The grouping of German troops is broken like hell. Presentation "Chertkovsky district during the Great Patriotic War". Anatoly Alexandrovich Wasserman Skeletons in the closet of history

February 22nd, 2015

“We were in Chertkovo, awaiting further instructions. The Italian food and industrial warehouses were in the hands of the Germans. Our services involved in supplying troops with food abandoned them when the first Russian tanks appeared in the city.
The Germans defending the city considered the warehouses to be their war booty. Only on the very first day did the Italian soldiers manage to get hold of some food. Already on the second day, the Germans placed armed sentries at the warehouses.
As a result, the soldiers began to steal, often with the connivance of their officers. The Germans, without a twinge of conscience, opened fire on them. It's a shame to end your life like this...
During the existence of the Italian garrison in Chertkovo, its strength ranged from five to seven hundred people. It was said that there were about four thousand Germans there. In my opinion, there were many more of them.

Gorlovka.

All of their units were fully equipped and ready for battle. The Germans had an order from Hitler's headquarters - to gain a foothold and keep the fortress of Chertkovo at any cost. Therefore, they were not at all going to provide us with tanks for escort.
Without tanks, we could not walk the 60 kilometers separating us from our own. Even one Russian tank would have been enough to finish us off.
In the meantime, the Russians received reinforcements, and the ring around the city closed. We were completely surrounded. For the many thousands of Italians who ended up in Chertkovo, there were only about 500 rifles. Most of the officers also had pistols.
After the onset of the new year, heavy aircraft that dropped supplies: German - in large quantities, by parachute, Italian - just a little bit (mostly medicines), did not fly anymore, because the Russians came close to the airfield and shot through the runway with heavy guns.
Now only Shtorchs landed in Chertkovo - small German reconnaissance aircraft that needed only a few tens of meters to take off and land.

On the morning of January 7, 1943, the Germans launched the attack. They had the goal of pushing the Russians back to the positions they had previously occupied. The fight lasted all morning. As a result, the Russians retreated and entrenched themselves at a distance of several kilometers from the German positions. However, the distant approaches to the city were still in their hands.
The bayonet attack did not pass this place. Here, mixed with the corpses of Italians, Russians were also encountered, although there were clearly more Italians.
In the morning there was a rumor that the Germans had shot all the Russian prisoners. It was said that the prisoners were lined up in ranks of 10 people, along which a soldier walked and fired. Most often in the head.
As far as I know, none of the prisoners managed to survive. I saw the bodies of some of them. I remember a Russian boy dressed in a soldier's uniform. He was no more than sixteen years old. He lay with his arms and legs outstretched and staring into the distance with wide, unseeing eyes.
A small hole in the temple showed where the bullet hit that killed the young man. Witnesses to the murder of Russian prisoners said that they stood in front of their executioners, holding their heads high, and did not ask for anything, but fear and despair darted in their eyes.

At the end, we had to cross a wooden bridge that curved over a wide, ice-covered river. Beneath him, a German truck was burning on the ice, surrounded by burning puddles of gasoline and water.
Here the Germans committed a heinous crime. This truck was hit by partisans. Shooting back, they settled in the house, but they were able to surround them and take them alive. There were six or seven partisans. The Germans threw them into the burning gasoline.
Eyewitnesses said that for some time the living torches ran, screaming desperately, then they began to tear off their burning clothes and rush into puddles of water thawed from the flame. There they died in terrible agony.
The Germans brought tanks into battle. Two of them were hit, the rest returned in a deplorable state. This was the third and last of the great battles in the Chertkovo region.

In the meantime, in the city, we became intimately acquainted with the general nightmare, called by the affectionate female name of Katyusha. Sixteen 130mm shells rained down on our heads one after the other.
Hearing the sound of flying shells, everyone threw themselves flat on the ground. The piercing whistle was followed by explosions. "Katyushas" preferred to shoot at large crowds of people. When the shelling stopped, we jumped up and ran headlong away, trying to hide away from the terrible place. And there were corpses in the snow - five, six, seven ... as lucky.
One carabinieri was standing in the street in a group of five or six soldiers when Katyusha shells began to explode around them. His friends fell to the ground, but he himself remained on his feet.
When the smoke cleared, the carabinieri was horrified to see that his companions had been torn to shreds in the full sense of the word. Meanwhile, the Carabinieri himself did not receive a single scratch. Because of the terrible shock, his mind was clouded, and he believed that he, too, had died.
He decided that only his soul was alive. I spent several days in this conviction. He went on the attack, tried in every possible way to support his comrades, but he himself did not shoot and did not hide from enemy bullets, believing that dead man can't be killed twice.

After January 10, the Italians were no longer used to work on German positions. Now the Russian civilian population and prisoners were engaged in this.
We often saw German soldiers looking for Russians in the streets. They grabbed everyone, regardless of age, they drove even seventy-year old people to work. Once I saved the elderly owner of our hut from a completely brutalized German who came to take him to work.
Later, when it became clear that there were too few Russians, the Germans again began to attract Italians, and they treated us no better than they treated prisoners.
At the request of the German command, work shifts were formed in different regiments, which were sent to headquarters, from where they were sent to the Germans. Every evening the Germans needed 300-400 men. They dug trenches, communications, built shelters.
The Germans decided to make an attempt to break through the encirclement. When the road is clear, we will go towards Belovodsk, that is, to the west.

The stream of people was clearly divided into two parallel streams: people in dark Italian uniforms were walking on the right, Germans were moving on the left in their very bulky light clothes. Moreover, the shoes of the latter were lined with thick felt. The difference between us was obvious to everyone.
By the way, the Germans had fuel and a fairly large amount Vehicle. They had many sledges and carts, each of which was pulled by two or even three horses. Eight to ten people were placed in such wagons. This made it possible for the soldiers to take turns resting on the sled.
In addition, they did not carry anything, not even weapons. But if an Italian soldier, falling from exhaustion, made an attempt to climb onto the German sled, he was immediately driven away.

I walked and thought about our rulers who got involved in the war. Now they were in distant Rome, in the habitual bliss of their luxurious dwellings...
In doing so, they sent their soldiers to fight in this murderous climate, without even taking care of the appropriate clothing! How can they be called? Scoundrels! Sons of bitches!
Even if we go through the war and find a way to convey to others, especially to the immediate perpetrators, the real meaning of it, in the future wars will still continue, contrary to human logic. But in order to really prevent them, the joint efforts of all mankind are needed.

The corpses of Italian soldiers encircled near Gorlovka regiment and the funeral after the breakthrough.

According to our calculations, out of 30 thousand Italians who served in the 35th Army Corps, who were surrounded on the Don, about eight thousand made it to Chertkov. On the evening of January 15, we counted the troops.
It turned out about seven thousand. Approximately five thousand people left Chertkov. No more than four thousand got out of the "cauldron". Of these, at least three thousand were injured or seriously frostbitten. But even among the survivors there were no healthy people: nervous disorders, illnesses ...
On large wooden road signs it was written: "Belovodsk", "Starobelsk". Night fell and the wind picked up even more. Our faces were again covered with ice masks. An hour later, I already doubted that I could overcome the distance to Belovodsk.
I learned why the order to leave Chertkovo was given so suddenly. The 19th German armored division (although it was armored only in name, since by that time there were no more tanks left in it), which, together with several battalions, tried to break through to the besieged city, could no longer resist the superior forces of the enemy. Her retreat was not even a matter of days, but of hours.
Fifty kilometers from Belovodsk to Starobelsk, where the command of the 8th Army was located, I overcame in a truck. Shortly after my departure, Belovodsk was subjected to a massive bombardment by Russian aircraft, which significantly reduced the number of lucky people who got out of the encirclement.
After that, I got through Voroshilovgrad on passing transport to the village of Yasinovataya on the Donets - the collection point for the surviving fellow soldiers. From here, on a specially equipped ambulance train, we departed for Lvov. - from the memoirs of E. Corti, an artillery lieutenant from the Pasubio 35 division.

Bravo, marching in the summer of 1942 along the streets of Alchevsk, Krasny Luch, Lugansk, the Italian troops were already blowing their feet in the winter of 42-43, falling from one "cauldron" into another.
Italy was the first of the German satellites to announce its withdrawal from the war in 1943. So the Italians backfired on the losses they received during the hostilities in eastern Ukraine.

http://militera.lib.ru/memo/other/corti/index.html

Memoirs
Corti, Eugenio Corti, Eugenio
Few returned.
Notes of an officer of the Italian expeditionary force 1942-1943.

Thank you, Oper74. you reminded me a lot little-known page our military history

Original taken from opera_1974 in Italians in the Donbass. Winter 1942 - 43

Gorlovka.

The stream of people was clearly divided into two parallel streams: people in dark Italian uniforms were walking on the right, Germans were moving on the left in their very bulky light clothes. Moreover, the shoes of the latter were lined with thick felt. The difference between us was obvious to everyone.
By the way, the Germans had fuel and a fairly large number of vehicles. They had many sledges and carts, each of which was pulled by two or even three horses. Eight to ten people were placed in such wagons. This made it possible for the soldiers to take turns resting on the sled.
In addition, they did not carry anything, not even weapons. But if an Italian soldier, falling from exhaustion, made an attempt to climb onto the German sled, he was immediately driven away.

The corpses of Italian soldiers encircled near Gorlovka regiment and the funeral after the breakthrough.

Of great importance for the fate of the Tsaritsyn Front was the fact that almost simultaneously with the decision of the Council of People's Commissars on the trip of Comrade Stalin to Tsaritsyn, units of the Ukrainian armies of Comrade Voroshilov, retreating from the Donbass, approached the Don.

In his autobiography, written in 1925, Comrade Voroshilov characterized this period of his activity as follows:

“I began military work with a detachment organized in 1918 and in March, under my command, fought with the occupying German troops. Soon he was appointed commander of the 5th Ukrainian Army, and then commanded detachments retreating under pressure. German troops from the Ukraine to the Volga and to Tsaritsyn.

Tov. Voroshilov, the beloved leader and leader of the workers of Lugansk and the entire Donbass, at the first news of the approach of the Germans to Ukraine, appealed to the miners and metalworkers of Donbass to create an armed force to fight the interventionists.

Soon the 1st Lugansk Socialist Detachment was created, which, under the command of Comrade Voroshilov, set out to fight the White Guards and interventionists. In the battles near Kupyansk, Svatov, Lisichansk, Kamyshevakha, Rodakov, etc., the Voroshilov detachment inflicted a number of defeats on the Germans. On April 15, 1918, Comrade Voroshilov was appointed commander of the 5th Ukrainian Army.

Throughout April, the 5th Ukrainian Army of Comrade Voroshilov fought fierce battles with the Germans in the Rodakovo-Lugansk-Millerovo area and by the end of April retreated to st. Millerovo.

On April 29, from Millerovo, Comrade Voroshilov, Artyom and others telegraphed to Lenin that the 5th Army had withdrawn to the territory of the Don Republic, that the entire Zverevo-Likhaya line was packed with echelons. The telegram raised the question of the need to take measures to protect Art. Chertkovo, because Chertkovo was the only way to retreat to Voronezh and the only connection with Moscow. Tov. Voroshilov asked to be informed about the plan for the demobilization of the revolutionary troops and about further tasks.

But on the day this telegram was sent, April 29, the Chertkovo station was occupied by the Germans. In the conditions created for the army of Comrade Voroshilov, there was only one way to retreat to Likhaya and through Likhaya to Tsaritsyn. This campaign played a decisive role in the fate of Tsaritsyn. But his difficulties were enormous, and if Voroshilov had not been at the head of the army, a planned and organized retreat to Tsaritsyn would have been impossible at all. On April 30, units of Comrade Voroshilov entered the village of Kamenskaya (now the city of Kamensk). Since the beginning of 1918, the village of Kamenskaya has become the center for the formation of revolutionary Cossack units. It was here that in January 1918 a congress of front-line Cossacks took place, which declared Soviet power on the Don and created the Don Revolutionary Committee, headed by Podtelkov. The revolutionary detachments of the village of Kamenskaya were commanded by E. A. Shchadenko. When Voroshilov's units entered Kamenskaya, Shchadenko's detachments joined the Ukrainian army and, together with Comrade Voroshilov, made a further transition to Tsaritsyn in battles.

In the first days of May, Comrade Voroshilov's units entered Likhaya. There was a big battle at Likhaya station. The Germans and the White Cossacks made every effort to cut off the retreat of Comrade Voroshilov's army to Voronezh through Chertkovo and to Tsaritsyn through Likhaya. But Voroshilov's army broke through from Likha to Belaya Kalitva, and then the way to Tsaritsyn opened up for her.

The path to Tsaritsyn… What did this path represent in May 1918? Behind were the Germans, in front - the rebellious White Cossacks. It was necessary to lead the army through the Don region, through the enemy insurgent villages, in continuous battles with the white generals. In the Dashing part of the 5th Army, Comrade Voroshilova met with units of the 3rd Ukrainian Army retreating from Lozova-Slavyansk-Nikitovka. Of great interest is the composition of Comrade Voroshilov's Ukrainian army. Along with the 1st Lugansk socialist detachment, which consisted of Luhansk metalworkers, there were detachments of Donbass miners, Kharkov workers, the Poltava detachment, the Izyum detachment, the Kyiv detachment, the Odessa detachment (it included Black Sea sailors and Odessa loaders), the Nezhinsky detachment, etc. In Kamenskaya, detachments of out-of-town and revolutionary Cossacks joined the army of Comrade Voroshilov, near Belokalitvenskaya - a detachment of Boguraevsky miners, and so along the entire route, more and more units joined Tsaritsyn. But all these units did not yet represent the regular army. There were many anarchist detachments and detachments that did not obey discipline, did not recognize a general leadership, etc.

Together with the workers, their families retreated - children, old people, women, with samovars, pillows, feather beds, diapers, with household belongings.

This was the great difficulty of the Donbass-Tsaritsyn crossing.

“Tens of thousands of demoralized, exhausted, ragged people,” wrote Comrade Voroshilov, “and thousands of wagons with belongings of workers and their families had to be led through the raging Cossack Don. For three whole months, surrounded on all sides by generals Mamontov, Fitskhelaurov, Denikin and others, my detachments made their way, restoring the railroad. canvas, demolished and burned for tens of miles, building bridges anew and erecting embankments and dams.

