The situation in the area of operations of Major General Rokossovskiy’s IX Mechanized Corps remained steady throughout the day. After beating back a determined German attack in the area of Klevan, Rokossovskiy’s command continued preparing for simultaneous attack and withdrawal for the next day. Major General Feklenko’s XIX Mechanized Corps was engaged in minor local actions as well.
Task Force Popel, Corps Commissar N. K. Popel Commanding
June 30 started off quiet in Popel’s area of operations. The rains of previous days ended, and, waiting for attack that they knew must come, Soviet soldiers huddled in stifling June heat. The good weather brought renewed German air and artillery attacks:
Our forward positions disappeared in smoke and dust. Clouds obscured the sun. The barrage was then shifted into our rear…. We did not notice, did not hear, when the aviation appeared. As if cannons of gigantic calibers joined in the artillery barrage…. We are even more defenseless under bombs, more so than under [artillery]. We do not have aid defense artillery. Not even one gun.[14]
German aviation and artillery worked over the Soviet positions for two endless hours. Especially hard hit were positions near the Ptycha village, in the southwestern sector. The rear echelon units of the 34th Tank Division were also hit hard. During the previous day, Popel’s men managed to tow a small number of disabled tanks to a central location. Since a majority of them were already heavily damaged, no attempt to disperse or camouflage them were taken, and the Germans further bombed them into oblivion.
The inevitable tank and infantry attack followed the bombardment. As Popel expected, the most severed fighting took place at Ptycha. The large village changed hands several times, until the smoking ruins of it finally and firmly remained in German hands. This fighting cost the Soviet side the only one field artillery battery available in Ptycha sector. The carnage was terrible: “Vehicles were burning. Cannon barrels of artillery pieces pounded into the ground were sticking up into the air, overturned half-tracks…. And everywhere—near vehicles, artillery positions, half-tracks—corpses of our and German soldiers.”[15]
In the early evening, after the fall of Ptycha, German pressure increased on the Mlynov sector held by a unit from the 34th Tank Division. One of the battalions from its 67th Tank Regiment was almost completely wiped out by a combined attack of German aircraft and panzers. This fight cost the life of Popel’s friend, commissar of the 67th Tank Regiment, Ivan K. Gurov. He had to identify his friend’s body under trying emotional circumstances: “We began breaking though to the still, slightly smoldering tank…. Through the opened front hatch I saw three blackened skeletons.” Popel’s driver, Korovkin climbed inside the mammoth T-35 tank and among the carnage found a charred Order of the Red Banner, with its enamel melted off. This was an award Ivan Gurov received during the war with Finland.[16]
After enduring punishing air and artillery attacks throughout the day, during the night of June 30–July 1, Popel’s command attempted to break out. The task force split into two groups, the combat and the rear echelon ones. In a sudden attack the combat group broke through the still-porous German defenses around Ptycha, allowing the rear echelon convoy, carrying wounded, to slip south around the eastern edge of the village. A small detachment from the 27th Motorized Rifle Regiment commanded by Col. Ivan N. Pleshakov brought up the rear of the almost-helpless convoy.
After the convoy with noncombatants departed, the still-combat-capable group remained with Popel east of Ptycha to cover the retreat. By now, according to Popel, this force consisted of around one hundred tanks, with roughly twenty to twenty-five rounds each and a half-tank of fuel. A handful of riflemen rode on each tank.
Generaloberst Halder noted in his war diary the end of Soviet threat at Dubno: “The situation at Dubno is straightened out. Still, 16th Panzer Division and 16th Motorized Division were not inconsiderably delayed by the episode, and 44th, 111th, and 299th divisions, which were brought up behind the III Panzer Corps, will be stalled for some days; this greatly delays and hampers the follow-up of infantry behind III Corps.”[17]
Neither Popel nor any of his officers knew that their corps already abandoned its positions and retreated southeast. While the convoy with wounded from Popel’s task force was probing its way south, the main body of the VIII Mechanized Corps was licking its wounds north of Radzivilov. According Ryabyshev, after the first week of the war his corps was down to 19,000 men, 207 tanks, and 21 armored cars. These numbers did not include Popel’s task force. Among surviving tanks were forty-three KV-1s, thirty-one T-34s, sixty-nine BT-7s, fifty-seven T-26s, and seven T-40s. Despite being down by one third of its pre-war strength, the VIII Mechanized Corps still retained a significant punch of fifty-four modern KV-1 and T-34s. To put things in perspective, the 207 tanks still available to Ryabyshev on June 30 were almost the same number of tanks that Rokossovskiy’s IX Mechanized Corps started the war with; and Rokossovskiy did not have any modern tanks. Especially severe was the loss of almost all the artillery, mainly due to air attacks. In his memoirs, Ryabyshev stated that by June 30, not counting Popel’s detached force, the VIII Mechanized Corps sustained losses of 635 killed and 1,673 wounded—a highly unlikely and, obviously, lowered number.[18] Other than plainly overestimating his strength at nineteen thousand, a doubtfully high number, Ryabyshev must have absorbed whatever straggling detachment of Red Army men he could lay his hands on.
In an interesting detail, both Ryabyshev and Popel wrote in their memoirs that both were subjected to several instances when someone claiming to be one of them attempted to contact the other by radio. According to the two memoirists, the speaker spoke fluent Russian, but when challenged could not provide proof to the authenticating questions. In this fashion, the false “Popel” did not know the name of Ryabyshev’s dog, and false “Ryabyshev” did not know the make of Popel’s hunting rifle. Since both writers independently mention these episodes, they seem like attempts by German intelligence to exploit the confusing situation at the front.
XV Mechanized Corps
Colonel Yermolayev’s corps spent most of the day in the vicinity of Zolochev, collecting stragglers, men and machines both, and getting ready to retreat eastwards. Its 10th Tank Division fought a sharp skirmish with German reconnaissance units before setting off itself. Retreat of the 37th Tank Division was also interrupted when it became embroiled in a rear-guard action in support of the 141st Rifle Division from the XXXVII Rifle Corps. After conducting several local counterattacks, the tanks of the 37th Tank Division resumed their pullback.
After 2000 hours, hoping to use the cover of darkness to slip east, the gigantic convoy of the XV Mechanized Corps entered onto the highway east of Zolochev. This was a mistake. Enjoying uncontested air superiority, German aircraft quickly found the defenseless convoy. Under relentless pounding from the air, the highway east of Zolochev turned into a gigantic funeral pyre of retreating Soviet vehicles.