Russia at war 1941-1945

wedges forward, they avoid frontal attacks, they get round us; they gain both time and space. The frontier guards, too, are fighting well, but few of them are left and we have no means of supporting them. And so the Nazis advance, insolently,

marching upright, behaving like conquerors. And that's on the very first day of the war! What'll happen after that?"

At that very moment communications with Minsk were reestablished, and General

Pavlov proceeded to give Boldin peremptory orders about the counter-offensive the 10th Army was to carry out that night. Boldin objected, pointing out that the 10th Army had been as good as wiped out. For a moment Pavlov seemed to hesitate, and then said:

"These are my orders. It's for you to carry them out."

What, Boldin reflected, was the meaning of these totally unrealistic orders? And he

related that, long after the war, he discovered that men like Pavlov used to issue such orders, "merely for the record, to show Moscow that something was being done to stop the Germans".

[Boldin does not mention the fact that Pavlov was, soon afterwards, to be shot for his incompetence—or as a scapegoat. Pavlov is also mentioned in Ehrenburg's memoirs as

one of the Russian generals he met in 1937 in Spain. He also refers to Pavlov's tragic end in 1941.]

The rest of this tragic chapter in Boldin's book deals with the attempts, during the 23rd, to mount a counter-offensive with the remnants of the 10th Army, some other units and the armoured corps under General Hatskilevich, which was still in comparatively good

shape. But all day long the troops and the army headquarters were being attacked by

enemy aircraft. One general was killed, and although Hatskilevich's tank crews fought bravely, they were beginning to run out of fuel. Boldin, unable to contact the Front headquarters, sent two planes to Minsk, begging for fuel to be flown to the headquarters of the 10th Army. But both planes were shot down.

It was in this desperate situation that Marshal Kulik suddenly arrived from Moscow.

[Kulik was a "Stalinist" upstart who had risen to the top of the Army hierarchy since the 1937 Purge. Little more was to be heard of him after the beginning of the war.]

He listened to my explanations, then made a vague gesture, and mumbled: "Yes, I see..." It was quite obvious that, when leaving Moscow, he had no idea that the situation was as serious as this. Soon afterwards, the Marshal left our command

post. When saying goodbye, he said he would see what he could do.

As I watched his car driving away, I wondered what he had come for... I had known him as a man of energy and will-power, but now his nerves seemed to have given

way. General Nikitin seemed to think so, too. When the car had disappeared in a

cloud of dust, he remarked: "A strange visit"...

A few minutes later Hatskilevich arrived. He was in a state of great agitation. "We are firing our last shells. Once we've done that, we shall have to destroy the tanks."

"Yes," I said, "I don't see what else we can do."

Within a few hours, General Hatskilevich died a hero's death on the field of battle.

Surrounded on all sides—like the other troops in the famous "Belostok Pocket"—without ammunition, the generals, officers and soldiers under Boldin split into small groups, and started moving east, hoping for the best... Boldin's small group of men, who picked up more and more soldiers in the woods in the course of their forty-five days' trek—in the end there were 2,000 of them—finally managed to cross the front near Smolensk and to join the main Russian forces.

There were countless other units who did not have Boldin's good luck, and who were