Hitler Moves East, 1941-1943 (4 page)

Then here too the minute-hand jumped to 0315. "Fire!" And the hell dance began. The earth trembled.

The 4th Special Purpose Mortar Regiment with its nine heavy batteries lent a particular note to the inferno. Within half an hour 2880 mortar-bombs screamed with terrifying howls across the Bug into the town and the fortress. The heavy 60-cm. mortars and 21-cm. guns of 98th Artillery Regiment lobbed their shells across the river, into the ramparts of the fortress, and against pin-pointed Soviet gun positions. Was it possible for a single stone to be left standing after this? It was possible. That was to be the first of many nasty surprises.

Second Lieutenant Zumpe of 3rd Company, 135th Infantry Regiment, had watched the last few seconds tick away before 0315. At the very first crash of gunfire he leapt out of his ditch by the railway embankment. "Let's go!" he shouted to the men of his assault detachment. "Let's go!" Steel helmets rose up from the tall grass. Like sprinters the men tore across to the bridge—the second lieutenant in front. Past the abandoned German customs hut. The gunfire drowned the clatter of their boots on the heavy planks of the bridge. Ducking along the high parapet on both sides, they ran across. Always at the back of their minds was the fear: will the bridge go up or not? It did not go up. A single burst of fire from bis sub-machine-gun was all the Soviet sentry had time for. Then he heeled over forward.

At that moment a machine-gun opened up from the dugout of the bridge guard. That had been expected. Lance-

Corporal Holzer's light machine-gun sprayed the Russian position. Like a handful of fleeting shadows the obstacle- clearing detail of the 1st Company, Engineers Battalion 81, assigned to Zumpe's assault detachment, rushed to the spot. A dull thud; smoke and fumes. Finished.

Zumpe's men raced past the shattered dugout. They flung themselves down to the right and left of the bridge by the railway embankment, their machine-guns in position. The second lieutenant and the sappers ran back on to the bridge. The charge was fixed to the central pier. Out with it. Zumpe ran the beam of his flashlight over the pier, to make sure no other infernal machine was hidden anywhere. Nothing. He slid the green shield over the lens. The green light. Like a station-master he waved it above his head towards the German side: bridge clear! And already the first armoured scout-cars were racing across.

At Pratulin, where 17th and 18th Panzer Divisions were to cross the Bug, there was no bridge. At 0415 hours the advance detachments leaped into their rubber dinghies and assault boats, and swiftly crossed to the other side. The infantrymen and motor-cycle troops had with them light antitank guns and heavy machine-guns. The Russian pickets by the river opened up with automatic rifles and light machine-guns. They were quickly silenced. Units of the motor- cycle battalion dug in. Then everything that could be pumped into the bridgehead was ferried across. The sappers at once got down to building a pontoon bridge.

But what would happen if the Russians attacked the bridgehead with armour? How would the Germans oppose them? Tanks and heavy equipment could have been brought across only with the greatest difficulty in barges or over emergency bridges.

That was why an interesting new secret weapon was employed here for the first time—underwater tanks, also known as diving tanks. They were to cross the river under water, just like submarines. Then, on the far bank, they were to go into action as ordinary tanks, smashing enemy positions along the river and intercepting any counter-attacks.

It was an amazing plan. In fact, it was over a year old and had originally been intended for a different purpose—for Operation Sea Lion, the invasion of England. Soon after Hitler had decided to leap across to the British Isles, the project of using tanks under water was born. The idea was that they would be unloaded well off the south coast of England, in about twenty-five feet of water, to advance over the sea-floor to the flat beaches. There they were to have emerged from the waves, like Neptune, to have fought down the British coastal defences on both sides of Hastings, to have formed bridgeheads for the first German landing craft, and eventually to have advanced inland, causing havoc and panic in the coastal hinterland.

The idea was immediately put into effect. In July 1940 four diving-tank sections were formed from eight experienced Panzer regiments, and posted to Putlos on the German Baltic coast for special training. It was a strange course for the tank crews. In their Mark III and IV tanks they virtually turned into U-boat men.

