Escape from Stalingrad

I - Diary of a famished man

The roof of the floor was partially missing together with the right side of the building, courtesy of the Luftwaffe.We were moving slowly through the rubble on the first floor when the door burst in a million pieces hitting everyone with splinters. Two of us where now lying in the rubble covered with dust. The Nazis rigged a stick grenade and tied it to a chair, hiding the cable in the ruble. Sasha's legs were blown to piece along with half of his torso, he was lying there motionless. We got up, dusted off and continued through the building, no time to mourn Sasha. No time... 

It wasn't the first time the Wehrmacht 6th army booby trapped buildings. We were fighting them for every inch, every room and every street. We met them on roof tops where our snipers would blow their brains out or in the sewers where our comrades from the 13th guard would meet them in a blood bath.  

Supplies were scarce. We all had blisters but Alexei's boots were full of blood. How that fool could still walk was a mystery to us all. We hadn't eaten in days and the only water we could drink was from puddles outside. Some of got sick and started throwing up, ending up incapacitated. Most of the water was either dirty or with blood. The smell of gunpowder together with rotting flesh was everywhere. God has forsaken this place... 

Rattenkrieg (the battle of rats)- that's how the Germans named the battle. Continuously seeking to push back the Nazis had reduced much of the city to rubble. Most of the streets weren't accessible by vehicles and Nazi-free good places for our snipers where very rare. Our orders were to meet them in close quarter combat so that they couldn't order air raids over the buildings. It was a suicidal tactic but it was working so far. 

Our outpost was in a basement of what was left of one of the buildings near the Volga river. In the beginning we were 12, the close quarters combat and the constant shelling reduced the squad to 4. The last one to die was Sasha Nikolaevich, 20 year old private of 62nd army, conscripted 3 months ago. The first one was Arseny the first night after the Heer set foot in the city. He was doing reconnaissance on one of the crossroads when a sniper shot him in the stomach. Two of us rushed and got him off the streets but he died one hour later in agony.  

Tomorrow we rush on the eastern part of the city to take over a street of strategical importance. We will make our way through the houses and try to settle a reconnaissance point near one of the last accessible intersections. 

Mostly quiet today, which means the Heer are gathering forces in hopes of a new assault on our position near the west bank of the river. We received intel that they were expecting a fresh reinforcement of troops, we have to hurry with our plan to rush the eastern part in hope of a surprise attack.

It was 3 am on a cold morning when Alexei woke me up, we had to sneak into the eastern part. The distance was less than 500 meters but going through all that rubble without getting seen, meant it would take a couple of hours to get there. We made our way to the first floor through the fallen ceilings of one of the apartments in the first floor. We were going through the windows into the next building, the problem was snipers. We ended up crawling through the dust most of the way to the next building. It was still dark and you could only see at the light of the fires that burned in the buildings in the vicinity.

Me, Alexei, Anatoly, our sergeant and Bogdan. We got close to the end of the hallway on the first floor and the way was shut. The windows collapsed and a heavy block of the floor above was blocking the way. This meant we had to climb to the next floor and try our luck there.

It's then that we heard a diesel engine in the dark, a Panzer was nearing by. We had to exercise caution and not make noise, otherwise we would all find out graves in this pile of ruble. I went first through a narrow opening in the floor by climbing on Bogdan's shoulders, Alexei and Anatoly followed which meant we had to pull Bogdan up. When he jumped to reach for Anatoly's hand he missed and fell down on some glass from the shattered windows, making enough noise to let the whole Heer that we're in the building.

At that moment we heard the Panzer cupola rotating, they heard us. In the dark i saw Bogdan's eyes light up, his face change to grim despair. He got up and started running to the opposite way of the corridor. We were looking at him to through the opening in the floor below us till he disappeared from sight. Then we jumped, taking shelter. A large explosion shook the building, making a pile of ruble from the remaining third floor, to come on top of us, fortunately we were okay. Unfortunately we assumed that Bogdan was dead after looking from the whole down. The entire half of the floor beneath us was blown to pieces. Anatoly looked at Alexei and shook his head. We were getting fewer and fewer. We couldn't risk going anywhere for the moment so we stayed quiet for the next 30 minutes, hoping the Panzer would just go down the street. Finally after a while we heard the sound of the engine engulfed by the darkness. We dusted again and proceeded to go through the windows to the next building.