26. Juni 1942
| GEO & MIL INFO | ||||
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| Siderowo | 
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| Bogoroditschnoje |
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| Krasni Jar |
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| OKW situation map July 1942 | 
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| 26 June: machine gun platoon attached to 3/477 7 July: Col Püchler back[1] | ||||
| from 7 July perhaps III Pz.K./Gr. von Mackensen? | on 7 July Küstenstab (coastal staff Asow[2] | |||
| OB: GFM ListWP | ||||
Our formations all along the Donets Front are being regrouped, and in the course of these measures we are also being relocated.[3] Siderovo resembles a beehive. Vehicles are loaded, crowds of soldiers walk between them. Soon the units are in the street, ready to march. Groups of Russian girls stand at the garden fences and bid farewell. Then a command: “Point march!”. The front company steps up, the others thread their way in from the side paths, the column stretches out like a worm. A last wave, a farewell word flies to the girls, and then the end of the column leaves the village.
After three hours we turn into a hollow and see our destination in front of us: Bogorodichnoye. A village like all the others. We don’t stay here for long. Our battalion is to be moved to the river. A preliminary detachment, of which I am one, goes ahead as guides. We come to Krasni Jar[4]. It is a small hamlet built at an angle, from which the Donets lowland can be overlooked for miles, because it is situated on the height of a flat slope. The village is deserted. To the right of the village the slope drops into a narrow, steep-sided gorge[5], which opens towards the Donez valley. On the other side of this steep-walled gorge lies a densely forested plateau with a steep slope down to the Donez valley.
To the left of the village, the slope falls flat and treeless to the valley floor, and at the foot of this valley slope runs a village whose houses have been completely destroyed. The village consists only of a chain of piles of rubble, from which the narrow columns of the chimneys rise into the air. The village is called Studenok[6], and in front of its row of ruins run our positions. From the row of ruins (and our positions) the terrain slopes very gently, almost flat, towards the river. It is a strip of meadow about a hundred metres wide. The Donets itself is about thirty to forty metres wide here. On the enemy side it has a flat bank, partly overgrown with bushes. Then the terrain changes into a kilometre-wide, half-open park landscape, bordered by dense forest on the horizon. Far in the distance, one can make out the houses of a typical Russian giant village[7], which is occupied by the enemy. From there he sends his scouts to the front of the river.
To the left of the village, the river has a ford. Here, an immense mass of wrecked Soviet vehicles crowded radially towards the ford, with the clear intention of crossing the river here. In the haste of the flighty retreat, the columns have jammed up here, driven up in tenfold rows side by side, partly into each other, blocking and clogging each other’s way. And German bombers smashed into this tangle of piled-up lorry columns and turned it into a huge pile of scrap. Horse carcasses and individual corpses of Red Army soldiers still lie among the rubble, spreading a slight odour of decay in the summer heat.
Our trench positions run partly through this field of car debris and then past the ruins of the row of houses of Studenok parallel to the river. It is possible to reach and leave our positions unseen through the gorge[8] behind us. Only the last stretch from the exit of the Balka to the trench can be seen by the enemy.
My machine-gun platoon is attached to the 3rd Company and the individual guns are distributed throughout the trench section of this company. I myself lie in a dugout, which is spacious but only covered with a layer of boards and a thin layer of sand. The very next morning I take a walk through the company section to inspect my four machine gun emplacements. The yellowish-reddish colour of the piles of stones and lumps of clay from the destroyed houses provides good protection for our trench, whose light-coloured sand heaps are therefore hardly recognisable. The trench runs close to the ruins and in some places through them. Most of the time it is chest deep. So with some caution I can walk through it unseen, even during the day. Only in some places is it just knee-deep, because the collapsing houses have buried it and the Landsers haven’t cleared it out yet.
We only have this one line, and even that can only be weakly manned in view of the shortage of men in the rifle companies. That’s why all the battalion’s heavy infantry weapons and a few light Pak guns have been put forward into the trench, even though this is tactically completely wrong. So I am again, as I have been for a long time, with my heavy machine guns at the front in the trench.
So here we are again in front of the enemy. In front of our trench, the open meadow slopes gently down to the bank of the Donez, and the river, barely forty metres wide here, meanders along as a small natural obstacle. On the far bank are a few clumps of trees and bushes, from which Soviet outposts shoot at us at night. But it doesn’t bother us much.
The hot days pass in monotonous guard duty. During the day, each platoon provides only one alert post, while the men not on guard duty lie lazing in the sun or sleep in the shade of the dugout. At night the posts are considerably reinforced. Then half the platoon is in position.
One day the regimental commander comes through the trench. I accompany him around my dugout. His first glance is at a sentry standing in his post, rifle at foot, in swimming trunks. Lieutenant-Colonel[9] Haarhaus pauses, but says nothing. As we continue on our way, we meet only sentries in sports shorts. The colonel must have the impression that he is in a lido. But the otherwise extremely correct soldier probably understands our suit in this heat, because he shows no displeasure. Only at the end of our inspection tour does he order me in a mild tone that at least on guard duty the men should be in uniform and buckled up.
I heard that elsewhere units had repelled Soviet attacks, all standing in the trench in swimming trunks. German fighter pilots are also said to have flown alert missions in swimming trunks.
