Where the Iron Crosses Grow

Off to the south, flashes began lining the eastern horizon as Fretter-Pico’s XXX Armeekorps began its assault on Sapun Ridge. When Martinek began his 60-minute artillery preparation he had an advantage: prisoner interrogations had revealed the exact location of Skutel’nik’s 386th Rifle Division command post on the heights. The opening salvoes landed squarely atop Skutel’nik’s command post, severely wounding him and his commissar, as well as disrupting Soviet command and control on the Sapun Heights. Next, Werfer-Regiment 70 laid a blanket of high-explosive and smoke rockets on the Sapun Heights, focusing on the area held by the 775th Rifle Regiment and the 7th Naval Infantry Brigade. Fretter-Pico had assigned Sanders the mission of storming the heights, and he had formed a special assault force consisting of three infantry battalions (I., and III./IR 399, and II./IR 420), supported by the assault guns of 2./Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 249, a company of Pz III tanks, pioneers, and flak guns. While Martinek’s barrage was still impacting on the ridge, the three assault battalions began to move forward, but they suffered casualties from unsuppressed Soviet mortars and machine gunners on the ridgeline. However, the assault troops moved in rapidly and infiltrated through weak points in the defenses. By 0340hrs, the German troops had reached the Soviet trenches on top of the Sapun Heights and began close-quarter fighting in the positions of the 7th Naval Infantry Brigade. Adding to the Soviet discomfiture, the Romanian 1st Mountain Division simultaneously launched a five-battalion attack against the left flank of Skutel’nik’s 386th Rifle Division at the village of Novo Shuli. The Romanian mountain troops engaged in house-to-house fighting in Novo Shuli and cleared the objective by 0730hrs.[81]

Once both Petrov’s flanks were reeling from simultaneous blows, Manstein ordered Schmidt’s 50. Infanterie-Division to begin its attack at Inkerman at 0400hrs. Initially, Schmidt began by committing his IR 121 to clear the open areas north of Inkerman held by the combat outposts of the 138th Naval Infantry Brigade. Surprisingly, Soviet resistance began to melt away, so at 0505hrs Schmidt brought Kampfgruppe Walter (IR 32 and IR 122) and IR 123 into the fight to clear the Gaytani Heights and prepare to assault across the Chernaya River. Oberleutnant Erich Bärenfänger continued to aggressively lead III./IR 123, despite being wounded for the third time, but it was Major Willy Marienfeld’s II./IR 123 that was the first to cross from Gaytani to Inkerman. The 47-year-old Marienfeld was an unusual battalion commander: he had fought at Verdun in 1916 and was twice awarded the Iron Cross, but had left the Wehrmacht after World War I and became a teacher. Returning in 1939, Marienfeld proved himself again in Poland, France, and the Balkans. As Schmidt was moving against Inkerman, Fretter-Pico sensed that Sander’s three assault battalions were creating a breakthrough on the Sapun Heights, so he committed his reserve – IR 105 – to exploit this success. Far away in his command post, Petrov could not ascertain exactly what was going on, but he knew that his troops were under attack virtually everywhere. These were critical moments for Petrov, but he was uncertain what to do or where to commit his meager reserves. There were six T-26 light tanks from the 81st Separate Tank Battalion near the Severnaya Bay landings, but perhaps Potapov exaggerated the scale of the German landings. Some reports suggested that only a handful of enemy paratroopers had landed near the bay. Petrov decided to wait for daylight and more information.