The Bloody Triangle

by Victor Kamenir

  Repeated stern orders about not provoking Germans into hostile actions robbed many Soviet officers of needed initiative. Even with German shells bursting around them, many frontline Red Army officers sent off desperate inquiries: “We are under attack! What should we do?”

  VLADIMIR-VOLYNSKIY DIRECTION

  The main brunt of the assault by Army Group South fell onto the Soviet XXVII Rifle Corps of the Fifth Army. This Soviet formation covered the extremely important strategic direction. From the small border town of Ustilug, what passed for a major road lead to Vladimir-Volynskiy, then Lutsk, and on to Rovno, Zhitomir, and, finally, Kiev, the Ukrainian capital. Capturing this vital roadway was paramount in German plans for rapid destruction of Soviet forces in the Ukraine.

  Enjoying the initiative of launching the first strike allowed Germany to achieve maximum favorable concentration of forces at the place and time of their own choosing. At the Schwerepunkt (point of main effort) of the German invasion in the Ukraine, three under-strength Soviet divisions, plus several border guard detachments and machine gun battalions, were opposed along almost sixty miles of border by eight infantry and two panzer divisions of German first echelon.

  As the German commandos were storming the bridges at Ustilug, less than twenty miles away to the east, a little black staff car was bouncing over a potholed road, taking two lieutenant colonels from the staff of Soviet 41st Tank Division fishing. While Lt. Col. Dmitriy Vasilyev was enthusiastic about putting in some quality fishing time, division’s Chief of Staff Konstantin Malygin could not shake off gloomy foreboding.

  Before they had the chance to cast their fishing lines, the two officers were alerted by their driver pointing towards the border:

  Several red and green signal flares go up from direction of the border. Before they burned out, a far-off thunder was heard. Reflecting of lightening sky, flashes from cannon shots began blinking. Somewhere ahead, ricocheting, tracer bullets flew high. In the fortified region the earth rose up, mixed with smoke. We could hear chattering of machine guns, pops of rifle shots, thuds of shells and mortars.4

  Abandoning their fishing poles and gear, they raced towards their garrison in Vladimir-Volynskiy, a small town with several small Gothic churches. Their base was already a beehive of activity under sporadic bombing and shelling as troops from the 41st Tank Division hurried to get ready to set off for the division’s staging areas. As more and more vehicles pulled out the front gates, division’s artillery regiment, possessing only four prime movers, sat idle. Its commander, Maj. Nikolai Khizhin, and Malygin put their heads together and came up with a field-expedient solution to get some of the guns moving. The 41st Tank Division possessed fifteen old BT-2 two-turreted tanks, armed only with machine guns and protected by paper-thin armor. Virtually useless other than as training machines, these tanks at the end of their useful lives were detailed to tow some of Khizhin’s howitzers.

  At the division’s headquarters, staff officers attempted in vain to reach headquarters of their parent XXII Mechanized Corps or of the Fifth Army, both located in Rovno. Division’s commander, Col. Petr Pavlov, and his political deputy, Commissar Mikhail Balykov, were attempting to piece together the situation. One radio message came in from the division’s 41st Motorized Rifle Regiment, located separately some distance away in Lyuboml: “The regiment is fighting on the border under operational control of XV Rifle Corps.”5

  Not receiving any orders from above and with Balykov’s agreement, Colonel Pavlov tore open his sealed orders packet. In accordance with the plans developed before the war, all of the XXII Mechanized Corps to which the 41st Tank Division belonged was to concentrate in the Kovel area and protect it against possible attack from northwest. The envelope also contained a map with designated staging areas and routes to them. Following these only orders available to him, Pavlov turned his division northeast to Kovel, away from the fighting at the border nearby.

  As the 41st Tank Division began rolling out of its base camp, an urgent request for help came from commander of 87th Rifle Division, Maj. Gen. F. F. Alyabyshev.6 Alyabyshev’s division was responsible for covering thirty-four miles of the border directly west of Vladimir-Volynskiy. As German shells starting raining on his garrisons, General Alyabyshev began moving his units forward to the sound of the guns. On his own initiative, Pavlov detached one tank battalion from the 82nd Tank Regiment to assist Alyabyshev. Placing Malygin in charge of moving to Kovel, Colonel Pavlov stayed behind with the tank battalion to assess the situation.

