Stuka Pilot

7. STALINGRAD

This lying in hospital gets on my nerves. I have been here now for almost a week, I can see hardly any change in my condition except that I am not exactly picking up strength with the strict diet and the unaccustomed confinement to bed. I can scarcely expect a visit from my colleagues; it would take them too long to get here.

Although we are near to the sea it is already becoming cold; I can tell by the breeze through the windows which are paned less with glass than with the lids of packing cases.

The doctor in charge of my case is an excellent fellow but he has lost patience with me, and so he becomes the “case” the day he enters my room and informs me offhandedly:

“There is an ambulance train leaving for Germany the day after tomorrow; I am arranging for you to go by it.”

“I shall do no such thing.”

“But you simply must go home for treatment. What are you thinking of?”

His professional wrath is aroused.

“But I can’t be sent out of the line for so ludicrous an illness. This is a very nice hospital, but I have had enough of lying in bed.”

In order to leave no doubt in his mind that I mean what I say:

“I must fly back to my squadron right away.”

Now the doctor really is angry; he opens his mouth, snaps it shut again, and finally delivers himself of this vehement protest:

“I accept no responsibility—you understand, no responsibility whatever.”

He is silent for a moment, then he adds energetically:

“Moreover, I shall make an endorsement to that effect on your discharge sheet.”

I pack my things, I get my discharge sheet from the office and—off to the aerodrome. Here there is working a fitter who has often overhauled aircraft of my Wing. One only needs to have luck on one’s side. An aircraft has just this moment come out of the repair shop; it so happens that it has to be flown up to the front to the Wing at Karpowo, ten miles from Stalingrad.

I cannot say that I feel very strong and fit, I bumble around as if I were walking in my sleep. I do not, however, attribute this so much to my illness as to the sudden fresh air.

Exactly two hours later I am on the airfield at Karpowo after having flown past Tazinskaja—Surwikino and lastly Kalatsch on the Don. The runway is packed with aircraft, mostly Stukas of our Wing and those of a neighboring squadron. The airfield itself offers no opportunities for camouflage, it lies right in the open country. It slopes away gently on one side.

After landing I go off to find the signboards. Exact orientation within the unit area has always been one of our special fads. Even if nothing or very little else indicates our presence the signboards are certain to be there. So I very soon discover the Wing orderly room. It is bang in the centre of the aerodrome in a hole in the ground, described in military parlance as a bunker. I have to wait a while before I can report to the C.O.; he has just gone out on a short operational flight with my friend Kraus. When he comes in I report my return; he is more than surprised to see me back so soon:

“You do look a sight! Your eyes and everything are yellow as a quince.”

There is no talking myself out of this without a white lie, so I brazenly reply,

“I am here only because I have been discharged as fit.”

It works. The C.O. looks at the M.O. and says with a shake of his head:

“If he is fit, then I understand more about jaundice than all the doctors. Where are your medical papers by the way?”

A ticklish question. On the aerodrome at Rostow I had had desperate need of some paper and had put my doctor’s cunningly worded certificate to a more profitable and appropriate use. I have to think quickly and reply in the same tone of voice:

“I understand that the medical papers are being sent by courier.”

In accordance with the promise made to me ten days before, I take over the command of my old flight.

We have few operational missions; they have been out only once over a Volga harbour in the vicinity of Astrachan. Our main task is to deliver attacks within the city area of Stalingrad. The Soviets are defending it like a fortress. My squadron commander gives me the latest news. There has been practically no change in the ground personnel. From armorer Götz to Sen./Fitter Pissarek all are still there. The flying personnel necessarily presents a different picture because of casualties, but the new crews I have trained have all been posted to the reserve squadron. Living quarters, offices, etc., are all underground. In a very short time I have found my feet again and feel at home. The next day we fly a sortie over Stalingrad, where approximately two thirds of the city is in German hands. It is true the Soviets hold only one third, but this third is being defended with an almost religious fanaticism. Stalingrad is Stalin’s city and Stalin is the god of these young Kirgises, Usbeks, Tartars, Turkmenians and other Mongols. They are hanging on like grim death to every scrap of rubble, they lurk behind every remnant of a wall. For their Stalin they are a guard of fire-breathing war-beasts, and when the beasts falter, well-aimed revolver shots from their political commissars nail them, in one way or the other, to the ground they are defending. These Asiatic pupils of integral communism, and the political commissars standing at their backs, are destined to force Germany, and the whole world with her, to abandon the comfortable belie f that communism is a political creed like so many others. Instead they are to prove to us first, and finally to all nations, that they are the disciples of a new gospel. And so Stalingrad is to become the Bethlehem of our century. But a Bethlehem of war and hatred, annihilation and destruction.

