Stalingrad

end, even though in the early hours of that day, General Lascar had rejected the Red Army’s demand for surrender. ‘We will continue to fight without thought of surrender’, he declared, but his troops, although resisting bravely, were without supplies and short of ammunition.
    The Soviet crossing at Kalach immediately put the XI Army Corps, to the north, in grave danger. It had already been fighting a defensive battle on almost three sides amid uncertainty and chaos, compoundedby rumours. This confusion was revealed in the fragments of a diary taken from the body of a German artillery officer:
    20.11.…is the offensive coming to a halt??!! Change of position northwards. We have only one gun left. All the others are out of action.
    Saturday, 21.11. Enemy tanks early… Change of position to the rear. Russians already extremely near. Own infantry (motor-cyclists and pioneers) called in for close protection. Today still more Romanians passed by without stopping. We’re pulling out. Already under pressure from Russians on two sides. New fire position. Only stayed a short time, then another change of position rearwards. Build a bunker.
    Sunday, 22.11. Alarm at 3.30 a.m. Ordered out as infantry! Russians approaching. Romanians retreating. We can’t hold this position on our own. We’re anxiously waiting for another order to change position.
    During this retreat, German infantry divisions found themselves in the open fighting off cavalry attacks ‘as if it were 1870’, as one officer put it. Their greatest problem was transport, mainly because of the shortage of horses. In some cases the solution adopted was brutally simple. An ΝCO would grab three-quarter-starved Russians from one of the prisoner-of-war cages to serve as draught animals. ‘When the retreat started on 20 November,’ reported one Russian prisoner of war, ‘we were put instead of horses to drag the carts loaded with ammunition and food. Those prisoners who could not drag the carts as quickly as the Feldwebel wanted were shot on the spot. In this way we were forced to pull the carts for four days, almost without any rest. At the Vertyachy prison camp, an encirclement of barbed wire without any shelter, the Germans selected the least unhealthy prisoners and took them with them.’ The remainder, the sickest prisoners, were left behind to starve and freeze in the snow. ‘Only two out of ninety-eight were still alive’, when they were discovered by an advance unit of the 65th Army. Photographers were summoned to record the horrific scene. Pictures were printed in the press and the Soviet government formally accused the German command of a war crime.
    The 376th Infantry Division was the most exposed to the Russian attack, which was ‘extraordinarily rapid’, according to its commander, General Edler von Daniels. The division, reduced to 4,200 men, when trapped on the west bank of the Don as part of XI Army Corps, pulled back in a south-eastwards direction on 22 November. Two days later, in the early morning, the division crossed the Don by the bridge at Vertyachy.
    The tank regiment of 16th Panzer Division had meanwhile been advancing, having finally crossed the Don on the night of 22 November to support XI Corps. On the way, it had managed to pass by its armoured workshops at Peskovatka, where some new and freshly repaired tanks were collected. From its position on the southern side of the German bridgehead in the Don loop, the panzer regiment attempted a counter-attack in the direction of Suchanov on 23 November in heavy mist, but was ambushed by Soviet infantry, in white camouflage suits, armed with anti-tank rifles. In the face of enemy strength, and owing to the acute shortage of fuel, the 16th Panzer Division was pulled back. It took up positions ready to cover the retreat, but communications were so bad that almost all orders had to go via dispatch rider.
    The German retreat eastwards across the Don, back towards Stalingrad and away from the rest of the Wehrmacht, was in many ways worse than the retreat from before Moscow, the previous December. Fine snow, hard and dry, drove across the steppe, lashing their faces, however much they turned their collars up against the wind. Despite the bitter lessons of the previous year, many soldiers had still not yet received winter uniform. The lines of retreat were littered with discarded weapons, helmets and equipment. Most Romanian soldiers had little more than their brown uniforms. They had thrown