Where the Iron Crosses Grow

The beach around Eltigen was guarded by 5. Kompanie from II./Grenadier-Regiment 282, but its level of alertness was woefully inadequate. It took about 15 minutes before they realized that there was activity on the beaches. Finally, someone noticed something and called for artillery to fire illumination rounds over the straits at 0520hrs. The flares revealed dozens of Soviet craft on the water, which provoked a barrage of German artillery fire. The 2. Batterie of Marine-Artillerie-Abteilung 613, with four 17cm cannon, was located a mile southwest of the Soviet landing, and it began firing large-caliber rounds into the flimsy Soviet flotillas. The coastal artillerymen inflicted tremendous losses on the landing force, including sinking the barges carrying the artillery battalion’s 12 76mm guns. Nevertheless, the Soviets managed to land enough troops to secure a lodgment, and a battalion from the 1339th Rifle Regiment and the 386th Naval Infantry Battalion managed to overrun a battery of two Romanian 75mm howitzers on the northern end of the beachhead. Another Soviet battalion from the 1331st Rifle Regiment landed too far south, near the German 17cm gun battery, but the Germans could not see the troops on the beach in front of them due to cliffs, and the Soviet troops marched along the shoreline to link up with the main landing force. Once the sun rose, the Soviets were forced to suspend further landings at Eltigen until the next night. It is estimated that no more than 2,900 Soviet troops landed at Eltigen out of 5,700 dispatched, and that only a few 45mm antitank guns and mortars reached the shore. At least one-third of the landing craft were sunk or damaged, and hundreds of troops had drowned.¹³

Allmendinger was not particularly alarmed by the landing at Eltigen, which was incorrectly assumed to be a battalion-size diversionary force, so he ordered Oberst Karl Faulhaber’s Grenadier-Regiment 282 to mop it up. Inside the bridgehead, Major Dmitri S. Koveshnikov found himself the senior officer at Eltigen, with elements of several battalions mixed together. Initially, Koveshnikov had no radio contact with his division command post on the Taman Peninsula or with his subordinate units. Oberst Faulhaber pulled together the spread-out 5. and 7. Kompanie for a counterattack at dawn, but quickly realized that he was not dealing with a small diversionary force. By 1130hrs, Faulhaber had assembled a battalion-size counterattack with some artillery support, but in the interim Koveshnikov had finally established radio contact with the artillery on the Taman side, which he directed to pound the German positions around the beachhead. Soviet aircraft also continually strafed every attempt by Faulhaber to mass troops for a counterattack. Around 1230hrs, six StuG III assault guns from Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 191 arrived and led an advance against the northern side of the Eltigen beachhead. A Soviet penal company was overrun and destroyed, and Major Koveshnikov’s front line began to crumble. Only timely artillery support from the Taman Peminsula forced the Germans to break off the counterattack late in the afternoon. When night arrived, Petrov began sending more troops across to reinforce the Eltigen beachhead, and, despite serious losses due to mines and artillery fire, another 3,200 troops and nine mortars were landed. Among the new arrivals was Colonel Vasily F. Gladkov, commander of the 318th Mountain Rifle Division, who took command of the Eltigen beachhead. Again the Kriegsmarine failed to interdict the crossing operation.

Dawn on November 2 found Gladkov with three poorly armed battalions holding a half-mile-deep and 1½-mile-wide strip of land. In mid-morning, Gareis’s 98. Infanterie-Division began a counterttack with two infantry battalions (I. and II./GR 282), supported by six StuG IIIs, pioneers, and flak guns. Luftflotte 4 also managed to scrape up some air support, although the Soviet 4th Air Army strenuously contested the air space over the beachhead. Attacking both ends of the beachhead, the Germans were able to reduce Gladkov’s lodgment by half during the day, but Soviet artillery support from the Taman Peninsula inflicted significant losses on the German infantry, halting the counterattack. Faulhaber’s Grenadier-Regiment 282 suffered 110 casualties in the first two days of fighting at Eltigen.¹⁴ The next day Gareis continued counterttacking, and he received Stuka support from III./SG3 at Bagerovo airfield, but could not overwhelm the beachhead at Eltigen. By this point, the German forces surrounding the beachhead were heavily outnumbered by the encircled Soviet forces, but Gladkov’s troops lacked the tanks or heavy weapons necessary to affect a breakout.