Maj-Gen A. A. Korobkov, the commander of the Fourth Soviet Army, hastily despatched a situation report from his headquarters in Kobrin to the Western Special Military District in Minsk. Released at 06.40 hours, it read:
‘I report: at 04.15 hours on 22 June 1941 the enemy began to fire on the fortress at Brest and the region of the town of Brest. At the same time enemy aviation began to bomb the airfields at Brest, Kobrin and Pruzhany. By 06.00 hours artillery shelling intensified in the region of Brest. The town is burning… ’(2)
‘We youngsters did not want to believe in a war,’ admitted Georgij Karbuk, ‘it was something too far away for us.’ Suppressed suspicions were overtaken by the grim reality of events.
‘We had a foreboding that war would soon break out. We had certainly seen the Germans behind the Bug, but in spite of this we did not want to believe it. Then when we saw the first wounded and dead lying on the pavement and all the blood – we had to believe that now there would be war.’(3)
Katschowa Lesnewna worked as a nursing sister in the surgical hospital located within 36 buildings on the South Island. ‘Immediately with the initial bombardment,’ she said, ‘the buildings forming the surgical clinic went up in flames, as did the others.’ There was outrage. ‘We thought the Fascists would spare the hospital;’ she complained, ‘there was a large red cross painted on the roof. At the same time there were the first wounded and dead.’(4) Wooden buildings burned furiously.
Unteroffizier Helmut Kollakowsky, a German infantry NCO, spoke in awe of the opening bombardment:
‘Someone told us that at 03.15 hours an overwhelming barrage would come, and it would be so strong, that we would be able to cross the Bug unhindered. It is impossible to contemplate any resistance after such an opening bombardment.’(5)
Gerd Habedanck observed the preliminary barrage secure within the battalion HQ bunker of one of the 45th Infantry Division’s assaulting units. They heard a single artillery report break the stillness, then:
‘We had barely heard it when the earth shook, boomed and rolled. Strong draughts of air blew into our faces… I risked a quick look outside the casement. The sky over us was lit up bright red. An infernal whistling, droning and crackle of explosions filled the air. Young willows were bent over as if in a storm… It is still not yet quite light and thick clouds of smoke darken the sky.’(6)
Wochenschau German newsreel cameramen were on hand to record the destruction. The films show mushrooms of smoke jetting up from the flash of impacts on the citadel walls; in the foreground, German artillery observers wriggle into better positions to see. Targets smothered in explosions disappear behind clouds of ground-hugging smoke and dust. Here and there, larger-calibre shell strikes abruptly shoot up huge geysers of smoke towering above the rest.
Chaplain Rudolf Gschöpf with 45th Division recalled: ‘as 03.15 hours struck, a hurricane broke loose and roared over our heads, to a degree never experienced before or indeed later in the war.’(7) Hermann Wild was in a dinghy precariously weighed down by 37mm anti-tank guns. Alongside Infantry Regiment 130, he was part of the southern attack axis assaulting across the River Bug, and he saw ‘the air filled with metal at a stroke’. Sheltering in a slit trench, ‘one was shoved from side to side by the rhythmic explosion and concussion of shells’.(8) Most of Wild’s company achieved the crossing during the short opening bombardment. The plan appeared to be working. Gschöpf described how:
‘This all-embracing gigantic barrage literally shook the earth. Great fountains of thick black smoke sprang up like mushrooms from the ground. As no counter fire was evident at that moment, we thought everything in the citadel must already have been razed to the ground.’(9)
Gerd Habedanck’s battalion began the assault river crossing of the Bug. His subsequent correspondent’s account atmospherically recreated the scene:
‘One boat after the other slid into the water. There were excited cries, splashing and the howling of assault boat engines. Not a shot from the other bank as blood red flames dance in the water. We jump on shore and press forwards.’(10)
