War Without Garlands: Operation Barbarossa 1941-1942 (24 page)

‘If only I knew how my love was getting on. Are you still in good health? Otherwise I hope you are well. I would gladly have fetched you something to eat and drink during this hot week. If I had to be outside in the heat as well, then you would not have been thirsty. Where are you my love? I so look forward to your next letter. Write to me as soon as you can. Perhaps you are near Brest-Litovsk, where there is certainly fighting going on.’
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She was correct. Fighting still raged within the disputed border city.

On the fourth day of the siege at Brest-Litovsk, combat teams from the three infantry regiments of the German 45th Division formed mixed groups of assault pioneers and infantry to reduce remaining strongpoints. Nebelwerfer multi-barrelled rocket launchers were in support. Helmut Böttcher, an assault engineer, recalled their bizarre impact on the enemy.

‘A type of rocket was used. They didn’t go far, but their impact was terrible. The worst possible there was, I think, at that time. Everything within a circle of about three and a half metres was dead, caused by the air vacuum created, which collapsed all the lungs of humans and animals alike. It was awful. Generally one saw the people simply sat there, immovable, frozen like dolls – Ja! – many had marks, but some simply sat still on a chair or bench. Death was certain, and came very quick. Ghastly!’
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It was decided to clear the North Island before grappling again with the citadel. Immense difficulties were encountered from the start. Artillery support was impractical due to the confined nature of the areas to be reduced. ‘Infantry weapons were ineffective due to the strength of the walled fortifications,’ reported 45th Division staff, while ‘heavy tanks or SPs (self-propelled guns), which might have made an impact, were not available’. The one remaining flamethrower belonging to Pionier Battalion 81 could not close up to the houses without armoured protection. Attempts were made to bring captured Russian tanks into action.

Newly constituted assault teams commenced mopping up the identified resistance points. Daja Dmitrowna, married to a Soviet artillery soldier, tearfully recalled the claustrophobic nature of the fighting:

‘We were hidden in barrack cellars with no water or anything to eat the whole week long. When the Fascists stormed the fortress they threw smoke grenades into the cellar. I saw my children suffocating but could do nothing to prevent it. I have no idea how I manage to survive – purely by chance. I wonder how it is I am still alive!’
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Close-in fighting for these enclosed built-up areas was brutal. Trapped Russians, expecting to be shot on the spot if taken prisoner, even fought back with knives. Grigori Makarow, a Red Army soldier, recalled how attack directions conducted with tear gas ‘were indicated by the noxious clouds rising in the air’. Women and children were trapped within the same choking casemates as desperately resisting Russian soldiers. Makarow saw ‘a small youngster, dead. He had suffocated in the gas. His mother had covered his face with a fur glove, to protect him.’ Their position was hopeless. ‘There were many wounded,’ said Makarow, ‘but no disinfectants; gangrene took hold therefore very quickly and many of the injured died.’
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Leutnant Schneiderbauer, of 45th Division’s 50mm Anti-tank Platoon, was ordered to move his guns forward to assist in the reduction of citadel strongpoints. As the platoon advanced across the South Island he noticed:

‘The whole route showed the bitter fighting that had taken place here over the first few days. Buildings were for the most part destroyed and brick rubble, and dead Russians and horses covered the roads. The oppressive stench of burning and corpses was all-pervasive.’

As the specially constituted assault groups began mopping up enemy-held buildings, 50mm guns provided fire support, shooting up windows and suspected hiding places. Snipers made the enterprise extremely hazardous. A propaganda company officer, ignoring exhortations to be careful, was shot. Extricating the casualty degenerated into a lengthy and dangerous task. Stretcher-bearers came under fire ‘but by a miracle,’ commented Schneiderbauer, ‘managed to get back in one piece’. The remorseless process of wearing down the defenders continued. The anti-tank platoon commander watched as:

‘Assault engineers got up onto the roof of the building block opposite us. They lowered explosive charges down with poles onto windows and firing positions, but only a few Russians gave up as a result. The majority sat it out in secure cellars and, despite the heavy artillery strikes, would take up the fire fight again after the demolitions had exploded.’

