Chapter 22
In spite of his reservations, Hörnlein was quick to mount a vigorous attack into the wide gap between Novo Kirovka and the main city. On his right, stretching along the northern suburbs of Novo Kirovka was the main cemetery of the city, stretching some three kilometers east, where it approached a sturdy building that was a Brick Factory near the balka. That feature ran another four kilometers east before several branches joined it from the north, where there was yet another burial ground near the main city hospital. The main road from Kalach ran in towards central Volgograd, past a radio station, yet another cemetery, and then running by that hospital.
As Grossdeutschland Division pushed into that open ground, Hörnlein was haunted by the thought that his men were advancing into a position bounded by the resting places of the dead, and he worried that too many of his fine young soldiers might soon join them. It was a sallow grey morning, with light snow falling, and his first order of business would be to capture and silence that Radio Station. It had been broadcasting ceaselessly, taunting the Germans, the announcer saying there was plenty of room in the cemeteries for newcomers, and plenty of stone in the dry balkas for new headstones.
“If that man is captured alive,” said Hörnlein, “then I will personally see that he gets a nice plot in that cemetery.”
That morning, 1st Company of his Fusilier Regiment, with 1 Panzer Company made a direct attack on the station, the tanks blasting away at the walls, doors, and windows, the infantry making well-coordinated rushes to break in to the lower floor. It was half an hour’s work, and Hörnlein had the satisfaction of having the announcer dragged back alive through German lines and presented to him, whereupon he took out his pistol and aimed it directly at the man’s head.
“Plenty of room in the cemeteries?” he said. “Then there will certainly be room for you!” He had no scruples when he pulled the trigger, and his men smirked as they dragged the man’s limp body off, though he was not given the dignity of a burial. They left him for the bands of roving dogs. It was just the opening line of the litany of terror and cruelty that this battle would become.
2nd Fusilier Company was already in the center of the Radio Station Cemetery, and now it was supported with a major attack involving two more companies of Panzergrenadiers and a lot of armor. That attack cleared the ground there by mid-day, the defending 204th Rifle Division out-fought among the tombstones. After they had fallen back into the suburbs further east, the Russian division artillery put in a barrage with all three battalions.
It was a macabre site to see the artillery churning up the cemetery, the headstones shattering, sodden earth cratered deep enough in places to expose the bleached white skeletons of the buried. To one German Grenadier, it seemed as if the dead were rising up from their graves to join the battle. Sergeant Muller dove for cover into a smoking shell crater, thinking it unlikely that a second shell would land at just that spot. There he found a horror of another kind as he crouched low, the moldered remnants of a newly buried corpse, the skin of its face rotted away, the pallid skull exposed, and those empty eye sockets staring at him. It was an experience that would haunt him ever after.
The Germans took the smaller cemetery that day, but did not go into the much larger burial ground on the northern fringes of Novo Kirovka. First they focused on the small Brick Factory, jutting like Hougoumont from the edge of the balka that bordered the city. Two companies of the tough Grenadiers drove out 1st Battalion, 38th Rifle Division, and the Russians retreated into the balka. Behind them came the growl of tanks, and the men of the motorized machinegun company attached to that battalion radioed back to say they had what looked to be two battalions of enemy tanks in the balka. Hörnlein’s men were in the thick of that no-man’s land, surrounded by the dead on three sides, and now confronting a most unexpected attack by this armor.
When Chuikov had learned that the Germans were moving aggressively into that gap, he had quickly ordered the 56th Tank Brigade to counterattack. The armor poured over the balka, grinding towards that MG Company, which found itself ill prepared to contest that ground. A radio call went out, sounding the alarm, which was heard by 7th and 8th Panzer Companies west of the Brick Factory. They had been preparing to go into the big cemetery, but now they pulled out of that sector, moving over the balka to support the threatened area. They would bring over 30 tanks, and about half were the newer PzKfw Vs, with two Lions and also a pair of the new Tigers. These were beasts that had never prowled the broken landscape of this city, all appearing in the war six months early.
The Russians had learned to fear and respect the Tiger when it appeared. It outgunned their own tanks, with far more hitting power at range, and during the war in Fedorov’s history, it achieved a kill ratio of 8 to 1 over all Russian adversaries it faced. It was to be an equally lopsided duel here, with the more experienced German tank crews halting their advance just outside 700 meters, and then letting the long barreled Panthers and Tigers cherry pick the onrushing enemy tanks. One of the Tigers scored a particularly spectacular hit, blowing the turret right off a T-34, the tank crews hooting when they saw it spin madly up from the hull on a column of black smoke and fire.
Hörnlein had taken all his key objectives by the end of the following day. He had men in the main cemetery, where fighting still continued at the extreme east, and on the opposite western neck of the graveyard, where a cluster of larger mausoleums stood like ghostly pill boxes manned by both the living and the dead. As squads of German infantry pushed forward, if any fell dead from enemy fire, they would soon be attended by a small penal squad.
These unlucky soldiers, having run afoul of regulations or fallen out of favor with their Sergeants for one reason or another, would be assigned to crawl forward over the cold snowy graves, and literally dig into the frozen earth then and there, all under enemy fire. Their mission was to bury the dead where they fell, and they were to bring back all the personal effects of the fallen, their helmet, belt, sidearm and any medals or other documents.
Heintz Romer was one such private, finding himself in the penal squad that day for pilfering an officer’s personal stash of tobacco. He had dragged himself over the deadly ground, through a ghastly scene where tracer rounds zipped past his exposed head. No helmets were issued to the men on that squad, so as to motivate them to get out to their fallen grenadiers, where it was permitted that they could then wear the helmet of the stricken soldier.
Fighting for a damn graveyard, he thought, bemoaning his fate. Damn bullets snapping off the tombstones, the ground frozen over and cold as hell on my belly, and another twenty yards to that Grenadier out there.
Then came the reassuring drone of an MG-42, and he saw the enemy line ahead enveloped in that hail of bullets. Covering fire! On an impulse, he reasoned that ten seconds on his booted feet would get him much farther than ten minutes on his belly, so he grunted up into a low crouch, running from one headstone to the next. Behind him, he heard the cheering of the other members of the penal squad, but they all had ulterior motives. If Heintz were to be gunned down, then it would be one of the remaining five men out there on his belly in the middle of that boneyard.
Private Romer made it to the fallen man, hugging the ground behind his body, the cold reaching right through his trenchcoat. First things first. He began to search through the man’s pockets, pulling out anything he could find. At one point, a rifle bullet nearly struck his hand, thudding into the fallen soldier instead.