The entire army of Comrade Voroshilov moved in echelons along the railway track. Over 80 echelons - 3 thousand wagons, more than 30 thousand army of fighters with their families stretched for 20 kilometers on the way. In continuous battles, the echelons traveled 3-5 kilometers a day. All water pumps were destroyed. Water was supplied to the locomotive by a conveyor in buckets from some nearby well. Most of the railroad tracks were blown up. The Whites used a special method of destroying the railway track: they harnessed several pairs of bulls and camels and pulled the rails along with the sleepers to the side. This made part of the rails unusable. I had to take the rails at the back and move them forward. There were fierce battles at every station. The White Cossacks tried at all costs to cut off the path of the Voroshilov army to Tsaritsyn, to capture it in a bag from which there was no way out. In such conditions, an almost 700-kilometer 2-month crossing from Ukraine through the Donbass to Tsaritsyn took place. From the very beginning, Comrade Voroshilov clearly put before command staff the question of the difficulties of the transition, he decisively exposed the point of view of those who looked at the campaign to Tsaritsyn as a respite. Fighting, fighting, they went to Tsaritsyn not for a respite, but for a new war, in order to complete the defeat of Krasnov's Don army from there. The defense of Tsaritsyn is the defense of the approaches to Moscow - this is how Comrade Voroshilov posed the question from the very beginning. In this he saw the meaning of the whole heroic transition. In order to accomplish this task, everything possible and impossible was done. On the move, in continuous battles, an army of fighters was put together, reorganized, and disciplined.

In mid-May, the army of Comrade Voroshilov entered the village of Morozovskaya. It was a revolutionary village, which for many months fought against the Cossack counter-revolution. Here is preserved Soviet authority and Morozov revolutionary detachments were created from railway workers and the Cossack poor. From the side of the village of Kamenskaya, revolutionary detachments under the command of Comrade Shchadenko approached Morozovskaya together with units of Comrade Voroshilov. Tov. Voroshilov helped these Morozov-Donetsk units with weapons (from which the Morozov-Donetsk division of the 10th Army was formed in the future). He sharply raised the question of cleansing especially the Morozov detachments from the fist that had penetrated into them, demanded the expulsion of partisans, the establishment of firm discipline in the units, etc. The Morozovites did not want to move further than their village, they refused to march on Tsaritsyn. Only when Comrade Voroshilov's army retreated from Morozovskaya to the Don in the direction of Tsaritsyn, the Morozov units, under pressure from the White Cossacks, left the village and joined Comrade Voroshilov near Chir.

The army of Comrade Voroshilov not only dealt blows to the Don counter-revolution, crushing it in fierce battles, not only distanced and made it difficult for the Whites to capture Tsaritsyn, but also contributed to the rallying of the forces of all the revolutionary elements of the Don.

During the stay of Comrade Voroshilov's troops in the village of Morozovskaya, the units of the 3rd and 5th Ukrainian armies were reorganized and reorganized. A meeting of the commanders of the 3rd and 5th armies was convened, at which Comrade Voroshilov sharply raised the question of creating a unified military leadership of the armies. This proposal of Comrade Voroshilov was accepted unanimously, and Comrade Voroshilov was approved as commander.

The creation of a unified command, the reorganization of units, the struggle for discipline, continuous battles and formidable danger rallied and tempered the fighters. On the way, from demoralized, exhausted, undisciplined detachments, a combat-ready army grew up, covering itself with unfading glory near Tsaritsyn.

Difficulties in approaching the city did not decrease, but increased. The resistance of the Don counter-revolution, which was trying at all costs to cut off Comrade Voroshilov's army from Tsaritsyn, grew as the Red units approached the Don.

Having left Morozovskaya in the 20th of May, the advanced Voroshilov echelons moved towards Oblivskaya and Surovikino. And then there was a tragic episode, clearly showing all the sharpness and bitterness of the struggle.

After the speech from Morozovskaya, an armored train and several echelons with troops were sent to restore the path and communication with the Tsaritsyno Council.

When the path was restored, the headquarters of the Ukrainian troops sent an ambulance train to Tsaritsyn with wounded and sick Red Army soldiers.

On May 22, in the evening, an ambulance train arrived at the Surovikino station, where the assistant stationmaster, who turned out to be a traitor and a traitor, detained the train, saying that it was dangerous to move on, unhooked the locomotive and put the train at a standstill. On the morning of May 23, the White Cossacks attacked the Surovikino station and brutally dealt with the seriously wounded Red Army soldiers ...

Eyewitnesses reported horrific scenes.

53 people were killed, or rather finished off ... The entire train was looted ... The wounded were thrown out of the cars and immediately chopped down with sabers on the spot. The seriously wounded were beaten with whips.

But during this brutal massacre, the red units under the command of Comrade Voroshilov arrived in time, and the whites were driven away.

This is how Voroshilov's units moved from Morozovskaya to Chir.

In early June, Comrade Voroshilov's army launched an offensive against the Chir station. After fierce fighting, the Chir station was occupied by the Red units, and the White Cossacks retreated south to the village of Nizhne-Chirskaya. At the Chir station there was a huge, almost 600 meters long railway bridge across the Don. After the retreat of the Tsaritsyn units from Chir on May 23, the Donskoy railway bridge was blown up. Approaching the Don bridge, the Voroshilov army stopped - it was impossible to move on. Due to the explosion of the bridge, the path to Tsaritsyn was cut off. Behind, from the direction of Surovikhino, the whites advanced, striking in the tail the echelons moving towards Chir. The blown-up Donskoy Bridge was in front, and behind it, between Chir and Kriva Muzga, the White Cossacks occupied the path. There was no connection with Tsaritsyn. Voroshilov's army was almost at the target, but all of it was in the enemy ring: both from the side of Surovikino and from the side of Nizhne-Chirskaya and Lyapichev, the Whites advanced.

The blown up bridge caused confusion among some of the soldiers and command staff.

Restoring the bridge and guiding trains across it seemed almost impossible. Some, under the influence of counter-revolutionary agitation, began to demand in panic to leave the trains, all military cargo, all valuable property and try to march, having found a crossing, to move to Tsaritsyn. Separate, so-called "flying detachments", not obeying discipline, tried to cross by boat to the left bank of the Don, but near Lyapichev they were surrounded by white cavalry, and only the support sent to their aid saved them from inevitable defeat. Others demanded to move back and break through again to Ukraine.

The gravity of the situation was further aggravated by the fact that Tsaritsyn did not provide any assistance to the Voroshilov units. The Tsaritsyn detachments left Chir just a few days before the Ukrainian armies approached it (on May 23, the Tsaritsyn units retreated from Chir to the left bank of the Don, to Lyapichevo, and then to Kriva Muzga, and in early June Chir was occupied by Voroshilov units). The Tsaritsyno detachments were fighting at that time near Kriva Muzga and Kalach, not trying to break back to the Don and break the ring that surrounded the Ukrainian armies from all sides. In Tsaritsyn, due to Minin's treacherous position, the approach of Voroshilov's units was definitely hampered. Representatives of the Ukrainian echelons (Artyom and others), who with difficulty made their way to Tsaritsyn by a detour, were met there by Minin with more than a cold reception.

“Over the past week, fifty-seven echelons, 4 armored trains in need of repair, 4 with food, 4 with refugees, several with cargo and echelons of 40 different detachments and the remnants of the army made their way through Likhaya-Zverevo, along the Donetsk line, to Chir. There are revolutionary units there, but there are also unreliable, marauding ones, carrying with them various goods; there was a fear that these echelons would upset our front and bring anarchy to the city.

So, Minin "expressed his fear" that the arriving trains "would upset our front and bring anarchy to the city." Meanwhile, he could not help but know that at the head of the echelons were the well-known party leader of the Luhansk workers, a participant in the IV and V congresses of the party - Comrade Voroshilov, a member of the Central Committee of the party Comrade Artem and a number of other prominent workers of the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic.

Little of. It was quite obvious that the approach of the Voroshilov units saved Tsaritsyn from being captured by the Whites. After the retreat to Krivaya Muzga, the Tsaritsyno detachments would not have been able to defend the city on their own, provided that the enemy concentrated the offensive. But all the activity of the White Cossacks after the approach of Voroshilov was concentrated in the direction of the Chir. This saved the city from a concentrated attack by the White Cossacks in May-June 1918.

What way out of this situation was found by Comrade Voroshilov?

To restore the bridge at all costs and to pass through it all the echelons, leaving nothing to the enemy - that was the decision. An order was given and Comrade Voroshilov's appeal to the soldiers was circulated, which spoke of the need to restore the bridge. The best representatives of the army were sent to the unit for agitation: Parkhomenko, Dyshlova, Kulik, and others.

It was decided to bottle Don. It was the only possible way out in those conditions.

Tov. Voroshilov had a long conversation with the railway watchman, who spoke about the bottomless depths of the Don in this place, that it was impossible to bottle the Don, that with a fast current "everything would be carried away as far as Rostov."

“The Bolsheviks will succeed, we will go across the bridge and we will roll you, father,” Commander Voroshilov answered him confidently and firmly.

In the first half of June, earthworks began. In the beginning there was a lot of confusion, noise, confusion. Many people stood idle. And the enemy at that time fired at the workers from the guns. Gradually shifts were introduced. The order has been established. Some worked, others fought the advancing enemy. Shovels, saws, axes, hoes, crowbars, carts with horses, etc. were mobilized from the surrounding population.

“On this day (the first day of work),” one of the participants in the campaign describes the progress of work, “we began to bottle the Don.

All day long they drove carts to the bridge, carried earth, sand and stones on a stretcher, in buckets and in the hem of aprons and skirts, sweated, exhausted, but stubbornly and persistently dug in the ground, uncompromisingly struggled with the raging elements of water, which carried away our work without leaving a trace. abyss.

All that day, Comrade Voroshilov was at the bridge, supervising, organizing work, and himself, along with others, carried earth, sand and stones.

In the afternoon, the work went much more organized and friendly ... It was necessary to flood the Don five fathoms from the shore, and only then it was possible to start restoring the bridge.

“For six days, day and night, with shovels in our hands, we stormed the Don and the hill almost to no avail. They began to refine themselves, to adapt in every possible way, to lower wattle fences, harrows, and clutches of logs into the water. The work began to move noticeably. And the enemy did not lose sight of the bridge for a minute, his artillery daily sent clouds of shells to the bridge. Exploding in the water, they jammed the mass of fish that filled the boilers of the kitchens of our units ... from the explosion of shells falling into the river, the fish covered the water with white bellies and then fishing began ... no warnings worked. Need a fish...

... After a twelve-day stubborn struggle, Don began to noticeably flail ... They perked up. Strength increased tenfold, and the pace rose significantly. They pushed harder and harder, and the hill gave up. In the third week of work, we moved it, transferred it to the bed of the Don, leveled it five sazhens from the shore, and the foundation for the construction of the shipyard was ready. This victory was our most solemn holiday.”

But that was not all. It was necessary to cut down and lay log cages, fasten them and then lay a railway line over the bridge. A whole ancillary production was organized. Finally, this part of the work was completed. With bated breath, everyone watched the armored train, which was the first to slowly cross the bridge. Enemy artillery in these last days and nights of work especially stubbornly fired at Voroshilov's units. But nothing helped. The bridge has been built. The most difficult, at first glance, almost impossible task was brought to an end.

Immediately after the restoration of the bridge, on the orders of Comrade Voroshilov, all Voroshilov echelons began to move towards Tsaritsyn. Near Lyapichev, near Muzga, near Karpovka - fierce battles were going on everywhere. But White's ring was broken. On June 22 Comrade Voroshilov arrived in Tsaritsyn. In early July, the whole army approached Tsaritsyn. In Tsaritsyn Comrade Voroshilov met Comrade Stalin. Arriving in Tsaritsyn on June 6, at the moment when the Voroshilov units approached the Don, Comrade Stalin immediately established contact with the Voroshilovs and organized active support for the Ukrainian units from Tsaritsyn. This accelerated the approach of the Voroshilov army to Tsaritsyn. And just in time: since mid-July, the enemy's activation around Tsaritsyn has especially intensified.

Pervomaiskoye, as well as the surrounding villages and farms, regional centers, were rescued from the Italian-German occupation during the Battle of Stalingrad. The reader, inexperienced in military affairs, has the right to be surprised: where is the city on the Volga? where is south Voronezh region? Far from each other. But the theater of military operations in large battles often covers territories of thousands of square kilometers - spaces equal to no small states. A large river bend on the middle Don became the site of combat battles on the northern flank.

On October 14, 1942, the German high command issued a confidently reassuring "winter" order signed by Hitler. It said, in part: “The summer and autumn campaigns are over. We have made great strides. With a huge offensive they pushed the enemy back to the Caucasus and the Don. Land links between central Russia and the Caucasus region, vital to the conduct of the war, have been cut off. Apart from specific exceptions, the armies of the eastern front during the winter will perform only defensive tasks.

And already on November 23, Soviet troops took the winner of European capitals in pincers - the Sixth Army of the Wehrmacht and the units attached to it, which were bogged down in battles on the banks of the Volga. In less than a hundred hours, Soviet soldiers threw a noose on one of the most selective Nazi armadas under the command of the future Field Marshal Paulus. In the opinion of the German tank general Frido von Senger, expressed by him after the war in the book of memoirs “No Fear, No Hope”: “It was Stalin’s brilliant move - to order the Paulus army to be surrounded by frontal attacks, where it was easy to break the weak Romanian and Italian allies of Germany.

The enemy had not yet had time, as they say, to come to his senses and realize that he was surrounded, and on the night of November 24, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief suggested that his "flying general staff" from Stalingrad move north - to Voronezh Buturlinovka and there outline a plan for "sensitive" military operations of the South-Western and the left wing of the Voronezh Fronts. There was only one task: “it is more reliable to ensure the liquidation of the Stalingrad “cauldron” from the West.

It is sometimes difficult for us now to believe that the war equalized everyone. Both the private and the commander often, as in the song of those years, had "four steps to death."

“At the appointed hour, we were at the nearest airfield from Serafimovich,” Alexander Mikhailovich Vasilevsky, Chief of the General Staff, will write in peace days in the book “The Matter of All Life”. “We” are Nikolai Nikolaevich Voronov, commander of the artillery of the Red Army, Alexander Alexandrovich Novikov, commander of the air force, and other generals. Due to heavy fog, the transport plane did not arrive. We decided to fly separately on light plywood "maize" - U-2 (PO-2) aircraft.

“After some time, planes appeared, led by experienced pilots. Novikov gave instructions to the crews, in accordance with which the aircraft took their places in the ranks after takeoff. The fog continued to thicken. The planes lost visual contact. In addition, as expected, heavy icing began. The car on which I was flying was forced to land right in the field, about thirty kilometers southeast of Kalach (Voronezh). I had to get through the virgin lands to the nearest collective farm, then on a sleigh to the highway leading to Kalach, and finally, on the first military truck that came across, to the regional telephone exchange. The secretary of the district committee, M.S., met me in Kalach. Vasilenko said that they called from Moscow and said they were concerned about what had happened. I was most worried about the fate of the aircraft on which A. I. Ruchkin, who was on assignment with me, was flying: he had secret documents of the Headquarters intended for the command of the Voronezh Front. Having contacted the front commander Filipp Ivanovich Golikov by phone, I learned that out of seven of our aircraft, only one, just the one on which Ruchkin flew, landed safely in Buturlinovka. The planes delivering Novikov and Voronov made an emergency landing near Kalach. Golikov and I agreed on a work plan for tomorrow, after which I reported to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief by telephone about what had happened. I expected comments, but, surprisingly, they did not follow.

