They moved forward curiously to examine the results of their handiwork and discovered that, apart from cut caterpillar treads and damage to drive and sprocket wheels, there was nothing to explain the abrupt abandonment of the tanks. ‘Not until the prisoners were questioned did the riddle become clear,’ explained Oqueka. The answer lay in the resonant din produced by multiple 20mm strikes on cast steel turrets, which had the effect of transforming them into ‘huge bells’.
‘Continuous explosions on the turret had produced a hellish noise which had grown louder from explosion to explosion. The sound had swollen beyond the realms of tolerance and had virtually driven the crews insane.’
Oqueka recalled the example of executions of indicted criminals in ancient China. Hapless individuals were incarcerated inside a huge bell which was hammered outside until the unfortunate victim expired. The 20mm gunners appreciated they were not totally defenceless when facing heavy tanks. Oqueka claimed his battery disabled 32 T-34 tanks before the end of the year, employing similar tactics.(12)
Other German sectors on the Kiev perimeter were not so fortunate. On the right wing of the 45th Infantry Division, Infantry Regiment 133 experienced ‘a lunatic and reckless cavalry attack which rode through our machine gun fire’. They were followed by ‘mass human-wave attacks, which we had not experienced until now’. Cossacks galloped through German outposts with drawn sabres, slashing down with such force that troops caught in the open had their helmets cleaved through to the skull. A segment of this epic Tolstoyian charge reached as far as the division headquarters at Yagolin before it was stopped. Behind the cavalry came a tightly compact triple-wave infantry assault, supported by heavy artillery fire. Four tank and three lorry-mounted infantry platoons were amongst them, suicidally driving directly against the division line. As they dismounted when blocked by a railway line atop an embankment facing the German positions, they were subjected to a withering storm of fire from co-ordinated artillery, anti-tank, machine gun and small arms fire. ‘The dead,’ according to the division report, ‘covered the length of the embankment in countless masses.’ Among them were women in uniform.
On 24 September the tidal wave of suicide assaults shifted against the 44th Division to the right and south of 45th Division. Russian troops exploiting inter-division boundary gaps penetrated into the rear positions, falling upon the logistic and artillery units that stood in the way. The 6th Battery of Artillery Regiment 98, occupying high ground at point 131, fired directly into waves of attacking Russian infantry, creating huge gashes in the advancing crowds. Undeterred, the remorseless mob swept into the German gun positions where furious hand-to-hand fighting developed. One German artillery piece was captured and hauled around to fire at its own division headquarters, wounding horses but missing personnel. At this moment in the struggle, one of those curious paradoxes of war occurred. While the chaotic and savage mêlée continued around the gun positions of 6th Battery, hardly 100m away columns of Russian infantry marched by moving eastwards, with rifles at the shoulder, as if on parade, oblivious to what was going on. They would have made all the difference and widened the breakthrough if they had been deployed to support the penetration struggling on their flank. The 45th Division padre, watching this in disbelief, remarked ‘they did not take the slightest notice of the clear route on offer over there, they were on another mission!’(13)
Fearful losses on both sides became increasingly apparent as the pocket was compressed. ‘I could not avoid seeing the truckfuls of young corpses,’ recalled Max Kuhnert following the advance. They were German.
‘It was just ghastly, and those were only a few from our immediate area. Blood was literally running down the side from the floorboards of the trucks, and the driver was, despite the heat, white as a sheet.’
Strewn along the roadsides were dismembered corpses. German soldiers were visibly affected at the sight of uniformed female Russian casualties. Kuhnert, inspecting a knocked out ‘60-tonner’ tank, saw that the flames had burned away the clothes of the driver and another crew member, a woman, hanging half out of a side door. She was probably a tank crew member but Kuhnert, uncomfortable with the concept of women fighting in uniform, surmised, ‘the Russians had apparently been so confident of their breakthrough that one had taken his wife or sweetheart into the large tank.’ Kuhnert was eating iron rations, which often contained a small tin of pork. As he prised it open with the tip of his bayonet and took his first mouthful, it coincided with the awful stench emanating from the tank.
‘Maybe I was simply too tired and the last few days for me as for many others, had been just too much. We had been in battle for 12 days; it was enough for anybody. Even so, for years to come whenever I tried to eat or wanted to eat tinned pork, I just couldn’t.’(14)
He was violently sick.
The reduction of the Kiev pocket was a battle of annihilation. As the Soviet divisions were cut to pieces, German casualties rose also. ‘Whose turn would it be today?’ was the unasked question vexing tired infantry as they roused themselves from a few hours’ sleep, often in woodland, before resuming the advance. ‘Pain, hunger and thirst took second place now,’ said one soldier, ‘with the ice-cold breath of death brushing our cheeks and sending shivers down our spines.’ It took five days to reduce the pocket. On the fourth day, 45th Infantry Division was attacking a heavily wooded feature in the Beresany area, pushing westwards toward Kiev. Heavy hand-to-hand fighting developed near Ssemjonowka against Soviet soldiers unusually armed with sub-machine guns and automatic weapons. There was no surrender.
Bundles of grenades bound together were hurled at the German attackers for maximum effect. One concentrated charge wiped out an entire machine gun crew. All night long the Russians repeatedly attempted to break out. By first light about 100 corpses could be counted, sprawled around the perimeter of one of the lead companies. A body inspection revealed 25 were officers and commissars and another 25 were NCOs. The wood where the enemy had been concentrated was raked by heavy artillery time and again until all resistance ceased: 700 PoWs including a Soviet army corps general emerged.
Even areas already overrun had to be systematically combed. It was a slow, methodical and remorselessly bloody process. ‘Survival became the only thing that mattered,’ declared Kuhnert. ‘One could actually become jealous of others who got wounded, not badly mind you, but just enough to get them home or away from this place of slaughter, stench and utter destruction.’ All the countless haystacks and straw huts that dotted the landscape had to be laboriously checked. Hiding inside were cut-off enemy groups who continued to pick off single German soldiers or vehicles. A ‘reconnaissance by fire’ was instituted to overcome the problem. The shelters were shot into flames. The 45th Division chaplain described the surreal scene:
‘If it were not necessary to contribute further to the fury of war one might have admired the countless dazzling columns of fire that made up this grandiose spectacle of illumination. In between, the infantry fanned out in wide skirmish lines and finally cleared the area of the last remnants of its defenders. Here and there the last magazine was fired off or a grenade thrown from haystacks already on fire.’(15)