The Road to Berlin (51 page)

Rybalko’s tanks drove through in a single unbroken column and by the evening of 16 July he reported to Koniev that one corps was to the north-west of Zolochev, with forward units racing for the river Peltev. South of the ‘Koltuv corridor’ a strong force of Geman armour and infantry tried to seal off the passage, isolate 3rd Guards Tank Army and thus eliminate the threat of encirclement building up in the Brody area. Koniev realized that at all costs the ‘corridor’ must be held and widened, and he decided to commit his second tank army (Lelyushenko’s 4th Tank Army) once Kurochkin’s infantry had taken Zolochev; Lelyushenko’s armour would go in behind the left flank of 3rd Guards Tank Army and strike out for Gorodok, some fifteen miles west of Lvov. Lelyushenko received strict instructions not to commit his armour to a frontal attack on Lvov but to outflank it from the south and sever German escape routes to the west and south-west. The 4th Tank Army entered the battle on 17 July, but with heavy German pressure on the flanks of the Soviet breakthrough sector not all of 4th Tank could be detached to outflank Lvov; with tank formations still fighting the 60th Army south of Zolochev, only 10th Tank Corps moved towards Lvov. As the Germans fought desperately to seal off the ‘Koltuv corridor’ and entrap the Soviet tank armies, Rybalko’s 3rd Guards had already crossed the Peltev and on 18 July reached the Busk–Derevlyany line, linking up with Baranov’s mobile group and closing the ring round the German troops in the Brody area, eight divisions holding a sizeable area. That night 10th Tank Corps reached Olshanitsa (southwest of Lvov), deeply outflanking the German
Panzer
divisions from the west and the south.

It was on 18 July that Rokossovskii unleashed another powerful blow from 1st Belorussian Front when he set his left-flank armies in motion—70th, 47th Army, 8th Guards Army, 69th Army, 1st Polish Army in the second echelon, supported by 6th Air Army and with considerable armoured strength in 2nd Tank Army, as well as a ‘mobile group’ formed from 11th Tank Corps, 2nd and 7th Guards Cavalry Corps. The right-flank armies of 1st Belorussian Front
were already on a line running from Sisloch in the north through Pruzhany and to the west of Pinsk, hanging menacingly over the north-east of Brest-Litovsk; the time had come to launch right and left flanks in an encirclement operation designed to close on German troops at Brest-Litovsk. Rokossovskii proposed to commit his left-flank armies in the direction of Kovel–Lublin. The operation as a whole envisaged the outflanking of Brest-Litovsk from the north and from the south, the destruction of German forces in the area of Brest-Litovsk and Lublin, after which the offensive would be developed along ‘the Warsaw axis’ to bring Soviet armies on a broad front to the Vistula, ready to strike into eastern Poland. The main blow was to come from the left flank, which three armies—Gusev’s 47th, Chuikov’s 8th Guards and Kilpachki’s 69th—assigned to breaking the German defences east of Kovel and assuring the passage of the armoured formations, infantry and armour, then co-operating in an advance along two axes, in the direction of Siedlce and Lublin; elements of the left flank would also assist in outflanking Brest-Litovsk from the south-west. This attack was intended to slice into the left flank of Fourth
Panzer
from Army Group North Ukraine (which jutted north past Kovel) as well as achieving the destruction of the German Second Army in the area of Brest-Litovsk.

Chuikov’s 8th Guards Army pulled out of the Dniester bridgehead of 3rd Ukrainian Front early in June 1944 and moved from the southern flank to the 1st Belorussian Front, starting out in trains on the morning of 12 July. In spite of all attempts to keep the army’s destination secret, the ‘buzz’ was that 8th Guards was moving up to Rokossovskii’s front, and it proved, like many military rumours, to be quite accurate. Three days later, after travelling by car, Chuikov and his military soviet reached Rokossovskii’s Front
HQ
in the forest to the west of Korosten, were briefed by General Malinin (Rokossovskii’s chief of staff) and then moved off to 8th Guards
HQ
, also sited in a wood just south of Rafaluvka station. Army units took up their positions only by night. Track and tyre marks left by tanks or vehicles on the move were carefully swept away; radio communication was forbidden and radio equipment sealed. The Guards regiments went through a rapid and intensive training course, learning how to fell trees, construct anti-tank defences and lay log-roads over the Belorussian marshes. Chuikov also had to devise a method of coping with the methods of ‘elastic defence’ adopted by the Germans, who fell back from their first line of defences to straighten their line and economize on forces, then dealt out a punishing counter-blow from secure, well-prepared positions further to the rear. Not much more than a week before, 47th Army, and more particularly 11th Tank Corps (then under Maj.-Gen. F.N. Rudkin), had raced into just such a trap; on 7 July, 47th Army attacked from the left flank in the Kovel area, with 11th Tank Corps under orders to pass through the breach and to make for Lyuboml–Opalin, and then for the western Bug, after which it was to press in the direction of Lublin. The infantry attacks on the morning of 8 July made little progress, and under the mistaken impression that German troops were pulling back to the western Bug
11th Tank Corps rushed in, only to take a savage beating from the well-timed German counter-blow. On Rokossovskii’s orders the corps disengaged, pulled back to Kovel, came under the command of Maj.-Gen. Yushchuk and was subordinated to 8th Guards Army. Defective reconnaissance lead to this reverse and Chuikov took good note of it, determined not to expend ‘trainloads of ammunition on empty space’.