Let's add: "U-2" with Novikov crashed into telegraph wires upon landing. The pilot and his passenger were lucky - they hurt themselves easily. The plane with Voronov was more successful, sat in the steppe weeds.

A.M. Vasilevsky: “I still remember this unsuccessful flight, which brought a lot of worries and anxieties to the flight and management personnel who performed this task. Taking this opportunity, I would like to not only once again apologize to the command of the 734th night bomber regiment of the 262nd aviation division and its pilots who flew, M.R. Bagramov, K. Ya. Vasilevsky, P. A. Ganshin, V. K. Zaikov, A.P. Nazarkin and V.D. Ryzhov for the risk caused by my careless order, but also to thank them heartily. Despite the extremely difficult conditions, these commanders, who possessed outstanding flying skills, did absolutely everything to ensure that the flight did not end tragically. I want to express my special gratitude to Senior Lieutenant Stepan Konstantinovich Kovyazin, who then flew our plane. Later, while working on these memoirs, I, with the assistance of the Air Force headquarters, found it with difficulty. While in reserve, Comrade Kovyazin lived and worked in Donetsk at that time.

True, neither during the flight, nor even after the war, for a long time, none of the pilots, including Kovyazin, knew that representatives of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command were on board.

At dawn on November 25, all of us, in vehicles sent from the headquarters of the Voronezh Front, went to the Upper Mamon area, and after a few hours, together with Lieutenant General Golikov and a member of the military council of the front, Lieutenant General Fyodor Fedotovich Kuznetsov, we began reconnaissance work. . The commander of the 6th Army, Lieutenant General Fyodor Mikhailovich Kharitonov, acquainted us in detail with the state of affairs in the zone of operations of his army.

The future three marshals and generals also, not without risk to their lives, secretly climbed the belfry, which stood on the front line of the Church of St. Mitrofaniya, and point-blank studied the mountainous right bank of the Don, inhabited by Italians ...

Hitler and his commanders did not give in - he decided to keep the unconquered Stalingrad "to the last soldier." Thus, he doomed the best divisions to certain death.

Before the victory hour, the Red Army had to not only defeat the enemy pocket, but also frustrate the enemy’s desperate attempts to come to the rescue of the besieged. The Headquarters of the Supreme High Command developed the pre-emptive operation "Saturn". It was thought with fire and sword to cut through the second "planetary" ring of encirclement and go to Rostov-on-Don, in order to similarly lock up the enemy troops that had captured the Kuban, the North Caucasus.

And the situation at the front changed hourly and "not in our favor." The Germans, even from France, transferred fresh tank units, and additionally rifle divisions to the Don bend. It seemed that an irresistible tank rink had already ironed through the snow-covered steppe the saving path along the Tikhoretskaya-Salsk-Kotelnikovo-Stalingrad railway. The enemy built saving "air bridges" for the transfer of ammunition and provisions. The Soviet command was forced to throw "Saturn" reserve units into oncoming battles. After weighing everything, Stalin decided not to take risks: "... the offensive towards Kamensk - Rostov cannot be successful." He ordered the Saturn to be modified in order to break through the enemy front line on the middle Don, destroy its operational reserves and go to the flank and rear of the Don fascist army group, ready to rescue the Paulus army. Stalin set specific tasks: "... to eliminate the Italians", "to fall on the rear of the enemy", "to create a serious barrier against a possible enemy strike from the west." “The operation will start on December 16th. Name ... "Small Saturn".

Fateful time: the end of November 1942 - the beginning of February 1943. The course of the Great Patriotic War and World War II as a whole was changed before our very eyes by the offensive operations of the Soviet troops - "Uranus" and "Mars", "Saturn" and "Small Saturn" ". A real parade of planets. And then - the "Ring", in which not only fascist soldiers, officers, but also generals, along with Field Marshal Paulus, surrendered.

During these months, it was originally planned to defeat the armies of the German satellites - Romania, Italy, Hungary. Operations "Uranus" and "Little Saturn", Ostrogozhsk-Rossosh, Voronezh-Kastornenskaya, among others, set the task of forcing the Romanians, Italians, Hungarians-Magyars out of the state of war.

Everything is still ahead.

And here, in the Voronezh region, on quiet Don, where the “flying general staff” headed by his chief Vasilevsky had just visited, it was no longer quiet. Sappers covertly froze a flat log crossing into the ice. It led to the right river bank, on which the Italians were impregnably fortified. But it was near the village of Osetrovka that our soldiers did not retreat in the summer and held a bridgehead of fifty square kilometers. On December nights, tank columns marched and marched across the Don to this precious span of land and concentrated along the steppe front line.

Everyone was inspired by Stalingrad, where our troops struck back with two tank fists from the north and south. They hit with the support of artillery, infantry, aviation. A similar breakthrough, not expected by the enemy, was also being prepared on the Don, in order, by creating a new encirclement ring, to push the front line further to the west, to destroy airfields and supply bases on the South-Eastern Railway. Thus, completely stop enemy attempts to save the "Stalingrad fortress" named by Hitler.

And on that right bank - than not one of the wonders of the world.

Belogorye, a continuous ridge of chalk mountains. The Nikon Chronicle has preserved for us the information that, back in 1389, Metropolitan Pimin was sailing down the river Don along the local route from Moscow to Constantinople. Travel participant Ignatius Smolyanin wrote: “we saw white stone pillars, they stand side by side marvelously and beautifully, small haystacks, white and very bright, over the river ...” Admire and admire this indescribable beauty. But the military has a different view on the world. For them, nature itself has created an impregnable line of defense along and over the Don. Wide, deep river. Almost out of the water, cliffs rise vertically, straight to heaven, like fortress walls. They hang menacingly over the river flow, and, most importantly, over the plain of the left bank, open for many kilometers. Wherever a warrior hides, everywhere he is at a glance.

The Germans took advantage of this circumstance. Their troops are at the forefront of the main attack. And on the defensive flanks, as if given by the Creator, they placed the "weak link" - the satellites.

Since the Hungarians, because of the disputed border territories, have long been at enmity with the Romanians, so that they do not pat each other, they were separated by the Italians. South of Voronezh, to the then regional center Belogorye, the Second Hungarian Army was entrenched. Further - the descendants of the Romans as part of the 8th Italian army occupied a winding river sector with a length of 270 kilometers - to the world-famous Sholokhov village of Vyoshenskaya. Downstream on the flanks of Stalingrad were two Romanian armies - the 3rd and 4th. In the second echelon, reserve German units were scattered around just in case of a fire.

In autumn, along the mountainous bank of the Don, as the modern military historian Giorgio Scotoni notes (we will continue to rely on his information, taken from recently declassified documents from that “enemy side”, the authors), the Italians created a solid defense system. They built bunkers, interconnected by trenches, and an echeloned strip of engineering structures. At the front line, rows of barbed wire were erected, anti-tank ditches were dug, and minefields were prepared. Communication passages branched off from the first trenches in depth, and the main strip included a system of strong points with artillery.

By the first snowfalls, in early November, work to strengthen the positions was completed and the troops were quartered in well-stocked and heated outhouses. After a few days, the minimum temperature became very low, the Don River was covered with ice. It was no longer a water barrier, the watch needed to be strengthened.

On the sectors of the front, almost every night, Soviet troops conducted combat reconnaissance. Often, Italian units repulsed small enemy attacks, but never participated in important battles. It is no coincidence that the most famous event of the autumn stay on the Don was not an armed clash. The Alpines of the "Tirano" battalion of the "Tridentina" division found the Donskaya Madonna. So they called the Orthodox icon of the Most Holy Theotokos "Softener of Evil Hearts", or "Seven-shot". Mountain shooters of the 46th company found her in a house destroyed by bombing. The soldiers touchingly cherished, worshiped her as their shrine. The icon was brought to Italy by the surviving soldiers of the Alpine Corps. There she became the subject of a mass pilgrimage of relatives and friends of those soldiers who never returned from Russia.

By the end of November, a large concentration of Soviet troops was noticed on the sector of the front of the 8th Italian Army. In particular, intense offensive preparations were noted in the front zone of the 2nd Italian Army Corps - from Novaya Kalitva to Osetrovka. Where the river Don forms a bend.

However, "on our lines it was thought that we were facing weakened Soviet formations." When the Red Army troops were preparing to break through the defense front, “the Wehrmacht high command and the commander of the 8th Army, Gariboldi, became convinced that the influx of troops in front of the front was insignificant and that one should not be afraid of attacks in these sectors ... Therefore, the Italians, strengthening their defense, little by little we were convinced that they were not under threat, should not be afraid of serious attacks and could safely remain for the winter.

Carelessness brought the Italians and the Germans "seconded" to them.

In Operation Saturn, and then in its final version, Little Saturn, tank corps were instructed "not to go uphill." The Don Mountains were bypassed by the "bridgeheads" held from the summer retreat by Soviet soldiers on the right bank occupied by the enemy. This is one. And secondly, the enemy was partially right in assessing the forces of the Red Army - our "troops outnumbered the enemy only in tanks, and were inferior to them in manpower, artillery and combat aircraft." But we already knew how to fight. Having weakened their own defenses in places, they boldly concentrated the available combat power "in the zone of planned strikes in narrow sections of the breakthrough of the enemy's tactical defense zone." Thus, they achieved a significant superiority: five times in tanks, three times in guns and mortars, almost double in manpower.

The main two blows were delivered: to the north - from the Upper Mamon region, to the south - from the area of \u200b\u200bthe village of Bokovskaya. Auxiliary - along the front line, where the Italians, Germans and Romanians had "thin". Directions - Novaya Kalitva, Kantemirovka, Markovka, Chertkovo, Millerovo, Tatsinskaya, Morozovsk. The blows were delivered "under the stomach" to the enemy, to whom it became clear that "it would no longer be possible to unblock the encircled grouping of Paulus."

"Small Saturn" completed its task for the New Year holiday.

We are also interested in a detailed story about the liberation of native places at the junction of the Voronezh and Rostov regions.

On the twelfth of December, we carried out reconnaissance in force, writes Mikhail Ilyich Kazakov, Chief of Staff of the Voronezh Front, in the book “Over the Map of Past Battles”, it was attended by several battalions of the 127th Infantry Division, which for a long time occupied the defense here and knew the enemy well.

Exploration was successful. The outposts of the Italian division "Ravenna" were destroyed along the entire breakthrough zone. Our troops captured several heights on the southern bank of the Don, the village of Samodurovka (now Donskoy) and part of the village of Derezovka.

The Italians could not calm down for a long time. During the afternoon of December 12 and all day of December 13, they counterattacked, trying to restore the situation. Almost the entire 127th Rifle Division was drawn into the battle to repulse these counterattacks. Its fighters and commanders acted skillfully and courageously. They held the bridgehead and inflicted significant losses on the Italian division.

Combat formations of the 15th Rifle Corps with escort artillery began to deploy on the bridgehead. We anxiously awaited the start of the first offensive operation troops of the Voronezh Front. How will she go? How will it develop? Will it bring the desired success?

On the morning of December 16, artillery preparation began. We followed her from an observation post on the outskirts of the village of Gorokhovka. The Katyusha guards mortars made a particularly strong impression on me. This time there were quite a lot of them: only in the zone of our 6th Army there were up to a dozen divisions and several regiments. After such processing of the front edge of the enemy's defense, you can confidently launch an attack. It does not matter that because of the frosty fog, our aircraft could not operate until the middle of the day.

The first minutes of an attack are always tense. The infantry has climbed out of the trenches and is moving across the open field towards the enemy positions, where our artillery fire has only recently been walking. What forces are left there? To what extent did the gunners succeed in suppressing the firing system of the forward edge? These questions concern everyone.

But then the arrows with a cry of "hurrah" burst into the first trench. Merciless hand-to-hand fights ensue. Here everything comes into play: a bayonet, and a sapper shovel, And just tenacious hands grabbing the enemy by the throat. Dozens, then hundreds of meters of native land are reclaimed. Then the enemy brings reserves into battle. Counterattacks begin.

In the meantime, at the observation and command posts, jerky, often nervous conversations are being conducted by radio and telephones. Someone reports success. Another requires fire assistance. The command posts react to everything, take everything into account and demand, insist, order: forward!

The offensive of the Sixth Army proceeded generally well. The resistance of the Italians was broken, and already on the first day our troops advanced five kilometers. This is not so little if there is deep snow on the way and the terrain is rather difficult to attack. After all, the troops had to attack from the bottom up, overcoming a sloping, but long climb - from the topographic mark of 100 to the mark of 220 meters above sea level.

On the second day, the offensive developed even more successfully. The counterattacks of the German 385th Infantry Division and their own 318th Infantry Regiment, as well as the brigade of the Italian Blackshirts, were repulsed ... By the evening of December 19, our troops reached the Novaya Kalitva, Pervomayskoye, Kantemirovka line. Thus, in four days they fully completed their task according to the Little Saturn operation plan. And then on the evening of December 19, our 6th Army was transferred to the Southwestern Front.

Kazakov drew a general picture of the offensive.

The battles were getting fiercer. On the sixteenth of December, the tankers failed to escape from the Osetrovsky bridgehead to the steppe expanses. They stumbled across "extremely saturated minefields". Italians in the autumn buried charges in the ground. With the onset of winter, mines were hidden in the snow. In fact, they baked a dangerous “layer cake”. And only when our sappers thoroughly worked here at night, cleared safe passages, then the 115th separate tank brigade of Melnikov, and then the 17th corps of Pavel Pavlovich Poluboyarov went into battle without artillery "processing" of the front edge. This way they confuse the enemy. His anti-tank guns were crushed by the caterpillar tracks of Soviet tanks without firing a shot. Moreover, our tank units did not lose a single vehicle.

The enemy was beaten by his own methods.

Poluboyarov's tankers bypassed villages with enemy strongholds, without getting involved in battle, went to the main goal - to Kantemirovka. On December 19, they "fell down from the sky, from the mountain that covered the village and saddled" the South-Eastern Railway. The Germans and Italians fled in panic, leaving trains with ammunition and food on the tracks, guns and tanks on the streets. And when they realized it, it was too late. Tankers seized the initiative into their own hands. They released Soviet prisoners of war from the camp, handed them weapons - a rifle regiment was born. Together with him, they took up all-round defense, repulsed enemy counterattacks with his own weapons. So they held out until the arrival of our infantry.

