Oblivious to the storm which was about to break, Dimitri Korsak drove his requisitioned T-26 tank through the dark fields. The headlamps burned merrily as he left the main Moscow highway road and made directly across country towards the designated rendezvous point. He hummed a melody and reflected on the mission in hand. His instructions were clear; rendezvous with a German parachutist dressed in a Russian bandsman’s uniform and collect a sealed package from the radio operator. There was a slight twist to the instructions which appealed to Korsak. The words from his superior in Moscow were still ringing in his ears.
“Ensure that you have the package then turn your machine gun on the courier. Make sure there are no witnesses, from our side as well as theirs.”
As the tank trundled its way through the darkness Korsak had time to reflect. “So it’s come to this, a glorified postman!” But he qualified that thought, as postmen didn’t usually kill their customers.
The first grey light of dawn was beginning to show in the sky to the east as Korsak drove straight on through a field on ripening corn. He could have gone round the edge, but for the sheer hell of it he carried on straight through, oblivious to the tell-tale tracks which marked his passage. He felt safe that no jumped up local official would dare lodge a complaint. All was peaceful when suddenly his world was turned upside down. At 04:15 Moscow time, the hurricane began.
- CHAPTER 3 -
Das Loslassens des Infernos
HANS VON Schroif looked at his watch for the last time◦— 03:15, 22nd June, a date and time he would never forget. He then inhaled, felt his mind go strangely empty and calm, then exhaled and it all began.
“Fire!” The command was simultaneously issued from thousands of throats, unleashing a barrage with the power to wake a sleeping world and crack a continent in two.
It was the light first, the red streaks rushing off to join their predecessors, the first red streaks of dawn, in the sky above them, and then the sound… Even as a veteran of the great war von Schroif was stunned. He thought to himself, “No man has ever heard a cacophony like this before, no man should, and hopefully no man in the future ever would…” and at that moment he snapped out of the role of mere spectator and snapped into the role he had been training all his life for….
Above the roar of the StuG engines he could hear Captain Grunewald call “Fire!” and the hell dance began.
As the command half-track rumbled forward the rockets shot skywards with a howling, wailing sound and the earth trembled. German artillery of all calibres joined in the barrage and the noise rose to a deafening crescendo which was immediately joined by the rumble of explosions in the nearby fortress.
Von Schroif tried to imagine the effect this wave of fiery hell would be having on the ramparts of the fortress, its buildings and gun emplacements. The shock waves could easily be felt at this distance. The unbelievable concussion was palpable. It was inconceivable that anyone or anything could survive under such a rain of destruction. Surely the fortress must have been pounded to dust. Perhaps, after all, they might be able to drive right past and chase after Guderian. Surely no living thing could withstand that barrage.
There is a phrase commonly used, often by those who have never served in any theatre of war, namely ‘when the dust settles’. For those who have experienced, or rather survived, any kind of heavy bombardment◦— whether from the ground or the air◦— this phrase is completely devoid of meaning. The dust never settles. This is especially true if, like the garrison of the Brest fortress, you are holed up in a fortification made of brick and concrete which is exposed to sudden and unexpected bombardment. It hangs in the air and clogs the eyes and the lungs, the atmosphere almost as solid as the bricks from whence it came.
After the initial explosion the defenders did not stand and ‘dust themselves off’. They lay where they had been thrown, some with their eardrums completely shattered, others with their lungs sucked out, many whose brains were so damaged it was as if they had been knocked straight back to infancy. Perhaps it was the lucky ones who were dead, either atomised or pulped. Most did survive however, though few could tell you how.
One of the stunned survivors was Bettina Wendorff. She had been disappointed to lose the newfound companionship of Captain Zubachyov, but her loss saved her life. The nurses’ quarters were adjacent to the hospital complex, spread over a jumble of nearly forty buildings on Cholmsker Island, which lay within the boundaries of the fortress, but was known to the Germans as South Island. It was on South Island that the first volley of the fire from Grunewald’s Nebelwerfer battery fell. As she walked disconsolately towards the hospital a terrible howling sound suddenly arose from the west. The noise reached a painful pitch as thirty-six high-powered rockets packed with high-explosive screamed down and exploded on the hospital complex. Two minutes earlier and Bettina would have been under the barrage. As it was, the horror of a Nebelwerfer attack threw her backward, pummelled her ear drums and sucked the air from her lungs as the cluster of explosions impacted and the succession of concussions pounded her prone frame with shock wave after shock wave.
Just up ahead from von Schroif and his battery of assault guns, even closer to the falling barrage, lay the 3rd Company of the 135th Infantry Regiment. In common with von Schroif’s men, they had lain quiet and motionless in the reeds which fronted the Bug, the only sound before the bombardment the mating calls of frogs, their only thought the hopelessly undermanned bridge that lay before them.
At exactly 3:15 the grenadiers charged from their positions, past the empty customs hut, and surged across the bridge, the single Soviet sentry mown down before he could react. Tearing onwards across the open space, a burst of fire from the lead elements of the unit wiped out the remaining Soviets in the guard dugout then dashed on to form the perimeter of the first bridgehead. The next phase in the lightning-fast operation was for the engineers to clear the bridge of any explosives. A single charge! That was all they found! Once dealt with in a matter of seconds, a green lens over the torch◦— and that was it! Bridge clear!
“Sturmgeschütze vor!” called von Schroif. With the upper part of his arm extended horizontally to his right side and his fist in the air he jerked the limb downwards. Engines roared and revved and the whole column rolled across the bridge and into the territory of the Soviet Union.
All along the frontier the same element of surprise had been achieved. Frogmen, boats and assault engineers throwing makeshift pontoons all helped to cross the river obstacle.
None made their entry on to the battlefield in such a dramatic fashion as the tanks of the 18th Panzer Division commanded by Major Jurgen Rondorf. His machines were the Tauchpanzers, the underwater tanks developed for the abortive invasion of England. At Milowitz, near Prague, in the spring of 1941, Rondorf had been charged with a programme under which the tanks had been modified to make them suitable for river crossing. With typical thoroughness he had risen to the challenge and both the tanks and crews were now adapted for a new campaign. Their mission, as had long been understood, was literally to submerge beneath the waters of the Bug and make a submarine crossing over the line near Patulin. Rumour travels fast in armies and it was an open secret that the Panzer III’s of Jurgen’s force were being modified for a surprise river crossing. To make it possible they were provided with an ingenious submersion kit. Air-intakes were fitted with locking covers, and the exhaust was fitted with non-return valves. The cupola, gun mantlet and hull machine gun were all sealed with waterproof fabric covers. An inflatable rubber tube surrounded the turret ring and made it waterproof.