The German tactic was to utilise these brief respites offered by supporting fire and rush into the buildings. Schneiderbauer explained, ‘we would go in between, packing and ramming boxes, crates and rubble into all the outlets to prevent the surrounded Russians from breaking out again from beneath the houses.’ The monotonous cracks and thumps of demolitions carried on throughout the day
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The so-called ‘Officers’ Mess’ building in the citadel was a constant thorn in the side of mopping-up operations being conducted to clear the North Island. These were repeatedly exposed to enfilading fire. Assault Pionier Battalion 81 was ordered to reduce this flanking threat with demolition teams. Groups clambered onto the roof and again dangled massive explosive charges attached to poles, which were exploded opposite occupied windows. ‘One heard the screams and moans of Russians wounded in the explosions’ recorded the Division report, ‘but they carried on firing.’
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Conditions in the Russian strongpoints were becoming intolerable. One nursing sister, Katschowa Lesnewna, described how:

‘In the casemates we gave emergency aid to the wounded, injured children, soldiers and women. By then we had no bandages, medicines or water. Everything had been used up, above all, the water. We couldn’t fetch water from the river, but we had to have it for the wounded!’

Georgij Karbuk explained the dilemma presented to defending Red Army infantrymen. ‘The worse thing,’ he said ‘was the shortage of water’. Machine guns needed constant cooling to avoid jamming from hot expanded metal working parts producing friction. Lying alongside these same guns were the wounded, dying of thirst.

‘Now what’s the most important? Keeping the machine gun intact in order to rescue these people? If a machine gun went down, so indeed, did the whole group. All around, lay the wounded and dying, parched, thirsting for water. Families! Children! How many were dying of thirst! And nearby only a few steps away, two rivers.’
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Progress in German eyes appeared equally illusory. ‘Only now,’ wrote Generalfeldmarschall von Bock in his diary on 25 June, ‘has the citadel at Brest fallen after very heavy fighting.’
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Yet the following day an insultingly huge explosion rocked the massive edifice that once housed the Communist Officer School. Pionier Battalion 81 had blasted its metre-thick massive brick side-wall with a prepared charge. Out were taken 450 dazed prisoners. The final impediment to the reduction of the North Island remained the
Ostfort.
All approaches to it were driven back with withering bursts of accurate machine gun fire. The men of 45th Division concluded ‘the only option left was to oblige the Russians to give up through hunger and especially thirst. All other means were to be employed to accelerate this process of wearing him down, such as constant harassing fire with heavy mortars, preventing movement in trenches or houses, using direct tank fire, employing megaphone appeals to surrender or by throwing in surrender notices.’

The lack of water was virtually unsupportable for the defenders. Sister Katschowa Lesnewna witnessed ‘how one of the nursing sisters from our ward was shot on the riverside meadow because she wanted to fetch water. I saw it with my own eyes. We could not recover the body. She lay there in the grass for eight days.’ Any conceivable ploy to wear down defenders was employed. Georgij Karbuk said:

‘The Germans set up huge searchlights on their bank and illuminated our side, turning night into day. Every bush was lit up, and if any of us attempted to go down to the river, even to fetch a tin can full of water, he was immediately taken out. Many of us ended up lying there.’
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The siege was now approaching its sixth day. A Russian deserter admitted that resistance, centring on the
Ostfort,
held some 20 officers and 370 men from the 393rd Anti-aircraft Battalion of the Soviet 42nd Rifle Division. They possessed a quadruple-barrelled AA machine gun, 10 light machine guns, 10 automatic weapons, 1,000 hand-grenades and plenty of ammunition and food. They could be expected to fight on. ‘Water was short, but was extracted from boreholes in the ground.’ There were women and children in the fort. ‘The core of the resistance,’ it was reported, ‘appeared dependent upon a major and a commissar.’
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Despite the round-up of several thousand prisoners the day before, German casualties rose inexorably. With them came an increasingly bitter frustration with the failure to end such pointless resistance.