This is the thought which occupies our minds as we fly sortie after sortie against the Red fortress. The section of the city held by the Soviets borders immediately on the west bank of the Volga, and every night the Russians drag everything needed by the Red Guardsmen across the Volga. Bitter fighting rages for a block of houses, for a single cellar, for a bit of factory wall. We have to drop our bombs with painstaking accuracy because our own soldiers are only a few yards away in another cellar behind debris of another wall.

On our photographic maps of the city every house is distinguishable. Each pilot is given his target precisely marked with a red arrow. We fly in, map in hand, and it is forbidden to release a bomb before we have made sure of the target and the exact position of our own troops. Flying over the western pant of the city far behind the front, one is struck peculiarly by the quiet prevailing there and by the almost normal traffic. Everyone, including civilians, go about their business as if the city were far behind the front. The whole western part is now in. our hands, only the small eastern quarter of the city towards the Volga contains these Russian nests of resistance and is the scene of our most furious assaults. Often the Russian flak dies down in the afternoon, presumably because by then they have used up the ammunition brought up across the river the night before. On the other bank of the Volga the Ivans take off from a few fighter airfields and try to hamper our attacks on the Russian part of Stalingrad. They seldom push home the pursuit above our positions, and generally turn back as soon as they no longer have their own troops below them. Our airfield lies close to the city, and when flying in formation we have to circuit once or twice in order to gain a certain height. That is enough for the Soviet air intelligence to warn their A.A. defense. The way things are going I dislike the idea of being away from my flight for a single hour; there is too much at stake, we feel that instinctively. This time I am physically at bend or breaking point, but to report sick now means the loss of my command, and this fear gives me additional stamina. After a fortnight in which I feel more as if 1 were in Hades than on earth, I gradually recover my strength. In between we fly sorties in the northern sector north of the city where the front joins the Don. A few times we attack targets near Beketowa. Here especially the flak is extraordinarily heavy, the sorties are difficult. According to statements taken from captured Russians the A.A. guns here are served exclusively by women. When the day’s mission takes us here our crews always say: “We’ve a date with the flak girls to-day.” This is in no way derogatory, for all of us who have already been there know how accurately they fire.

At regular intervals we attack the northern bridges over the Don. The biggest of these is near the village of Kletskaja and this bridgehead on the west bank of the Don is most vigilantly defended by flak. Prisoners tell us that the H.Q. of a command is located here. The bridgehead is constantly being extended and every day the Soviets pour in more men and material. Our destruction of these bridges delays these reinforcements, but they are able to replace them relatively quickly with pontoons so that the maximum traffic across the river is soon fully restored.

Up here on the Don the line is mainly held by Rumanian units. Only in the actual battle area of Stalingrad stands the German 6th Army.

One morning after the receipt of an urgent report our Wing takes off in the direction of the bridgehead at Kletskaja. The weather is bad: low lying clouds, a light fall of snow, the temperature probably 20 degrees below zero; we fly low. What troops are those coming towards us? We have not gone more than half way. Masses in brown uniforms—are they Russians? No. Rumanians. Some of them are even throwing away their rifles in order to be able to run the faster: a shocking sight, we are prepared for the worst. We fly the length of the column heading north, we have now reached our allies’ artillery emplacements. The guns are abandoned, not destroyed. Their ammunition lies beside them. We have passed some distance beyond them before we sight the first Soviet troops.

They find all the Rumanian positions in front of them deserted. We attack with bombs and gun-fire but how much use is that when there is no resistance on the ground?

We are seized with a blind fury horrid premonitions rise in our minds: how can this catastrophe be averted? Relentlessly I drop my bombs on the enemy and spray bursts of M.G. fire into these shoreless yellow-green waves of oncoming troops that surge up against us out of Asia and the Mongolian hinterland I haven’t a bullet left, not even to protect myself against the contingency of a pursuit attack. Now quickly back to remunition and refuel. With these hordes our attacks are merely a drop in the bucket, but I am reluctant to think of that now.

On the return flight we again observe the fleeing Rumanians; it is a good thing for them I have run out of ammunition to stop this cowardly rout.

They have abandoned everything; their easily defended positions, their heavy artillery, their ammunition dumps.

Their cowardice is certain to cause a debacle along the whole front.

Unopposed, the Soviet advance rolls forward to Kalatsch. And with Kalatsch in their hands they now close a semi-circle round our half of Stalingrad.

Within the actual area of the city our 6th Army holds its ground. Under a hail of concentrated artillery fire it sees the Red assault waves surge up incessantly against them. The 6th Army is “bled white,” it fights with its back to a slowly crumbling wall: nevertheless it fights and hits back.

