The air reeked of burning. The whole city was on fire, bombs exploding, corpses scattered everywhere. It was a meat grinder. I cannot help but remember.
Sometimes I have dreams. Sometimes I only remember my comrades, the living and the dead. It is still hard to think about it even now. I cannot bear it.
By 1942, the Germans were advancing toward Stalingrad. They moved their main units from every front to converge on the region. Why? Because Stalingrad would determine the outcome of the war.
If the Germans could cross the Volga, they would push into the Caucasus and seize the oil fields. Russia would be lost. Stalingrad would become the decisive point for the entire Soviet Union. It had to be held at any cost.
One soldier remembered arriving as part of a vast force, a full German army of 250,000 men suddenly thrown into the fight to take the city. They had fought fiercely all the way to Kiev, and by 1942 they were ready to fight again. As they moved forward to close on Stalingrad, the infantry took the lead. The gun crews followed, dragging the artillery.
One young soldier had never ridden a horse before, but he mastered it in time. He was not the kind to look for an easy way out. When his unit reached the city, there was complete silence. The Germans had not yet broken into the city proper.
The young soldier, fresh from his school desk, was afraid. He had no idea what awaited him. Then the intensive bombing of Stalingrad began. Bombs exploded practically every few feet.
The city was turned to dust. Everything burned. Only charred buildings remained. Almost no civilians were left.
There was an unpleasant smell because many bodies had not been removed. The sounds never stopped. Day and night there was shooting, crying, and screaming throughout Stalingrad. It was a nightmare.
The Nazi pincers were fifteen miles from Stalingrad. Regardless of cost, the city had to be taken. Those were the German orders. When the Germans finally entered the city, things went well, at least in one division.
That division broke through the ranks on September 14 and reached all the way to the Volga. The Germans attacked dozens of times every day. Their tanks charged, and the trenches shook from side to side. A man could not raise his head.
When he looked up, he would find a German soldier right in front of him. Their backs were to the wall. The young soldier insisted there was no one his age, and he stressed how young he was, because at that age everyone feels invincible, and he was deeply frightened. The smell of dried blood struck him when he first reached the hospital, and it followed him everywhere.
Initially he worked in the triage section. They could hear the convoys of wounded approaching, arriving at speed with loud voices. During heavy battles, about five hundred wounded reached the hospital every day. On the front lines, he felt this was his place.
He grew used to it. He was not afraid of anything. Quite the opposite. Often they came under fire, and his horse would begin to tremble.
He would wrap his arms around the horse’s neck, pat it, and say, calm down, calm down. At the end of September, Hitler declared that the fall of the city was a matter of days. Once again, the world feared the Russian campaign was lost. But the commander of the German army saw that his forces risked encirclement and destruction.
He told the division commander that when the main forces withdrew to the Volga, his division would have to hold off the Germans and prevent them from advancing. This meant one division had to stand firm against two entire German armies. Then Stalin issued his order. It became known as Not One Step Back.
The Red Army created penal units armed with machine guns. If anyone retreated, they opened fire on their own troops. Discipline was restored. Stalin declared, the city bearing my name will not fall.
The other terrible dictator, Hitler, declared, the German soldier never retreats. The city found itself in an unprecedented historical situation. A battle between two dictators had begun. By the end of October, snow covered Stalingrad.
From the air, the Germans tried to force the Russian-held part of the city to surrender. Street fighting continued. Three quarters of Stalingrad was now in German hands. The Russians clung to the last quarter.
The city was ablaze. Nothing remained but ash and the smell of fire. In most battles, there are sounds of shelling, explosions, and gunfire. In Stalingrad, one could not hear anything because of the constant roar.
It felt like being inside a meat grinder. Entire battalions went in and never came back. The Germans had thought their infantry would take the city in a few days, maybe a week or two. But then the bitter fighting from house to house began.
They had not expected that at all. The fighting went on over every house, every floor. Neither side retreated. For every soldier, Russian and German, it became the deadly question, will you die or will I?
One soldier remembered a patient with a wound in his chest crying out, nurse, air, air. How could anyone give him air? What air? He is choking.
They did not have the tools to help him. They could not save him. Illusions of victory faded as the house-to-house fighting grew more ferocious. When it came to fighting inside buildings, the Russians were undoubtedly superior.
They could hold out longer. They did not surrender quickly or break easily. The man responsible for the Soviet operation was Zhukov. He was a serious and very intelligent strategist.
He decided to encircle the German armies. His plan was simple. Three fronts would advance from separate directions, surround the enemy, and destroy them. The Soviet people, including the soldier, believed the Germans were acting with brutality and had to be eliminated.
Two simultaneous attacks were launched, one from the north and one from the south. The German armies besieging Stalingrad now faced encirclement themselves. The enemy positions received a heavy blow. The Soviets shelled them for a full hour, using about 3,500 artillery pieces across the three fronts.
They fired without stopping and without rest. Their air force also bombed. After breaking through, they closed the ring. The Germans were trapped inside the pocket.
The Russian tactics had succeeded. The German soldiers were completely surrounded. Since that moment, the fighting was so hard it is difficult to describe. One soldier could not exaggerate the severity of the cold.
Twenty, twenty-five, sometimes thirty degrees below zero. The German division commander sought death. As defeat became more likely, he took a weapon in his own hands and fired at the Russians. He was lucky enough to take a bullet to the head and died instantly.
That was one way out. The other regimental commanders, when the end approached, drank themselves drunk and shot themselves. The Germans retreated, and the Soviets advanced in column formation. They received orders to stop and rest briefly.
One soldier found a place to lie down and used his coat as bedding. His horse stood beside him. He opened his eyes later to see his horse dying. It was starving.
During the offensive, they had not received regular supplies. He had to take the remaining straw from a peasant house roof to feed the horse. But the horse could not endure any longer. The soldiers did not waste it.
They butchered it, boiled its flesh, and ate it. Horse meat, far away. They were shelling with cluster munitions, and a shell threw the soldier onto his back. He saw the snow bright red with his own blood.
Lung blood is always very bright red. The sergeant major placed a pistol in his hand and said, lieutenant, unfortunately we cannot take you with us. The Russians may reach this hideout within half an hour. It was very considerate.
He gave the soldier the chance to shoot himself. But by a miracle, a plane was leaving that night. The sergeant major carried the young soldier on his shoulder and put him on that plane. That was how he got out of that hell.
Stalingrad was free. The Nazis surrendered after being encircled. The German command surrendered. When they announced that the fighting in Stalingrad was over, the soldiers came out of the tent and saw destroyed tanks and guns everywhere.
Sporadic machine gun fire could still be heard here and there. The remaining Germans were hiding behind tanks and vehicles. Soviet soldiers were finishing them off, shooting them. They would say, another German gone.
They felt no pity. The Battle of Stalingrad was a turning point in that war. The surviving soldier believed it was. And they went all the way to Berlin.
That was the result. When it was over, the division commander and all the officers gathered. They drank a great deal. It was a good thing.
They sang a song, let us drink a toast to the company commanders. Let us drink and drink and pour again. They had won. That was the best feeling, to keep your legs and arms and be alive after the war.
Suddenly they announced the war was over. Everyone with a weapon fired into the air in salute and celebration. But at the same time, alongside the joy, morning light came. When the fighting was declared over, they went to the graves where their dead were buried.
The lilacs had bloomed. Someone broke branches and placed them on the graves. Those men had not lived to see the victory. If only they had been given a few more days, or a few hours.
They died without seeing the end of the war. There seemed to be joy, but at the same time there was no joy at all. There was no joy.