The German retreat eastwards across the Don, back towards Stalingrad and away from the rest of the Wehrmacht, was in many ways worse than the retreat from before Moscow, the previous December. Fine snow, hard and dry, drove across the steppe, lashing their faces, however much they turned their collars up against the wind. Despite the bitter lessons of the previous year, many soldiers had still not yet received winter uniform. The lines of retreat were littered with discarded weapons, helmets and equipment. Most Romanian soldiers had little more than their brown uniforms. They had thrown away their steel helmets in the retreat. The luckier ones, mainly officers, wore Balkan sheepskin caps. Shot-up and burnt-out vehicles had been pushed to the side of the road or down the embankment. At one point there was an anti-aircraft gun whose barrel had exploded, curling out and back like an exotic flower. Closer to the bridges over the Don, there were solid traffic jams of trucks, staff cars, dispatch riders desperately trying to get through, farm carts and the odd field gun towed by exhausted and undernourished horses. From time to time there would be waves of panic, with cries of ‘Russian tanks!’ The Soviet 1 6th Tank Corps was attacking down through the 76th Infantry Division towards Vertyachy, threatening to cut off German units left west of the Don.
Some of the ugliest scenes developed at the approaches to the bridge at Akimovsky, with soldiers shouting, jostling and even fighting to get across to the eastern bank. The weak and the wounded were trampled underfoot. Sometimes, officers threatened each other for not letting their men pass first. Even the Feldgendarmerie detachment armed with sub-machine-guns was unable to restore a semblance of order. A considerable number of soldiers, to avoid the chaos and congestion, tried to cross the frozen Don on foot. The ice was thick and strong near the banks, but in the centre there were weak spots. Those who fell through the ice were doomed. Nobody even thought of going to their aid. Comparisons to the Berezina were uppermost in most people’s minds.
Occasionally, on these lines of retreat, an officer as unshaven as the men around him decided that it was his duty to halt the disintegration. He drew his pistol to round up a few stragglers, then, using them as a core, press-ganged others until their force snowballed. Heavy weapons and gun crews would also be commandeered to form an improvised combat group. The scratch force, with varying degrees of compulsion, then took up positions and waited for Soviet tanks or cavalry to appear out of the icy mist.
Across the Don, on the east bank, every village was packed with German soldiers who had lost their divisions, all seeking food and shelter from the terrible cold. The exhausted and half-starved Romanians, who had been retreating for over a week already, received little sympathy from their allies. ‘The numerous Romanians’, observed one officer, ‘were forced to bivouac outside.’ The lines of retreat took in the supply depots, but this only added to the chaos. A panzer officer later reported on the chaos in Peskovatka, ‘especially the frantic and nervous behaviour of a Luftwaffe flak unit’, blowing up, burning and destroying stores and transport ‘in a wild fashion’. Passing soldiers plundered any supply dump they found. From the mountains of cans, they filled rucksacks and pockets until they bulged. Nobody ever seemed to have an opener, so they used bayonets, in their impatience, often not knowing what the tin contained. If they discovered one with coffee beans, they poured them into a steel helmet and pummelled them with the hilt of the bayonet like a crude pestle and mortar. When soldiers who had not received any winter clothing saw supply troops throwing new outfits on to fires, they rushed over to seize them from the flames for themselves. Meanwhile the Feldpostamt was burning letters and parcels, many of which contained food sent from home.
Far more terrible scenes were to be found in field hospitals. ‘Here everything’s overflowing,’ reported an NCO from a repair depot in Peskovatka suffering badly from jaundice. ‘The lightly wounded and sick must find accommodation for themselves.’ He had to spend the night in the snow. Others suffered much more. There were trucks parked on the frozen mud of the yard outside, still full of wounded, with bandaged heads and stumps. The drivers had disappeared and corpses were not removed from their midst. Nobody had offered the living any food or drink. The orderlies and doctors inside were too busy, and passing soldiers tended to ignore their cries for help. Malingerers or walking wounded who tried to gain entry to the field hospital found themselves referred to an NCO charged with rounding up stragglers to reform them as scratch companies. Frostbite casualties, unless very severe cases, were given ointment and bandages, then also marched off for duty.
Inside, patients dozed apathetically. There was little oxygen left in the heavy, damp air, but at least it was warm. Orderlies removed field bandages, many already crawling with grey lice, cleaned wounds, gave tetanus injections and rebandaged them. A man’s chances of survival depended essentially on the type and place of injury. The missile—whether shell splinter, grenade fragment or bullet—mattered less than the point of entry. The triage was straightforward. Those with serious head wounds and stomach wounds were placed to one side and left to die, because such operations took a full surgical team between ninety minutes and two hours to complete, and only about one patient in two survived. A priority was given to walking wounded. They could be sent back into the battle. Stretchers took up too much room and too much manpower. Shattered limbs were also dealt with quickly. Surgeons with rubber aprons and scalpels and saws, working in pairs, performed rapid amputations on limbs held down by a couple of orderlies. The ration of ether was reduced to make it stretch further. Severed matter was dropped into pails. The floor around the operating table became slippery with blood, despite the occasional hurried swab with a mop. A blend of sickly smells overcame all traces of the usual field-hospital carbolic. The surgical production line seemed endless.
Troops still left on the western bank of the Don wondered if they would escape. ‘Right on towards the Don,’ continued the diary entries of the artillery officer. ‘Will it go off all right? Will we get through to the big pocket? Is the bridge still standing? Hours of suspense and anxiety. Defence sections to right and left of the route. Often the road is itself the front line. At last the Don! Bridge intact: A stone drops from our hearts! On the far side take up a fire position. Russians pushing forwards already. Cavalry crossed the Don to our south.’
‘A number of tanks had to be blown up,’ a corporal reported later, ‘because we did not get fuel in time.’ The 14th Panzer Division was left with only twenty-four tanks which could be repaired, so its spare crews were reorganized as an infantry company armed with carbines and machine pistols. Senior officers were close to despair. Early on the morning of 25 November, Prince zu Dohna-Schlobitten, the intelligence officer of XIV Panzer Corps, overheard a conversation between General Hube and his chief of staff, Colonel Thunert, in which they used phrases such as ‘last resort’ and ‘a bullet through the head’.
The temperature dropped drastically. The hardness of the ground meant a much higher casualty rate from mortar fire, but it was not so much the frozen earth as the frozen water which affected the retreat. The dramatic frost meant that the Don would soon be easily passable for the enemy. During the following night, Soviet infantry were able to cross the Don near Peskovatka. Early the next morning, the patients in the field hospital woke to the sound of mortar and machine-gun fire. ‘Everyone was running around like headless chickens’, reported the NCO with jaundice from the repair depot, who had survived the night outside after finding there was no room for him. ‘On the road there were queues of vehicles, one behind the other, while mortar bombs fell all around. Here and there one of them was hit and burned out. The badly wounded could not be transported, because of a lack of trucks. A hastily assembled company of soldiers from a variety of units managed to repulse the Russians just before they reached the field hospital.’