:00 P.M. Captain Zalipukhin himself killed thirty-two fascists with his pistol, some grenades, and a submachine gun. With this commissar in the lead, this group of soldiers kept up the fight for three hours in the power station under siege.
All of them were wounded, including Zalipukhin, but they did not leave that command post until I ordered them to. Zalipukhin carried the wounded battalion commander and chief of staff from the battlefield. The two medics and one of the signals corps men died in that building, asphyxiated by smoke.
At 6:00 P.M., some thirteen enemy tanks were approaching my command post, where our headquarters staff was located. They began firing directly at us from eighty to ninety meters away. We were taking submachine-gun fire at the same time. That was when our deputy chief of staff for reconnaissance, Lieutenant Vasily Kalinin, came back from a scouting mission. He crawled up to the command post, grabbed an antitank rifle, and went to fight the German tanks on his own. In twelve to fifteen minutes, he burned out five German tanks and disabled six. Then he took a group of seven submachine gunners to launch a counterattack against the paratroopers trying to break into the command post. This counterattack resulted in the deaths of more than a hundred fascists, and Kalinin advanced about 150 meters and dug in.
Senior Lieutenant Vasily Petrovich Kalinin (Deputy chief of staff for reconnaissance, 347th Rifle Regiment): On October 16–17 our combat formations and rear positions were taking a lot of heavy fire from enemy mortars, machine guns, and airplanes. The bombs made the earth groan. The bombing started up again the morning of the 17th, and they launched an attack at about 2:00 P.M. Right then I was in a bunker, on the telephone. I was asking about the condition of our units and about enemy activity. They told me that enemy machine-gun and mortar fire had stopped. I started transferring movements of enemy firepower from my situation map to my notebook where I keep track of these things. I lit a cigarette, and right then I could hear the sound of engines. I rushed out and heard the rumbling of tanks coming from the railway line. I ran to the command observation post, which was about three or four hundred meters away. I could see about ten tanks approaching in dispersed formation. The enemy had managed to take out the observation post, which I still hadn’t been informed of. Down below there were antitank soldiers from a neighboring unit. I went down to them and grabbed an antitank rifle. It had been raining a lot the day before, and because of someone’s lax standards, the rifle was rusty. I got the thing set up and aimed at a tank. I fired, but was short by a hundred meters or so. Then I lined up the coarse sight and hit the tank head-on. It started sparking like an arc welder. But I could see that it was still coming and that its turret was rotating. I adjusted my aim, thinking that I could hit him first, but we ended up firing at the same time. I hit their gas tank, and their shell hit the upper gable of the building.
The tank caught fire, and after three or four minutes it went up like a box of matches. I saw another tank come out from the same building and try to tow the first. I shot the second tank when it had just come out, and it too caught fire. After I’d set two tanks on fire I thought I’d change my position in this building. I saw another tank coming out. I wanted to take my weapon and see what was going on at the command post, so I got out of there, and right then the tank shot straight at me, hit my antitank rifle and bent it out of shape. I hadn’t managed to shoot first. Anyway, it was slow going because of all the rust: after I fired I’d have to open the lock with my foot, which made it difficult and slowed down my rate of fire. I was stunned from the shell, and I felt a sharp pain and sort of lost consciousness for a while. There were clouds of dust everywhere and I couldn’t see anything. I thought, I’ve got to get out of here or he’ll finish me off. Nothing from the command post, as if there was no one there. I took my rifle, my runner took some cartridges, and we left. On the way I helped a wounded soldier and ordered the runner to get him out of there. He carried him off and returned with more armor-piercing cartridges, which I’d told him to get. I was stunned, couldn’t hear much, my hands were bloody. The tanks were advancing slowly, with a group of submachine gunners right behind. When I shot, the infantry ran down into a ravine that leads to a cemetery. The runner pointed out that the tank was crossing the railway line and was [sic] meters away from the command post. I grabbed my antitank rifle and shot the front section of the tank nine times, but I couldn’t get through the armor. I decided to shoot at his side, and I let him have it. The tank stopped moving but kept shooting. Then I took an antitank grenade and a petrol bomb, and I told the runner to open fire if they opened the hatch. The tank commander opened the hatch, and the runner shot at him. I crawled up to the tank, threw the bottle and then the grenade. The tank caught fire. [ . . . ]
Someone showed me that a tank was coming, but the antitank gun was two hundred meters away. I rushed toward the tank. I thought it was just a small tank, I’d take care of it quickly. But you know, this tank was coming at us on an asphalt road, it had broken through our defenses and was coming at us from the rear. The tank came up and started shooting at our combat formations as it collected his own men and sent them back from the front line. Then I took thirteen men. It wasn’t easy working out the boundaries between the Germans’ positions and our own, and we were often mistaken about who was where. I crawled to the next building, where there was a fork in the railway line, and I set up my antitank rifle. I shot twice, and the fourth tank caught fire. There was a tank down past the school, too far away. I didn’t think I could reach it, but I thought I’d try. It turned out that I was out of cartridges, and I didn’t know how to reload the antitank rifle because I’d never had to learn. I was really annoyed that I couldn’t open the rifle. Then I accidentally pushed a button that opened the chamber, and I put in the cartridges. There were tanks in the area where the others were on fire, and one tank was firing at the building I was in. I listened, and I could hear someone else shooting at the tank with another antitank rifle. There were sparks, but nothing was taking. Then I crawled across the railway line with my rifle, climbed down into the ravine, and went the 150 meters to their forward line, about a hundred meters from the tank. “Now,” I thought, “I’m going to get you if it’s the last thing I do.” I fired once, then twice—nothing. I got closer and fired again, but the rifle couldn’t penetrate the armor. I fired twelve times from every direction. It wouldn’t burn. Then I crawled back with my rifle, took a runner to carry a grenade and a petrol bomb, and then we crawled back to my last position near the tank. We were about forty meters away. Only one chance to get this right. I crawled up closer, tossed one at the front of the tank. It immediately caught fire. I took advantage of this and threw two grenades, before hurrying back to our own forward positions with my runner.