Gefreiter Hans Teuschler, in the second assault wave of Infantry Regiment 135, was with the northern axis. He watched the rubber dinghies of the first wave enter the river at 03.19 hours. Artillery fire lashed the ground ahead, creeping forward in 100m jumps every four minutes, coinciding with the time it was estimated each wave would need to cross the river. ‘The sky was filled with bursting shells of every calibre,’ Teuschler observed. ‘It was an awful roaring, exploding, crackling and howling as if hell was actually about to come on earth.’ Even the attacking soldiers were intimidated. ‘An uncanny feeling came over us all,’ the NCO admitted.(11)
The two-pronged assault on the citadel of Brest-Litovsk was pressed home furiously. Two battalions (I and III) from Infantry Regiment 135 penetrated the North and West islands on the northern axis, while to the south two other battalions from Regiment 130 (I and III) attacked the South Island, attempting to bypass Brest town further south, following the line of the River Muchaviec. The imperative was to secure bridges for the Panzers. Leutnant Zumpe’s 3rd Company sprinted across the four-span railway bridge to the north. They passed the customs post through which, barely an hour before, the last goods train from Russia had rolled. They took fire from a dug-out. Soldiers continued to skirmish forward until a dull thud signified it had been despatched with explosives by accompanying assault pioneers. An urgent survey of the bridge’s superstructure revealed a demolition charge on the central pier. This was disconnected and dropped into the river. Zumpe flashed a green light toward the home bank. German armoured cars began to cross immediately. Within 15 minutes of the start of the assault XIIth Corps Headquarters received the anticipated signaclass="underline" ‘Railway bridge secured intact’.(12)
Leutnant Kremer’s amphibious coup de main force of mixed infantry and assault pioneers from Regiment 130 and Pionier Battalion 81 had barely manhandled their nine assault boats into the water when they were engulfed by the same hurricane of fire that was plastering the opposite bank. A carpet of crackling detonations spurted multiple geysers from the river intermingled with fountains of mud and huge clods of damp earth which were ejected into the pale sky. Bitter-smelling clouds of grey cordite smoke wafted along the riverbank in the deathly calm that followed. Four of the nine boats were a complete wreck, floundering and settling in shallow water.
Bodies began to snag among the reeds lining the riverbank. Wounded soldiers shrieked for assistance. Hermann Wild, attacking upriver, remembered losing his close friend Muller to this unexpected strike. ‘I had spoken with him only five hours before the assault,’ he said: ‘Even then he was already troubled by a premonition of impending death.’(13) Now he would never speak to him again. German artillery, likely the newly employed secret Nebelwerfer multi-barrelled mortar Regiment, had dropped short: 20 men were dead or hideously mutilated.
Kremer reorganised the survivors. Delays and the mind-cloying shock of the artillery strike stifled momentum, but they continued with the mission. Five surviving assault boats motored eastwards along the River Muchaviec toward the first bridge objective. To their left rose the imposing two-storey-high walls of the citadel fortress. Before long a storm of scything, splashing fire spat out from its dominating walls. Two more boats riddled with holes were swamped in the vicinity of the north bridge linking the West Island to the citadel. Survivors struggled ashore to the Citadel Island where they were to remain pinned down for two days. Leutnant Kremer had lost two-thirds of his force in the first few hundred metres. He rallied the surviving three boats and pressed onward toward the first two bridges. These were secured by 03.55 hours, jointly supported by a landward attack pressed home by the ‘Stosstrupp Lohr’, also from Regiment 130. Leutnant Lohr’s group fired from the riverbank while Kremer’s remaining trio of vulnerable boats carried on. The third ‘Wulka’ bridge was captured at about 05.10 hours. Kremer was elated. He insisted on raising a swastika flag over the bridge, his final objective, to mark the accomplishment of the mission that had cost his force so dearly. Lohr advised him not to expose himself but Kremer recklessly persisted. As the flag was raised the hapless officer violently jerked backwards, mortally wounded, struck in the head by a single sniper’s bullet.(14)