Guards Kantemirovtsy, such honorary title soon assigned to the corps, and then the division, cut off the land route, feeding those who again rushed to Stalingrad. Similar act, becoming a legend, the 24th tank corps of Vasily Mikhailovich Badanov. With enemy rears, he passed through the snowy steppe impassability of 250 kilometers to Tatsinskaya, defeated the main enemy airfield, the closest to Stalingrad, food, artillery, clothing and other warehouses at the railway station.

The 115th tank brigade solved other tasks. Together with the foot soldiers, she also headed for Kantemirovka, knocked out the enemy from the villages, cleared them of the invaders.

Heroes were born in battles. During the liberation of the village of Derezovka, paving the way forward for his platoon and saving his comrades from fatal fire, the squad leader, sergeant Vasily Nikolaevich Prokatov, rushed to the enemy machine-gun embrasure. Busts to the Hero Soviet Union will be installed on the steep bank of the Don and at home in the city of Kharovsk, Vologda region. The name of Prokatov was given to the Derezovskaya rural school.

If an eagle were to fly over the steppe, then an unusual picture for December would appear. It was as if the spring flood had broken through the enemy line of defense and spread over the valleys, over the mountains. Streams of people, convoys, military equipment sometimes scattered in streams, then merged into rivers, then again flowed into different sides Sveta.

Truly - "horses mixed in heaps, people" ...

The command of the best Alpine division "Julia" and the 24th German tank corps with two infantry divisions attached to it - the 385th and 387th were ordered "in defiance of the enemy to restore the front in a zone of complete chaos."

How did it look? “It is worth remembering what happened to the 13th battery of the Conegliano group, which is part of the Julia division. Having reached Mitrofanovka, she received an order to go to Ivanovka. A column consisting of a dozen trucks carrying a battery left the village in a snowstorm at night and ended up, as it turned out, deep into the territory that no one owned. Almost immediately after leaving, the trucks met with four tanks that were moving towards them along the same road. The paratroopers sitting on the tanks were dressed in camouflage white coats that did not allow identifying who they were. At the meeting, they waved their hands and greeted our gunners. But some time later, the tanks stopped and began firing in the direction of Mitrofanovka. Alpine gunners realized that they met with Soviet tanks and greeted the enemy.

Fulfilling the orders of the division commander, General Umberto Ricano, Lieutenant Ezhisto Corradi remembered for the rest of his life the trip across the snowy steppe from Rossosh towards Boguchar:

“On December 17, 1942, entering the burning Tali, I did not understand at all the horror of the military catastrophe that had just begun ... The command of the 2nd Corps left the village for Kantemirovka, located to the west. After a long search, we found the way to Kantemirovka. We arrived there in the middle of the night ... The command of the 2nd Corps is not here, - they told us, - it should be in Mitrofanovka, fifty kilometers northeast. But the way to Mitrofanovka was blocked. Soviet planes fired on truck columns. Traffic jams immediately formed from stationary cars... The road from the village of Tala to Kantemirovka was completely empty and sparkled with ice, it shone under the morning sun. Further we saw overturned trucks lying on both sides of the road, pits formed by explosions, piles of things and boxes of ammunition falling out of them; smoke from dying fires could be felt in the air. Dozens of dead Italian and German soldiers lay in the fields along the road. On the road, the corpses were mostly crushed, mixed with ice ...

In one village, the road turned a little, and muffled women cleared it of snow. They saw our car and started shouting, raising their brooms high. They shouted with mockery: “Tick! Tick!” "Tikay" - in Russian means "run away" or just escape, I don't know. The Germans, I thought, would not have been shouted "tick" or they would have shouted only once and that's it. The women cleared the road so that it would be easier for the Russian troops to pass, this was well understood. Their cries offended me, but not too much; On the contrary, it seemed natural to me that in the given circumstances the Russian citizens gave vent to their jubilation.

In this flight, the relationship between Italians and Germans was exposed to the limit. There are notes by officer Eugenio Corti "The Few Returned", in which he rather frankly reflects "on the designated topic":

“I often asked myself the question: what would become of us without the Germans? Unfortunately, you must admit that if the Italians were alone, then all without exception would be in the hands of the enemy. I hated the Germans for their cruelty (sometimes it even seemed to me that they were unworthy to be called people) and the defiant arrogance with which they treated people of any other nationality. It was not clear to me why they were confident in their right to exploit all peoples without exception, and the exploited should be grateful to their oppressors for this. But, nevertheless, I thanked God that we were walking in the column with them. And he prayed that they would win the battle.

Despite my dislike of the Germans, I cannot but confess that, as soldiers, they have no equal. Whatever my purely human attitude towards these people, I bow before their military prowess.

“I don't want to give the impression that the Russians are mediocre soldiers. Just the opposite. They were excellent fighters, ready for self-sacrifice at any moment. I consider them to be the very best of all "Allied" soldiers. They are superior to the Germans in many ways, especially when it comes to mastering the technique.”

The reader may skip this section. It publishes excerpts of archival documents telling about the liberation of the region from the Italian-German occupiers. But a meticulous history buff will be able to learn first hand how our long victorious journey to Berlin began from the banks of the Don.

EXTRACT FROM OPERATIONAL SUMMARY No. 354

at 8.00 20.12.42

The troops of the left wing of the Voronezh Front and the South-Western Front from 16.12 went on the offensive against the Italo-German troops defending in the area of the middle reaches of the Don. Having broken through the enemy defenses in the Novaya Kalitva-Monastyrshchina section and in the Bokovskaya area, our troops, in four days of intense fighting, overcoming enemy resistance, advanced 25-55 km, occupying the cities of Novaya Kalitva, Kantemirovka, Boguchar and the regional centers of Tala, Radchenskoye, Bokovskaya. In the battles, 9 infantry divisions and 1 infantry brigade of the Italo-German troops were defeated, heavy losses were inflicted on 4 enemy infantry divisions.

Southwestern front.

6th Army, going on the offensive on 16.12, it broke through the enemy’s defenses in the Novaya Kalitva-Derezovka sector and, having defeated the opposing units of the 5th and 3rd Italian infantry divisions, the 385th infantry division and the regiment of the 213th German infantry division, by the end of 19.12, captured the areas of Novaya Kalitva, Ivanovka, Salty, Tala, Kantemirovka.

The enemy, putting up stubborn resistance, retreated in the western and southwestern directions.

On December 19, 17th Panzer Corps captured the settlement of Kantemirovka.

1st Guards Army, going on the offensive on December 16, it broke through the enemy defenses in the Krasno-Orekhovoe - Monastyrshchina sector and, having defeated the opposing units of the 3rd, 9th and 59th Italian infantry divisions, the 298th German infantry division, continued to develop the offensive in the south and southeast directions.

The 4th Guards Rifle Corps at 14.00 19.12 reached the line Zaitsevka - Bull - Anna Rebrikovskaya - Lebedinka - Shurinovka.

Parts of the 6th Guards Rifle Corps by 14.00 19.12 reached the Radchenskoye - Dyachenkovo - Tereshkovo area.

153 Rifle Division fought for Meshkov. During the day of December 19, the enemy went on the counterattack four times, trying to cut off parts of the division in the Meshkov area.

EXTRACT FROM OPERATIONAL SUMMARY No. 358

GENERAL STAFF OF THE RED ARMY

at 8.00 24.12.42

During December 23, the troops of the Southwestern Front in the center continued to pursue the Nazi troops, retreating to the south and southwest in the directions of Millerovo, Kamensk, Tatsinskaya, fought to destroy the remnants of the encircled enemy grouping in the Arbuzovka area and on the left wing , having broken the resistance of the enemy in the area southeast of Bokovskaya, they occupied several settlements.

6th Army on the right flank it was fixed on the line reached, on the left flank, overcoming the stubborn resistance of the enemy, continued to conduct offensive battles in the same direction.

The 127th rifle division was fixed at the turn of the northwestern outskirts of the settlement Novaya Kalitva - MTF - height 176.2 (2 km southwest of Novaya Kalitva).

The 15th Rifle Corps, continuing the offensive, by the end of the day on December 23, reached the line:

172 rifle division - Pervomaisk - Serobabin - height 201.8;

The 350th Infantry Division fought west of the settlement of Kosovka and in the area of the grove east of Fisenkovo;

The 267th Rifle Division occupied the defense at the line of Golaya (now the village of Shevchenkovo) - Novomarkovka.

By the morning of December 23, the 17th Panzer Corps had captured the Voloshino area.

1st Guards Army.

Units of the 4th Guards Rifle Corps reached the line by 17:00 on 23:12: the 195th Rifle Division fought in two regiments in the Gartmashevka area;

The 41st Guards Rifle Division captured the Mikhailovo-Aleksandrovsky area with one regiment, and fought with the encircled enemy group in the Chertkovo area with the other.

The 35th Guards Rifle Division, together with units of the 6th Guards Rifle Corps, fought to destroy the encircled enemy grouping in the Arbuzovka-N. Nikolaevsky area (17 km northwest of the settlement of Setrakovsky) ...

EXTRACT FROM OPERATIONAL SUMMARY No. 359

GENERAL STAFF OF THE RED ARMY
at 8.00 25.12.42

During December 24, the troops of the Southwestern Front continued to pursue the Nazi troops retreating to the south and southwest in the direction of Kamensk-Tatsinskaya and completed the rout of the enemy grouping in the Arbuzovka area.

6th Army continued to conduct offensive battles in the same direction and in some areas repulsed enemy infantry counterattacks.

Parts of the 17th Panzer Corps on 24.12 from the Voloshino region resumed their combat operations in the direction of Millerovo.

1st Guards Army continued to pursue the retreating enemy to the south and southwest, part of the forces destroyed his blockaded garrisons in the areas of the Gartmashevka station (12 kilometers southeast of the village of Kantemirovka), Chertkovo.

Parts of the 18th Panzer Corps fought in the Millerovo area.

The 24th Panzer Corps, having captured the Skosyrskaya area, fought with the retreating enemy in the direction of the Tatsinskaya area.

EXTRACT FROM OPERATIONAL SUMMARY No. 360

GENERAL STAFF OF THE RED ARMY

at 8.00 26.12.42

During December 25, the troops of the Southwestern Front continued to pursue the Nazi troops, blockaded Millerovo and captured the Verkhnyaya Tarasovka, Tatsinskaya area, capturing large trophies.

6th Army the right-flank units conducted a firefight with the enemy on the former lines, on the left flank, repelling the enemy’s counter-attacks, continued to conduct the offensive in the same direction.

The 160th Infantry Division occupied the western outskirts of Novaya Kalitva - Ivanovka - the western outskirts of Pervomaisk.

The reconnaissance group of the division captured the commander of the company of the 8th infantry regiment of the 3rd Italian division "Julia", transferred from the city of Rossosh.

Parts of the 15th Rifle Corps: The 172nd Rifle Division, having repulsed several enemy counterattacks, fought at the same line; The 350th captured the Fisenkovo area, fought west of Fisenkovo and on the eastern outskirts of Golay; The 267th Rifle Division took control of the Kasyanovka-Kholodny-Khreschaty area and advanced detachments occupied the Kaskovka-Rossokhovaty area in the Voroshilovograd (now Lugansk) region (20 km west of south-west of Kantemirovka).

The 17th tank corps blocked Millerovo with part of its forces, with the other part of the forces it took control of the Verkhnyaya Tarasovka region and fought a stubborn battle for the Krasnovka region (5 km north of the city of Kamensk).

1st Guards Army. The 18th Panzer Corps, together with units of the 17th Panzer Corps, fought on December 25 for the city of Millerovo and captured the Kulchanka-Guryev-Nov region. Spasovka (8 km north and 2 km east of the town of Millerovo).

The 24th Panzer Corps captured the Tatsinskaya area, capturing 300 aircraft, a railroad train with aircraft, 50 enemy guns and other trophies.

The 25th Panzer Corps was on the move towards Morozovsky...

GENERAL STAFF OF THE RED ARMY

at 8.00 27.12.42

During December 26, the troops of the Southwestern Front on the right flank at a number of points repulsed counterattacks by small units of the enemy, in the center they continued to pursue the retreating Nazi troops in the same directions and blocked their garrisons, surrounded in the areas of the stations of Gartmashevka, Chertkovo, Millerovo.

6th Army right-flank units defended the previous positions, on the left flank, repelling enemy counterattacks with a force of up to an infantry battalion in the area of \u200b\u200bheight 176.2, with a force of up to an infantry battalion in the direction of a height of 205.6, with a force of up to an infantry battalion with 12 tanks in the Markovka (Novomarkovka) area , continued to conduct offensive battles in the same direction.

1stguards army part of the forces fought with a blocked enemy at the stations of Gartmashevka, Chertkovo, Millerovo. The rest of the army went to the line according to the plan.

3rd Guards Army. On December 26, the 197th Rifle Division reached the Nikolskaya line (20 km east of Millerovo) - Aleksandrovka - Efremovo-Stepanovka.

EXTRACT FROM OPERATIONAL SUMMARY No. 362

GENERAL STAFF OF THE RED ARMY

at 8.00 28.12.42

During December 27, the troops of the Southwestern Front conducted offensive battles on the right flank in the area northwest of Kantemirovka, in the center they continued to block the encircled enemy garrisons in the areas of the Gartmashevka, Chertkovo, Millerovo stations and fought intense battles with fresh enemy units approaching in the Tatsinskaya area, on the left flank, they went on the offensive in the direction of the Chernyshkovsky region and occupied several settlements.

6th Army On December 27, it went on the offensive, but, having met stubborn resistance from the enemy on the right flank and in the center, it was not successful; on the left flank, moving forward, it occupied several settlements.

The 350th Rifle Division captured the area of Golay (now Shevchenko) - Pasyukov - Kalinov (15 km northwest of Kantemirovka).

The 267th Rifle Division captured the Vysochanov area in the afternoon of 27.12.

The 17th Panzer Corps fought with the encircled enemy in Millerovo.

1st Guards Army. The 195th Infantry Division part of its forces continued to fight with the encircled enemy group in the area of the Gartmashevka station.

The 41st Guards Rifle Division part of the forces fought with the encircled enemy group in the Chertkovo area.

The 18th Panzer Corps, together with units of the 17th Panzer Corps, fought to destroy the encircled enemy in Millerovo.

The 24th Guards Tank Corps fought a heavy battle in the encirclement in the Tatsinskaya area with the approaching 98th German Infantry Division, supported by 100 tanks.

The 25th Panzer Corps fought for Morozovsky.

