“Nice of you to take a bullet for me,” he said aloud, “seeing all the trouble I’ve been put to here.” He looked at the man’s personal billfold, seeing his name on an identity card—Klingmann, Private First Class—and behind the card he found a photograph, presumably of the man’s wife, and two small children. He passed a moment of sadness, thinking of them being out there, far away, at that very moment, and not knowing that Private Klingmann had already joined the dark, silent battalion of the dead buried beneath that ghastly ground. They were to be his family now, and the only embrace he would ever have again would be the mingling of his corpse, his bones, with those of the enemy he had come here to conquer. He was joining them soon, as Heintz stuffed the billfold away in a pocket and closed his frigid fingers on the haft of his shovel. His back protected by a thick headstone, he began to scrape at the cold earth, his breath frosty white, deathly white with the exertion of his labor.
The Germans were going to take that burial ground that day, but they were going to have to pay for it with the lives of men like Private Klingmann, and the madness that would soon fall on men like Private Heintz Romer, digging as he stared at the frozen blood of his fellow soldier, a macabre sheen of red ice darkening the area around the man’s body.
Yet if the camera pulled back from this silent little drama in the cemetery, it would have seen that Steiner’s plan was working as he supposed it might. The considerable weight of the Grossdeutschland Division was now firmly within the gap between Novo Kirovka and the town of Maxim Gorki, north beyond the captured Radio Station. The stalwart Grenadiers and Fusiliers were in all three cemeteries, and had the small Brick Factory set up as an observation post for their mortars. The wedge they had secured was very dangerous to the defense, for the easternmost cemetery by the hospital was no more than six kilometers from the river.
The Brandenburgers to their north had also hit hard, enfilading Maxim Gorki from that side, where an entire regiment of the 204th Rifle Division was now cut off. That division had also stormed the Kirov Airfield, and taken the steelworks beyond the barracks, but the Soviet 196th Rifle Division was still firmly entrenched in that old military base, fighting from behind the stockade wall, and low wood barracks buildings that made up the place. The loss of the airfield, however, forced the Russian Guardsmen on the Rampart to abandon that position as Steiner predicted. They fell back into the slowly thickening trees that crept up the western slope of Hill 115.
To make matters worse for the Russians, the Leibstandarte Division was pushing hard near the Airfield Settlement at the northern end of that rampart. The division had been pushing up the rail line that crossed the Don near Golubinskaya and ran down through Gorodische and Aleksandrovka, eventually running on to the Flight School near Mamayev Kurgan. Chuikov could see what was happening, a classic pincer attack by two of the steely German divisions against his center. The question was whether or not he should attempt to hold, or fall back. There was so little ground to give, and the 12 kilometers from the big mass of Mamayev to the rampart seemed like an endless luxury of space which he did not wish to relinquish unfought.
Yet the fighting had already pulled in a good number of reserve units, and now he had only a single Machinegun Regiment and the 189th Tank Battalion parked along the rail line by the Flying School. The 124th Special Brigade was in the Red October Worker’s Settlement, but they had limited offensive value, being lightly armed civilian recruits. He also had the entire 13th Guards Rifle Division back in the factories, but he would not touch it, not now, not on the first days of what might be many weeks of hard fighting here. So he sent one battalion from the MG Regiment north to shore up the Airfield Settlement, and a second battalion to the airfield itself, which was now being overrun by German infantry from the Brandenburg Division.
The Rampart, as perfect an anti-tank ditch as anywhere else on the battlefield, had fallen with scarcely a shot being fired. The telephone rang in his underground HQ bunker, the quavering of the sound jarring his nerves. He reached for it, expecting nothing but bad news, and Shumilov did not disappoint.
It’s that damn SS division I told you about—the one that has come up from Nizhne Chirskaya. How did Rokossovsky’s boys ever compel them to withdraw? They hit the Minina Mining Workers Settlement hard today, and have nearly overrun the entire sector.”
“What about Beketova?” said Chuikov. “What about the Siberian Division?”
“I pulled it out safely, but just barely. Volkov has that city now, all but the ferry bunker, where I left a single battalion to hold out for a while. We’re placing charges on all the quays and boat docks. No sense making things easy for Volkov’s brats when they smell the river.”
“Then where is the rest of the 1st Siberian?”
“All the heavy weapons went by the coast road through Kupersnoye as we planned. There was a traffic snarl over the railway bridge at the Leopard Gorge. The damn Germans are no more than two kilometers west of that bridge! That said, I got it sorted out, and most of the infantry came up on the river barges to the Lumber Trust Ferry, and we’re damn lucky they are there. If that SS division keeps on coming like they have these last two days, they’ll be in Yelshanka tomorrow.”
“What about your 185th Division? It was holding west of Yelshanka, yes?”
“Not for very much longer. Those SS troopers fight like demons. They busted up that division very badly. My men are still fighting—we hold the Yelshanka Quarry, a small section of the Menina Settlement, the local hospital. But they’ve already taken Verknaya Yelshanka, and soon they’ll push right on through Kupersnoye to the river. Thankfully, the evacuation of Sarpinskiy Island is coming off smoothly. Volkov hasn’t lifted a finger east of the Volga. They’re just sitting over there gloating and listening to the artillery fire.”
“It’s a lot of ground to give, more than all we still hold.” Chuikov was still worried about the decision.
“True Vasyli, but we pulled three more divisions into the fight for Volgograd. Sergei Kirov won’t want to know what happened on Sarpinskiy Island. It’s this city he’s concerned about.”
“They made a big push into the gap between Novo Kirovka and Maxim Gorki,” said Chuikov. “It looks like they are trying to carve up the city like a steak—create smaller enclaves that they can invest and reduce one by one. It’s what I would do.”
“Is it?” said Shumilov. “Then start thinking of how we can stop them.”
“Stop them? General Shumilov, that won’t take much thinking, but it will take a good deal of muscle, bone, and blood. Their offensive push is slowing a bit tonight, but they’ll be back at it again tomorrow. The only place that held firm today is the northern segment. They sent the Das Reich Division near the aqueduct east towards Rynok. Rokossovsky was kind enough to return our 2nd Volga Rifles, and he even fleshed it out with a good many new squads. They are holding the line beyond the Mushrooms.”
“Good,” said Shumilov, then he was silent for a moment. “To think that division was once a corps, and it stood watch here for ten years. Volkov could never move them, and now the wolves are at the gates. God be with them.”
“With us all,” said Chuikov. “The death toll from the enemy bombing is fierce. Thousands died again today, and we have no way to evacuate the civilians.”
“Then let them stay and fight,” said Shumilov. “We’re going to need every man, woman and child that can lift a finger.”
