Occasionally, a public garden separated the housing complexes. On Sovietskaya Street, a bank interrupted the residential pattern. A flour mill intnided along Pensenskaya Street. Closer to the Volga, in a library facing the river, a prim matron handed out copies of books by Jack London, a favorite author of the young people.
Neighborhood stores tucked into corner lots competed for business. “Auerbach the Tailor” offered soldiers in ragged uniforms a dingy shop in which quick repairs could be made. Swarms of flies pestered women as they picked over watermelon and tomatoes at open-air markets. Beauty parlors were crowded with girls on off-duty time from war work at the factories.
In the Tsaritsa Gorge, Andrei Yeremenko had already scanned the intersection at Solechnaya Street to assess its military significance. He also examined labyrinthine side roads, off the Ninth of January Square. What really fascinated him was that immediately to the north of Krutoy Gully, the buildings abruptly gave way to a grassy, rock-studded slope rising to a height of 336 feet. This was Mamaev Hill, once a Tartar burying ground and now a picnic area. From there, a casual observer could see most of the city. The view was breathtaking. To the west, there was an uninhabited stretch of steppe country, badly broken by
Built in eleven months, the tractor factory had opened officially on May 1, 1931, and, when it was completed, it ran for more than a mile along the main north-south road. Its internal network of railroad tracks measured almost ten miles; many workshops had glass roofs to permit a maximum use of sunlight. Ventilation ducts, cafeterias, and showers had been added to the plant to make the workers’ lives more pleasant and productive.
On the other side of the main road, paralleling the eleven miles of industrial park, a special, self-contained innercity had sprung up to accommodate families of factory employees. More than three hundred dwellings, some six-stories high, housed thousands of workers. Clustered around carefully manicured communal parks, they were only a few minutes’ walk from summer theaters, the cinema, a circus, soccer fields, their own stores and schools. Few factory personnel living in this compound ever wanted to leave it. The state had provided almost every basic necessity and the model community that Stalin had fostered was a showpiece of the Soviet system.
From his mental perch on Mamaev, Andrei Yeremenko was not unduly concerned about the view north into the “economic heart” of Stalingrad. Even the most powerful field glasses of an artillery observer, should he chance to be a German, would not be able to penetrate as far as the tractor works, or past it to the uppermost boundary of Stalingrad, the Mokraya Mechetka River.
What alarmed Yeremenko about Mamaev was its staggering vista to the east—down the shimmering Volga, which was jammed daily with hundreds of tugs, barges, and steamers, whistling at each other in riverboat language and trailing wreaths of smoke as they navigated the channels between barren Golodny and Sarpinsky islands. The route they traveled, a vital artery of the Soviet war machine and necessary to any intended defense of Stalingrad, was completely exposed to the whims of the army that possessed the hill. Furthermore, the far shore, which was as flat as a billiard table and stretched into infinity, lay open to observation; so was its lush meadowland, once an amusement park for vacationers who went there to dance or to swim at the pearl-white beaches and to spend weekends at the cottage village near the shore. Now the meadowland was deserted. But through it, in time of need, must come the soldiers, ammunition and food for the relief of Stalingrad. And from Mamaev, an enemy could easily track every boat that left it.
Finished with his exercise, Yeremenko wearily pushed his map away and began issuing orders. Now, more than before, he was determined to dig in firmly along the line of hills that began near Abganerovo. Proper antitank defenses there should delay the German advance. But first he had to scrape up enough manpower for the job.
Above his bunker, a flaming red sun had set; the night air was uncomfortable and muggy. Civilians walked down to the relative cool of the river embankment, where a crowd of evacuees waited for a ferry to arrive from the opposite bank. In a waiting room beside the ferry pier, men and women filled pots of boiling water from giant copper kettles. Some used the water to wash clothing, others to make “tea” from dried apricots or raspberries. It was all they had left.
The dawn of August 7 engulfed the steppe country with a rush of blazing color and burning heat. In the gullies and hollows just outside the thatched huts of the village of Ostrov, twenty miles west of the Don River, Russian soldiers stretched and rubbed their eyes.
Tall, broad-shouldered Maj. Nikolai Tomskuschin faced a special personal dilemma. When, on July 15, he was ordered to take his artillery regiment onto the steppe to protect Sixty-second Army Headquarters, his superior had told him, “In the event of encirclement, save your men before your equipment.” But on July 28, Tomskuschin heard another command, this time from Radio Moscow and Premier Stalin, who told the Red Army to hold at all costs. “Not one step back” was the ultimatum Stalin issued.
As his men ate breakfast, German planes appeared overhead and Tomskuschin called Sixty-second Army Headquarters for further guidance. The line was dead. “Hello! Hello!,” he shouted. No one answered. The major dropped the phone and ran to find someone on the staff who could give him new orders. But he was stunned to find that Sixty-second Army Headquarters had disappeared. His commanders had fled to Stalingrad.
Trained for years to obey and serve, he hurried back to his regiment. In the next hours, German tanks blew up most of his .76-millimeter guns; Stuka dive-bombers burned the steppe grass around him with incendiary bombs. In desperation, Tomskuschin dispatched a messenger to the rear, to the bridge crossing the Don at Kalach, where he hoped there was some sort of headquarters. While he waited for orders, the blinding disk of the sun beat down, the Stukas hovered and dove. Casualties soared; by late afternoon more than four hundred men lay dead or wounded in the grass. The messenger never returned.
At twilight, Tomskuschin gathered his aides. “Assemble the men after dark,” he told them. “Head for the Don. Take everyone and everything that can move.”
He had made his compromise between conflicting orders.
In the sudden cool of nightfall, the men formed up and shuffled off to the east. Conversation was forbidden. Even so, weapons clanked against mess tins, and the troops cursed loudly when they stumbled. As the moon peeped fitfully through the clouds, Tomskuschin listened for suspicious sounds. Occasionally a rifle popped, but it was always far away, and the major whispered his troops on. Suddenly the darkness burst into a thousand lights, and tracer bullets ripped into the column from both sides of the road.
“Ambush!” Tomskuschin screamed. “Run, run to the river!”
The regiment stampeded into the darkness, but Tomskuschin stayed behind. It was quiet now, except for moans from the road, and he crawled into the high grass to await the dawn.
Lying under a brilliant canopy of stars, he thought of his family, safe in Sverdlovsk behind the Ural Mountains. He had not seen them for more than a year, since the war began and swept him to this wretched field. He thought, too, about his military career, irrevocably ruined since he had chosen to move back against Stalin’s orders. While he had no regrets about disobeying a senseless order that conflicted with his duty to his men, he had no illusions about the fate awaiting him back at headquarters. His offense was punishable by death.
As dawn streaked the sky, the major rummaged in a pocket for his wallet and took out wrinkled pictures of his wife and son, six-year-old Vladimir. He held the photos a long time before he put them down and reached for his pistol. As he raised the gun and fingered the trigger, the image of Vladimir seemed to rise up before him. He hesitated, wanting desperately to hold the boy in his arms. Even imprisonment in Germany might be better than
