IX Mechanized Corps, Maj. Gen. K. K. Rokossovskiy Commanding
During June 23, Rokossovskiy’s corps continued moving towards Lutsk. Due to exhaustion of his troops during the first day of march, he was forced to reduce movement during consecutive days to approximately twenty miles.
Rokossovskiy’s motorized division, the 131st Motorized Rifle under Colonel Kalinin, was better supplied with wheeled vehicles and outpaced the rest of the corps, reaching the vicinity of Lutsk. There, Major General Potapov, commander of the Fifth Army, subordinated this division directly under his command. Kalinin’s new orders were to take up defensive positions along the Styr River between Lutsk and Mlynuv and prevent any enemy breakthroughs.[7]
Colonel Kalinin remembers:
[Lutsk] was on fire. The small local garrison was staunchly resisting the enemy, especially on the southwestern outskirts. Our forward detachment, after crossing Styr, immediately attacked a German unit. The Fascist antitank artillery knocked out several of our combat vehicles. The enemy was pressing hard towards the bridge we held…. The main body of the division after arriving at Lutsk took up defensives along the eastern bank of the river. The tank regiment provided fire support from beyond the river. To its right, by the river, was the 743rd, and to its left—the 489th Motorized Rifle Regiments. Each of them was reinforced by an artillery battery, two antiaircraft guns, and a tank company. Division command post deployed at the tree line, two kilometers east of the bridge across Styr. The reserves, the 3rd Battalion/743rd Regiment, deployed there as well. The firing positions of the artillery regiment were established two–three kilometers beyond the river. The front of our defenses stretched to almost twenty kilometers.[8]
Corps’ Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. A. G. Maslov sent ahead a platoon of combat engineers to set up a temporary command post along the route of advance of the 35th Tank Division. This division experienced a slight delay crossing Goryn River by ferries, and Rokossovskiy ordered part of it diverted through the town of Goscha to utilize the bridges there.
After ensuring that the crossing was being carried out in an orderly manner, Rokossovskiy with his command group moved ahead. As an afterthought, he ordered a battery of 85mm guns to accompany him.
Rokossovskiy’s convoy drove west alongside extensive wheat fields, with stalks as tall as a man. After a while, they began noticing strange individuals in the wheat fields. These people, single or in small groups, would hide upon seeing Rokossovskiy’s group. Some of these people were dressed in a mixture of military and civilian clothing, some only in underwear. After rounding up and questioning few of those men, Rokossovskiy’s staff found out that they belonged to the units who had already engaged the Germans and had been routed by them.
Rokossovskiy wrote that these panicked soldiers attempted to “masquerade” themselves as civilians. Those who could not obtain civilian clothes remained in their underwear, shedding the uniform and boots. He noted that this naive trickery did not fool the Germans—at a later time he encountered bodies of Red Army men executed in their underwear.[9]
Among this panicked group in the wheat fields, Rokossovskiy’s officers found two soldiers from the engineer platoon sent ahead by Maslov. They relayed that their platoon was ambushed by German motorcyclists and truck-mounted infantry and wiped out.
In those early days of the war, often whole large units would panic even at the slightest surprise attack by Germans and run. The panicked men would see German parachutists, panzers, and saboteurs around every corner and under every bush. Some officers attempting to stem the panic were shot down by their own men, afraid to return to the front. Some men committed suicide. Rokossovskiy recalled a suicide note left behind by an officer from his 20th Tank Division: “The feeling of fear that I would not measure up in combat drove me to commit suicide.”[10] Rokossovskiy noted that when the newspapers wrote articles about increasing vigilance in spotting saboteurs dressed in police, army, and NKVD uniforms, they also spread fears and rumors.
Rokossovskiy relayed a sad anecdote from those hectic first days of war. One day a general was brought to Rokossovskiy’s command post. He was in a shredded uniform blouse, tired, and without weapon. This unnamed general was a liaison officer from the staff of South-Western Front to Fifth Army’s headquarters. West of Rovno this general encountered several truckfuls of Red Army men driving at breakneck speed east to Rovno. The liaison officer attempted to stop one of the vehicles to find out what was going on. When one vehicle did stop, he was unceremoniously pulled into the truck and roughly interrogated by soldiers who decided that he was a saboteur. The men took away his pistol and his ID and decided to execute him at first opportunity. Luckily, the general managed to jump out of the truck and duck into the thick rye field. He was not chased by soldiers intent of getting away themselves. There were many similar cases.[11]
During the day, Rokossovskiy and Maslov continued sending out reconnaissance parties and liaison officers to find out situation ahead and around them. Many times Major General Maslov would himself jump on a motorcycle and speed off to find news.
Despite their best efforts, only meager unconfirmed news filtered in through the chaos. They heard that Kondrusev’s XXII Mechanized Corps already entered the battle north of Lutsk. Feklenko’s XIX Mechanized Corps was heading towards Dubno.
Maslov reported that he briefly established communications with General Purkayev. South-Western Front’s chief of staff had enough time to inform him that IX Mechanized Corps was being subordinated to the Fifth Army. It was to continue concentrating around the town of Klevan, roughly fifteen miles northwest of Rovno.
In the evening Rokossovskiy’s convoy traveling just east of Zdolbunov, less than ten miles south of Rovno, encountered a German reconnaissance element of several armored cars and truck-mounted infantry. As Rokossovskiy’s 85mm howitzer battery began deploying for a fight, the German scouts exercised the better part of valor and withdrew without engaging the Russians.
Cautious about blundering into Germans in descending darkness, Rokossovskiy set up his command post for the night in the immediate vicinity south of Rovno.
VIII Mechanized Corps, General Ryabyshev Commanding
Throughout the night and into late morning of June 23, the VIII Mechanized Corps covered almost seventy-five miles to their designated area east of Lvov. During the night, German aircraft found the corps on the road. Aided by airdropped flares, German planes strafed and bombed the strung-out Soviet columns. While the casualties from air attacks were not significant, valuable time was lost. After men would scatter for cover, it would take some time to round them up and account for them. Corps Commissar Nikolai Popel remembered that on many occasions, the men, newly subjected to the howling death from above, would be reluctant to leave whatever shelter they found and mount up again.[12]
After each attack, the rate of march kept decreasing. The drivers, most of whom had not slept for day and a half, kept falling asleep at the wheel. This was the time before power steering, and it took significant physical effort on part of drivers to handle their heavy tanks and trucks. Forced to observe strict light discipline, the vehicles were driving into ditches and ramming each other in the dark. Before nightfall, many officers had their men draw a large circle in white chalk on the back of their vehicles in order to see the preceding vehicle in the dark. This trick worked while the drivers were awake.[13] Sometime during the night, the VIII Mechanized Corps moved through Drogobych, the town they left the morning before, and a lifetime of road marches ago. Those officers who were stationed in town had a chance to briefly visit their families and grab a bite to eat. Popel was grateful for the opportunity to check on his wife and two daughters. He was immensely relieved to see that his wife, who suffered a concussion during the bombing morning before, was feeling better.