  While the bulk of the 87th Rifle Division, hampered by German air attacks, advanced to the border, the only forces directly available to oppose the Germans around Ustilug were one engineer and three rifle battalions involved in construction of fortifications along the border.7 They were augmented by several platoon-sized border guard detachments and two machine-gun battalions garrisoning a scattering of bunkers belonging to the fortified region. In addition, just days before the invasion, Alyabyshev, without approval from above and at his own risk, pre-positioned one artillery battalion in the overwatch positions around Ustilug.

  A bitter fight flared up all around this tiny picturesque town. Following on the heels of commandos and recce troops, the main forces of the German 298th Infantry Division attempted to bull its way through Ustilug. Vicious fighting developed among the twisted cobblestone streets and muddy banks of the river. For the first two hours, outnumbered Red Army soldiers were able to put up stiff resistance, supported by point-black artillery fire and aided by narrow confines of ancient streets. However, effective German counter-battery fire forced the Soviet artillery battalion to withdraw east. Stubborn Red Army machine gunners manning bunkers along the river were largely neutralized by direct fire of German artillery and assault teams of combat engineers armed with flamethrowers and demolition charges. Left on their own, the depleted remains of 1st Battalion, 16th Rifle Regiment, and few surviving border guards withdrew east to link up with advancing elements of the 87th Rifle Division.

  By 0900 hours, as more and more of his units went into the fight directly from the march, Maj. Gen. Alyabyshev was able to somewhat stabilize the situation, temporarily halting the German advance by determined counterattacks north and south of the town. Alyabyshev’s riflemen were supported by the point-blank fire of his division’s 212th Howitzer Regiment and T-26 tanks from the 82nd Tank Regiment loaned by Colonel Pavlov.

  Several miles away to the east, Lieutenant Colonel Malygin was moving the rest of the 41st Tank Division north, parallel to the fighting, through the areas where the 87th Rifle Division was staging for a counterattack. The Germans were heavily bombing and shelling both units. He recalled a direct bomb hit striking a heavy KV-2 tank and setting it ablaze. Another KV-2 became stuck in a swampy patch of ground, common throughout the northwestern Ukraine. Since there was no way to pull it out under fire and with Germans approaching, its crew blew the immobile tank up.

  Just south of Ustilug, two other Soviet rifle and one engineer battalion which were employed in construction briefly attempted to prevent Wehrmacht’s 44th Infantry Division from crossing the Western Bug River in rubber boats and ferries. Despite stubborn resistance by Red Army troops, the 44th Infantry Division was able to establish a beachhead on the right bank of the Bug River and expand it to the depth of five miles. The 14th Panzer Division, following closely behind infantry, began shifting its main forces there. Finding themselves outflanked in the open, the survivors of the three Soviet battalions were forced to fall back, ceding the disputed eastern river bank to the enemy. A virtually unguarded gap of over twenty miles, thinly held by widely separated bunkers, developed between the 87th Rifle and its sister 124th Rifle Division to the south.

  Throughout the day the German 14th Panzer, 44th Infantry, and 299th Infantry divisions advanced into the widening gap, despite dogged resistance of Soviet soldiers in their isolated positions. By 1700 hours the Germans began flanking the 87th Rifle Division approximately ten miles southeast of Vladimir-Volynskiy, with Maj
or General Alyabyshev not having any reserves to plug the gap. His 341st Artillery Regiment used up all cannon ammunition and had to fight as infantry. Alyabyshev also received information from the XXVII Rifle Corps headquarters that on June 23 the 135th Rifle Division would be deployed in the gap between the 87th and 124th divisions. Alyabyshev, therefore, made the decision to maintain his position and continue attacking on the 23rd in the direction of Ustilug.

  In the evening of June 22, the bulk of the 41st Tank Division reached its staging area in the vicinity of Kovel. There were still no communications with the XXII Mechanized Corps or the Fifth Army. Whatever meager news Lieutenant Colonel Malygin could gather trickled in over the newly laid telephone line to the headquarters of Colonel Fedyuninskiy’s XV Rifle Corps at Lyuboml. The 41st Motorized Rifle Regiment belonging to Malygin’s division was by then fully engaged in fighting on the border and was barely holding the gap between the 45th and 62nd divisions of the XV Rifle Corps.

