‘The Luftwaffe’s favourite places for dropping bombs, especially incendiary ones, were forested areas close to main roads. Not seeing, but expecting, and rightly so, that the woods were providing resting places for army units and their horses, German planes were bombing them, particularly at nightfall.’
Pure birch forests, which, Temkin confessed, ‘I never before or after saw,’ were consumed in the flames. ‘The burning greyish-white trees were turning reddish, as if blushing and ashamed of what was going on.’ As he observed the inferno he became aware of a peculiarly pungent smell. ‘For the first time,’ Temkin said ‘I smelled burnt flesh.’ He was unable to distinguish whether it was men or horses.(7)
Stuka dive-bombers were employed to shatter resistance in the pocket. Between 12 and 21 September, Vth Fliegerkorps flew 1,422 sorties, dropping 567,650kg of bombs and 96 incendiary Type 36 devices. Results were impressive: 23 tanks, 2,171 vehicles, 6 Flak batteries, 52 railway trains and 28 locomotives were destroyed. In addition, 355 vehicles were damaged and 41 put out of action alongside 36 trains. Railway lines were cut in 18 places and a bridge destroyed. Soviet losses included 65 aircraft shot down and 42 destroyed on the ground. Luftwaffe losses, by comparison, were slight, with 17 aircraft destroyed and 14 damaged, costing 18 missing aircrew and 9 dead.(8)
German infantry divisions moved in to eliminate any remaining resistance. On 19 September Fritz Köhler’s motorised infantry unit was still north of the River Desna. At midday he heard the radio Sondermeldung that the link-up with Army Group South had been achieved and four Soviet armies surrounded. After an afternoon of ‘routine work’ they heard a further announcement that the city of Kiev had fallen. Three days later he was in action with an advance guard hastily dug in to repel break-out attempts near Lokhvitsa. As six T-34 tanks moved towards them, Köhler realised they ‘had been seen’. His lorry-borne unit had only recently dismounted and consequently ‘had not dug in very far’. German 37mm anti-tank and 105mm field guns directly engaged the tanks, but the ‘rounds ricocheted straight off’. One German gun after the other was knocked out during the unstoppable advance, which drove over and crushed wrecked guns and the bodies of the hapless crews. The last German guns abruptly withdrew, leaving the infantry unprotected. Köhler nervously glanced above the parapet of his shell-scrape as:
‘The tanks drove right up next to our position. We experienced some very uncomfortable minutes. One crunched by about five metres from my foxhole and even stopped now and again. I hunched myself up and made myself as tiny as possible, hardly breathing. Finally the armoured vehicle drove on, but it was a moment I will certainly never forget.’
The threatened section of the line was restored with the arrival of 88mm guns and Pioniers who laid mines. Köhler commented, ‘luckily there were no [enemy] infantrymen sitting on the tanks, otherwise few of us would have seen that evening’.(9)
The German 45th Division, already badly mauled at Brest-Litovsk, began to arrive at Priluki, 120km east of Kiev, on the eastern edge of the pocket. Like so many other divisions, it had endured a steady attrition rate as it marched eastward. At Brest-Litovsk it had lost more men than during the entire French campaign. Between 1 and 6 September, 40 more soldiers were killed and a further two officers and 23 men between 9 and 13 September. Pouring rain slowed their rate of advance to 4.5km per day. They were under the command of Second Army advancing on the pocket from the north. Its commander relayed the situation in an order of the day on 10 September:
‘Bitter enemy resistance, terrible roads and constant rain have not stopped you… This advance has enabled you to contribute to the possible realisation of a battle of annihilation, which will begin within the next few days. We will surround the enemy from all sides and destroy him.’(10)
As the 45th Division entered the line the outline of the pocket had been reduced to a diameter of about 40km. It was subsequently attached to Sixth Army belonging to Army Group South, forming part of a group of eight German divisions tasked with forcing the beleaguered surviving Russian divisions to surrender. On 20 September 45th Division was set astride the Yagolin gap on the eastern side of the perimeter, which became a focal point for Russian escape attempts. As the first battalions started arriving on 22 September, the Russian attacks began.
Cavalry Feldwebel Max Kuhnert had also arrived at the periphery of the ring surrounding the Kiev pocket. The perimeter, he could see, ‘was closing fast, but this only made the Russian forces in and around Kiev all the more determined to throw everything into the battle’. Positioned behind a Panzer division, Kuhnert admitted, ‘luckily for us’ only ‘strays of the Russian armour got through’. He ruefully reflected, ‘we were then in a fine pickle’, and ‘wished myself many kilometres away’.
‘We were utterly helpless in those situations. Warfare against tanks we had hardly practised because it was not our job on horseback. The best we could do was to get out of the way, seeking cover in the wooded areas, and hope for the best.’(11)
Massed Soviet break-out attempts often resulted in thinly distributed German mobile units being surrounded themselves. These were reduced to adopting an Igel (literally island or hedgehog) all-round defence position, from which they fought for their very lives. Walter Oqueka participated in the earlier Uman encirclement, and was a crew member of a 20mm Flak 38 mounted on a half-track chassis. His unit’s role was air defence, not to fight the ‘grey-green colossus’ Soviet tanks that suddenly appeared on their front.
‘“T-34” – hissed the gun commander between tightly compressed lips. The T-34, we had all heard about these tanks, amazing things – which meant not good for us. We were hardly likely to win any prizes with the 37mm “Wehrmacht door-knocker” [anti-tank gun], and certainly not against these monsters. How were we supposed to knock out these great lumps with our pathetic [20mm] calibre?’
Oqueka’s battery commander, Oberleutnant Rossman, ordered them to concentrate automatic fire on the tracks of the advancing T-34s. Nobody was optimistic as to the likely outcome, but there remained little else they could do. Oqueka ‘clenched his teeth and decided they would sell their skins as dearly as possible’. They held their fire until the tanks had approached to within 200m. A burst of fire smashed the track of the leading T-34, which began to turn helplessly around on the same spot. Guns were then ordered to concentrate fire at the turret. Even before the first magazine emptied, the turret lid flipped open and a white flag appeared. The Russian crew clambered out and were taken prisoner. Meanwhile the cone of 20mm fire was switched to the left and another T-34 similarly disabled.
Instead of surrendering, the crew of this vehicle chose to fight with small arms as they emerged. They were cut to pieces by multiple impacts of 20mm cannon explosions which sparked and spluttered around the hull. Other tanks met the same fate. Crews were scythed down at any sign of resistance. The rest of the T-34s turned back. It was inconceivable to Oqueka and the other gun crews that their insignificant calibre cannon could have triumphed against tanks considered the heaviest and best of their type. ‘Our nervous tension was released in a triumphant yell,’ Oqueka exclaimed, ‘as if we were eight-year-old kids playing cowboys and indians!’