Private Fyodor Maximovich Skvortsov (Telephone operator, 308th Rifle Division): There were bombs and shells going off all the time. They would sever our communications, and we didn’t have enough wire. We had to make connections with used wires. This affected the sound quality, but it still did the job. One time during an enemy attack our communications suddenly stopped working. A submachine gunner had crawled up to our line and cut our wire into bits. I started reconnecting the line, and he started shooting at me. I lay down by the railway, stayed put about fifteen minutes, and then crawled back to the command post, the communication line still intact. [ . . . ]
One time I had to run a current through a bare rod. The current went right up my arm and through my teeth. There were times when we used barbed wire. You can even complete a circuit by stringing together a few men holding hands.
Senior Sergeant Nina Mikhailovna Kokorina (Nurse, assistant deputy for political affairs, 347th Rifle Regiment): At first our medical company was on the island. The girls had a lot of work to do there. It was eight hundred meters over the island to the ferry, and we took the wounded only as far as the shore. From there they were taken and loaded onto boats, then carried with straps or stretchers to the regimental aid station on the sand. [ . . . ] We couldn’t build fires, so everything had to be done in the dark. There were some first aid workers who did nothing but carry the wounded. The island was under a constant mortar barrage because the enemy knew that our support units were here and that our reinforcements were coming through this island. [ . . . ]
They forced us back on October 18. We had to move back together with the battalion command post. The Germans had cut off the regimental command post, and we didn’t know where our regiment was. We went straight to a workshop at the Barricades factory. This was the morning of October 19. We spent the day there, because it was impossible to get the wounded across the river. [ . . . ]
That evening it turned out that we were surrounded. We spent a whole night and day at the Barricades factory, but we had no chance of leaving because there was nowhere to go, the enemy had set up machine guns all around, they were even throwing grenades. The Germans had come within five meters of us. We used grenades just like the soldiers. That night we decided to fight our way out of there. There were a lot of Germans, according to the intelligence report, and there wasn’t that many of us. So we had to use our brains. We knocked out an enormous hole in one of the walls of the workshop, and we all crawled out through this hole to escape without losing anyone. We made it to the riverbank. [ . . . ] On October 21 I was wounded on the riverbank and got sent to the medical battalion. At first they were going to send me eighty kilometers away from our field hospital, but there were rumors that our unit was leaving; I was afraid I’d be separated from my unit, so I simply ran away from the field hospital and went to our command post. They packed me off that very night because there was no way they could let me stay—I had a serious head injury. I was wounded when there was a direct hit to our bunker, and battalion commander Posylkin was wounded at the same time. He had to be packed off too. I haven’t been back to Stalingrad since October 21.
Private Fyodor Maximovich Skvortsov (Telephone operator, 308th Rifle Division): On the 22nd the 351st Regiment started to retreat. The regimental commander wrote a note to the general saying that the regiment wanted to pull back. This note was taken to the command post, and from there Tarasov ordered me to deliver it to the general. I set off with machine-gun fire and mortar shells coming from all around. Everything was coming apart, buildings were falling down. I crawled about three hundred meters to the general and handed him the message. The general refused to retreat and kept his men where they were, but it wasn’t long before we had to leave anyway because we were out of options.
Major Vladimir Makarovich Sovchinsky (Deputy commander for political affairs, 339th Rifle Division): On October 22 we received an address from the Military Council of the Stalingrad Front to all communists and defenders of Stalingrad. We started to go through this address in the units. Party members were brought together in the workshop for an all-regimental meeting. There were around seven or eight people. We didn’t manage to get through everything because the enemy launched an attack on the workshops. All the communists, including the party bureau secretary, who had only just arrived, were dismissed. It was ordered that a party member must be in each workshop and that no one was to leave without permission. We held the workshops for two days. At one of them, half of the shop was ours, and the other half was the enemy’s. We’d never used as much ammunition as we did on those days. When we ran out of cartridges, we used F-1 grenades. We had a lot of casualties. There were around three or four people left per battalion.
Anna Kipriyanovna Stoylik (Nurse, medical company platoon commander, 308th Rifle Division): We were right on the riverbank on [October] 26. The enemy was shelling us, heavy mortar fire. There was no chance of escape. This one soldier got hit. I ran over to him. The enemy had just begun firing rapidly all at once. I ducked into a bunker, and then I jumped out. This one mortar man nearby was hit in six places. I stripped him and dressed his wounds, but I didn’t have enough strength to get him out. Then Robinova ran over, and together we dragged him to the bunker. He came to and asked us for water. Getting water from the Volga meant passing through open ground, which meant that the soldiers’ canteens were empty. I ran to the river for water, carried it back, gave it to the wounded man, and left him in the bunker. At night I used a tarp to drag him the two kilometers to the medical company. We didn’t have any stretchers. We’d tie up the corners of a tarp and carry the wounded out on our shoulders. The Germans were sweeping the ravines with mortar and submachine-gun fire. [ . . . ] In Stalingrad I carried out ninety-seven wounded altogether. [ . . . ] For my work I was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.
Lieutenant Colonel Andrei Sergeyevich Chamov (Commander of the 347th Rifle Regiment): On October 27 the enemy spent the day carrying out a massive barrage of artillery and mortar fire, along with aerial bombardment. The aerial preparations typically began at dawn and stopped, according to all our data, at 6:30 and 6:45 P.M. A German attack was usually expected at that time. At 12:30 I heard from the command post of the divisional commander that there was going to be a “concert.” Indeed, this “concert” began at 12:40 P.M. and lasted until 1:20 P.M., forty minutes long. This was the artillery preparation. Then our own artillery, which was on the other side of the Volga, started firing intensively. As a result of this concentrated, competent, and well-planned artillery fire, every attempt by the Germans to advance further was paralyzed. Their communications were cut off, their firepower crushed, and for two hours after the artillery preparation there was no sound of mortar or machine-gun fire. It went completely quiet.
