General Halder visited von Rundstedt’s Army Group South headquarters on 7 September and agreed final details for a plan involving both Army Group South and Army Group Centre. It directed that all enemy in the Kiev–Dnieper–Desna bend were to be destroyed and the city of Kiev taken. The Panzer envelopment shaping up like Cannae 2,000 years before was imminent. Guderian was to continue his 12-day-old thrust southward to Romny and Priluki with Second Army (infantry) covering his right flank. Army Group South’s Seventeenth Army would pin Soviet forces on the lower Dnieper below Cherkassy and establish a bridgehead across the river at Kremenchug. Von Kleist’s Panzergruppe 1 was to drive northward and link up with Guderian in the Romny-Lokhvitsa area. Six Soviet armies could then be cut off and isolated. Generalfeldmarschall Walther von Reichenau’s Sixth Army was to cross the 650m-wide River Dnieper opposite Kiev and attack the now encircled enemy forces in the city. Panzergruppe 1 was down to 331 armoured fighting vehicles, which was 53% of its campaign start-state.(15) By 12 September he was over the River Dnieper and the race northwards to link up with Guderian was on.
Panzergruppe 2, on the other side of the pocket being created, struggled desperately to maintain the momentum of its southern advance. Surprise had initially paved the way. Soviet General of Engineers Tschistoff, who had been tasked to construct a defensive obstacle along the River Desna, directed his train from Moscow into Novgorod-Severski on 3 September. It had already been in German hands for eight days. On the following day General Model, commanding the spearhead German 3rd Panzer Division, which had penetrated to 16km north of the River Sejm in Krolevec, was handed a selection of captured maps. They had been removed from the body of a crashed Soviet airman, shot while attempting to escape. Analysis of the material revealed 3rd Panzer lay directly on the boundary between the Soviet Twenty-first and Thirteenth armies and that ahead a gap loomed between the opposing enemy forces. Two days’ fighting through stubborn resistance ‘in every village’ in driving rain followed. A bridgehead was thrown across the River Sejm at Malnja. By 9 September Model’s division was a further 25km south. An advanced detachment with the division Panzerjäger battalion, reinforced with a medium Panzer company (PzKpfwIIIs), a light tank platoon and a company of motorised infantry, was created from the dispersed spearhead element to push on alone. Major Frank, its commander, was given a simple directive: ‘thrust forward as far as possible’. Behind him the 3rd Panzer Division regrouped and concentrated for a deliberate division attack, due to commence at 06.00 hours on 10 September. Every soldier was informed this was the final dash required to link with Panzergruppe 1, advancing towards them from the south. Rain began to soak the columns as the attack toward Romny started.
Panzergruppe 2 reached and crossed two bridges north and south of the city of Romny, establishing a bridgehead over the River Sula. Initially unaware of their presence, violent local Russian counter-attacks developed in the built-up area and around the bridges; 25 air attacks were directed against the 3rd Panzer Division strung out along muddy roads. Fuel trucks had to be towed through impassable boggy areas by engineer half-track tractors to refuel Major Frank’s advance detachment. On 12 September, with the appearance of clearer weather, the small group was ordered to test the route further south to Lokhvitsa.(16) Generalfeldmarschall von Bock was satisfied to note that ‘resistance has collapsed in front of the Second Army and Panzergruppe 2’. Success appeared to beckon:
‘At the request of Army Group South, Panzergruppe 2, which is stretched out over more than 200km, was instructed to advance on Lokhvitsa as well as Priluki and Piryatin, in order to link up there with the tanks of Army Group South which early this morning set out toward the north from Kremenchug.’
There was palpable tension at von Bock’s headquarters.
‘At noon came news that the enemy is streaming east out of the more than 200km-wide gap between Kremenchug and Romny in dense columns. Immediately afterward, three telephone calls were received from Army Group South within a half hour, asking if Lokhvitsa had been reached yet!’(17)
Panzer Unteroffizier Hans Becker was enduring the harsh reality of executing his commander’s intent from a more human perspective on the ground. ‘The advance had been growing steadily slower and slower,’ he said, ‘the number of casualties larger and larger.’ He had destroyed six Russian tanks from his own Panzer PzKpfwIV during a single day’s action until his tank was immobilised by a strike on the right-hand track. With no infantry in direct support, the crew decided to blow up the Panzer to prevent it falling into enemy hands. ‘The score was six to one and we were without a scratch between us,’ commented Becker ruefully. Within a day the crew was in action again, this time manning a reserve Panzer. ‘We felt ill at ease,’ he confessed, because there had been no time to paint the barrel with rings commemorating the crew’s tally of tank kills. Although merely a superstition, it was important to them. The new tank was also a PzKpfwIV but it ‘was unfamiliar in small ways, and all of us were suffering from the aftereffects of the previous evening’s combat,’ he said. During the four and a half hours of subsequent fighting, the new Panzer despatched ‘two enemy tanks up in flames’.
As they broke off the action ‘there came a heart-catching crack and jolt’. Becker instinctively realised this was not superficial damage. ‘The morning’s ill-omens had been justified.’ They had received a direct strike on the right rear corner. The Panzer burst into flames. Two of his five-man crew were dead, ‘sprawled in a corner, covered with blood’. The survivors hauled the bodies through the hatch to prevent them being burned. Unusually, the Panzer did not explode, but there was no alternative but to abandon the scorched but repairable hull to the enemy. Running, dodging and weaving, the three remaining crew members started back to their headquarters using a brief lull in the enemy fire. Once clear, Becker described how ‘dejectedly we plodded back four or five kilometres, smoking cigarettes to steady our nerves’. Their appearance was bizarre. All had been splattered with blood from their dead comrades and the splinters that had ricocheted around the Panzer interior as the incoming round had struck home. Depressing news awaited them when they reached their company headquarters. Two complete crews had failed to return. Their seriously wounded company commander was doggedly manning his post and listened to their unfortunate situation report before being evacuated to hospital himself. Victory had been as costly as defeat. Becker reflected, ‘glory grows with the passing of time, and the best battles are battles long ago.’(18)
Even the soldiers fighting in the field could sense the climax to this battle was fast approaching. Cavalry Feldwebel Max Kuhnert, riding reconnaissance for infantry regiments, recalled ‘latrine news’ or gossip ‘that a large encirclement was in progress around Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine, since air activity had increased and we were urged to march faster’. The implication merely inspired resignation. ‘This meant less rest for everyone, including our horses.’(19) As before, the infantry struggled to match the pace of the Panzers. Units on foot, particularly those in transition between battle areas, requisitioned whatever transport was available. Theo Scharf, marching with the 97th Infantry Division, ‘estimated the division [column] reached a maximum [length] of about 60km, with hardly anybody on foot’. Quartermasters did not necessarily approve, but turned a blind eye. Soldiers simply took what horses and wagons they needed. On nearing the combat zone, Scharf said, ‘the illicit requisitioning and trappings, the rubber plants and canary cages, all melted away and the soldiers’ boots were back on the ground.’(20)