Island of Fire

There is mention of one guy called Svidrov who, with 4 other soldiers, held house number 71/31 on the corner of Pribaltiskaya St for several days and nights. In the end the house was overrun and Svidrov and his one surviving mate, Yusupov, hid in the basement.

The germans lobbed half a dozen grens down after them but didn't fancy entering a darkened cellar with 2 potentially still alive and kicking guys down there so they left them.

Svidrov and Yusupov eventually heard sounds of fighting and there was a counter-attck, so they came charging out of the basement into a very chaotic scene of CQB, scaring the sh*t out of the germans who had forgotten they were there in the firefight that was going on, and both, miraculously survived.

I am not far into the book but there seem to be tales of tactics, heroism and horror throughout - the book opens with a scene that makes the opening of Saving Private Ryan seem a bit tame. It is a damned good read so far and I'm only on page 9

Most of it appears to be from the German perspective, particularly of the Pioneer battalions specifically drafted in to help with the assault around the Barrikady gun factory.

Ok - next phase is how the attacks stalled in October and how the Germans wanted to break the stalemate. So there's loads of stuff about the individual Pioneer Battalions that were drafted in on Hitler's specific orders.

This was probably at the recommendation of Von Richthofen, the Red Baron's cousin, who was in charge of air forces in the area and was frustrated with the infantry's lack of progress.

Hitler refused to relaese any extra infantry (i.e. 29 Infanterie Division) to assist these pioneers though - I'm guessing this is going to turn out to be a crucial mistake - clearing blocks and blowing stuff up is all well and good but you have to hold the ground as well.

So there's a detailed introduction to the 5 Pioneer Battalions and a few of the SturmKompanies involved. Some of these guys were seriously kitted!!! Here's an example he gives of a squad of the 24th Panzer's Sturmschwadron, which was seconded to the action:

Squad leader: SMG, 2 x grens
Soldier 1: LMG, 1 x 50-rd drum, pistol, 2 x grens
Soldier 2: Pistol, 4 x 50-rd drum, 1 x 300-rd can, 2 x grens
Soldier 3: Rifle, 2 x 300-rd cans, 2 x grens
Soldiers 4-5: Rifle, bag of 8 x grens
Soldier 6: Rifle, concentrated charge (satchel?), 2 x grens
Soldier 7: Rifle, bag of 6 x smoke grens, smoke pot, 2 x grens

By my calculations (though not the author's) this means 1 squad has ready for use in battle:

4 rifles, an SMG, an LMG with 1150 rounds, 2 x pistols, 28 Grens, 6 smokers and a satchel.

There's also an intro to the uses of the sIG-33, which was one of Hitler's brainchildren, how it was rushed off the production line and supplied, buggy as hell, without a manual, to crew who had no real experience of driving anything more complicated than a horse and cart.

Their commanders did a fairly good job getting them up-to-speed pretty quickly, though, and the sIG's were first used to bring down some of the towering chimneys of Krasniy Oktyabr, which were used as OP's by the Russians.

the author, Jason Mark, also reckons there's a chance the guy on this sIG here was actually Paulus himself (certainly looks tall enough)

The last 40-odd pages are source notes, bibliography and index. There are about 4 pages of bibiography.

Majority of citations are from places like the National Archives & Research Administration, Washington; Bundesarchiv-Militararchiv, Freiburg and Tsentralniy Arkhiv Ministerstva Oborony, Podolsk and from interviews with veterans.

Where he is unable to confirm stories (e.g. because of German regimental records being destroyed by British bombers in 1945) he says so. If this were a PhD thesis it would definitely be considered, 'exhaustively referenced'.

@Helmi, Ah - the old Geballte Ladung - we like those - I just never saw the name translated into English before.

OK - update here on the story so far.

The pioneers were originally supposed to go in to clean up the Lazur works which were the main strongpoint of Soviet defence at the time. Pretty much at the last minute the plans were canceleed and it was decided they would assist the 305 and, to a lesser extent, the 389 Infanterie in pushing South-East out of the ruins of the Barrikady gun factory to the Volga.

The front lines were about 100 metres apart according to the map that comes with the book. The Grunts in the factory were pleased to see the Pioneers arrive as they were fresh and generally respected for their city-fighting skills. The grunts were all pretty exhausted and had suffered up to 50% losses, sometimes more and were not really capable of sustained assaults in their own.