EXTRACT FROM OPERATIONAL SUMMARY No. 365

GENERAL STAFF OF THE RED ARMY

at 8.00 29.12.42

During December 28, the troops of the Southwestern Front conducted offensive battles on the flanks in the areas northwest of Kantemirovka, Chernyshkovsky, slowly moving forward, in the center continued to block the encircled enemy garrisons in the areas of the station Gartmashevka, Chertkovo, Millerovo and beat off his counterattacks in the Chernyshkovsky area.

6th army.

The 350th Rifle Division captured the Akhor area (20 km north of Kantemirovka) and the advance detachment captured a branch of the Krutenky state farm (24 km north of the village of Markovka). The rest of the army fought on the same lines.

1st Guards Army part of the forces continued to destroy the blockaded enemy garrisons at the stations of Gartmashevka, Chertkovo, Millerovo and advanced to the Derkul River.

The 195th Rifle Division captured the Kuryachevka area (27 km west of Chertkovo) and the vanguard detachment captured the northeastern part of the Belovodsk settlement (Voroshilovograd, now Lugansk region) ...

The 17th Panzer Corps fought for Millerovo from the west.

The 18th Panzer Corps fought for Millerovo from the east.

EXTRACT FROM OPERATIONAL SUMMARY No. 364

GENERAL STAFF OF THE RED ARMY

at 8.00 30.12.42

During December 29, the troops of the Southwestern Front defended their former positions on the right flank, in the center they continued to block the encircled enemy garrisons in the areas of the Gartmashevka and Chertkovo stations, fought for Millerovo and repelled enemy counterattacks in the Streltsovka area, on the left flank they fought offensive battles in the Chernyshkovsky areas , Oblivskaya, north and south of the Nizhne-Chirskaya settlement.

Parts of the 6th Army during 29.12 they conducted a firefight with the enemy on the previous lines.

The enemy groups of submachine gunners tried to seep through the battle formations of our troops.

1st Guards Army. Parts of the 4th Guards Rifle Corps fought to destroy the encircled enemy garrisons in the areas of the station Gartmashevka, Chertkovo ...

The 18th Tank Corps, together with units of the 38th Guards Rifle Division and a regiment of the 1st Rifle Division, fought for Millerovo.

EXTRACT FROM OPERATIONAL SUMMARY No. 365

GENERAL STAFF OF THE RED ARMY

at 8.00 31.12.42

During December 30, the troops of the Southwestern Front defended their former positions on the right flank and fought local battles, in the center they continued to destroy the surrounded enemy in the areas of the Gartmashevka, Chertkovo, Millerovo stations and fought for the Skosyrskaya district, fighting for the areas of Chernyshkovsky, Oblivskaya and in areas north and south of the Nizhne-Chirskaya settlement.

6th Army remained in their previous positions and part of the forces fought local battles.

On December 30, units of the 127th and 160th rifle divisions captured the areas of the PTF, OTF (2-11 km west of the Novaya Kalitva settlement) and the height area 176.2.

As a result of an enemy counterattack on December 30, units of the 350th Infantry Division left the Pasekovo-Pasyukov area (11-16 km south of the Mitrofanovka settlement).

1st Guards Army part of the forces continued to fight to destroy the encircled enemy garrisons in the areas of the station Gartmashevka, Chertkovo, Millerovo.

On the site of the 35th Guards Rifle Division, the enemy, with a strength of up to an infantry battalion with tanks, went on the attack and by the end of the day on 30.12 captured a dairy farm (3 km southeast of Chertkovo).

EXTRACT FROM OPERATIONAL SUMMARY No. 1 (674)

GENERAL STAFF OF THE RED ARMY

at 8.00 01.01.43

During December 31, the troops of the Southwestern Front fought unsuccessful offensive battles on the right flank, in the center they continued to block the encircled enemy in the areas of the Gartmashevka and Chertkovo stations and fought for Millerovo, on the left flank, pursuing the retreating enemy, captured the Oblivskaya areas , Nizhne-Chirskaya and developed an offensive against Tormosin.

6th Army forces of 127, 160 and 350 rifle divisions from the morning of December 31, tried to continue the offensive, but, having met stubborn resistance from units of the 3rd Italian infantry division, the remnants of the 94th, 385th and 387th infantry divisions of the Germans at the turn of Zelyony Yar, height 182.9 - Pasekovo - Vysochanov, did not achieve success, and by the end of the day on December 31, she was fighting at the previous lines.

1st Guards Army. Parts of the 41st and 35th Guards Rifle Divisions continued to block the encircled enemy in Chertkovo.

EXTRACT FROM OPERATIONAL SUMMARY No. 17 (690)

GENERAL STAFF OF THE RED ARMY

at 8.00 17.01.43

Cards: 500,000 and 100,000

On January 13, the troops of the center and left wing of the Voronezh Front went on the offensive south of Voronezh and, breaking through the enemy’s defense front in the Selyavnoye, Shchuchye, Kantemirovka areas, advanced 35-90 km by turn 16.1, continuing to develop the offensive on the flanks and the rear of the enemy grouping located east of the Liski-Rossosh railway.

During January 16, the troops of the Southwestern Front continued to develop the offensive in the directions of the cities of Starobelsk, Kamensk, the settlement of Ust-Belokalitvenskaya, drove the enemy out of Chertkovo and fought to destroy the enemy garrison surrounded in Millerovo.

Voronezh front.

3rd Panzer Army(12, 15 tank corps, 7 cavalry corps, 48 guards rifle division, 180, 184 rifle divisions, 37 rifle brigade) at 12.20 14.1 went on the offensive from the line Fisenkovo (18 km north of Kantemirovka) - Kashcheev (5 km west of Kantemirovka) and , having broken through the enemy’s defenses, by the end of 16.1, it advanced in the north-west direction with rifle formations for 35 km, cavalry formations for 55 km and tank formations for 90 km.

In the morning of 16.1, the 12th Panzer Corps captured the city of Rossosh and by 16.40 on 16.1 reached the line Podgornoye - Postoyaly.

By 14.00 16.1, the 15th Panzer Corps captured the Olkhovatka area and by 16.40 16.1 reached the Kuleshovka-Maryevka line.

The 7th Cavalry Corps, advancing in the direction of Rovenka, by 17.00 16.1 advanced units reached the Vsesvyatka-Ivanovka line (12 km east of the Rovenki settlement).

The 37th Rifle Brigade, in cooperation with units of the 180th Rifle Division, captured the Mitrofanovka area in the morning of 16.1 and continued to develop the offensive against the Krinichnaya area.

The 180th Rifle Division, having captured the Mitrofanovka area, advanced in the direction of the city of Rossosh.

The 48th Guards Rifle Division was in the area of the city of Rossosh.

The 184th Rifle Division from the line Pshenichny - Poddubnoye (19-24 km southwest of Mitrofanovka) advanced in the direction of the Novoselovka region (18 km southwest of the city of Rossosh).

During the period of fighting from 13.1 to 16.1, the troops of the front captured about 17,000 soldiers and officers, according to incomplete data, captured: tanks - 75, guns of various calibers - 800, mortars - 493, anti-tank guns - 157, machine guns - 1200, rifles - 14,000, cars - 520, tractors - 130, radio stations - 21, horses - about 700, carts - 672, shells - about 250,000, cartridges - over 5,000,000, warehouses - about 70 and a lot of other military property of the enemy, which is counted. During the same period, destroyed: 51,000 soldiers and officers, 135 tanks, 70 batteries, 17 aircraft; over 550 bunkers destroyed.

Weather: clear, temperature from -20° to -25°.

Southwestern front.

6th Army, overcoming the stubborn resistance of the enemy, continued the offensive and by 16.00 16.1 reached the line:

62nd Guards Rifle Division (former 127th) - western slopes of height 151.0 - sheep farm (3 km southwest of Novaya Kalitva);

The 160th Rifle Division captured the Krinichnaya area - the eastern outskirts of Serobabina (8 km east of Mitrofanovka);

The 350th rifle division captured the Novobelskaya area - height 160.4 (4 km west of Osikov) and by 19.00 16.1 led street fighting in Trembachevo (now Novopskovskiy district of Luhansk region).

The 172nd Rifle Division, in cooperation with the 115th Tank Brigade, captured the Dontsovka area (10 km northeast of the Novopskov settlement);

The 267th Rifle Division captured the Kabansky-Krupchansky area (now the Markovsky district of the Luhansk region).

The enemy in front of the army, hiding behind strong rearguards, retreated to the west. In the area of height 182.9 (5 km southwest of Novaya Kalitva), Italian prisoners of the 5th Infantry Division "Passubio" were taken.

1st Guards Army during the day 16.1 conducted offensive battles.

The 38th Guards Rifle Division, having captured the Krosnyanka-Guryev area, broke into the city of Millerovo in the second half of the day on 16.1 and continued to clear the city of the enemy.

The 57th Guards Rifle Division captured Chertkovo.

Archival documents, together with travels on a geographical map, as well as testimonies of participants in the battles on the Don, confirm that there was no dividing front line between the opponents in the initial days of our offensive. The confusion, multiplied by military successes, sometimes gave rise to carelessness. It was she who let down the chief of staff of the 3rd Guards Army, Ivan Pavlovich Krupennikov. The major-general left for the troops and was absurdly taken prisoner near Millerovo. Historian Anatoly Ivanovich Utkin, in his book Russians in World War II, described this fateful event as follows: on December 21, intelligence officers of the Don army group elicited from Krupennikov details of the strategic plan for the offensive of the Soviet troops. They deceived the major general, saying that his son was wounded and was in captivity while in good conditions. Further, his fate will depend on the behavior of his father. Krupennikov lost his temper and spoke about the Saturn, that the operation was aimed at breaking through the front of the Italian 8th Army and further advancing south to Rostov. Thus, the entire Caucasian grouping of fascists will be surrounded.

On December 22, the Nazis captured the commander of the 15th Rifle Corps of our Sixth Army, Pyotr Frolovich Privalov, on his birthday. It happened on the way to the liberated Kantemirovka. Old-timers claimed that in those days the commander of the Southwestern Front, Nikolai Fedorovich Vatutin, visited the village of Pervomaisk. It is possible that both his arrival and the tank raid of the Lubyanetsky battalion were connected with the search for the missing major general. The seriously wounded Privalov confirmed Krupennikov's testimony. But nothing could stop the "motors" of the military operation.

The fate of the prisoners is as follows: both were released by the allies and at the end of May 1945 were sent to Moscow. The military collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR recognized them as traitors. Krupennikov and Privalov were shot. Later, in the case of Krupennikov, an additional check established that he was captured under circumstances that deprived him of the possibility of any resistance. The fascists took the staff operational documents not from him, but from the dead - the chief of staff of the South-Western Front, Major General Stelmakh and the adjutant, Lieutenant Yuri Krupennikov, the general's son. During the preliminary investigation, no convincing evidence of treason was found in the case. In his last speech at the court session, Ivan Pavlovich stated: “How was Soviet man and so I remain."

On June 8, 1957, the sentence "was canceled due to newly discovered circumstances, and the Krupennikov case was dismissed for lack of evidence." Posthumously.

It is known about Privalov from German archival documents that he seemed to have given out information about the formation and organization of chemical troops in the Red Army. And he also voluntarily agreed to serve with the Germans. True, Pyotr Fedorovich stated that he wrote a statement about this deliberately in order to escape from a German prison. Privalov was rehabilitated in 1968.

One of the heroes of "Small Saturn" - the commander of the 127th Rifle Division (later the 62nd Guards) Georgy Mikhailovich Zaitsev - was captured by the enemy. For military merit in the operation, he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner and the Order of Suvorov, 2nd degree. Promoted to the rank of Major General.

In March 1943, the division south of Kharkov covered the retreat of the 3rd Panzer Army across the Severny Donets River. In a night battle, Zaitsev was wounded in the leg with a broken bone. The adjutant hid him in a haystack, and then transferred him to the last hut in the village of Ternovoye. In the meantime, he was looking for help from one of the fighters, the general was captured and sent to a German hospital. After treatment, he was taken to Germany to the fortress-prison of Weissenburg. After his release, the allies sent Georgy Mikhailovich to Moscow, where he underwent a special check in the NKVD. Zaitsev reinstated in frames Soviet army.

Maria Artemovna Orlova, a front-line soldier who lived in Rossosh, served as a medical instructor in Zaitsev's division. Met, saw Georgy Mikhailovich. “Fair-haired, medium height. Discharge of a military personnel. Demanding, but friendly and reserved. It seems to me that the officers were afraid of him, but respected him. Everyone loved the commander. We did not immediately learn that our general was a prisoner. They said he died. Later, in the sixties, at meetings of fellow soldiers I heard that Georgy Mikhailovich had experienced inhuman trials in the Buchenwald concentration camp. It was there that his health was destroyed. It is a pity that he did not live long after the war ... "

The seventeenth of January is not far away.

And on December 18, the 15,000-strong army of the Julia division, led by General Umberto Ricagno, shoulder to shoulder with the German infantrymen of the 385th division under the command of a general, holder of one of the main awards of Germany - the Knight's Cross with oak leaves and swords - Karl Aybla (Ibla ), it was necessary to stop the attacks of the enemy, to recapture the Russian positions captured before the start of the offensive.

They were obliged to do this ahead of time and a little later by the Fuhrer himself in his orders.

“10/14/42

1. By all means, hold winter positions ...

3. In the event of attacks from the enemy, do not retreat a single step and do not perform retreat maneuvers of an operational nature.

For the unconditional fulfillment of these requirements, the commanders are responsible directly to me.

Adolf Gitler".

"December 27, 1942.

The main thing for the fighting in the near future should remain the liberation of the 6th Army (German, surrounded in Stalingrad - the authors).

Army Group "B" must hold or return the common line: Kalitva, northwest of the settlements of Tatsinskaya, Millerovo, Railway Millerovo - Kantemirovka - Don. The enemy, already behind this line, must be destroyed by the attack.

Adolf Gitler".

His commanders, who ended up on the Don, understood that Berlin was high, but they could see better from the ground. To recapture, return, hold on to what was lost is an impossible task. There's no fat here.

On the morning of December 19, the division "Julia" came under the control of the 24th German tank corps. The command of this corps did not have its own troops, and its task was to take all the Italian and German units into its own hands and organize a new defensive line in order to stop the enemy.

