The Bloody Triangle

by Victor Kamenir

  Popel bitterly thought about worn-out men and equipment, used-up fuel, and combat vehicles that broke down and had to be abandoned by the side of the road due to lack of recovery means. But he kept his thoughts to himself, more concerned how to best break the news to his men.

  In order to meet the new time schedule, the VIII Mechanized Corps was forced to depart almost immediately, practically without any rest. They would have to retrace their steps back from Sambor to Drogobych to Striy, then north to Nikolaev and Lvov.

  By 2300 hours the corps was on the move again. The road from Sambor to Drogobych again became choked with men and machines. The 12th Tank Division led off, then the 34th Tank, followed by 7th Motorized Rifle Division. While the 12th Tank Division moved off around 2300 hours, the rear-most units of the 7th Motorized Rifle did not get under way until dawn. The long column kept telescoping onto itself, in spurts of stop-and-go in the accordion fashion familiar to most military men. The soldiers in units towards the end of the long column could at least catch quick catnaps in their vehicles.

  IX MECHANIZED CORPS

  Working in his office right through the last night of peace, commander of the IX Mechanized Corps, Konstantin K. Rokossovskiy, was still awake when a duty officer knocked on his door at 0400 hours.

  In an unconscious gesture which became his habit, Rokossovskiy rubbed his jaw. Four years earlier, in 1937, Rokossovskiy was swept up in the horrible wave of purges that all but swamped the Red Army. Arrested for close association with the discredited and executed Marshal Blukher, Rokossovskiy had undergone severe beatings at the hands of NKVD interrogators, and all of his teeth were knocked out. Now the fiery general of Russo-Polish ancestry sported a mouthful of metal teeth. After three years of incarceration, in May 1940 Rokossovskiy was freed, reinstated in rank, first appointed to command a cavalry corps, and, later, the IX Mechanized Corps, still in process of being formed.

  The duty officer handed Rokossovskiy a message from headquarters of the Fifth Army: he was to immediately open the secret operational packet. The message was signed by the deputy chief of operations section of the Fifth Army. This was very irregular, since only two people were allowed to give this order: Stalin or Marshal Timoshenko.11 Instructing the duty officer to authenticate the message through either the headquarters of the Fifth Army, the Kiev Special Military District, or the Defense Ministry, Rokossovskiy called together his senior officers.

  The duty officer soon reported that communications were out; neither Moscow, Kiev, nor Lutsk were answering. On his own initiative, Rokossovskiy opened the secret packet. He was directed to bring his corps to combat readiness and deploy in the direction of Rovno, Lutsk, Kovel. Rokossovskiy immediately ordered general alert. The IX Mechanized Corps was still in its peacetime garrisons, spread out in the areas of Novograd-Volynskiy and Shepetovka, and it took time to pull the units together. While his divisions were getting on the way, Rokossovskiy’s staff officers hurriedly, but calmly, were preparing orders and dispositions for individual units.

  Although the people were getting organized smoothly, the problems with equipment were immediately apparent. Only limited amounts of fuel, ammunition, and vehicles were on hand. Rokossovskiy ordered storage depots opened and necessary supplies and equipment distributed. After the war, Rokossovskiy ruefully recalled how he was almost thwarted in this endeavor by the supply officers. Unwilling to take responsibility for opening the emergency stores depots, the supply officers demanded Rokossovskiy’s personal signatures for every action. Rokossovskiy later joked that he never signed his name as much as he did on this first day of war.12

  Chief of staff Maj. Gen. A. G. Maslov, was constantly trying to establish contact with higher headquarters. Around 1000 hours he succeeded in talking for a few minutes with the headquarters of the Fifth Army in Lutsk. A harried staff officer on the other end of the line told Maslov that Lutsk was being bombed for the second time; there were no reliable communications and no news of what was going on at the border.

  Around 1100 hours Novograd-Volynskiy was overflown by a group of German bombers. Again, on his own authority, Rokossovskiy ordered his air-defense artillery to open fire, but no German aircraft were knocked down. This particular enemy flight apparently was on the way somewhere else, and the city was spared bombing for a time.

  At 1400 hours, the IX Mechanized Corps set off toward Lutsk along three separate routes. Traveling along the southern route was the 131st Motorized Rifle Division under Col. N. V. Kalinin, a former cavalry officer. Wheeled vehicles were worth their weight in gold, and Rokossovskiy, again acting on his own authority, took almost two hundred trucks from the district’s reserve at Shepetovka and gave them to Kalinin.13 Severely overloading his transport and having some of his infantrymen ride onboard tanks, Kalinin managed to get his division completely mounted and on the road. Being fully mobile, Kalinin’s division began making good time and moved ahead of the rest of the corps.