Major Vasily Georgievich Belugin (Commissar in the 347th Rifle Regiment): October 27 was a day I’ll never forget. The enemy started acting up early in the morning. They unleashed a constant barrage of fire from artillery, mortars, machine guns, submachine guns, and rifles; they scattered bombs like peas from the sky; and through this assault on both the physical body and the spirit, the enemy was able to unhinge even the most battle-hardened of men. The soldiers said this was hell. I remember a picture of hell from Dante’s Divine Comedy. In that hell people could celebrate at a wedding and at least feel okay. But here, when mortar fragments, stone, sand, and dirt are always coming down on you deep in your trench; when your eardrums feel like they’ve burst because of the exploding shells and mortars; when you stick the handle of a shovel out of your trench for only a second before it’s hit by a sniper’s bullet—try repelling an enemy attack in conditions like that.
Then came the climax. Everything was covered with dirt. Our firing positions were buried, our trenches fell in, our command post was destroyed. We had got out of the trenches only two minutes before, and at that moment we thought that this unstoppable avalanche of enemy manpower and machinery would crush us. But it didn’t. Silence—this was the strictest command: prepare yourself. Right now, right this second. Now pull yourself back together, get ready to fight, and even if you’re half dead, if you’ve only got one good arm, use it to shoot the enemy. Deal with that first one coming on the attack. Just deal with that first one. Your first shot will encourage your comrades.
And the silence of this unconditional command starts to lift the men out from their buried trenches, it starts to prepare them for the decisive battle. Everyone is thinking the same thing: this is it. “I’m not letting the enemy in my sector, there’s nowhere for me to fall back to. I told comrade Stalin that there’s no place for me on the east bank of the Volga. I signed a letter to comrade Stalin in my own hand saying that I would not take one step back, and that I would give all my strength and skill to fight for the motherland.”101 This is what everyone was thinking as they silently prepared themselves to repel the attack.
And then it started. The thundering of the first artillery salvo. Where was it coming from? And why? It was odd, unbelievable that this powerful salvo was coming from the east, from the east banks of the Volga. There was a second and third salvo, and then they began firing at will.
General Chuikov, commander of the 62nd Army, took on the full burden of repelling the enemy attack. A wise decision! He unleashed the firepower of his army’s entire artillery corps, hurling it toward his opponent’s main strike force. A thousand guns fired for forty minutes, during which time our soldiers—representatives of the 347th Rifle Regiment—were celebrating. They left their trenches, eyes wide, with big, tender smiles. Everyone understood that today the artillery was working for us. I’ve never seen or heard in my life such a monstrous force of artillery fire as what was unleashed on the enemy by our army commander. Everything burst into flame. The air was full of smoke, ash, dust, and rubble, and we celebrated this day’s victory. But what was the enemy up to now? He was all broken up, all his formations were destroyed, his leadership disrupted—there weren’t going to be any attacks or counterattacks today. We sent for our dinner, made tea. And during this artillery barrage the soldiers sat down to dinner.
The artillery stopped. There was a silence, the silence of victory. Until evening there wasn’t a single shot. Not one Fritz in the observation sector, not one aircraft.
But on November 1, when our regiment was pulled back to the east bank of the Volga, the soldiers felt no less of a burden, no less anxiety, than they felt on that unforgettable day. After we were relieved by a rifle regiment, the enemy broke through in our sector and reached the Volga. It took a lot of strength, resources, and sacrifice to restore things.
Now when I think about the defense of Stalingrad I feel again like saying: “Great Mother Russia. You have a people who are unyielding, who love you, who for your beauty, Mother Russia, will give everything, even their own lives, if the army needs us to.”
Major General Leonty Nikolayevich Gurtyev (Commander of the 308th Rifle Division): On November 1 the Germans came at us all at once, and they could only be fought with artillery fire. The artillery batteries were directed from the west bank via radio. The artillery regiment fired reliably and supported the entire division. We were all, I think, satisfied with their work. Once they’d been firing for half an hour everything went quiet in our sector. The Germans really wanted to break into the area of the Barricades factory. They pressed particularly hard on a little ravine that led to the industrial area, and eventually, on about November 9–10, after we’d already left, they broke through, separating the 138th Division from the 95th. Divisional commander Lyudnikov, who was cut off on two sides, was in a difficult spot, and it was only when the river iced over that things improved somewhat.
Lieutenant Colonel Afanasy Matveyevich Svirin (Deputy commander for political affairs, 308th Rifle Division): [October] 28, 29, and November 2 were very difficult for us because there were so few of us remaining. We got a call from army asking about our men: Where are they? How many are there? How spread out? We said we had seventeen men covering a great distance.
Junior Lieutenant Ilya Mironovich Brysin (Sapper platoon commander, independent field engineering battalion, 308th Rifle Division): At 2:00 A.M. [October 28] I got the order from Lieutenant Pavlov to attack. By that time we had only nine men. There was a rampart we couldn’t climb over. Pavlov went ahead while I supported. The Germans had superior numbers, and they destroyed nearly all of Pavlov’s group. Only two came back: Kostyuchenko and Barannikov. When I heard that Lieutenant Pavlov was killed and all his men were lost, Kostyuchenko and Barannikov joined my group.