Battalions and groups moved into positions with great difficulty. Equipment and food were transported on sleds, which were pulled by the Alpines themselves, because since the beginning of winter, most of the mules were sent to distant rear areas. An auxiliary supply point was created in the village of Krinichnoye, and ammunition was stored in the nearby village of Poddubnovka. The sanitary platoons of the regiments were also sent to the new front. The headquarters of "Julia" was located in the rear and closer to Rossosh - on the Novotroitsk farm. Behind the mountain, behind the river there is an airfield. Cavalier of the Knight's Cross, commander of the 385th German infantry division settled in the farmstead of Komarovo, one might say - at the forefront. The reserve enemy line of defense ran along the steppe heights west of Novaya Kalitva along the farmsteads Novaya Melnitsa - Komarovo - Zeleny Yar - Serobabin - the village of Valentinovka, the railway station Pasekovo - Vysochinov. Then it turned south and went west of the South-Eastern highway past Chertkovo, through Belovodsk to Millerovo, Chernyshkovskaya, Oblivskaya.

In these places, on the spare enemy front line along the steppe heights from the farms Novaya Melnitsa, Zeleny Yar, Serobabin to the Pasekovo railway station, the 15,000th corps of the Yulia Alpine Division, led by General Umberto Ricagno, held positions. On the right flank Italian Alpine Corps it was included in its right neighbor - 24th German Panzer Corps- to strengthen the defense . The Nazis tried to protect the airfields in Rossosh, Gartmashevka, Chertkovo, Millerovo, Tatsinskaya, from which they supplied the encircled army of Paulus with weapons, fuel, provisions through "air bridges". And in the vicinity they supported their ground troops. Bombed the enemy. The wounded were taken out. They sent reinforcements. Delivered fuel, medicines, dressings, mail. And therefore, with all their might, they tried to hold out even in the environment, indeed, to the last fighter. These "small boilers" were proudly called - "fortress". One of these appeared at the airfield of Gartmashevka station, near Kantemirovka, near the Kharkov-Ostrogozhsk-Yevdakovo-Rostov railway line. The Germans and Italians often called this airfield - Kantemirovka. The reason for this was serious. Not far from the railway station in the steppe Yars is located Garmashevka village. It is not surprising to get confused in these similar names. near the station , in the area of the airfield, the regiments of the 195th rifle division of the 1st guards army took a group of German troops into the "ring". It was led by the commander of the 84th Motorized Anti-Aircraft Division, Lieutenant Colonel Georg Tiroller. Due to the fact that the Germans were able to hold the airfield, it was possible to arrange the supply of this group by air by landing method and organize the removal of the wounded. Transport aircraft delivered reinforcements here. On December 26, 1942, a company from the Don Air Force reserve battalion (Flieger-Ersatz-Btl.Don), one of the many Luftwaffe units hastily created to participate in ground battles, was transferred by plane. This is reported by the authors of the book "Air Bridges" of the Third Reich A. Zablotsky and R. Larintsev (Moscow. "Veche", 2013).

Let's look ten days ahead - to the New Year 1943.

Despite the fact that Goering’s air aces were behind the first hillock, within minutes of flight, on January 6, on the instructions of the Headquarters, our “flying General Staff” reappeared in the village of Tali, according to other sources, in Kantemirovka. In brand new shoulder straps, they had just been returned to the Red Army, paying tribute to Russian military traditions, the generals and officers seemed to have turned bronze. Alexey Mikhailovich Vasilevsky and Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov have already managed to visit the Don Shchuchye bridgehead. It hasn't dawned yet. The darkness of the night was diluted by the side moonlight, allowing you to inspect the area. Plastunsky after the commander of the 96th tank brigade Viktor Grigorievich Lebedev successfully reached the "sniper nest" at a height. As they say, at close range, the generals saw the minefields discovered earlier by scouts in sunflower thickets untouched for fuel. And behind them - machine-gun bunkers, artillery caponiers, trenches and dugouts. The enemy dug in securely and vigilantly followed any movement in the neutral zone. Although they came under stray shelling on the way back, the trip to visit the Germans ended successfully.

And here, in the wide valley of the Bogucharka River, it is also within easy reach of the front line. From the Pasekovo railway station to the steppe heights near Pervomaisk, battles seem to be of local importance. Why, thanks to the soldiers who went on the attack at that hour, arrows of another significant military operation were already drawn on the operational maps. Ostrogozhsko-Rossoshskaya historians will call brilliant. It is still being studied by cadets of military schools in many countries of the world.

Was the risk of the appearance of commanders in a front-line hut or in a soldier's trench justified? Yes. The participants in such military councils had a better idea of the situation on the ground. Their opinion was significant, so that "it would be smooth on paper", so that "the ravines would not be forgotten." They "first hand" adopted not only specific, for their units, but also the general goals and objectives of the upcoming offensive. So - in the course of the battle itself and the changing situation, commanders sometimes made more necessary decisions on their own. At the very beginning of the Ostrogozhsk-Rossosh operation, the 106th tank brigade of Ivan Epifanovich Alekseev pulled ahead. By order, she was ordered to liberate the village of Lizinovka. But the brigade commander knew that the main danger to the attackers was the enemy airfield in Rossosh. Tanks in the snow are an excellent target. Alekseev, already in the deep rear, makes a many-kilometer night throw and breaks into the city in the early morning, where the enemy was not waiting for him. The fight was uneven. Trampling death by death, the tankers sowed panic in the enemy camp, for the whole day "tied" aircraft to themselves, which predetermined the capture of Rossosh with "little bloodshed", and largely ensured the success of the entire operation. Colonel Alekseev was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union at the age of thirty-three.

On the northern flank of "Small Saturn", Soviet troops occupied the villages of Novaya Kalitva - Ivanovka - Pervomaisk - Fisenkovo - the Kashcheev farm north of Kantemirovka ... About the events on this sector of the front, more - near the village of Pervomaisk - and will be discussed.

... Frosty January blizzard,

Know, dear Europe has not forgotten.

Brigadier General Ricano wrote pitifully in his memoirs: the Alpine troops are on an icy plain with several hills and gullies, in the open, without shelter from snow and cold. Taking advantage of a pause in the fighting, they begin to dig trenches in order to at least take shelter from the cold wind. On the front line, long ditches with snowdrifts are created. Blankets and tent sheets attached to the edges of the trenches serve as a roof, although they do not shelter from snowfall and wind. At temperatures below 20 degrees, the front line troops hold the line in the open, barely protected from snow and cold. Firewood brought from the rear is used not for heating, but for strengthening trenches. After all, the Italians are located in the zone of visibility of the enemy and therefore cannot kindle fires. There are cases of frostbite. So, the 108th company of the "L Aquila" battalion was replaced by the 59th company of the "Vicenza" battalion, because in addition to heavy losses during the battles, 64 people were severely frostbitten.

The general either did not go to the places of battles, or he is disingenuous. The second line of defense in the rear by the Italians was also partially prepared in advance. This was once evidenced by the old-timers in the local front-line villages. Fortifications and dugouts were built on the steppe hills. For example, a hospital and a powerful supply base with warehouses filled with ammunition, provisions, and medicines were located in a yard near the Zeleny Yar farm. Yes, and the height of 205.6 ahead of time was turned into a "fortress" by Soviet prisoners of war. The camp for them was located on the outskirts of Pervomaisk in livestock buildings.

However, our soldiers also went on the attack, fought off the advancing enemy without sitting on the stove. At night, burying themselves waist-deep in deep snow, ravines and ravines secretly got closer to enemy positions. With a pick and a shovel, they dug into the ground bound by frost, dug saving trenches and trenches for themselves - where they could hide from fatal shelling or storm the enemy under their protective mounted mortar fire.

Near the village of Pervomaisk, the enemy entrenched himself on the steppe heights. They "neither go around nor bypass", since the seemingly intermittent front line was kept under deadly enemy crossfire. Especially significant were the hills of Solontsy and Osiyanka (on military maps, this is a height of 205.6) and a hill near the Serobabin farm, which has now disappeared (height of 201.8).

The liberators - soldiers of the 172nd Infantry Division - were replaced by reserve regiments of the 160th Infantry Division. It was often called initially "Gorky" by its place of birth - the military training camps of Gorokhovets, located in the Gorky, now Nizhny Novgorod region. In addition to the Gorky people, one might say the entire Soviet Union was represented among the conscripts. Muscovites and recruits from the Central Chernozem region, Siberians and Urals, residents of the Volga region, Kabardino-Balkaria, Rostov region, Armenians, Belarusians, Georgians, Kazakhs, Ukrainians. In July 1941, right from the wagon wheels, in fact, unfired recruits entered into an unequal battle with the already experienced conquerors of Europe. They held back the Germans who were pressing along the Dnieper near Mogilev. Here they fully experienced the bitterness of defeat, retreat. Lost fighting friends. And - learned to fight in defensive battles. From the banks of the Don for the division, "the war turned its face to the west." Commander - Colonel Mikhail Petrovich Seryugin.

A "diary" of the division's combat operations has been preserved in the archives of the Ministry of Defense. A similar "daily report" based on Italian archival documents was compiled by the historian Giorgio Scotoni. The retelling of the same events makes it possible to visualize the battles “for the Russian land” more clearly. Why is this so important today, seven decades later? Let us remind readers that for a quarter of a century our Voronezh steppes near the Don have been visited by numerous groups of pilgrims from Italy. Travels are caused by their desire to visit places where the nearest in time "tragic campaign of the militant descendants of the Romans to the east - to the Soviet Union" ended ingloriously.

And suddenly tourists began to come with leaflets addressing us - “Dear Russians”. In them, in particular, it was emphasized that "Russian soldiers appreciated the correctness of the Alpine military, saying, "Italian karasho." Some of our modern historians and local historians are also trying to convince: "Italy is an unwilling enemy." Since almost the whole of Europe left a bloody trail on the Don during the Great Patriotic War, they “scientifically” find out which of the invaders was “better in relation to the enemy and the local population”. The beginning of these studies was laid by the first commander of the Italian expeditionary force in the "war on the Russian front", General Giovanni Messe. He compiled a "scale of villainy, cruelty" of foreign units, justifying compatriots. And now the general is not the only one who "went further", who comes to the conclusion that, say, the same Italians "almost" did not fight - they threw their weapons on the ground, raised their hands up and went in crowds to surrender ...

By rewriting history in your own way, neither the friendship of peoples, nor peace on the planet can be strengthened. There are no “correct” fighters or innocent sheep in a front-line combat situation. The invaders in the bulk remained the enemy. The Italians also knew how to fight.

"The enemy is the remnants of the defeated units - 190, 140 infantry regiments, 27 tank regiment 5 Italian infantry divisions, 8 and 9 infantry regiments of the 3rd Italian infantry division and 387 German infantry division - defend the line: New Kalitva, New Mill, sheep farm, western slopes of height 176.2, height 182.9, 153.3, 156.5 , Green Yar farm, Krinichnoe village.

Parts of the 160th Infantry Division put themselves in order. By 8.00 they took their starting positions:

537 rifle regiment and the third battery of the 566 artillery regiment on the outskirts of Novaya Kalitva,

636 rifle regiment with a second battery of the 566 artillery regiment - Pervomaisk,

The 443rd rifle regiment with the first battery of the 566th artillery regiment, the machine-gun battalion of the division and the 290th separate fighter battalion at the turn of the dairy farm, north of Ivanovka, are engaged in a strong firefight with the enemy.

« On December 23, artillery was operating from both sides. Batteriesaartillery battalions "Conegliano", "Val Piave" and 105 / 28-mm guns of the 23rd army group corps fired at Novaya Kalitva, the Soviet artillery, in turn, fired at the positions of the Tolmezzo battalion and the Conegliano artillery battalion. In the afternoon, the German company "Police" comes to the aid of the Italian units and captures Hill 205.6, which is now moving into Colonel Trenger's sector of the front.

Before Christmas, Soviet planes drop leaflets on the line of defense of the division, urging the Italians to desert...”

“The enemy is defending the former line. Parts of our division by 8.00 left:

The 636th rifle regiment, supported by 2 batteries of the 566th artillery regiment and the PC (Katyusha) division, overcoming the stubborn resistance of the enemy, by 8.00 reached the line: southeastern slopes of a height of 205.6 and sheds from the south of a height of 205.6.

At 0800, the enemy counterattacked the 443rd Rifle Regiment with the strength of an infantry battalion, supported by strong artillery fire from the Zeleny Yar farmstead. The counterattack was successfully repulsed.

At 0800, the enemy counterattacked the 636th Infantry Regiment from the area of height 168.4 and the ravines southwest of Krinichnaya with a strength of up to an infantry battalion. The enemy attack was repulsed.

“On December 24, at 5.15 am, units of the Soviet troops attacked the junction of the 108th company of the “Le Aquila” battalion and the 265th company of the “Val Chismon” battalion and at the same time the defense front of the 264th company of the “Val Chismon” battalion. The 277th company, supported by five anti-tank self-propelled guns transferred by the 385th German division, batteries of the Udine artillery battalion, machine guns, pushed the enemy back to their original positions.

To stop the breakthrough of the Red Army in Krinichnoye, the Vicenza battalion, located at Zeleny Yar, attacked the 59th and 61st enemy companies. A fierce battle with an enemy outnumbered forced the Soviet commanders to bring the 60th company into battle. In this battle, only on the front line of the 59th company, the losses of Soviet troops amounted to about 500 soldiers and officers. The losses of the Italian units were also serious.

By the evening of December 24, a snow storm broke out. Under her cover, two Soviet battalions suddenly attacked the Alpines of the Tolmezzo battalion, who were preparing for dinner. The survivors believe that this was the most serious, unexpected and dangerous attack of the Red Army in those days. The Italians pushed back the attackers.

On the same day, the “rapid action group” was disbanded, and the command of the site was entrusted to the commander of the 9th Alpine Regiment, Colonel Lavizzari. From the "L Aquila" battalion, the 93rd and 108th companies remained on the line, and the 143rd company, ponychaving suffered heavy losses at an altitude of 205.6, she was sent to Krinichnoye for reorganization along with the Monte Cervino battalion. In the southern sector, the Val Chismon battalion is now located, and the Vicenza battalion has been redeployed to the reserve in Krinichnoye.

(Information about the losses of both the Red Army and the Italian, German, in such a situation was initially estimated approximately, which is quite understandable).

« During the day, parts of the division fought fierce battles, reaching hand-to-hand combat.

The 537th Infantry Regiment fought at the crossroads between the Novaya Melnitsa farm and the village of Novaya Kalitva. An officer of the 8th Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Infantry Division "Julia" (Italy) was taken prisoner, who showed that the division, consisting of two regiments, was re-equipped and arrived on December 22, 1942 from Rossosh to the Golubaya Krinitsa - Krinichnaya area.

The 443rd Infantry Regiment, in its former composition, fought a strong battle with the enemy in the sheep farm area, southeast of Zeleny Yar and height 166.5. The enemy, supported by artillery and mortar fire from six-barreled mortars by an infantry battalion with 12 tanks, launched several counterattacks in the Zeleny Yar area. The regiment's personnel, showing courage and perseverance in battle, successfully repulsed all counterattacks of the enemy.