  Several hours later, Colonel Pavlov rejoined the main body of the 41st Tank Division with the remains of the tank battalion that was left behind to assist Alyabyshev. This tank battalion was one of the very first Soviet armored formations to engage the Germans in World War II. For a time, they helped hold Vladimir-Volynskiy, but at a steep price. Out of fifty T-26 tanks, almost thirty were destroyed. While advancing in support of Alyabyshev’s infantry, the light-skinned T-26s were severely mauled by German antitank artillery. Battalion commander, Maj. A. S. Suin, wiping away blood from a minor head wound, described to Malygin and other staff officers how some tanks were put out of commission even by fire of heavy machine guns. Lacking means to recover damaged vehicles and ceding the ground to the enemy, all the disabled vehicles of Suin’s battalion were irretrievably lost. Neither Pavlov nor Suin knew yet that Vladimir-Volynskiy, for which their men paid so dearly, was lost in the late evening after their departure.

  As darkness descended over Vladimir-Volynskiy, bursts of automatic weapon fire and sporadic explosions still ripped the night. Here and there, isolated groups of border guards were holding out in basements of their destroyed block houses. Some bunkers of the fortified region grimly hung on for days, waiting for relief that would not come. Border Guard Outpost #13 under Lt. A. I. Lopatin held out for eleven days and died to the last man.

  SOKAL DIRECTION

  On General Alyabyshev’s left flank, the 124th Rifle Division, under Maj. Gen. F. G. Suschiy, was responsible for roughly twenty-four miles of the border. The bulk of its units was stationed over twenty-five miles away to the east, behind a small town called Sokal. This tiny town, located on the east side of Western Bug River, was approximately eight miles from the border. The river, following the border in 87th Rifle Division’s sector, veers off southeast in that of the 124th, with less than ten miles of ground between the river and the border. This small land bridge gave the German advance the chance to pick up steam before coming into contact with Soviet field forces around Sokal.

  Racing through the thinly held border and bypassing resisting bunkers, forward elements of four German infantry divisions captured Sokal before the Soviet forces could set up effective defenses there. Red Army units, hampered by German air strikes, clashed in a series of meeting engagements east of Sokal with rapidly advancing German infantry, closely supported by the 11th Panzer Division. Major General Crüwell’s 11th Panzer Division went into action around 1000 hours and, with a reconnaissance battalion in the lead, quickly pushed east. Despite sporadic fire from isolated Soviet pockets of resistance, the division made good progress.

  The Soviet resistance was rapidly collapsing as the 11th Panzer Division expanded its front and was more of a nuisance than a serious threat. As Sergeant Alfred Höckendorf from the 4th Company of the 15th Panzer Regiment rode his scout motorcycle through the field of tall wheat, a wild artillery shot came from nowhere, rendering the motorcycle a total loss. For a short time, Sergeant Bergander and his panzer stayed behind with Höckendorf and his disabled machine. However, Bergander had to resume the advance, and Sergeant Höckendorf remained alone. From time to time, disoriented and dispirited Soviet soldiers in ones and twos chanced upon the German sergeant. A few shots from Höckendorf, taking cover behind the wreck of his motorcycle, were usually sufficient to convince the Russians to drop their weapons. By the time a German search party located Höckendorf, he was guarding a group of forty Red Army prisoners.8

  Soviet divisions holding this sector of the border were inadvertently deployed in a sort of checkerboard formation. The spaces between the forward-most divisions were to be occupied by the supporting divisions upon mobilization. In fact, the 135th Rifle division of the XXVII Rifle Corps, part of Fifth Army’s reserve, had been on the march since June 20, aiming to take up positions between its sister 87th and 124th divisions. However, when Germans struck at dawn of June 22, the 135th Rifle Division was still over sixty miles away from the border.