On the 28th at 6:00 P.M. I put observers on the second floor of a building: Dudnikov and Kayukov.102 Me and Sergeant Pavlov took up position in another building, and my men were nearby. At dawn I could see the Germans standing on a hill, yelling: “Come on, Rus, give up! To the Volga!” I was at a loss, didn’t know what to do. Then my men ran back to me from the other buildings. But Dudnikov and Kayukov couldn’t get down from the second floor because a mortar had destroyed the staircase. I could see that I only had seven men, and I decided to go to the riverbank, where there were entrenchments. We ran in that direction. The Germans occupied the first and second buildings we’d been in. We took up a defensive position twenty meters from the Germans and twenty meters from the water. I didn’t tell my men that two of our own were in that building. My men were tough, they didn’t panic. They had some antitank grenades. They started chucking them at the Germans so they could get out of there. Once there was a smokescreen they ran out and regrouped by me. After a while Dudnikov and Kayukov showed up. They’d managed to get away from the Germans. We were really glad to see them.
Pioneers in the 308th Rifle Division: (left to right) Ilya Brysin, Yefim Dudnikov, and Alexei Pavlov
Private Yefim Yefimovich Dudnikov (Sapper platoon, independent sapper battalion, 308th Rifle Regiment): We were always together, me and Private Kayukov. We made ourselves a two-man firing trench. It was tough digging because of the slag, so we took these chunks of rock to make something like a shield and dug down a little bit, so you could shoot on your knees. I noticed a German sniper on the day that Skripka was killed. The sniper was hiding in a pile of rocks and blown-up reinforced concrete. He kept changing positions in the rocks, but there was nowhere else for him to go. I had a German rifle with a good sight, but the few times I shot at him I missed. Toward evening the German sniper decided to move to the building next door. I was watching him the whole time through my binoculars. That’s when I shot and killed him. Me and Kayukov spent the night in a crater. Turns out we were only a few meters away from the Germans. They made a run for it when it started getting dark. I shot at them. I killed one, Kayukov killed another, and the third one got away. When it was dark I went up to them: one was an officer, the other a soldier. I took a flare gun and a revolver off them and crawled back to our crater.
After a while we got an order from Brysin, telling us when we were to attack, when me and Kayukov were to get back to the building and take up positions on the rampart. But then the Germans attacked, and we had to get up to the second floor. Then a mortar hit and destroyed the staircase. I don’t know how it happened, but we were on our own. We were hoping that our buddies were down below, but they weren’t. We could hear Germans yelling all around. We started throwing grenades, but it was tough because there was a wall in the way. Then we decided to get down from the second floor. The ceiling was bombed through, the metal bars were broken. We tied two German ponchos to one rod and climbed down one by one. We walked quietly down the corridor. I looked out and wanted to run to join the others, but then I saw some Germans dragging something five or six meters away. I threw two grenades at them and ran back into the building. They started to panic. While they were still confused, Kayukov ran to join the others, and I stayed in the building by myself. I ran down the corridor, peeked in another door—there’s Germans there too. I could tell that there were too many of them for me to do anything. I crawled around this pile of rock, made a run for it, and reached the second building. From there I was able to get back to Brysin. Everyone was very happy to see me.
I took a minute to catch my breath. Then I spotted a machine gun and tossed a grenade at it, destroying the gun and its crew. Then we went on the offensive, and Private Kostyuchenko got hit. He was wounded and faint from losing so much blood, but he kept shooting, even with his left arm dead at his side. He threw grenades and went on attacking the fascists until the very end. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. He displayed exceptional discipline and self-sacrifice in battle. I bandaged him up. He gave me his gun and three F-1 grenades. Then he was taken to the field hospital.
I made quick use of those grenades. I could see Pavlov and Kayukov running toward me with a satchel of grenades. I was glad to see this. Kayukov and me were friends, if we weren’t together in combat we missed one another. I yelled, “Come on, hurry up!” A German machine gun was covering the open space between the building and the rampart, but they had to get across. Pavlov lay down in the rocks, and Kayukov started running, but he got hit in the abdomen and spine. I crawled over to him quickly, gave him my hand and dragged him along a little way. Then I crawled under him to get him on my back and carried him out. They tried to bandage him up three times, but it was no use. He was dead. [ . . . ]
Kayukov lost his cap when he got hit, so I gave him mine, and I put on my helmet. Then I decided to go back for that cap because the helmet was uncomfortable. Right then a bomb went off, and I was so stunned that I had trouble hearing for days. Shells were exploding all around, and there was a constant rumble from them—but me and Brysin wanted something to eat. We got some black bread. Several of our men were wounded at that time.
Junior Lieutenant Ilya Mironovich Brysin (Sapper platoon commander, independent field engineering battalion, 308th Rifle Division): At ten o’clock on October 28 there were three of us left: me, Dudnikov, and Glushakov. I was summoned by a company commander from 2nd Battalion, 347th Rifle Regiment. I hadn’t shaved in a while, and I had a big mustache. The commander named me Sergeant Mustache: “Mustache, go scout out the Germans’ locations and find out where their firing positions are.” I wanted to point out that you can’t go on reconnaissance during the day—it’s light, and everything can be seen—but orders are orders, so I went out on reconnaissance with two of my men, Dudnikov and Glushakov. We hooked up with the 10th Regiment, 37th Division.
They showed me where the Germans were. I went back to report the situation to company commander Kuznetsov. I’d discovered the location of their firing positions from the second floor, where I watched them setting up mortars and machine guns on the square. Lieutenant Kuznetsov, the company commander, instructed me to take out those firing positions. I told Dudnikov and Glushakov what we had to do. We got some grenades and ammunition and set off for the 10th Regiment, 37th Division. We found six men in the regiment and one field-grade officer. I told him I was on my way to complete this mission, and I asked if he would help by providing covering fire. That was around midday. We sat for a while and smoked, and they gave me some good advice. My two comrades and I agreed on the plan. I took off my overcoat and crawled forward. I climbed up this high point where I could see the railroad, where there was a big crater with a trench that led into a dugout. There were two machine guns by the crater. I crawled about three meters to the rail line and wanted to go into the crater. But I looked into the trench and saw the Germans. First I threw an F-1 grenade, then another, and then I crawled down into the trench. Both of the Germans were dead. I waved at Dudnikov and Glushakov to tell them to come. We took a satchel from the Germans that had pictures and papers, and we hid all of it under the tracks.
