Two days later, as the last day of peace, June 21, drew to a close, a German deserter crossed over to the Soviet side of the Western Bug River border in Ukraine in the area of operations of Major General Fedyuninskiy’s XV Rifle Corps. This deserter, with the rank of sergeant, reported that the invasion would begin at 0330 hours the next morning. Information was quickly relayed from Fedyuninskiy’s headquarters to the Fifth Army, then to South-Western Front. From there, General Purkayev called Moscow. For the previous several days, personnel at the People’s Commissariat for Defense and the General Staff had worked almost eighteen-hour days, with Timoshenko and Zhukov often sleeping in their offices. It took only a few minutes to reach and brief them. In their turn, Zhukov and Timoshenko immediately reported to Stalin, who ordered them to the Kremlin in forty-five minutes.
Timoshenko and Zhukov quickly gathered up their already-prepared drafts of alert orders, picked up Lt. Gen. N. F. Vatutin, Chief of NKO’s Operations Section, and went to see Stalin. “On the way there we agreed to convince Stalin by all means possible for permission to bring up forces to combat readiness,” Zhukov later recalled. Stalin was alone in his office. After a brief report by generals, several members of Politburo arrived, who remained more or less silent observers without taking any significant part in discussions.
Finally, Stalin asked Timoshenko and Zhukov straight out what they wanted to do. They quickly presented their MP-41 mobilization plan. After hearing them out, Stalin still did not agree with full measures, consenting to a watered-down version, strongly cautioning not to fall for provocations. The three generals excused themselves to another room and hashed out a modified version, which was finally approved by Stalin. Vatutin immediately hand-carried this version to the General Staff for dissemination to border districts. Transmission was completed by 0030 on June 22. The war was three hours away.
Part II:
THE BORDER BATTLE
CHAPTER 6
We Are Under Attack! What Should We Do? June 22
MANY OF THOSE WHO SURVIVED THE WAR to talk about the predawn hours of Sunday, June 22, 1941, remembered the multitude of frogs inhabiting this particular swatch of northwestern Ukraine among the wide, swampy banks of the Western Bug River.[1] Their unrelenting croaking provided a cacophony of sounds in the foggy morning up and down the river near a small Ukrainian town of Ustilug.[2]
The sounds of frogs, however, did not mask the growling of vehicle engines on the other, German-occupied, bank of the river. To the young guard pacing across the Soviet end of the highway bridge spanning the river, these sounds seemed to be increasing over the past few nights, with the hooded glare of vehicles’ headlights dissipated somewhat in the morning fog.
The fog would melt away in a couple hours of what was promising to be a beautiful Sunday morning. He pulled his green-topped round cap of NKVD Border Guards deeper on his closed-shaved head and pulled the overcoat tighter around himself, keeping alert eyes on the other end of the bridge.
Few minutes later, the young guard became aware of two sets of dimmed headlights as two trucks pulled onto the bridge from the other bank. Wary, but not worried yet, he quickly glanced to his left and right where two heavy machine guns were emplaced to cover the bridge. The three-man crews of Maxim machine guns also saw the two approaching vehicles; the gunners’ thumbs rested on the butterfly-shaped triggers of their weapons.
As the two vehicles pulled closer, the young guard was surprised to recognize the shapes of Russian-built GAZ-AA trucks. He pulled his rifle off his shoulder but held it at port-arms, ready to halt them. The cab of the first vehicle, an upgraded clone of an American Ford truck, was occupied by two men in Soviet uniforms, the man in the passenger seat wearing collar tabs of a captain. The truck slowed down and lurched to a stop several steps past the young guard. The captain in the front truck addressed him in a flawless Russian: “Good morning, comrade.” Machine gunners in the emplacements, recognizing Soviet uniforms and hearing Russian speech, eased their fingers from the triggers.
The last thing the young guard saw was a seemingly gigantic muzzle of a pistol appearing in captain’s hand. He was cut down by several shots even before uttering a sound. The canvas tarp was thrown off the back of the truck, and two pairs of grenades arched high into the morning air, descending onto the machine-gun positions. They were followed by men in Soviet uniforms, bearing Soviet weapons, jumping off the truck and running towards the border guards’ emplacements. Dazed survivors of machine-gun crews, crumpled around scattered sand bags, were quickly finished off by point-blank shots.
The second truck raced by them and halted farther down the block, disgorging its own load of German Brandenburg commandos clad in Soviet uniforms.[3] Scarcely a year and a half ago, the Russo-Finnish War ended, leaving ample amounts of Soviet equipment, arms, and uniforms in Finnish hands. The Finns readily provided Germans with a sufficient quantity of captured materiel of their common enemy. Now, the Soviet-dressed German commandos spread out in a skirmish line, hugging whatever cover available, setting up a perimeter around the bridgehead on the Soviet side. A dozen commandos scurried under the bridge, removing pre-positioned Soviet explosives. The bridge thus secured, the captain, in actuality a Brandenburg lieutenant, turned toward the German side and quickly dashed off a prearranged sequence of blinks with his flashlight. A score of headlights came to life on the western bank, and a company of German armored cars and motorcyclists dashed to the eastern side to reinforce commandos.
The same scene repeated itself eight miles farther south, where German commando and reconnaissance troops secured a railroad bridge. They were closely followed by combat engineers, bringing forward prepared wooden planking to make the railroad bridge passable by wheeled vehicles. On their heels more and more Wehrmacht troops began flowing onto the Soviet territory, covered by massive German artillery barrage of all calibers. Overhead in the brightening sky, squadrons of aircraft with black crosses darted east, seeking out Soviet airfields, communication centers, and military installations.
At 0330 hours, all up and down the western border of the Soviet Union, the German artillery and air force unleashed punishing strikes on largely still-sleeping Soviet forces. Fearful of provoking Germans into an armed conflict, the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin had expressly forbidden Red Army field forces from taking up defensive positions in the fortified regions along the border. When he finally gave in to frantic pleas of his senior military advisers and permitted partial alert and deployment of Red Army field forces, it was too late. In many instances, the first notification of war the Soviet soldiers received was German bombs and shells exploding among their garrisons.
Repeated stern orders about not provoking Germans into hostile actions robbed many Soviet officers of needed initiative. Even with German shells bursting around them, many frontline Red Army officers sent off desperate inquiries: “We are under attack! What should we do?”
VLADIMIR-VOLYNSKIY DIRECTION
The main brunt of the assault by Army Group South fell onto the Soviet XXVII Rifle Corps of the Fifth Army. This Soviet formation covered the extremely important strategic direction. From the small border town of Ustilug, what passed for a major road lead to Vladimir-Volynskiy, then Lutsk, and on to Rovno, Zhitomir, and, finally, Kiev, the Ukrainian capital. Capturing this vital roadway was paramount in German plans for rapid destruction of Soviet forces in the Ukraine.