troops. They started to slip away singly, in pairs, and finally, in large groups.
With the division on the verge of dissolution before ever seeing combat, its commanding officer acted decisively to curb the epidemic. Calling a general assembly of regiments, he stood before them and berated them for shirking their duties to the Motherland. The colonel charged his men with the same guilt as those who had already run off and told them he intended to punish them for cowardice.
His harangue ended, the colonel moved purposefully to the long lines of massed soldiers. A pistol in his right hand, he turned at the end of the first row and began counting in a loud voice: "One, two, three, four." As he reached the tenth man, he wheeled and shot him in the head. As the victim crumpled to the ground, the colonel picked up the count again: "One, two, three. . . ." At ten, he shot another man dead and continued his dreadful monologue: "One, two. . . ."
No one bolted. Nurses standing beside the formation sucked in their breath at the macabre scene. The colonel's mournful voice stabbed at the troops, ". . . six, seven. . . ." Men mentally guessed their place in line and prayed the colonel would finish before he got to them. When the last bullet in the revolver thudded into a man's brain, the commander shoved the pistol back in his holster and walked away.
An officer bellowed, "Dismiss!"
The order ricocheted across the parade field, and soldiers broke from formation and scattered in all directions. Behind them six of their comrades lay in a neat pattern on the grass.
Less than twenty miles south of this grotesque ceremony, the Germans clinging to the 16th Panzer Division hedgehog at the Volga faced annihilation. A Fourteenth Corps officer put it succinctly when he complained to Paulus: "If this situation continues, I can name the exact day when . . . we . . . will cease to exist." He was complaining about the supplies that were still blocked by Soviet interference.
A five-hundred-car freight train finally broke past Russian rail blocks on August 28, to deliver ammunition and food to the surrounded tankers. Its timely arrival saved the fiery General Hube an embarrassing moment. He had just agreed with irate staff members to pull back from the Volga and try to reach Sixth Army's main lines back at the Don. In five days of fighting against the factory workers of Stalingrad, Hube had not been able to reach the tractor plant. But now, replenished with artillery and mortar shells, the general turned his heavy weapons back on the militia holding the balkas at the northern border of the city.
In his underground bunker at Tsaritsa Gorge, Andrei Yeremenko scanned his maps, which told an ugly story. On his right flank, he had held Hube at bay with a motley collection of civilians and military units. But Stalin's attempts to interdict the German corridor had failed, and the 3rd Motorized Division had finally linked up with the 16th Panzers to seal off an eighteen-mile stretch of steppe running from the Don to Stalingrad. Also, the 60th Motorized Division bringing up the rear was about to complete the junction of the German islands and completely block any further penetrations by Soviet troops coming down from the north to reinforce the city.
In the center of Yeremenko's front, the main body of Paulus's Sixth Army was massing for a broad sweep over the steppe from Kalach east to the very heart of Stalingrad. And to hold this region, Yeremenko could count at best twenty-five thousand combat soldiers, the remnants of the battered Sixty-second Army, which was virtually destroyed in the Germans' pincers in early August beyond the Don.
Over on his left flank, southwest of the city, Yeremenko looked with some satisfaction at the defense line he had engineered in the low hills from Abganerovo on to Tinguta and Tundutovo. The line had brought German general "Papa" Hoth to the verge of apoplexy as Russian antitank guns pummeled his armor and
With the division on the verge of dissolution before ever seeing combat, its commanding officer acted decisively to curb the epidemic. Calling a general assembly of regiments, he stood before them and berated them for shirking their duties to the Motherland. The colonel charged his men with the same guilt as those who had already run off and told them he intended to punish them for cowardice.
His harangue ended, the colonel moved purposefully to the long lines of massed soldiers. A pistol in his right hand, he turned at the end of the first row and began counting in a loud voice: "One, two, three, four." As he reached the tenth man, he wheeled and shot him in the head. As the victim crumpled to the ground, the colonel picked up the count again: "One, two, three. . . ." At ten, he shot another man dead and continued his dreadful monologue: "One, two. . . ."
No one bolted. Nurses standing beside the formation sucked in their breath at the macabre scene. The colonel's mournful voice stabbed at the troops, ". . . six, seven. . . ." Men mentally guessed their place in line and prayed the colonel would finish before he got to them. When the last bullet in the revolver thudded into a man's brain, the commander shoved the pistol back in his holster and walked away.
An officer bellowed, "Dismiss!"
The order ricocheted across the parade field, and soldiers broke from formation and scattered in all directions. Behind them six of their comrades lay in a neat pattern on the grass.
Less than twenty miles south of this grotesque ceremony, the Germans clinging to the 16th Panzer Division hedgehog at the Volga faced annihilation. A Fourteenth Corps officer put it succinctly when he complained to Paulus: "If this situation continues, I can name the exact day when . . . we . . . will cease to exist." He was complaining about the supplies that were still blocked by Soviet interference.
A five-hundred-car freight train finally broke past Russian rail blocks on August 28, to deliver ammunition and food to the surrounded tankers. Its timely arrival saved the fiery General Hube an embarrassing moment. He had just agreed with irate staff members to pull back from the Volga and try to reach Sixth Army's main lines back at the Don. In five days of fighting against the factory workers of Stalingrad, Hube had not been able to reach the tractor plant. But now, replenished with artillery and mortar shells, the general turned his heavy weapons back on the militia holding the balkas at the northern border of the city.
In his underground bunker at Tsaritsa Gorge, Andrei Yeremenko scanned his maps, which told an ugly story. On his right flank, he had held Hube at bay with a motley collection of civilians and military units. But Stalin's attempts to interdict the German corridor had failed, and the 3rd Motorized Division had finally linked up with the 16th Panzers to seal off an eighteen-mile stretch of steppe running from the Don to Stalingrad. Also, the 60th Motorized Division bringing up the rear was about to complete the junction of the German islands and completely block any further penetrations by Soviet troops coming down from the north to reinforce the city.
In the center of Yeremenko's front, the main body of Paulus's Sixth Army was massing for a broad sweep over the steppe from Kalach east to the very heart of Stalingrad. And to hold this region, Yeremenko could count at best twenty-five thousand combat soldiers, the remnants of the battered Sixty-second Army, which was virtually destroyed in the Germans' pincers in early August beyond the Don.
Over on his left flank, southwest of the city, Yeremenko looked with some satisfaction at the defense line he had engineered in the low hills from Abganerovo on to Tinguta and Tundutovo. The line had brought German general "Papa" Hoth to the verge of apoplexy as Russian antitank guns pummeled his armor and
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