I started thinking about how to take out the mortar, which was [sic] meters away from the machine gun crater. I decided to go forward again. I had Dudnikov and Glushakov crawl into the crater and provide supporting fire. I set off. There were German snipers in the area, and I hadn’t gone more than a few dozen meters when a sniper landed a shot on my helmet. I turned back. I started out again and crawled like that for two hours. Then I started to throw grenades, and Glushakov killed a sniper with his rifle. I took out the mortar with some grenades and started crawling back. Later we returned and took the German corpses. I had them brought back to regimental HQ, and I went to the company commander to tell him that his orders had been carried out. They let me get some rest in the bunker, seeing as I hadn’t slept in four days. [ . . . ] I didn’t get a chance to sleep because this regiment engineer arrived after us, and he was going to help defend the headquarters because they didn’t have enough men. So we went to regimental HQ and defended it. [ . . . ] In the three days from October 26 to October 29, my platoon eliminated eighty-seven soldiers, four machine guns, and a mortar, and we killed one sniper and one officer. I killed twenty-five Fritzes myself. I was given the Order of the Red Banner.
They took me from the aid station to a field hospital where I stayed two days, and then I went back to my unit, where I was taken care of by our medic. It wasn’t a serious wound. Later, when reinforcements arrived, I was put in command of a platoon. A pretty decent platoon. I instructed them in accordance with the experience I had already acquired in the Great Patriotic War.
After the battle on October 29 I submitted my application to the party, and now I’m a member.
Senior Lieutenant Vasily Petrovich Kalinin (Deputy chief of staff for reconnaissance, 347th Rifle Regiment): In just two days I destroyed seven tanks and their crews.
Captain Semyon Solomonovich Ryvkin (Commander of an independent field engineering battalion): Those of us who were still alive—thirty men—all of us were decorated. Eight received the Order of the Red Banner, three got the Order of the Red Star, and the rest got medals.
Captain Ivan Vasilievich Maksin (Chief of the divisional political section in charge of the Komsomol): There was also the heroic deed of Zoya Rokovanova, one of our Siberian Komsomol members. Zoya Rokovanova was a civilian typesetter working in the editorial offices of the regional newspaper.103 She volunteered for the army and came to our division with the same drive and desire to get to the front line as Lyolya Novikova had. She was brought in to work on our newspaper, but she wanted to be on the front line. And so here she was in Stalingrad with a medical company she’d joined, and they were holding a defensive line—a single building. There was only a handful of people left from her unit, including two midgrade Komsomol officers. [ . . . ] When the Germans came in overwhelming force to cut off and storm the building, Zoya Rokavanova and one of the officers kept throwing grenades at them from a window. The Germans took cover. Their path to the building was obstructed by these grenades, so they withdrew. A few minutes later the building was peppered with incendiary shells and caught fire. As smoke came pouring out of the windows of the building our units tried to break through the German blockade and get our people out of there, but we couldn’t do it. And when the Germans were coming right up to the building, our men could hear them yelling “Surrender, Rus!” to those who were still inside, and again they could see grenades being thrown down onto the Germans from the smoking window. Then it went quiet. All you could hear was the Germans yelling, but no one came out of the building to answer their awful cries.
Three days later we took the building back from the Germans and found the charred remains of these heroes, including Zoya Rokovanova, a patriot of the motherland, who remembered the words of Arnold Meri when he said that Komsomol members don’t retreat, that they don’t get taken prisoner, and that the only way they leave the battlefield is on a stretcher. Zoya Rokovanova fulfilled her duty. She knew that being a captive of the fascists would have been worse than death, and she decided to burn rather than be taken prisoner.
Lieutenant Colonel Afanasy Matveyevich Svirin (Deputy commander for political affairs, 308th Rifle Division): Daily bulletins from the Sovinformburo kept our soldiers informed of the operations of our forces on all fronts. They also knew about the work going on behind the front lines. We didn’t get newspapers often, but we had our own radio. We typed out the bulletins and sent out duplicates to the units.
Headlines in Komsomolskaya Pravda read “Hero of Stalingrad Boris Shonin,” November 15, 1942.
Each deputy political officer had the plan for the day’s political work. If there was going to be a battle the next day for some building or other, the political officer would write a plan that covered three points: (1) preparatory work before the battle, (2) work to be done during the battle, and (3) outcomes of the battle and conclusions drawn from it.
We often made use of press reports from England and America on the resilience of Stalingrad. We did everything we could to get these reports to all the men and officers. Each political worker tried to make the soldiers aware of everything that was being printed by our own press about Stalingrad. The party-political apparatus—comrades Sovchinsky, Belugin, Sidorov, Petrakov—and workers from the political division—comrades Kheruvimov, Polyansky, Maksin, Ingor, and others, could always be found in the trenches with the soldiers. The entire party-political apparatus was decorated for its work.
When I came to the unit the first thing I wanted to know about was the daily life of the soldiers, whether they were being fed. In Stalingrad we had our own bathhouse where we washed. I remember once when the general and I went there to bathe, and a locust104came and started dropping bombs. We’d dug our bathhouse where Germans had buried their dead, and there was an awful stench of corpses. But despite that and the bombers we continued bathing.