  By the end of June 22, the ever-present German mobile reconnaissance units found unguarded gaps between the 87th and 124th Rifle Divisions and their neighbors north and south. Quickly exploiting these openings, while pinning the Soviet divisions from the front, German follow-on echelons began flowing around their flanks. Nightfall on June 22 found the two Soviet divisions surrounded on three sides and out of touch with each other, their neighbors, and higher command. The forward elements of the 15th Panzer Regiment belonging to 11th Panzer Division, when halted for the night at 2300 hours, were actually behind the positions of the 124th Rifle Division, approximately twenty miles into Soviet territory, west of Stoyanov. This Soviet division was in especially bad shape. Two of its rifle regiments, when pushed back from their garrisons in small towns of Tartakov and Poritsk, lost their regimental depots and virtually all their supplies there.

  KOVEL DIRECTION

  North of the XXVII Rifle Corps, the XV Rifle Corps under Col. Ivan Fedyuninskiy also found itself pressed hard.9 However, not being astride main axis of German invasion, two divisions of the XV Rifle Corps were in a relatively stable position. Nonetheless, an undefended gap of over ten miles developed on its left, southern, flank between its 62nd Rifle Division and the 87th Rifle Division of the XXVII Corps.

  Opposing Fedyuninskiy’s corps and advancing close behind rolling artillery barrages, Landsers from the German 56th Infantry Division crossed the Soviet border at 0315 hours. Ferried across the Bug River in rubber boats and rafts, German assault parties captured intact the bridges south of Vlodava, and the main body of their division flowed across these vital bridges. Spear-headed by the advance elements, German XVII Army Corps began developing its attack along the Lyuboml-Kovel axis.

  As the first German soldiers were splashing into the Bug River, Colonel Fedyuninskiy was smoking at the window of his apartment in Kovel. Looking at dark spires of a small Gothic cathedral, he was tired, but could not sleep. There was a lot to think about. An unpleasant sound of telephone interrupted Fedyuninskiy’s worried reverie. His immediate superior, commander of the Soviet Fifth Army, Maj. Gen. Mikhail Potapov, was on the other end of the line. With tension in his voice, Potapov ordered Fedyuninskiy to return to his headquarters and stand by for Potapov’s call.10 With a sinking feeling, Fedyuninskiy did not wait for a staff car to pick him up and practically ran to his nearby headquarters. On the way there Fedyuninskiy could hear sounds of explosions coming from the border.

  Upon arriving at his headquarters, Fedyuninskiy found the dedicated military telephone line not functioning. He managed to reach Potapov by a civilian telephone line. Potapov ordered him to sound an alert, keep ammunition at hand, but not to issue it to the men yet, and not to fall for any provocations. Soon communications with Potapov were completely lost.

  Sounds of explosions from the border grew into a constant roar. A flight of aircraft with black crosses appeared over Kovel and dropped bombs. Half-dressed, panicked people were running aimlessly through the streets. Needing no more convincing that the real shooting war was upon them, Colonel Fedyuninskiy ord
ered his divisions to the border. In some places, units from the 45th and 62nd Rifle Divisions were located within seven miles of the border, and by 0500 hours Fedyuninskiy’s men were able to reinforce the hard-pressed border guards. (Note: There were both Soviet and German divisions numbered “62nd” operating in the same sector.)

  As everywhere else, the Soviet airfields around Kovel were being hammered by German aviation. When the bombs began to fall, the airfields were still on a peace footing, with only one or two aircraft per unit on standby. Dodging explosions and bomb craters, some of Soviet pilots managed to get into the air. In the few first minutes of the war, one of these duty pilots from the 17th Fighter Regiment, a senior lieutenant with the quintessential Russian name Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov, rammed his I-153 fighter into a German bomber, plunging both of them to their deaths.

  On the ground, resistance was stubborn, if disorganized at first. Soviet border guards in their bunkers along the Bug River near Volchiy-Perevoz, south of Vlodava, fought to the last man.11 Advancing German units became intermixed with the Soviet ones. Two battalions of the German 192nd Infantry Regiment from the 56th Infantry Division became cut off and were able to reestablish contact only during the night.12

  Commanding the Soviet 45th Rifle Division deployed north of the Chelm-Lutsk railroad was Maj. Gen. G. I. Sherstyuk. Already in his fifties, able and reliable, Sherstyuk still maintained the stiff-backed bearing of the former Russian Imperial Army officer that he was. Disputing every meter of swampy ground, the right flank of Sherstyuk’s division tenaciously defended defiles among the lakes around Shatsk.