Chuikov’s 8th Guards duly undertook the main breakthrough operation on the left flank of 1st Belorussian Front: the Germans must receive no alert by extended Soviet reconnaissance; the blow must be ‘decisive’ and mounted without a protracted build-up in the rear. Rifle battalions would act as reconnaissance battalions, with infantry support and mine-clearing tanks; the preliminary bombardment was to be brief, a mere thirty minutes. Success by the reconnaissance battalions would bring on the main forces without further artillery preparation, but if the reconnaissance was halted the barrage would continue for an hour and forty minutes, followed by a main attack. Twenty-four hours before the attack opened Marshals Zhukov and Rokossovskii, Aviation Marshal Novikov and Peresypkin (signals) attended a full-scale rehearsal, an occasion for a clash between Zhukov and Chuikov, smoothed over by the tactful Rokossovskii. During the night of 17-18 July, when the staff of 1st Polish Army arrived at Chuikov’s
HQ
(1st Polish being slated to follow 8th Guards), Guards divisions took over from 60th Rifle Division’s units which held the forward positions until the last moment to deceive German intelligence. At 0530 hours on 18 July the guns duly fired off a thirty-minute barrage and the reconnaissance battalions moved out. Thirty minutes later Zhukov, Rokossovskii and Col.-Gen. V.I. Kazakov (Front artillery commmander) arrived at Chuikov’s forward observation post and watched the ‘reconnaissance in force’ unroll under cover of the short but very heavy barrage using guns of up to 203mm calibre. The use of the heaviest guns in this kind of attack shook Kazakov, who remonstrated with Pozharski (8th Guards artillery commander), only to be told that Chuikov wanted it this way.

After two hours the infantry had broken into the first defences and taken the high ground: at 0730 hours Chuikov reported to Zhukov and Rokossovskii that he was committing his main forces. By the evening the first echelon of 8th Guards reached the eastern bank of the river Plysk. Yushchuk’s tank corps received orders to move on the morning of the second day of operations through the infantry, outflank Lyuboml from the north and south, then advance with all speed to the western Bug to secure crossings in the Opalin–Gnishuv–Svezhe sector. Three lead brigades from 11th Corps (36th, 65th and 20th Tank Brigades) pushed on westwards, outflanking Lyubomyl, and at 1300 hours on 20 July 20th Tank Brigade reached the western Bug; towards evening the brigade had secured crossings, and by nightfall more units of 11th Tank Corps (with advanced elements of Glazunov’s 4th Guards Cavalry Corps) were over, fighting to enlarge the Soviet bridgehead. Rokossovskii now issued orders to Chuikov to commit Bogdanov’s 2nd Tank Army, which moved off for the western Bug at 1700
hours on 20 July, the tank coiumns driving ahead under fighter protection provided by 6th Air Army: at noon on 21 July, 2nd Tank was on the western Bug.

Marshal Rokossovskii and Lt.-Gen.Bulganin (the third member of the 1st Belorussian Front Military Soviet) arrived at Chuikov’s forward
HQ
on 21 July. Bogdanov’s tanks took ten hours to make their crossing of the Bug, 3rd Corps moving into the wooded area west of Stulno, 8th Guards Tank Corps to Bytyn while the second echelon (16th Corps) completed its crossing; Bogdanov received orders to cut loose from the infantry as from the morning of 22 July, attack in the direction of Savin–Pugachuv–Leczna, reach the line of the river Wieprz by the evening and capture Lublin the next day. Yushchuk’s corps was meanwhile detached from 8th Guards Army and combined into a ‘cavalry-mechanized group’ with 2nd Guards Cavalry Corps, with orders to strike north-west along the line Parchev–Radzyn–Lukuv. At dawn on 22 July Bogdanov’s tanks moved off for the attack on Lublin, where the wooded areas, swamps and numerous small rivers forced the tank columns to keep to the roads, themselves in none too good condition owing to the heavy rain. Lublin itself had also been fitted out for defence, with outlying defences made up of trenches, pill-boxes and firing-points and inner defences built round strong-points.

To clear the passage for his main body of armour along the approach to Lublin, Bogdanov pushed out strong ‘forward detachments’ consisting of a tank brigade, a section of self-propelled guns, two or three companies of infantry and a squad of sappers; 6th Air Army provided the air cover. As they fell back on Lublin, German troops set up tank ambushes in the woods bordering the roads, in the numerous villages and at the several bridges; while the ‘forward detachments’ dealt with these, ‘pursuit detachments’ (consisting of a tank section with tommy-gunners riding atop the machines) flushed out German units digging in along the line of the Soviet advance. On 22 July 107th Tank Brigade (16th Tank Corps), acting as ‘forward detachment’ with a motorcycle regiment, and units of 7th Guards Cavalry corps, cleared Chelm (forty miles south-east of Lublin). 3rd Tank Corps, disengaging from the infantry, moved on the right flank in two columns on Kiyany–Lublin, with 8th Guards Tank Corps on the left driving through Pugachuv, Leczna and on to the eastern outskirts of Lublin, where Bogdanov decided to attack from three sides. ‘Forward detachments’ received orders to bypass the outer defences of Lublin and make straight for the Vistula.