As a result, more than 500 corpses of soldiers and officers of fascist evil spirits remained on the battlefield, 29 reptiles were taken prisoner (9th Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Infantry Division "Julia".

The fire of our artillery destroyed a battery of six-barreled mortars from the enemy, moreover, at the most difficult and critical moment of the battle. Our infantrymen shouted with joy "Hurrah!" to our illustrious artillerymen of the first battery of the 566th artillery regiment and the commander of the first division, captain Kalpak. (IN archival documents managed to clarify that we are talking about Kolpak Viktor Matveyevich. A twenty-eight-year-old native of the city of Kamyshin, Stalingrad, now the Volgograd region. In the Red Army since 1936. Ukrainian. Soon he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner).

In addition, several enemy tanks were burning on the battlefield. But the enemy was strengthening its forces, introducing fresh infantry units and tanks into battle. Our fighters smashed and destroyed the hated enemy, but were forced to retreat to their original positions.

During the day, the 636th Infantry Regiment fought a fierce battle in the area of \u200b\u200bheight 205.6, showing stamina, courage and heroism, repulsed five enemy counterattacks. As a result, up to 700 enemy soldiers and officers were killed, 4 officers of the 387th Infantry Division (Germans) were captured. Destroyed 9 tanks and 2 artillery batteries.

The regiment retreated to its original positions. During the day they suffered losses: 141 people were killed and 203 were wounded.

For some reason, the Italians kept silent about the events of the current day. There is only a brief note: “On Christmas Day, December 25, everything was relatively calm at the front of the Julia division.”

At the Komarovo farm, at the headquarters of the 385th German Infantry Division, the Catholic Christmas was celebrated in the evening at a feast. General Able (Eibl) wished to listen to the Russian song "Katyusha". He was helpfully found a vociferous singer - a teenage girl Dusya Visloguzova. She sang, changed lines on the fly:

... Trembling takes the Nazis over the river,

This is our Russian Katyusha

Nemchure sings for peace!

Dusi's mother was standing at the threshold. Her legs buckled - "neither alive nor dead." Fortunately for them, the tipsy Germans did not understand the meaning of the altered song. They were fascinated by the melody - they sang along, beating their palms to the beat.

“The enemy put up fierce resistance with counterattacks, strong artillery fire and aircraft.

The 636th Rifle Regiment, supported by the first battery of the 566th Artillery Regiment, the 288th Anti-tank Artillery Regiment, the 366th PC Division, the 87th Howitzer Artillery Regiment, at 0400, launched an offensive from the western outskirts of Pervomaisk in the direction of height 205.6. Overcoming the stubborn resistance of the enemy, by 0900 the regiment reached the line: the southeastern slopes of height 205.6 and the barn to the south.

During the night, the 443rd Rifle Regiment marched Ivanovka - Pervomaisk and by 0100 concentrated on the southwestern outskirts of the village.

At 06:20, with six tanks of the 115th Tank Brigade, supported by the second battery of the 566th Artillery Regiment, 266th Howitzer Artillery Regiment, 305th PC Division, 87th Howitzer Mortar Regiment, launched an offensive from the western outskirts of Pervomaisk in the direction of the Belogortsev and Tereshkov ravines. By 10.00, overcoming the stubborn resistance of the enemy, he reached the junction of the Belogortsev-Tereshkov ravines.

The machine-gun battalion of the 160th rifle division covered Ivanovka.

By the end of the day, parts of the division were taken to their original positions for regrouping, leaving field guards.

“On December 26, at 3.15 am, after a short artillery and machine-gun preparation, the enemy began to advance along the entire front line of the Tolmezzo battalion. The advancing fire was supported by machine guns placed on sleds. The battle gradually subsided.

Later, with two attacks, at 5.30 and 6.15 in the morning, the Red Army soldiers, consisting of about one regiment, break through to the position of height 205.6 (Solontsy), occupied by the 264th company of the Val Chismon battalion, and the road in the Pervomaisk (Derezovatoe) area - the Zeleniy crossroads Yar, occupied by the 265th company of this battalion. The rapid intervention of Italian and German artillery forced the Soviet troops to abandon the continuation of the offensive. But they did not stop their attacks and at 7.15 in the morning they tried again to conquer the height of 205.6, after artillery preparation. Hill 205.6 had been under heavy artillery fire for several days, and the Alpines called it "boiled pot". The 277th company of the "Val Chismon" battalion moved to this height, reinforced by six German tanks. With a sharp counteroffensive, she managed to recapture the height. Losses were heavy both on the Italian and Soviet sides, hundreds of fallen soldiers remained on the ground.

“The 636th and 443rd rifle regiments, hiding behind the division’s machine-gun battalion on the right with the same reinforcements, in cooperation with aviation at 7.00, launched an offensive in the direction of height 205.6. By 12.00 we reached the line:

636 rifle regiment - to the northeastern and southeastern slopes of height 205.6,

443 Rifle Regiment - a barn southwest of height 205.6 and a ravine to the south.

During the day, the enemy shelled our defenses with artillery mortar fire and prevented the offensive.

“In these days, Soviet aviation has intensified its operations. On the night of December 27, aircraft bombarded positions in the Krinichnaya area and at an altitude of 205.6. For this height, the Red Army stubbornly fought by all means, using aircraft, artillery, and machine guns. The defenders of the 264th company of the Val Chismon battalion were forced to fight off fierce attacks. At 7.30 in the morning, 6 Soviet tanks found themselves moving from Derezovatoy in the direction of Krinichnaya. The rapid counteraction of the German self-propelled dei pezzi semoventi tedeschi, which destroyed one tank, forced the Red Army to retreat.

“The 636th Infantry Regiment, with the same means of reinforcement, began an offensive at night on a height of 205.6. By 0400, he reached the northeastern slopes of the height, capturing five prisoners. Having met strong enemy artillery fire, the regiment stopped its advance.

The 443rd Infantry Regiment at the same time launched an offensive to the same height. At 4.00 I went out to the south-western slopes and was also stopped.

During the day, the enemy goes on the attack twice. They were repulsed with heavy losses for him."

“On December 28, the struggle for a height of 205.6 became even more bloody. At night, Soviet troops captured the western side of the height, the former site of the German troops of the 387th division, on the right flank of the Alpines. As a result, height 205.6 was abandoned. But later, by a strong assault on the 264th company of the Val Chismon battalion, it was taken again. The Soviet troops retook the height again that night, but by 5 am it was returned again...

The frost was strong. On this day, 103 cases of frostbite were recorded among Alpines ... "

“Parts of the 160th and 127th rifle divisions fought fierce battles.

The 636th Rifle Regiment with 8 tanks of the 115th Tank Brigade launched an attack on Hill 153.3.

The 443rd Rifle Regiment with 10 tanks of the 115th Tank Brigade stormed Hill 166.5.

Having broken the stubborn resistance of the enemy, by 20.00 December 30, 1942 they reached the heights and occupied them, captured 26 prisoners, destroyed more than 300 soldiers and officers, 2 enemy tanks.

636 rifle regiment - up to a thousand enemy soldiers and officers, 9 tanks, 7 bunkers, 12 dugouts, 2 mortars, 21 machine guns, 3 guns, 25 people were taken prisoner.

443 Rifle Regiment - more than 900 enemy soldiers and officers, 15 tanks, 15 bunkers, 7 dugouts, 7 mortars, 31 machine guns, 5 guns, 8 ammunition carts. 102 people were taken prisoner.

On the afternoon of December 29, a summary of the military operations of the German High Command was broadcast on the radio, which stated: “The Italian division “Julia” especially distinguished itself in defensive counteroffensives in the big bend of the Don. Newspaper " la Domenica del Corriere ”Not without pride reported:“ great battle in the bend of the Don. In the battles against the advancing Soviet troops, our Alpines distinguished themselves, especially the division "Julia", who stopped and repulsed the enemy with a decisive counterattack.

“At night, the 9th company of the Vicenza battalion and the 264th company of the Val Chismon battalion were replaced on the front line of defense, both heavily injured in the battles. Their positions were taken by the 61st company of the Vicenza battalion and the 277th company of the Val Chismon battalion.

Only on January 9, 1943, in the summary of the General Staff of the Italian Armed Forces, it was reported: “Losses in December, about which we were given the necessary documentation and about which we have the exact indication of names, until December 31, 1942, the following: the army and the fascist police M.V.S.N.(black shirts) - Russia: fallen 236; wounded 787; missing 81".

On the line of the Alpine division "Julia" the situation remained in an unstable balance. Here the pressure of the Soviet troops is intensifying from day to day: their actions are aimed at capturing the arc held by the forces of the Julia division. December 30 became one of the most bloody days. At dawn, Soviet soldiers attacked the positions of the Tolmezzo battalion. After heavy artillery and mortar fire, several rifle battalions stormed the junction of the 6th company and the 12th company. The attack is aimed at taking the shortest road to the Komarovo farm. But the Alpines of the Tolmezzo battalion had twice as many machine guns and machine guns as the Red Army, due to the fact that they had previously found weapons in the trenches of the Cosseria division. The attacking troops had to retreat, leaving many wounded and killed on the ground.

Intense attacks from the air and ground began again. By 6.30 in the morning a hurricane of fire hit the advanced Italian units and rear. The rapid action of Soviet artillery and mortars was also directed against the Alpine batteries. Many guns were damaged, losses were heavy. The Red Army men resolutely attack the Italians and Germans and strive to break through to the Novaya Kalitva-Komarovo highway. But all their attempts were suppressed by the artillery of the "Julia" division, with the support of the artillery of the "Kuneenze" division. Among the Alpines of the Tolmezzo battalion were General Ricagno, commander of the Julia division, and Colonel Cimolino, commander of the 8th Alpine Regiment.

In the same hours when the Red Army soldiers attacked the 6th and 12th companies of the Tolmezzo battalion, their other units stormed Hill 176.2, occupied by the Germans. The trigonometric height indicator was clearly visible here, therefore it was called "Signal". She occupied a special place in positions in front of New Kalitva. The capture of this dominant height gave the Germans the opportunity to view and shell the entire Kalitva valley, where the road passes, along which the Red Army was supplied. Therefore, the German command, having little confidence in the Italians, instructed a platoon of their Panzergrenadiers to hold the height.

She changed hands dozens of times...

By 22.00, the Red Army broke through the line of defense. A fierce battle with hand grenades began, which lasted over an hour and a half and turned into hand-to-hand combat. The Alpines of the Tolmezzo battalion repulsed the attack.

December 30 was also a difficult day for the 9th Alpine Regiment, where the Alpines of the Vicenza Battalion were attacked by Soviet infantry and 20 tanks. At about 6 am, after prolonged artillery fire, two enemy battalions attacked the Alpine positions covering the Pervomaisk-Zeleny Yar road. While the Alpines held back the advancing troops, enemy artillery fired on the settlements of Golubaya Krinitsa, Komarovo, Zeleny Yar and Krinichnaya, the highway to the rear. By 7.30 in the morning, the battle with the support of German tanks unfolded throughout the area. At 09:00, the battle turns into a close one and soon turns into a furious brawl with the use of hand grenades. Four Soviet tanks were blocked by anti-tank guns. By 10.00 the battle enters a critical phase. The command of the 385th German division asks for aviation support, which in an hour and a half begins to bomb enemy columns.

At the same time, another column is moving in the direction of Zeleny Yar. The 59th company of the Vicenza battalion launched a counteroffensive. She was supported by 4 German self-propelled guns and 6 tanks. With the help of a tank strike, the Alpines pushed the enemy units back from their positions. Only at 18.00 the situation stabilized in the entire sector of the 9th Alpine Regiment. The losses among the Italians were very significant.

After a whole day of heavy fighting, everything was quiet by 23.30.

“On December 30, the line of the Southwestern Front on the Middle Don stabilized at the line Novaya Kalitva - Fisenkovo - Kashcheev - Vysochinov - Markovka - Chertkovo - Voloshino - north of Millerovo ... Parts of the 160th division went on the defensive at the line: Novaya Kalitva - Ivanovka - Pervomaisk. Received replenishment of personnel and weapons. They fought defensive battles until January 17, 1943.

“And the last day of 1942 turned out to be very difficult for the troops of the Julia division. By 6 am on December 31, four Red Army companies, supported by 18 tanks, attacked in two directions at the Zeleny Yar crossroads. The attack was at first successful, but by 8.30 the attackers had to retreat with losses.

In similar battles, the snows boiled bloody near the village of Serobabin, where the commander of the tank battalion Lubyanetsky and his comrades-in-arms died heroically. And further along the front, the Pasekovo station passed from hand to hand ...

And yet - in the December offensive on the middle Don, the troops of the Southwestern and Voronezh fronts defeated the 8th Italian Army and the left wing of the Don Army Group. By December 31, parts of the Italian army as part of the 2nd, 29th and 35th army corps lost seven out of every ten soldiers of their personnel and all military equipment killed, wounded and captured.

But the Italian military leaders believed that the crisis on the Don front was exaggerated. The Chief of the General Staff, Marshal Count Cavaliero, and the commander of the 8th Army, General Gariboldi, expected that after Operation Little Saturn, the Supreme High Command of the Red Army would not be able to strike them again on the Don. They did not listen to the alarming report of General Giulio Martinat, Chief of Staff of the Mountain Rifle Corps: “Movement in the enemy rear continues to be very strong ... The noise of large engines and sometimes tractors, along with the voices of people, as if engaged in heavy maneuvering work, is heard at night from Don. All of this points to above-average activity in the area.” “In Novaya Kalitva, the pressure of the Red Army units against the positions of the Yulia division is increasing from day to day, which is a sign of a possible future attack on the southern flank.” In response, they ordered to resist: “ The Alpine army corps and the Hungarian army must hold the line of the Don to the last man and to the last bullet. No one should retreat from the front without an order from the command of the army group "B". Divisional commanders are personally responsible for this.

The fighting on the steppe heights expanded the encirclement around Stalingrad. The soldiers inflicted serious losses on the enemy, diverted the attention of the enemy from the impending offensive, which allowed us to quickly and covertly gather forces on the Storozhevsky and Shchuchyonsky bridgeheads, near Kantemirovka - in order to hit the enemy with “three fists” and defeat him during the Ostrogozhsk-Rossosh operation.