Since our positions are rarely shelled, the days pass in tranquillity and boredom. Apart from sunbathing, we have no variety, but even sunbathing is no longer a pleasure in the scorching heat. If the wind is unfavourable, the smell of cadavers from the car cemetery blows into our nostrils. Now we also know why the drinking water that the Landser always fetch from a well between the wrecks tastes so strange...
The only annoyance for us is the ridiculous banging of the Russian outposts over on the other shore. It always comes from the same place, a group of trees. One day it gets too stupid for our company chief. He sits down behind a Soviet booty-pak still standing among the ruins of the village. But since the Russians had taken the aiming device with them when they fled, he had to take a bearing through the open barrel to aim at the target. The first shot goes high into the treetops. The second shot then sits better. The chief now sets the direction for the night, but the Ivan no longer shoots.
Just now we had a small bang with three Ratas. The flight flew over our positions at about eight hundred metres. I gave “fire at will” for my two closest machine guns. Like two strings of pearls, the tracer bullets shot vertically upwards, for the machines were flying straight over us. The sheaf of one of my rifles lies excellently. I see the bright dots fly past all around the plane. But the plane remains unharmed. Now they had spotted us, or they had already seen us and were irritated by our fire. In any case, they turn in and send their sheaves into the ditch and the surrounding area in a nosedive attack. We take full cover. A few more times they roar over our trench, firing. Then they pull up and disappear. No hits.
Russian surprise fire! or attack? We don’t know yet, but to be on the safe side we return fire from all guns. It’s a hell of a noise. During the banging I run from one machine gun nest to the next. I pass a Landser who is operating two firing positions at the same time. First he shoots a few grenades out of a Russian 8-cm mortar, then he jumps to his German 5-cm mortar and stuffs one grenade after the other into it with fiery zeal. Then he rushes back to the middle launcher and is unstoppable. This one is not fighting, he’s playing!
The regimental commander uses the relative calm at the front to conduct lessons for the officer candidates in the regimental command post. This is a pleasant change for me, because you finally get out of the narrow trench during the day. Today the first class takes place and I set off. I walk in the ditch until I reach the motor graveyard. Here I have to jump out of the trench, over a bare area to the ravine and can now climb up the slope under the protection of the Balka until I reach the dense forest at the top. It went well. Only a ridiculous rifle shot was whistled at me and clapped into the ground far away. I walk to the battalion bunker, which is up here in the forest. Horses are waiting here, because it is about fifteen kilometres to the regimental command post. Apart from me, there is another corporal officer candidate here. He is a Protestant theology undergraduate, fresh-faced, with small blue eyes, straw-blond hair and thoroughly decent. We mount and set off on the several hours’ journey. Chatting, we ride through the endless forest, and when we are silent for once, we hear the dull pounding of the horses’ hooves on the sandy forest path. After hours of riding, we reach the edge of the forest. From here the path leads across a wide open pasture where two downed Soviet tanks lie. We put our horses to a trot and ride out into the wide, flowering steppe. In a hollow in the valley we pass a well that probably used to serve as a drinking trough for the grazing herds. The terrain here in the Donets region is very hilly, almost mountainous, and with its valleys and heights, forests and open spaces, gorges and plains, it offers the eye many a variety. Finally, after a short gallop, we reach the regimental command post. We made this journey together several times in the future, and each time it was a pleasure for us to travel on horseback through these vast expanses of the Russian countryside.
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- ↑ KTB 257. I.D., NARA T-315 Roll 1804 Frame 000923
- ↑ KTB HGr A (TsAMO, in the war diary called “Heeresgruppe (army group) List”, with 1 Pz.A., 11 and 17 A., 257 I.D. on thhe left wing; subordination became known only on 9 July (together with the renaming to “H.Gr. A”) “by all accounts” (KTB 257. I.D., NARA T-315 Roll 1804 Frame 000926))
- ↑ On the night 16/17 June, I.R. 477 marched to Krasni Jar (KTB 257th I.D., NARA T-315 Roll 1804 Frame 000908/909); the 2 Coy from Siderovo followed only on the night 26/27 June (Frame 000916)
- ↑ Krasni Jar no longer exists; however, it can be found on, for example, map Osteuropa 1:300,000 sheet Z 50
- ↑ Gossudareff Jar, acc. to map Russland 1:100000 sheet M-37-XIII Ost
- ↑ Uncovering a cartographic error: Some maps (e.g. Russland 1:100000, sheet M-37-99 Isjum, Truppenausgabe, 2. Ausgabe I.43 or Osteuropa 1:300.000 sheet Z 50 Isjum, Ausgabe 3 1941, einzelne Nachträge VI.43 ) name the place west of the Donets “Studenok” (an error due to misinterpreted Russian base 1:50.000 M-37-99-D (FTP link); also in the pl/details.php?id=11796414 Map Russland 1:100,000 sheet M-37-XIII Ost Kramatorskaja, Studenok is still correctly indicated, east of the Donets); the western place is actually called (Bolshaya) Yeromovka.
M-37-XIII Ost of 1879 correct: Studenok east of Donez
M-37-99-D of 1937/39 unclear: Lettering between to settlements
Z 50 of 1939 wrong: Studenok west of Donez
M-37-99 of 1939/40 wrong: Studenok west of Donez
- ↑ the then Malaya Yeromovka and the real Studenok
- ↑ Balka Kamenka, acc. to map Russland 1:100,000 sheet M-37-XIII Ost
- ↑ in the original “Colonel” which was an error and not just a courtesy like in English