The operational task required manoeuvrability in water of twenty-five to thirty feet. That meant that the tanks had to withstand a water pressure of about two atmospheres and had to be appropriately sealed. This was achieved by a special adhesive. Sealing the joint between turret and tank body was done very simply by means of an extended bicycle inner tube which could be inflated by the gun-loader inside the tank. The gun itself was fitted with a rubber muzzle cap which could be blasted off from the turret within a second.

A special problem, however, was the supply of fresh air to the engine and the crew. Here the principle of the later U- boat snorkel was anticipated. A special hose about fifty feet long was fitted by a special suction device to a floating buoy, which, at the same time, carried an aerial. The tanks were steered with the aid of a gyro-compass.

Towards the end of July 1940 the four detachments practised in strictest secrecy at Hörnum on the Island of Sylt. An ancient ferry of the Rügen service would take them well out to sea; there they would slither down a hinged ramp to the sea-floor, and make their own way back to the coast. The unevenness of the seabed did not seem to worry the monsters. The experiments were highly successful. But then, in mid-October 1940, Operation Sea Lion was called off for good. The dream of the U-boat tanks had ended. Of the special detachments three were united into a plain tank regiment, 18th Panzer Regiment, while the remaining detachment was assigned to 6th Panzer Regiment, 3rd Panzer Division.

In the spring of 1941, when the High Command of the Army was discussing the crossing of the Bug north of Brest, in connection with the planning of Operation Barbarossa, somebody on the General Staff remembered the diving tanks. "Surely we had those things . . ." Inquiries were made. Questions were asked at 18th Panzer Regiment. "Oh, yes, we still have those old diving tanks." An order came for diving basins to be built near Prague. 18th Panzer Regiment tested the diving capacity of the old tanks. Since they were no longer required to move under the sea, but merely to cross a river, the fifty-foot-long rubber snorkel was replaced by a ten-foot steel pipe. The exhaust pipes were fitted with one-way valves. Within a short time the U-boat tanks were again in perfect condition. On 22nd June 1941 they passed their ordeal by fire.

In the sector of 18th Panzer Division fifty batteries of all calibres opened fire at 0315 in order to clear the way to the other bank for the diving tanks. General Nehring, the divisional commander, has since described this as "a magnificent spectacle, but rather pointless since the Russians had been clever enough to withdraw their troops from the border area, leaving behind only weak frontier detachments, which subsequently fought very bravely."

At 0445 hours Sergeant Wierschin advanced into the Bug with diving tank No. 1. The infantrymen watched him in amazement. The water closed over the tank. "Playing at U-boats!" Only the slim steel tube which supplied fresh air to the crews and engine showed above the surface, indicating Wierschin's progress under water. There were also the exhaust bubbles, but these were quickly obliterated by the current.

Tank after tank—the whole of 1st Battalion, 18th Panzer Regiment, under the battalion commander, Manfred Graf Strachwitz—dived into the river.

And now the first ones were crawling up the far bank like mysterious amphibians. A soft plop and the rubber caps were blown off the gun muzzles. The gun-loaders let the air out of the bicycle inner tubes round the turrets. Turret hatches were flung open and the skippers wriggled out. An arm thrust into the air three times: the signal "Tanks forward."

Eighty tanks had crossed the frontier river under water. Eighty tanks were moving into action.

Their presence was more than welcome in the bridgehead. Enemy armoured scout-cars were approaching. At once came the firing orders for the leading tanks: "Turret—one o'clock —armour-piercing—800 yards—group of armoured scout-cars —fire at will."

The monsters fired. Several armoured scout-cars were burning. The rest retreated hurriedly. The armoured spearheads of Army Group Centre moved on in the direction of Minsk and Smolensk.

South of Brest too, at Koden, following the successful assault on the bridge, the surprise attack of XXIV Panzer Corps, under General Freiherr Geyr von Schweppenburg, had gone according to schedule. The tanks crossed the bridge, which had been captured intact. Advanced units of Lieutenant-General Model's 3rd Panzer Division crossed on rapidly built emergency bridges. The skippers stood in the turrets, scanning the landscape for the rearguards of the retreating Soviet frontier troops, overrunning the first anti-tank-gun positions, waving the first prisoners to the rear, moving nearer and nearer to their objective for the day—Kobrin on the Mukhavets.

