Russia at war 1941-1945

We had no tanks left, but I sent along several battalions of marines to fill in the gap... It seemed that we would manage, in the end, to close the breach. But here, unfortunately, a panic started. It did not start in the front line, but in the rear. It started among the medical personnel, in the artillery park and our transport units,all of them on the right bank of the river. They had heard from somewhere that theGerman tanks were within a couple of miles. In those days such a piece of news wassufficient to drive all these people in disorder to the river crossing. Through

channels unknown to me this panic spread to the front line troops.

To stop this mass of people and vehicles from rushing towards the Don, I sent

several members of my staff and my artillery chief, Major-General Brout, to the

crossing. It was all too late and in vain. Enemy aircraft spotted this large

concentration of people and cars at the river crossing, and proceeded to bomb it. In the course of this bombing General Brout... and several other officers of the Army H.Q. were killed.

By nightfall the Germans had destroyed the bridge, but one infantry division and some other small units were still inside the Don Bend. What happened next was only too

typical of the lack of coordination at the top on the Russian side. In Chuikov's absence, the Chief of Staff of the 64th Army gave orders to these troops to retire beyond the Don.

Arriving back at headquarters, Chuikov was appalled by this news, and promptly

countermanded the order which might have led to another stampede and panic,

particularly in the absence of any crossing in that area. The troops successfully dug in inside the Don Bend, and so filled the breach at the end of three days' heavy fighting.

Generals the world over have axes to grind, and Chuikov is no exception. Throughout

this narrative he contrasts good troops with bad troops, good leadership with bad

leadership. Thus, when he learned, at the height of the fighting inside the Don Bend, that General Kolpakchi had been relieved of his command of the 62nd Army, and had been

replaced by Lieutenant-General Lopatin, he was far from pleased:

A cavalry man in the past, General Lopatin had lately been in charge of an army

which, during the fighting on the Don, had become so scattered across the steppes that it was extremely difficult to assemble it again.

Plump and fair and outwardly very calm, Lopatin treated me to an excellent lunch

at his command post, but informed me that, in the absence of munitions, the 62nd

Army could not carry out the orders of the Army Group's chief of staff... I at once felt he lacked self-confidence, and doubted whether he could hold the right flank on the Don, since his troops were half-encircled.

[Yeremenko in his book {Stalingrad) defends Lopatin by saying that, since he was commander of the 62nd Army in July-August, he deserves a little share of its fame. To Chuikov he was a person to be got rid of as quickly as possible.]

Under constant air attack, Chuikov spent the rest of the day circling about the Don

steppes, looking for Lopatin's "lost divisions" Meanwhile, General Shumilov had been appointed commander of the 64th Army, and Chuikov was ordered to report to Gordov at Stalingrad.