“The 160th Rifle Division (without the 537th Rifle Regiment, it was transferred to the operational subordination of the 172nd Rifle Division, participates in the liberation of Ukraine) is conducting offensive battles during the Ostrogozhsk-Rossosh operation. Her warriors liberate the villages and farms of Krinichnoye, Zeleny Yar, Komarov, Poddubnoye, Golubaya Krinitsa, Novotroitsk, Babki, Vershina. Having made a march through Rossosh, they are fighting for the villages of Olkhovatsky and Rovensky districts - Drozdovo, Novokharkovka, Kharkovskoye, Aleksandrovka, Zhabskoye, Nikolaevka. They did not let the Germans and Italians get out of the encirclement. At the same time, about four thousand enemy soldiers and officers were destroyed, over one and a half thousand were taken prisoner. In trophies - 7 tanks, 15 guns, 12 tractors, 96 trucks, 81 cars, weapons, ammunition and other military property.

We walked platoon and company

On machine guns in broad daylight -

With these poetic lines of the front-line poet Mikhail Fedorovich Timoshechkin, each of the soldiers of the 160th Infantry Division could tell about their "Saturn" combat everyday life. Together with the commander Colonel Mikhail Petrovich Seryugin, together with the commanders of the regiments Lieutenant Colonel Mikhail Mikhailovich Golubev, Major Alexander Gavrilovich Krasnikov, Lieutenant Colonel Pyotr Trofimovich Tsyganov, they adequately held the enemy strike, covered the unconquered fighting Stalingrad with a reliable shield.

Deservedly on April 18, 1943, the division was transformed into the 89th Guards. These “units, as a rule, carried out the most important combat missions, masterfully defeated the enemy, and were distinguished by iron military discipline and organization. Where the guard was defending, the enemy did not pass. Where the guard advanced, the enemy was crushed, defeated.

Biography of the military unit in its full name: 89th Guards Belgorod-Kharkov Order of the Suvorov and the Red Banner Rifle Division. Her soldiers liberated Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Poland. They also took Berlin - in the main strike group they broke through the "Seelovsky heights fortress", stormed the "enemy's lair" in the center of the German capital.

Lieutenant General Mikhail Petrovich Seryugin (November 6, 1906 - March 27, 1975, Rivne, Ukraine) came from a peasant family. A native of the village of Ilyinskoye, now the Kolchuginsky district of the Vladimir region. Personnel soldier. In the summer of 1942, at the age of 36, he was a division commander. He was awarded two orders of Lenin, the Red Banner, the Order of Suvorov of the second degree, the Red Star. And also the orders of Kutuzov and Bogdan Khmelnitsky of the second degree. "Honorary citizen of the city of Belgorod".

More than fifty soldiers and officers of the division were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

One of them is well known in the Voronezh region - Tuleberdiev Cholponbai. He did not have a chance to participate in "Small Saturn". A twenty-year-old son from a Kyrgyz peasant family accomplished a heroic deed a little earlier, in the summer of August 6, 1942. Near the village of Selyavnoye, Liskinsky district, at night with the fighters, he swam across the Don in order to recapture a foothold for the offensive from the enemy on the right bank. The idea succeeded. But the path of the soldiers was blocked by machine-gun lead fire. Tuleberdiev crawled closer to the bunker. Threw a grenade. And the machine gun came to life again. And then the Red Army soldier sacrificed himself, rushed to the embrasure. Gone to immortality...

And the Siberian Aleksey Ilyich Belsky underwent combat training in the battles near Pervomaisk. In a difficult moment, the commissar of the anti-aircraft battery of the 160th division took command of the battalion. Already in the battle near Kharkov he was seriously wounded. He was treated in the hospital for a year, but returned to his division. liberated Chisinau. Belsky's battalion was the first to break through city center, where the battalion commander hoisted the Red Banner on August 23, 1944.

Guard Major Belsky, fighting in Poland, “... reaching the Pilica River, despite strong artillery, mortar and machine-gun fire, crossed to the left bank together with the 5th rifle company and, having secured it behind him, transferred the entire battalion to the captured bridgehead . During the day of hostilities, the battalion broke through the enemy defenses, crossed the Pilica River, destroyed hundreds of enemy soldiers and officers, and defeated 30 enemy firing points. The battalion fulfilled its combat mission with honor. By his actions he opened the way to Germany.” The battalion commander was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. For courage and courage in the capture of Berlin, Belsky was presented for the second time by the commander of the 5th shock army, Nikolai Erastovich Berzarin, for the award with the star of the Hero, but did not receive it. First, the middle name was mixed up in the documents, and then the colonel general died.

After the war, Colonel Alexei Ilyich lived in Chisinau, was its Honorary Citizen. In 1970 he died. The street was named after the Hero, but in modern Moldova it was renamed. The League of Russian Youth, the Party of Patriots of Moldova and the faction of Communists in the City Council achieved a different solution. On September 17, 2012, the street was returned to its former name: “Str. A. Beliski - A. Belsky Street.

"Saturnites" remain in the ranks.

Tatyana Malyutina, Pyotr Chaly (Rossosh, Voronezh region)

June 22, 1941 treacherous attack Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union began the Great Patriotic War of our people against fascism.
The workers of the Derkul stud farm, like the entire Soviet people, had to defend and protect their right to work, happiness and a free life. And our fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers with dignity and honor, courageously and heroically rose to fight against the fascist invaders.
From Derkul himself, more than three hundred people were drafted into the army or went voluntarily to the front. Half of them died or went missing on the fronts of the Patriotic War. The names of 142 of our fellow villagers are carved on the memorial stele of the mass grave near the monument to our fellow countrymen who died during the war years, which is in the center of Derkul. They went to the front, fought heroically, and sometimes entire families died. Here are just a few fragments from the list that immortalized the names of the dead people of Derkul:
Voronin A.T.
Voronin N.T.
Voronin I.T.
Voronin M.T.

Kurganov S.G.
Kurganov N.G.
Kurganov F.G.

Uskov G.G.
Uskov S.G.
Uskov V.G.

And this list of close relatives - fathers, their children, brothers can be listed further.
Five sons and two daughters from the family of a stud farm worker Fyodor Antonovich Gnidin fought at the front. Four sons: Fedor, Ivan, Vasily and Grigory - all officers of the Soviet Army - died. Only Peter and daughters Alexandra and Nadezhda returned home - a military doctor of the 3rd rank.
The five Fedorov brothers endured all the hardships of this terrible war. The eldest, Pavel, died near the Chertkovo station in the winter of 1942, before reaching only a few tens of kilometers to his home, Vasily, an officer of the Soviet army, returned from the front disabled, Boris, Ivan and Alexander came shell-shocked and wounded, but until the end of their lives they worked in native horse farm.
Together with his father, Pyotr Gavrilovich Krupka, his sons fought - Mikhail, who died in December 1944. in Hungary, and Ivan, who returned from the front as an invalid.
The brother and sister of the Gladkovs Vyacheslav Mikhailovich and Nina Mikhailovna (Stepanova) and Gladkov Pavel Vasilievich returned to their homeland with a victory and, as befits front-line soldiers, selflessly, honestly and conscientiously worked at the Derkul stud farm. And there are many such examples, because this war has looked with its misfortune and grief into every family.

Our compatriots - Derkul's people, who were forced to remain in the temporarily occupied territory, did not submit either. The fact is that the evacuation of the Derkul stud farm was extremely unorganized and therefore unsuccessful. It was planned to evacuate in the first place the most valuable - the breeding stock of horses - and then livestock and household utensils. Herds of horses were sent to Voloshino - Millerovo with a subsequent crossing over the Don and further to the East. A herd of cattle and flocks of sheep moved through Vetrogon - Baranikovka and further to Sheptukhino. Herds of horses and cattle were accompanied, mostly by young men from Derkul who had not yet reached military age. But the turmoil, haste, of that time did not allow the plans to be implemented.
Thrown out by the Germans in the summer of 1942. the airborne assault along the Millerovo-Chertkovo line cut off the retreat and evacuation routes. The number of horses was completely lost. They were dismantled on the way by our retreating troops, the remaining part went to the Germans. Only those few horses that were presented at the All-Union Exhibition in Moscow have survived. And the herds of cattle and sheep returned back and remained partly in the second branch of the stud farm Vetrogon farm, partly in Derkul itself.
June 13-14, 1942 the Germans entered Derkul, and then the Italians and Romanians. A German wagon train was stationed in the stud farm, guarded mainly by Italians and Romanians.
The occupiers ruled our land for only seven months, but they brought a lot of grief and misfortune, although it should be noted that they did not show much violence and cruelty. The Germans did not stay here for long, the advanced units after a short rest went further. But the old-timers who survived the occupation recall that the Germans were aware that the central coaching stables and the stud farm itself were the brainchild of Catherine II, a German by birth, and therefore did not touch anything that was built by their Grosmutter (grandmother). The Romanians and Italians who remained here did not rage much. But the sweet life of the women, children and the elderly who remained in the occupation, for the most part, was not to be expected.
To the credit of our fellow countrymen - Derkulchan, it should be noted that they did not reconcile themselves and did not submit to the invaders and, at the slightest opportunity, they resisted, sabotaged the orders of the military commandant's office, established contact with the partisan detachment of Zharinov V.G.
In Derkul itself, a resistance group of 9-12 people was created under the leadership of the agronomist Pavel Nikolaevich Petrenko, the director of the Novoderkul school Demonov Ivan Frolovich and Komsomol member Vasily Kostev became his deputies. The group included communists I.V. Razdai-Bedin - manager of the second department of the stud farm on the village of Vetrogon, V.V. Onishchenko - evacuated from the Poltava region and remained in Derkul, several soldiers and commanders of the Red Army, wounded and surrounded and sheltered by local residents: senior lieutenant Alexander Fomin, Muscovite Arsen Molchanov, Ivan Belousov from Kovrov and several other local residents.
The occupiers forced the able-bodied population of Derkul to thresh bread, brought and stacked earlier in stacks on the Berestok farm. Threshing was carried out by the Kommunar combine. According to Veniamin Gavrilovich Cherkasov, an eyewitness and participant in those events, the underground workers sabotaged the orders of the invaders and often put the combine out of action. To this end, Vasily Kostev and his friend Semyon Kurganov, and sometimes attracted teenagers to this, like Veniamin Cherkasov himself, threw broken fork teeth, bolts into the harvester drum, poured sand into the engine cylinders, and cut the drive belt. As a result of stops and breakdowns, the harvester was under repair more of the time than it worked, and as a result, the bread remained unthreshed until the arrival of the Red Army units. The underground workers also managed to poison 36 horses of the German military unit stationed in Derkul. And before the retreat, the invaders ordered to drive the remaining cattle of the Derkul stud farm to Germany, but the underground workers, having learned about this, drove the cows and calves from Vetrogon to Nizhnebaranikovka, where our troops were already located.
School director I.F. Demonov managed to establish a connection with the "beard", under this nickname the former director of the Novospasovsky stud farm No. 87 was hiding, and during the war the head of the Belovodsk underground and the commander of the partisan detachment V.G. Zharinov. I would like to note the important role in the underground movement of I.V. Razdai-Bedin, manager of the second department of the stud farm. In general, the Vetrogon farm during the years of occupation was, as it were, a neutral zone. The Italians and Romanians did not often look here, they were afraid of the partisans, and the communist I.V. Razdai-Bedin managed to organize the supply of food to the partisan detachment, which was based in Baranikovka.
Meanwhile, the front was approaching Belovodsk, the artillery rumbles of a fierce battle unfolding near Chertkovo were already audible. Underground workers, mostly fighters and officers of the Red Army, were preparing to cross the front line. But in December 1942. literally a month before the release, most likely on the denunciation of a provocateur, the Germans learned about the existence of the underground and arrests began. I.V. was the first to be captured. Distribute Bedin and, after a short interrogation, was shot in the village. The site where he is buried. At Berestka, the Nazis managed to arrest Arsen Molchanov and Ivan Belousov. But at night they managed to escape from the basement, where the Germans threw them. They were heading towards Baranikovka, where our troops and Zharinov's partisan detachment were already located. Unfortunately, they were unable to leave. In the morning, the Germans who came to their senses literally overtook the fugitives in the Derkul forest, which is between Vetrogon and Baranikovka, and shot the unarmed. There, on the edge, they were buried, and after that their remains were transferred to a mass grave on the central estate of the Derkul stud farm.
Semyon Kurganov, Vasily Kostev and several other underground workers were also arrested and sent under escort to the German commandant's office, which was located in the village of Voloshino, and imprisoned in a basement turned into a prison. They were expected to be shot, but on December 22 they entered Voloshino soviet tanks and released the prisoners. Our countrymen, young Vasily Kostev and Semyon Kurganov, did not go home, but joined the 6th tank brigade and took part as paratroopers on tanks in a fierce battle near Krasnovka station, fifteen kilometers from Voloshino. Here, units of the Red Army blocked the road of Guderian's tank army, rushing to the rescue of Field Marshal Paulus's group surrounded by Stalingrad. The fact that 13 Heroes of the Soviet Union died in the battle for the Krasnovka station testifies to what extent the battle for the Krasnovka station was tense and decisive. Unfortunately, our countryman Semyon Kurganov also died in the battles for Krasnovka.
About the courage of our fellow villagers, about their boundless hatred for fascist german invaders says this fact. In the village of Danilovka German officer tried to get eighteen-year-old Efrosinya Voloshina to work in the canteen for German soldiers and officers. But the girl categorically refused. The next day, a German officer, now with soldiers, appeared in the Voloshinikh yard. But the girl refused again, besides, she boldly and defiantly scolded the Germans. For this, she was captured and thrown into the basement, and the soldiers began to rob her family's property. But Efrosinya managed to knock out the basement door, she returned, attacked the officer, tried to snatch the machine gun from him. The dumbfounded and frightened soldiers, shouting "partisan", shot the brave girl, and her body was forbidden to be buried for four days. Then the Nazis wanted to shoot her father, too, but he managed to leave the village.

But despite these cruelties and atrocities of the invaders, the hour of retribution against them was inexorably approaching. In January 1943, units of the Red Army, having defeated the fascist group near Chertkovo and liberated Melovoye - the first major locality Ukraine - moved irresistibly to the west. Streltsovka, Novospasovka, Baranikovka were liberated with fighting. In mid-January, at night, on the outskirts of Derkul, from the direction of the Vetrogon, Soviet intelligence officers from the 13th Guards Tank Brigade. Thirteen-year-old schoolgirl, pioneer Zina Kuznetsova, who often went to the forest for firewood and saw where and how the German positions were located, told the scouts about everything as best she could. This information was valuable for the Soviet command, and helped to liberate Gorodishche, Danilovka, Derkul with minimal losses. January 19, 1943 units of the 4th Guards Rifle Corps, with the support of tankers of the 13th Guards Tank Brigade, liberated Danilovka and Derkul.
Thus began a new period in the history of the Derkul stud farm - a period of restoration and construction of a new life.