The political apparatus was not only occupied with propaganda. Many took part in battles and went on the attack. Petrakov, for one, fought and went on the attack, comrade Kheruvimov took part in a bayonet charge, and Major Sidorov, deputy commissar for political affairs, took out two tanks with an antitank rifle and annihilated many fascists. He and Kalinin were wounded in the same battle. I can’t think of a single political worker who didn’t play an active role in the fighting. [ . . . ]
The party committee worked right in the trenches, where they accepted new members into the party. We didn’t make our comrades on the front lines recite the Party’s formal rules and program. Acts of heroism were enough to prove your faith in the party and receive your card.
As part of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Red Army, we resolved to send a letter to comrade Stalin from the defenders of Stalingrad, which was signed by all the soldiers of the 62nd Army. There was heavy fighting going on when we did this. Our ranks were greatly reduced in number that day. Some three hundred wounded lay on the bank, but there weren’t enough boats to get them across, and it was risky on account of the bombing.
Chamov called and said he only had seventeen men left. A sapper battalion was sent over. They pushed the enemy back.
In Stalingrad we lived day by day. The Military Council [of the front] ordered us to hold out for another two days, and we stayed to the end. There wasn’t a single man among us who would have tried to cross to the other bank. In that entire period there were only twenty-four cases of desertion. I instructed the divisional prosecutor to keep an eye on certain people.
The first thing I’d do was ask the soldier whether he was getting enough to eat, was he getting his vodka, and then I’d get to talking with him about politics. Usually the soldier would say he was getting enough but didn’t have an appetite [ . . . ]
We put together the letter to comrade Stalin over four nights, moving from trench to trench. Every one of our soldiers signed the letter. I remember it was a cold night in October, raining and windy. You’d get to a trench, cover it with your overcoat to keep out the wind, light a match, and then read out the part with the soldier’s oath to comrade Stalin. And the soldier would sign the letter.
Captain Mikhail Lazarevich Ingor (Politruk, 347th Rifle Regiment): These men understood their commanders with barely a word, with a single glance. When they signed that letter, they knew they weren’t just writing their names. They were each writing: “Dear comrade Stalin, my name is Soldier so-and-so, I’ve killed however many Germans, and I swear—and so on.”
Lieutenant Colonel Afanasy Matveyevich Svirin (Deputy commander for political affairs, 308th Rifle Division): We had a copy of the letter from the defenders of Tsaritsyn,105 and we distributed it as widely as possible. There were a few comrades still alive in Stalingrad who had signed that letter.
The words “stand like stone, for there is nothing for us beyond the Volga” were particularly moving for the soldiers. One soldier repeated those words, “There is nothing for us beyond the Volga,” with such intensity and sincerity that when I got home I thought: such patriotism, such love for this place where he is now, where comrade Stalin once was!
Here’s how we’d instruct the soldiers: “See that little hill over there? We’ve got to take it, even if it is little, because there’s a big hill on the other side, a great expanse of land, and there are houses and whole families. Every one of these little hills, even if they seem insignificant to us, is important because of what comes after.”
It wasn’t a coincidence that they fought for every window, every staircase. [ . . . ]
Our female medics really proved themselves. Back in Kotluban the girls dragged the wounded out under heavy mortar and artillery fire, and fire from the air. They didn’t want to dig in. Nothing frightened them, they’d sit cross-legged on the riverbank. You ask them, Why haven’t you dug in? They say, Why bother when we’re about to move forward?
Female medics are much better than men. They’re better at carrying out the wounded, better at dressing wounds, and they even carry the weapons of the wounded. About 40 percent of our girls have been decorated with orders or medals. Some five hundred of them have been decorated in this division.
This one girl, Stoylik, who used to work for the railway, acted so heroically and recklessly, she couldn’t have put herself more in harm’s way. She’s the one who pulled the wounded officers out of the water after their motor launch was destroyed.
All of this resilience and self-sacrificing work was the result of the education and training given to all our fighters. [ . . . ]
The divisional commander did a lot for the division’s combat training, working like a man devoted to his homeland, sparing neither his time nor his health. I ought to mention that during our time in Stalingrad the two of us didn’t have a single glass of vodka. Gurtyev is an exceptionally caring and loving person who is dedicated to his work. He denies himself everything, won’t allow any kind of luxury. He’s always on the same level as everyone else. He was brave in battle. In Stalingrad our command post was buried more than once, and we had to be dug out. [ . . . ]
In Stalingrad we picked up four spies suspected of passing on the locations of our command posts. One of them was a major whose family was still in Stalingrad. He had decided he must search for his family, but he ran into the Germans. They gave him a choice: either he would give them information or they’d kill his wife. Another was a twelve-year-old boy. I talked with him for four hours before he confessed. He didn’t want to give any names. I think that we lost the 339th Rifle Regiment’s headquarters because of him. He told me how he worked out the locations of our headquarters and command posts by noticing the wires leading away from them, the number of runners, and the barbers that were nearby. Finally, at dinnertime he would see whether the food was coming in mess kits or on plates.
We interrogated one woman, a spy who had been coming to us for a while. She wouldn’t confess for a long time, but then she told us that when the Germans arrived they took [her] two girls as hostages and gave her five hundred Soviet rubles, all so she would extract information from us.
Lieutenant Colonel Alexei Stepanovich Smirnov (Chief of the divisional political section): We admitted people into the party on the march, without slowing down. [ . . . ] In October and November we admitted about 360 new members in Stalingrad. Usually we took people who had shown real heroism. We held them up as examples for all of the units. We’d print their portraits and send them to the front lines. That’s how it was, for example, with Kalinin. Exceptional people were immediately recognized in the army. We’d produce six or seven leaflets. All this work was done by individual party members who had stayed with us. Sometimes you’d have a building being pressed from all sides, but we could still hold them because of the influence of the political workers. For two days comrade Zalipukhin, deputy commander of 1st Battalion, and a group of sixteen men held off an entire subdivision of some three or four hundred Germans. They held their building until the last moment. These men from the 347th Rifle Regiment had only four antitank rifles, a pistol, and a machine gun. In a lot of places our men were forced to retreat, but here they held their ground, even though the Germans were coming closer, and they could hear the roar of their engines. [ . . . ]
In Stalingrad the party-political work went somewhat differently than at Kotluban. There were fewer political workers. In Kotluban, the communists at the lowest level of organization played a crucial role by quickly bringing people together and setting goals. But the situation in Stalingrad was such that all this work was done differently.
