Russia at war 1941-1945

positions, inside Stalingrad. The roads were crowded with refugees. Peasants from collective and state farms were migrating, with their families and their livestock, many also taking their agricultural implements with them, and converging on the

Volga ferries.

Chuikov, returning from a visit to the east side of the Volga a few days later, describes the scene at one of the ferries:

From time to time a German shell would burst in the river, but this indiscriminate shelling was not dangerous... From a distance we could see that the pier was

crowded with people. As we drew closer many wounded were being carried out of

trenches, bomb-craters and shelters. There were also many people with bundles and suitcases who had been hiding from German bombs and shells. When they saw the

ferry arriving they rushed to the pier, with the one desire of getting away to the other side of the river, away from their wrecked houses, away from a city that had become a hell. Their eyes were grim and there were trickles of tears running

through the dust and soot on their grimy faces. The children, suffering from thirst and hunger, were not crying, but simply whining, and stretching out their little

arms to the water of the Volga.

During the last week of August and the first ten days of September, the Germans were advancing on Stalingrad from all directions, despite stiff Russian resistance; they had great superiority in weapons, above all in aircraft. By September 10 they broke through to the Volga south of Stalingrad, near Kuporosnoye, cutting the 62nd Army from the 64th.

As a result the 62nd Army was isolated within an irregular German "horse-shoe" of which the northern tip reached the Volga at Rynok and the southern tip at Kuporosnoye, about twenty miles downstream. At the time, the German air force did as many as 3,000

sorties a day; the Russians barely did more than 300. Nor did the Russians have any tanks to speak of.

The enemy had complete air superiority. This had a particularly depressing effect on our troops; and we were feverishly trying to think up some solution... A part of our anti-aircraft defences had been completely smashed, and most of the rest were moved to the left bank of the Volga. Here the guns could fire at German planes

hovering over the river and over a narrow stretch of the right bank; this, however, did not prevent German planes from being suspended over the city and the river

from dawn to dusk...

By September 10, morale among the troops was still very low.

The heavy casualties, the constant retreat, the shortage of food and munitions, the difficulty of receiving reinforcements ... —all this had a very bad effect on morale.

Many longed to get across the Volga, to escape the hell of Stalingrad... On

September 14 I met the former commander of the 62nd Army [Lopatin]; I was