The front of Stalingrad runs along a plateau of lakes from north to south and then joins the steppe. There is no island in this ocean of plain for hundreds of kilometres until the fair-sized town of Elistra. The front curves East past Elistra.

A German infantry motorized division based on the town controls the mighty waste of steppe. Our allies also hold the gap between this division and the 6th Army in Stalingrad. The Red Army suspects our weakness at this point, especially in the of days and the Russians are on the river. Then a Red thrust forces a wedge in our lines to the northwest. They are trying to reach Kalatsch. This plainly spells the impending doom of the 6th Army. The two Russian attacking forces join hands at Kalatsch and then the ring round Stalingrad is closed. Everything happens with uncomfortable speed, many of our reserves are overwhelmed by the Russians and trapped in their pincer movement. During this phase one deed of anonymous heroism succeeds another. Not one German unit surrenders until it has fired its last revolver bullet, its last hand grenade, without carrying on the fighting to the bitter end.

We are now flying in all directions over the pocket wherever the situation seems most threatening. The Soviet pressure on the 6th Army is maintained, but the German soldier stands firm. Wherever a local penetration is successful it is sealed off and the enemy, thrown back again by a counter-attack. Our comrade do the impossible to stem the tide; they stand their ground, knowing that their retreat is cut off because cowardice and treachery have come to the aid of the, Red Army. Our airfield is now frequently the target of Soviet airforce attacks in low and high level raids. In proportion to the great expenditure of force we sustain very little damage. Only now we are running so short of bombs, ammunition and petrol, that it no longer seems prudent to leave all the squadrons within the pocket. So everything is flown out in two or three detachments and afterwards no support from the air will be possible from this airfield. A special flight under Pilot Officer Jungklausen remains in the pocket in order to give uninterrupted support to the hard-pressed 6th Army for as long as it is still able to take off. All the rest of our flying personnel moves back out of the pocket to Oblivskaja, just over 100 miles west of Stalingrad.

Fairly strong German forces now go in to the attack from the area of Salsk in co-operation with two newly arrived armored divisions. These divisions have been out of the line and we know that they are elite troops thoroughly refreshed.

The attack is a thrust from the southwest in a northeasterly direction with the ultimate aim of re-establishing the broken communications with Stalingrad and thereby relieving the 6th Army, We support this operation daily from dawn till dusk It must succeed if the encircled divisions are to be freed. The advance goes rapidly forward, soon of comrades have overrun Abganerowo a bare 19 miles south of the pocket. By hard fighting they have gained nearly 40 miles.

Despite stiffening opposition we are still steadily advancing. If it were now possible for the 6th Army to exert pressure from the inside on the south rim of the pocket the operation could be accelerated and simplified, but it would hardly be able to do this even if the order were given. The 6th Army has long since succumbed to physical exhaustion; only an iron determination keeps it going. The debilitation of the encircled army has been aggravated by the lack of the barest necessities. They are now without food, ammunition or petrol. The temperature, generally between 20 and 30 degrees below zero, is crippling. The chance of their breaking out of the ring containing them depends on the successful execution of the plan to fly in the barest minimum of supplies into the pocket. But the weather god is apparently on the side of the enemy. A prolonged spell of continuous bad weather prevents us from flying in adequate supplies. In previous battles in Russia these operations have been so invariably successful that a pocket could always be relieved. But this time only a fractional part of the indispensable supplies is able to reach its destination. Later on, landing difficulties arise and we are compelled to rely on jettison drops. In this way again a part is lost. Notwithstanding, we fly with supplies in the thickest snow storms and under these conditions some of the precious freight falls into the Soviet lines.

Another calamity comes with the news that the Soviets have forced a huge gap in the sector of the front line held by our allies in the south. If the breakthrough is not pinned down it may bring disaster to the whole of the southern front. There are no reserves available. The break-through must be sealed off. The assault group intended for the relief of Stalingrad from the south is the only one available. The most effective elements are taken out of it and dispatched to the new danger zone. We have daily been flying over the spearheads of the German attack and we know the strength of the opposition. We also know that these German divisions would have reached the pocket and so relieved the encircled army there. As they now have to divide up their potential, it is all over. It is too late to free the 6th Army; its tragic fate is sealed. The decision not to let the strongly concentrated assault group continue its advance on Stalin grad must be a sad blow; the weak residue of this force can no longer do it alone.

At two decisive places our allies have yielded to Soviet pressure. Through no fault of the German soldier the 6th Army has been lost. And with it Stalingrad. And with Stalingrad the possibility of eliminating the real dynamic centre of the Red armies.