Here the crucial role of the party organizations was to make the dispersed forces as productive as possible, at a time when there might be fifteen to seventeen men left in a battalion. Communication between political workers and individual party members was quite difficult to arrange because there was effectively nothing separating us from the Germans. There were certain characteristic features of our agitation work. The political division tasked instructors with making sure that Party workers were placed at the most vulnerable locations. Our workers were always in these areas during attacks and assaults. [ . . . ]
We had two-way radio communication with the other side of the Volga. Every day we got reports on the international situation. We printed Informburo bulletins and distributed them to the divisions. To do this we had we had special club workers—including Subochkin, the projectionist—postal workers, and photographers, who would print fifteen to twenty copies of the Informburo materials and distribute them to the regiments. There was no other literature. There was a time when we’d get two-day-old papers from Moscow. But when the air post stopped we’d only get the papers after eight or nine days, so we just used the bulletins from Informburo.
We lost people every day. By the end of the battle our division had only three or four hundred men west of the Volga. Out of 780 party members there were no more than three hundred by the time we got to Stalingrad, and only a handful of them stayed in Stalingrad. [ . . . ] Despite being wounded, chief of staff Dyatlenko wanted to get his party membership card, and he eventually joined us, still limping, and was able to do excellent work.
Junior officer Fugenfirov was seriously wounded. He’d already been approved by his primary organization, but he hadn’t yet been processed at the bureau level. As he was dying he talked about his membership card, wondering whether he’d been admitted into the party.
Senior Sergeant Nina Mikhailovna Kokorina (Nurse, assistant deputy for political affairs, 347th Rifle Regiment): I became a candidate for party membership on October 14. I was admitted during the heavy fighting in the city itself, when we were trying to cross Skulpture Street. They took me, company commander Alexeyev, and Shuvanov, a medical orderly. The next day we were supposed to go to the divisional party committee. Shuvanov was killed on the evening of the 15th. Alexeyev was seriously wounded and taken to the east bank of the Volga. I was the only one left. But I still decided to go to the ceremony. I went with Pogrebny, the deputy commander for political affairs. The command post was in a tall red building that was more or less intact. On our way there we started getting shot at and bombed by the Germans. But there were people waiting for us. Somehow or other we had to go get our party documents. We walked through ruins, across the railway line. There was rumbling all around, submachine guns were firing. We made it to our headquarters, but no one had come from divisional HQ. We waited a while before heading back. During the return trip I fell behind and got a bit lost. Here’s how it was then: this street’s ours, that one’s theirs; this building’s ours, that one’s theirs. I went and took the wrong road. I walked up to this one building and could hear someone speaking German. I’ll admit I was a bit frightened, though I did have a gun. I took the path to the right. Someone was standing there. I stood up on tiptoe to look around, and I saw someone with a submachine gun. Turns out it’s Pogrebny. I went to him, and he yelled at me. When we got to our command post we heard that the battalion’s chief of staff had been wounded. He’d been seen to by some of the girls there. It was a head wound. I changed his dressings, bandaged him up. I got my candidate member’s card on the east bank at Bruny. In February 1943 I became an official party member and was chosen to be a party organizer.
Alexander Fyodorovich Koshkarev (Party bureau secretary, 339th Rifle Regiment): How did we conduct our party-political work in Stalingrad? [ . . . ] We introduced a new idea: every soldier had to start a personal account of how many Germans he’d killed. This was essentially a stimulus for socialist competition: to see who could kill the most Germans. We would check these accounts, and if a comrade didn’t have any dead Fritzes, we’d have a talk with him, make him feel the shame.
Alexander Dmitriyevich Stepanov (Battalion commissar, 1011th Artillery Regiment): The political and educational element as the regiment was being formed. Well, I can remember it all as if it were today—those ninety convicts who came to us. People in rags, hungry, covered in lice—real cons, as they would say. They frightened me at first, and I wondered how I could educate them, what kind of assignments they could take. I can remember going to inspect the barracks where these men were, and I saw four of them playing cards on top of their bunks, naked. As soon as I entered they got down and put away the cards. I said, “Hand over those cards!” They gave me some old cards, but the ones I’d seen were brand-new. Those weren’t the ones they gave me. When I spoke to the duty officer about this, he said: “I don’t know why, but it seems that the best men play cards.” And these men said: “We’re only playing a game of Fool.” Shafranov and Gavronsky were among those four. They both had interesting fates.
Shafranov is now a party member in the regiment, a decorated field officer, one of our finest commanders. Gavronsky deserted while the regiment was being formed. He was rounded up near Stalingrad and shot.
Of all the ninety convicts who came to our regiment, only two of them were unable to reform themselves and ended up being shot. All the rest were reeducated and turned into good honest soldiers. [ . . . ]
At Stalingrad the political staff did a lot of work to clear the criminal records of these men I’m talking about. About 25 percent of the men in our regiment had previous convictions. All of them except for a few got their criminal records expunged because of brave conduct during combat. We regarded this as another way to encourage people to do good work. I should also give credit to the regiment’s command and political staff for issuing state decorations properly and in good time. I’ve got to say that, on the whole, every accomplishment in the regiment was recognized with an award from the regimental commander or, for regular soldiers, from the relevant authority. Fifteen percent of the regiment were issued and presented with decorations. That’s a total of 150 men.