North of Brest, near Drohiczyn, where Engineers Battalion 178 lay close to the Bug in the area of 292nd Infantry Division, in order to build a pontoon bridge as soon as possible for the heavy equipment of the divisions of IX Corps, everything went also according to plan. The reinforced 507th and 509th Infantry Regiments—with the 508th farther to the right— raced across the Bug in rubber dinghies and assault craft under heavy artillery cover. Within half an hour the Soviet pickets on the far bank were wiped out and a bridgehead was established. At the first artillery salvo the sappers had leaped to their feet and moved their first pontoons into the water. For a quarter of an hour the Russians fired from the far bank with machine-guns and rifles; then they fell silent. By 0900 exactly the bridge was finished— the first within the area of the Fourth Army. The heavy equipment rumbled over the swaying pontoons. The 78th Infantry Division was already lined up in close order to cross the river.

Of all the coups planned against the frontier bridges along the five-hundred-mile-long Bug not one went wrong.

Similarly all the envisaged bridge-building operations across the frontier river succeeded, with the sole exception of one within the area of 62nd Infantry Division, which, belonging to the Sixth Army, was already part of the northern wing of Army Group South.

On 22nd June Field-Marshal von Rundstedt launched his offensive on his left wing with the Seventeenth and Sixth Armies, which stood to the north of the Carpathians. Farther to the south the Eleventh Army and the Rumanian Army were still standing by, both in order to deceive the Russians and to protect the Rumanian oil. The offensive in the Black Sea area was not to start till 1st July.

On the northern wing of Army Group South, at Reichenau's Sixth Army, on the Bug, good progress was made on the first day of the campaign, in spite of the difficulties which 62nd Infantry Division had in building its bridge.

Major-General von Oven's 56th Infantry Division crossed the river without any hitch with the very first wave of rubber dinghies. The artillery-fire lay so squarely on the well-reconnoitred enemy positions that the attackers suffered practically no casualties. Half-way through the morning a pontoon bridge was in position in the sector of 192nd Infantry Regiment at Chelm. The artillery crossed at high speed. On the very first day the regiments of XVII Corps pushed ahead nine miles right through the Russian frontier fortifications.

On the southern wing of the Army Group, where the frontier was formed by the river San, the divisions of General von Stülpnagel's Seventeenth Army found things more difficult. The bank of the San north of Przemysl was as flat as a pancake—without woods, without ravines, without any cover for whole regiments. That was why the assault battalions of 275th Infantry Division, from Berlin, could not move out of their deployment areas until the night of 21st/22nd June. "Not a sound" was the order of the regimental commander. Weapons were packed in blankets; bayonets and gas- mask cases were wrapped round with any soft material that was handy. "Thank God for the frogs," whispered Second Lieutenant Alicke. Their croaking drowned the creaking, rattling, and bumping of the companies making their way towards the river.

At 0315 precisely the assault detachments leaped to their feet on both sides of Radymno. The railway bridge was seized by a surprise stroke. But in front of the customs shed the Russians were already offering stubborn resistance. Second Lieutenant Alicke was killed. He was the division's first fatal casualty, the first of a long list. The men laid him beside the customs shed. The heavy weapons rolled on by him, over 'his' bridge.

In the south the Soviet alarm system functioned with surprising speed and precision. Only the most forward pickets were taken by surprise. The 457th Infantry Regiment had to battle all day long with the Soviet Non-commissioned Officers' Training School of Vysokoye, only a mile beyond the river. The 250 NCO cadets resisted stubbornly and skilfully. Not till the afternoon was their resistance broken by artillery-fire. The 466th Infantry Regiment fared even worse. No sooner were its battalions across the river than they were attacked from the flank by advanced detachments of the Soviet 199th Reserve Division.

In the fields of Stubienka the tall grain waved in the summer wind like the sea. Into this sea the troops now plunged. Both sides were lurking, invisible. Stalking each other. Hand-grenades, pistols, and machine carbines were the weapons of the day Suddenly they would be facing one another amid the rye—the Russians and Germans. Eye to eye. Whose finger was quicker on the trigger? Whose spade would go up first? Over there a Russian machine pistol appeared from a foxhole. Would it score with its burst? Or would the hand-grenade do its work first? Only with the fall of dusk did this bloody fighting in the rye-fields come to an end. The enemy withdrew.