Kalach, the principal objective for three Soviet tank corps, was one of the most vulnerable points of all. There was no organized defence, only an ill-assorted collection of sub-units, mainly supply and maintenance troops, a small detachment of Feldgendarmerie and a Luftwaffe anti-aircraft battery.
The transport company and workshops of the 16th Panzer Division had already established themselves in Kalach for the winter. ‘The first news of any change in the situation’ did not reach them until 10 a.m. on 21 November. They subsequently heard that the Russian tank columns which had broken through the Romanians to the north-west were now advancing towards their sector of the Don. At around 5 p.m. they heard for the first time of the breakthrough south of Stalingrad. They had no idea that Volsky’s mechanized corps, despite all the hesitations which had enraged Yeremenko, was approaching Fourth Panzer Army’s former headquarters, only thirty miles to their south-east.
The defences at Kalach were not only thoroughly inadequate for the task, they were also badly managed. On the west bank, on the heights above the Don, there were four Luftwaffe flak emplacements, and another two anti-aircraft guns on the east bank. Only a group of twenty-five men from the Organisation Todt were assigned to the immediate security of the bridge, while the scratch battalion of rear troops remained in the town on the east bank.
Major-General Rodin, the commander of 26th Tank Corps, gave the task of capturing the bridge at Kalach to Lieutenant-Colonel G. N. Filippov, the commander of the 19th Tank Brigade. Leaving Ostrov at midnight, Filippov’s column advanced eastwards to Kalach during the early hours of 22 November. At 6.15 a.m., two captured German tanks and a reconnaissance vehicle, with their lights switched on to disarm suspicion, drove on to the temporary bridge across the Don and opened fire on the guards. Another sixteen Soviet tanks had meanwhile plunged into thick scrub on the heights above the river to cover them. It was the point from which German panzers had gazed down upon the town on 2 August.
Several Soviet tanks were set on fire, but Filippov’s boldness had paid off. The detachment guarding the bridge was driven off, and enough T-34s crossed to fight off belated attempts to blow the bridge. Russian motorized infantry appeared on the Don heights, then another group of tanks appeared. Two more attacks followed, supported by artillery and mortars from the Don heights across the river. By mid-morning, Soviet infantry broke into the town. There was chaos in the streets, packed with Romanian stragglers separated from their units. It was not long before the few heavy weapons manned by the scratch battalion were out of ammunition or out of action, even though the drivers and mechanics had sustained few casualties. Having blown up their workshops, they withdrew from the town, climbed into trucks and drove back to find their division in Stalingrad. The way was open for the link-up the next day between the 4th and 26th Tank Corps, coming from the northern flank, and Volsky’s 4th Mechanized Corps, coming from south of Stalingrad.
Guided towards each other by green recognition flares fired at intervals into the sky, the Russian spearheads met in the open steppe near Sovietsky with bear-hug embraces, a scene which was re-enacted at a later date for Soviet propaganda before newsreel cameras. The celebratory exchanges of vodka and sausage between tank crews at the time were unfilmed, but far more genuine.
News spread rapidly on the German side, with the phrase, ‘We’re surrounded!’ That Sunday, 22 November, was for Protestants the day of remembrance of the dead. ‘A sombre Totensonntag 1942,’ wrote Kurt Reuber, a priest serving as a doctor with 16th Panzer Division, ‘worry, fear and horror.’ Many, however, were not too concerned on first hearing the news. Encirclements had happened the winter before, and been broken, but better-informed officers, on further reflection, began to realize that this time there were no reserves to rescue them quickly. ‘We became very much aware of what danger we were in’, remembered Freytag-Loringhoven, ‘to be cut off so deep into Russia on the edge of Asia.’
Forty miles to the west, the last pocket of Romanian resistance was coming to an end, even though in the early hours of that day, General Lascar had rejected the Red Army’s demand for surrender. ‘We will continue to fight without thought of surrender’, he declared, but his troops, although resisting bravely, were without supplies and short of ammunition.
The Soviet crossing at Kalach immediately put the XI Army Corps, to the north, in grave danger. It had already been fighting a defensive battle on almost three sides amid uncertainty and chaos, compounded by rumours. This confusion was revealed in the fragments of a diary taken from the body of a German artillery officer:
20.11.…is the offensive coming to a halt??!! Change of position northwards. We have only one gun left. All the others are out of action.
Saturday, 21.11. Enemy tanks early… Change of position to the rear. Russians already extremely near. Own infantry (motor-cyclists and pioneers) called in for close protection. Today still more Romanians passed by without stopping. We’re pulling out. Already under pressure from Russians on two sides. New fire position. Only stayed a short time, then another change of position rearwards. Build a bunker.
Sunday, 22.11. Alarm at 3.30 a.m. Ordered out as infantry! Russians approaching. Romanians retreating. We can’t hold this position on our own. We’re anxiously waiting for another order to change position.
During this retreat, German infantry divisions found themselves in the open fighting off cavalry attacks ‘as if it were 1870’, as one officer put it. Their greatest problem was transport, mainly because of the shortage of horses. In some cases the solution adopted was brutally simple. An ΝCO would grab three-quarter-starved Russians from one of the prisoner-of-war cages to serve as draught animals. ‘When the retreat started on 20 November,’ reported one Russian prisoner of war, ‘we were put instead of horses to drag the carts loaded with ammunition and food. Those prisoners who could not drag the carts as quickly as the Feldwebel wanted were shot on the spot. In this way we were forced to pull the carts for four days, almost without any rest. At the Vertyachy prison camp, an encirclement of barbed wire without any shelter, the Germans selected the least unhealthy prisoners and took them with them.’ The remainder, the sickest prisoners, were left behind to starve and freeze in the snow. ‘Only two out of ninety-eight were still alive’, when they were discovered by an advance unit of the 65th Army. Photographers were summoned to record the horrific scene. Pictures were printed in the press and the Soviet government formally accused the German command of a war crime.
The 376th Infantry Division was the most exposed to the Russian attack, which was ‘extraordinarily rapid’, according to its commander, General Edler von Daniels. The division, reduced to 4,200 men, when trapped on the west bank of the Don as part of XI Army Corps, pulled back in a south-eastwards direction on 22 November. Two days later, in the early morning, the division crossed the Don by the bridge at Vertyachy.
The tank regiment of 16th Panzer Division had meanwhile been advancing, having finally crossed the Don on the night of 22 November to support XI Corps. On the way, it had managed to pass by its armoured workshops at Peskovatka, where some new and freshly repaired tanks were collected. From its position on the southern side of the German bridgehead in the Don loop, the panzer regiment attempted a counter-attack in the direction of Suchanov on 23 November in heavy mist, but was ambushed by Soviet infantry, in white camouflage suits, armed with anti-tank rifles. In the face of enemy strength, and owing to the acute shortage of fuel, the 16th Panzer Division was pulled back. It took up positions ready to cover the retreat, but communications were so bad that almost all orders had to go via dispatch rider.