Two incongruous-looking armoured vehicles were driven up by Panzer Platoon 28. One was a French Somua tank taken in the previous French campaign, the other a Russian tank captured in this one. Two other platoon tanks had already broken down. Nevertheless, both vehicles began systematically to shoot up loopholes, embrasures and windows in and around the
Ostfort.
‘The Russians became much quieter,’ the division report observed, ‘but still no sign of success.’ Mopping up continued but was inconclusive. The Germans became perplexed and enraged at incredible acts of resistance performed by snipers who ‘fired ceaselessly from the most amazing and impossible hiding places, from beneath dustbins and rubbish heaps’. They were winkled out in detail, but through it all ‘firing from the
Ostfort
was always discernible’.
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Grigori Makarow, a Soviet soldier, recalled attacks mounted on 27 June by a ‘troop of German chemical weapons’. They assaulted with tear gas. The defenders had sufficient gas masks but, as Makarow pointed out:

‘They were too big for the small children. We wound them a few times at the top to tighten them up so the gas would not get in, but for one woman whose child was only a year and a half old, it was too late. He suffocated in the gas.’
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Such harrowing experiences served only to temper and add ferocity to resistance.

Ever more lethal combinations were employed against stubborn strongpoints. Helmut Böttcher, a German assault engineer attached to a flamethrower section, considered himself an ordinary soldier. The barbarous offensive capability he employed was perfectly normal to him, even if it makes uncomfortable reading to modern social democratic rather than totalitarian audiences. ‘I was 19 years old,’ he said, and ‘have often thought about it, being labelled a murderer, but in war one is a hero.’ Moreover, in war the bizarre becomes the norm. Böttcher’s childhood was difficult but not remarkable. A product of the depression years, he said, ‘at 14 years old one could say I was thrown out of home, and eventually sought a different type of experience through military service.’ He had volunteered ‘for this and that, but not for the flamethrowers. I was ordered to do that.’ Army life offered new and different opportunities, and he tried them ‘like many others’. Employment as a flamethrower operator at Brest-Litovsk was a disturbing experience. He rationalised it, saying:

‘It is awful to think of such a job, but I should point out that flamethrower operators were never allowed to surrender. They were immediately shot.’

It was not an easy weapon to handle. Strapped to the operator’s back was a cumbersome tank of inflammable liquid weighing over 21kg. This contained an adhesive mixture of viscous fuel which on spraying was designed to enmesh the victim in flame. The strength of the wind and its direction could transform it into a double-edged weapon which was, in any case, highly vulnerable to enemy fire. The operator needed to be part of a team protected by escorting infantry. Böttcher explained:

‘The equipment itself produced a flame about 30m long at a temperature of 4,000°C. When one came up to an angled trench system the flame could be directed around corners, of course liquidating anything in there.’

The inflammable fuel was launched by compressed gas through a nozzle incorporating an igniter to produce a spray of flame against which there was absolutely no defence. Each tank carried sufficient for 10 single-second bursts of fire. They sucked out the oxygen in confined bunkers, scorching and collapsing lungs in cumulative pressure waves of intense heat. ‘Most were burned immediately or at least blinded,’ admitted Böttcher. ‘These things were dreadful.’
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Even today, in the preserved ruins of Brest-Litovsk, bunkers remain scarred by the characteristic starred-effect of molten stone. Black or dark red, they resemble a form of lava paste. Georgij Karbuk, a Russian in Brest at the time, remembered:

‘The Germans deployed flamethrowers. They simply poked the nozzles into cellar windows and held them there. They avoided actually penetrating the cellars themselves. They held them there and burned everything. Even the bricks melted. Others threw grenades into cellars where families were hiding.’
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