During the morning of 23 July Soviet tanks broke into the eastern suburb of Lublin, clearing it quickly but running into heavy resistance on the river Vyszczicsa which bisected the town. While Soviet tanks and
SP
guns fired over open sights across the river and into the stone houses held by German troops, 51st Tank Brigade crashed into Lublin from the west, where Soviet tanks and infantry fought fierce street battles. Here the German garrison attempted to break out to the west, using an armoured train and an infantry battalion to cover the break. Soviet tanks brought the armoured train under close and heavy fire, blowing
it to pieces and killing many scores of German soldiers intent on escape; among the prisoners taken was the German commandant of Lublin. In the north-west, 3rd Tank Corps had taken the suburbs along with a stretch of the Lublin–Warsaw road, but in the south-eastern suburbs German resistance to 8th Tank Corps continued as fiercely as ever. Bogdanov decided to go to Maj.-Gen. Vedeneyev’s
HQ
(3rd Corps) to see for himself, and he learned that only tanks were in action here; Vedeneyev intimated that until the infantry from 57th Brigade came in he could not get the German machine-gunners out of their lairs in the strongly built stone houses. Bogdanov thought that Vedeneyev was dragging his feet, that he overestimated German powers of resistance, and so he invited him to take a little tour of the town, with a single tank for escort leading the two jeeps holding Bogdanov, Vedeneyev, adjutants and intelligence officers. Nothing stirred as the tiny convoy moved down deserted streets past burning tanks and smashed German trucks: no shots, no sign of life in any house. A few yards further on, however, an anti-tank weapon opened fire and disabled the lead tank, killing the crew. Bogdanov gave orders to turn back, but when the jeeps swung round they at once came under more fire which brought Bogdanov’s own jeep to a halt; the Army commander got out and then slumped to the pavement, his shoulder smashed by an explosive bullet. After they had walked more than a mile and a half, the remaining officers fighting off German attempts to trap the party, a Soviet truck picked up the general, whose command passed to Maj.-Gen. A.I. Radzievskii, chief of staff to 2nd Tank Army. At noon on 24 July the remnants of the German garrison in Lublin collected tanks and
SP
guns to support one last attempt to break out, an attempt that failed in a final spurt of heavy fighting. Lublin had been cleared; 2nd Tank Army now received orders to advance northwest on Pulawy and Deblin, taking bridgeheads on the Vistula to prepare for a further advance on Warsaw.

This north-westerly advance of 2nd Tank Army, through Pulawy and on to Praga, the part of Warsaw that lay on the eastern bank of the Vistula, promised to complete the encirclement of the German divisions that had been trapped in the region of Brest-Litovsk: this tank thrust would sever the German escape route in the direction of Warsaw. Chuikov’s 8th Guards also received orders to move to the north-west, though Chuikov did not have instructions to force the Vistula (which one of his divisions reached on 26 July). While Rokossovskii’s left flank thus curled round through Lublin and into the deep rear of German forces fighting eastwards at Brest-Litovsk, his right-wing armies—65th and 28th Armies—were closing on this vital junction and were established in some strength on the western Bug to the north of the town. General Pliev’s ‘cavalry-mechanized group’, operating in the German rear, was already fighting close to Brest-Litovsk while 4th Guards Cavalry Corps from this group moved on to the western Bug in company with Batov’s 65th Army. Soviet reconnaissance confirmed that, in addition to known German divisions in Brest-Litovsk, there were also the staffs of some fourteen formations that had been dispersed—a very favourable moment
to strike and one that Batov hoped to exploit, but for which he needed reserves. Unfortunately Rokossovskii could supply none—‘I have almost nothing left’, he told Batov, who got orders to hang on to his bridgehead on the Bug. Nevertheless, Rokossovskii squeezed out 80th Corps, but on the understanding that this formation was moved up to Pliev who was ‘having it hard on his own’. Batov sent his deputy commander Batinov to contact 80th Corps, but German bombers got there first, killing the corps commander and knocking out the headquarters. By 22 July Batov still had not made contact with Pliev’s cavalry and that evening Marshal Zhukov came on the line to demand why; Batov explained that neither he nor Front staff had heard from Pliev, whereupon Zhukov cut him short, told him that the assignment was his, and not that of the Front staff, and then ordered reinforced attacks from Batov’s southern flank. Preoccupied with the left-flank offensive on Lublin, Zhukov had no time to spare for operations near Brest-Litovsk and none for the predicament of Batov; all available reinforcement, especially armour, was going to the left flank.