I awarded Captain Trifonov, the party bureau secretary, two Orders of the Red Banner, but we still haven’t received the actual medals. [ . . . ]
I’d like to say something about the men’s welfare. Even though people were constantly being shot at and bombed by the enemy, there was still good order in the regiment: the men were shaved and getting haircuts, and they wore clean tunics and trousers. We built a bathhouse, a canteen, and even set up places where the soldiers could mend their tunics, underclothes, and so on. Of course there were times when we were eaten by lice, but we got rid of them quickly.
We accepted 120 people into the party at Stalingrad. Captain Trifonov played an especially important role in this. Every one of them was accepted into the party by him, he was the one who made it all official, and he did all of this while in the field.
Lieutenant Colonel Andrei Sergeyevich Chamov (Commander of the 347th Rifle Regiment): The divisional commander, General Gurtyev, is first and foremost an extremely modest man. That’s his most prominent trait. At first glance he even seems positively inoffensive. A very simple man, sincere and caring. You might have won ten battles, but if you let a single man go without food, then you’re a complete disgrace. I was in the Ravine of Death one day when the general, taking no heed of the danger, walked up to me along with Smirnov, the head of the political department. They spent half a day with me observing the men fight. We were some 150 meters from the front line. They were constantly monitoring the situation, trying to arrive at a meticulously detailed understanding of the enemy, to find out what steps ought to be taken. In these practical matters the divisional commander let his regimental commanders take the initiative, gave them a lot of independence, and always considered their opinions.
There was one occasion I could see there was nothing I could do to assist the divisional commander, nothing I could give him: I had already staked all I had. I wasn’t going to say this to him. I said that everything was just as it should be in war: they’re shooting—and so are we. But in fact they’d nearly broken through my left flank. I reported this to the division’s chief of staff, but I knew they couldn’t do anything, so I decided just to do whatever I could. Somehow Gurtyev overhead our telephone conversation and asked what was going on. He wasn’t in a position to help. He said: “Think about what you can do, but know that I’ve got nothing for you. I’m on my own and can’t give you a thing.”
He was demanding, but to just the right degree. I’d say he had a civilized way of being demanding. He was extremely tactful when he asked you to do something, and this demanding, exacting manner was in some inspiring way linked to far-seeing conviction. People respected and valued him on account of this. He never raised his voice.
His personal staff thought very highly of him. Wherever he went, the first thing he did was visit the canteen and ask how much food they were getting and what they were having for dinner. The soldiers would say: “We’ll have a good dinner today—the general’s here.” But actually the dinner was prepared the same as always. He asked our cook how he dished out the soup. The cook said two fingers from the rim. “Fingers come in different sizes: big and small. See that you make it two small fingers.”
It was a good thing that he knew the men, not only the officers but also the regular soldiers. He’s got an exceptionally good memory: he knows everyone by name. He likes when everything is in order and by the book. Very particular when it comes to following regulations.
Everyone respects him for his modesty, his sincere way of dealing with people when he’s asking them to do something, and for the fact that he really knows his stuff. Nothing bad can be said of him.
Genrikh Aronovich Fugenfirov (Commander of the 1011th Artillery Regiment): He’s an extraordinary man. The general never yells or swears, but if he simply changes the tone of his voice, that means you’ve got to do better, do a better job of following his command. The general’s commands are always carried out. It’s not only the officers who love him, but also the men, who know him well because he’s always driving around to see the units. He is thoroughly acquainted with the soldiers’ daily lives, never goes past a kitchen without dropping by to sample what they’re eating. The men love him. Once I was with him in a car. He spoke about his soldiers with such love. He swears and yells at a soldier, as if he himself were an old sergeant-major, and then he says: “That man will make a fine soldier, a great warrior.”
Major General Leonty Nikolayevich Gurtyev (Commander of the 308th Rifle Division): We all kept it together, and during the worst of it, when it seemed there was no way out, we would pick up our weapons and be ready to keep going to the end. No one even thought of leaving. If we looked toward the Volga, it was because we were expecting reinforcements or ammunition. Everyone felt this sense of duty. It meant a lot to us that the army commander was there with us. The soldiers would often walk along the shore in the open, the girls always joking. Mortars were falling all around, but they’d sit and relax—after all, it’s hard work carrying out the wounded. They didn’t like people who were afraid. [ . . . ] They didn’t like this one doctor because she was nervous, even though she was very skilled and attentive, and she’d always stay in the field to dress the wounded. She wrote me a letter afterward, telling me her impressions of a rally and parade in Stalingrad, where she stayed after we’d left.
Major General Leonty Gurtyev
Or take the sapper battalion. Apart from doing the primary duties, they also fought alongside us, heroically proving themselves at the crossing. We had these small canoes, and it wasn’t easy crossing the Volga at night—even when it was calm—and they ferried over the wounded, ammunition, and reinforcements, all the while under constant bombardment. It’s true that we used another crossing, and in the beginning there was a foot bridge over the Volga, but it was destroyed early on, and the boatmen helped us a great deal with their selfless work. They were decorated, their heroic work was noted.
Senior Sergeant Nina Mikhailovna Kokorina (Nurse, assistant deputy for political affairs, 347th Rifle Regiment): After the war I think I’ll stay in the army and go to the military academy. I’ve been here a few days, but I miss them, I wonder how they’re doing there without me. Before I joined I wanted to go to university to study history and philology. I really like spending time in the archives, just going there and wandering around.
Lieutenant Colonel Afanasy Matveyevich Svirin (Deputy commander for political affairs, 308th Rifle Division): Our division has its own Siberian traditions. Right now we’re preparing a booklet called “Siberians in the Defense of Stalingrad.”106 [ . . . ] All of our party-political work is built on the foundation of our combat experience and on the traditions of the greatest men.