One of the other pioneer battalions (not the newly-arrived ones), Pionier-Bataillon 389, was down to a fighting force of 2 NCO's and 30 men. It was a 42-year old NCO from this battalion who actually did not have to fight who basically pleaded with his CO to be allowed to take part in the assault, because he would not be able face questions about what he did in Stalingrad if he didn't join in.

He was Stabsfeldwebel Leonhard Lang and, I saw from the footnotes that he died in the first day of the assault on the 11th November.

Some of the newly arrived pioneers didn't even make it to the starting positions - when moving up the night before, some of the new comers: Pionier Battaillon 336, strayed into a minefield, and, inevitably, were mortared once the explosions alerted the Russians to their positions, killing 18 men. Immediately after that they probably had a good idea what the other infatry around them had been through for the past several months.

I would post a map to put all this into context, as there is a good map of the factory and surrounds that comes with this book, but that would be a gross breach of copyright and I do not want to take anything away from the author of this book. It sets a new standard for research into the battle and bringing it to life with a good style of writing.

KH Reese said:

Soldier 7 gets to smoke pot?

Click to expand...

LOL - I wondered who would pick up on that first. No, he didn't, though fairly strong grass does grow in summer in the sidestreets around that area (erm..so I'm told ). One thing that did surprise me, reading this, was the number of times mention was made in Soviet reports of German assault troops being drunk, even for a dawn raid. It tends to contradict the cliched image of the Wehrmacht in action.

The map in the book is about a zillion times more detailed - pretty much hall by hall and house by house detail - even though some of the houses were holes in the ground by that stage.

Moving on with the narrative - I had a long session reading it last night and covered day 1 of the assault. The casualty rates were appalling - across the 5km front you have units on both sides losing, in one day, 25% of their active manpower, or 30% for some Soviet units - even 117% of one regiment's manpower were casualties (see if you can guess how that happened).

There appear to have been two key strategic buildings positioned near the front lines by the factory main halls - the Kommissarhaus (factory admin) and Apotheke. The Pioniers achieved surprise during their assault on the Apotheke by requesting no arty barrage to start so that they could crawl up, plant satchels on the walls and then detonate them at zero hour. They charged in and took the building from the shocked Russians very quickly, taking 45 prisoners.

My earlier statement that RO-Kommissarhaus is a map crying out to be made has been proved correct. The German attack against it failed on day one - if you see a photo of it you can probably guess why. It was built along the lines of medieval castle with metre-plus thick redbrick walls and surrounded by no real cover (except the trenches and craters). Any RO player on axis would look at the OH map and say, "ffffsshhh, that is going to be a hard cap".

The Germans had assault guns backing up the assault but they let them get well within Molotov and PTRD-plink range and lost three of them, as well as any realistic chance of storming the building that day. Noobs!

RO Players who moan about nade-spam would be well advised to read about a member of the factory militia, named Fedin, who was in the Kommissarhaus and grabbed a bagful of nades, ran out from the building and, covered by an SMG fired by his mate, Putirin, lobbed nades into the craters where the advancing Germans were taking cover. Gef. Ludwig Apmann and 4 other Panzer Pioniers being amongst those wounded in this assault. Eventually Fedin got hit too and staggered back to the building for first aid. A combination of acts like this and the Russian snipers must must have done quite some damage as the entire German force assaulting at that point withdrew.

At other points the Germans did better, advancing through gullies and trenches to take houses all the way down to the Volga, but, as a reader, I am guessing that they paid too high a price for the few hundred metres they gained and the old problem about not having infantry to hold the gains is going to resurface. They also had the Kommissarhaus sticking out like a thumb in the middle of their area of 'gains'.

Looknig at this in just the first day I wonder how the battle managed to drag on til January. The Russian 138th Rifle Div and the German 305th and 389th surely could not take much more of the kind of losses they suffered on day 1.

This is all the most general intro to what is in the book - I have mised out the pages about the problems of transporting an entire battalion by air, the comments about Russian Women snipers (though I thopught there were none in Stalingrad) and a lot of back-story of the units.

A later post might deal with the role of Major Gunyaga, in charge of the 768th Rifle Regiment of the 138th, who certainly does not come across as the typical Russian 'blood and guts' style of commander who wanted to lead from the front, even though the events of the day made sure that that is exactly where he ended up It will be interesting to see whether the examples of extreme bravery from his CO, Colonel Lyudnikov, manage to put some fire into this 'reluctant hero'.

Well the Germans took the Kommissarhaus - and they actually used some pretty neato tactics to do so (that and a helluva lot of HE and flamethrowers and rather evil chemical grenades referred to as blindk