  Kalinin later lamented that he should have attempted to split his division along two roads to facilitate movement.

  The 489th Motorized Rifle Regiment under Lieutenant N. D. Sokolov was the first one to leave camp. The columns moved off along one road. The division immediately spread out to the length of 15–20 miles. By the time the leading units reached Rovno, the tail of the column was just leaving Novograd-Volynskiy. This clearly was a mistake. The march to Lutsk, of course, needed to be accomplished simultaneously along two roads. Then we would have arrived in Lutsk much sooner.4

  Following Kalinin’s unit was the 35th Tank Division under Maj. Gen. N. A. Novikov and 20th Tank Division under Col. V. Chernyaev, also traveling along one road each and experiencing similar congestion problems. Colonel Chernyaev was in temporary command of the 20th Tank Division, while its permanent commander, Col. Mikhail Katukov, who himself only took command of this division in early June, was sick in a hospital. Katukov was to catch up to his division within a week, still feeling effects of his illness. He rose to distinction during the war, commanding the 1st Tank Army during the Battle of Kursk, and was awarded the rank of marshal in 1959.

  As many other memoirists, Rokossovskiy mentioned a recurring fact appearing in practically all memoirs of the first days of war: an almost total lack of presence by Soviet Air Force. Most of these memoirists mentioned that the majority of the Soviet aircraft that they saw were either burning on the ground or scrambling from the airfields being bombed. Rokossovskiy ovskiy remembered encountering several Soviet airfields where burned and destroyed aircraft were lying almost wingtip to wingtip.15

  Riding in his staff car, Rokossovskiy sadly observed long columns of his infantrymen struggling alongside the roads in intense heat, walking through clouds of dust and carrying on their backs all their personal equipment and extra ammunition. The men resembled the pack mules, hauling machine guns, mortar tubes, and plates and ammunition for them.

  Each of his two tank divisions contained a motorized infantry regiment. However, these regiments were “motorized” in the name only. They were still very early in the formative stages. Being called “motorized,” Rokossovskiy’s infantry regiments did not have draft horses or wagons assigned to them while possessing roughly 30 percent of their assigned wheeled vehicles. Therefore, his men had to trudge toward the front under the weight of their equipment. During the first day of the war, the men of the two motorized infantry regiments of the tank divisions covered almost thirty miles, laboring under the weight of their equipment in the stifling heat. The tank divisions were forced to slow down in order not to outrun their infantry.

  His main worry, however, was the fact that he received operational orders as if he were commanding a fully manned and operational mechanized corps, not the weak facsimile of one. He was appalled that orders given to him treated his corps as a fully combat-ready formation.16

  Rokossovskiy described events of the first day of the war:

  After completing a 30-mile march during the first day, the main body of the corps, represented by infan
try, was completely exhausted and lost all combat capability. We did not take into consideration that the infantry, for the lack of any transportation, besides personal equipment had to carry light and heavy machine guns, 50mm and 82mm mortars, and spare ammunition. This development forced us to reduce the infantry marches to 30–35 kilometers (18–22 miles), which resulted in 20th and 35th so-called “tank divisions” to move on ahead. The motorized rifle division, having ability to load its infantry on trucks and tanks, albeit with an extreme overloading, proceeded at normal pace.17

  Even though the 131st Motorized Rifle Division had 595 trucks, it was only a paltry 37 percent of authorized 1,587 vehicles. Ironically, this division made the best progress and, after covering almost sixty-five miles, halted for the night near Rovno. In the tank divisions, all available trucks were allocated to carry supplies and ammunition, leaving the “motorized” infantry to march on foot.

  In the evening, while his exhausted men rested, Rokossovskiy called together his tank division commanders, Colonels Nikolay Novikov and Vasiliy Chernyaev. Together they worked out movement plans for the next day. They would send forward all the tanks with as many infantrymen they could pile aboard and part of artillery which had mechanized vehicles. This mobile group would be followed by infantry marching on foot and horse-drawn artillery. The mechanized echelon would leapfrog, moving forward and halting, waiting for marching infantry to catch up. Then they would repeat the maneuver. While waiting for the infantry, the tankers would perform preventive maintenance on their vehicles and refuel.

  One thing that Rokossovskiy was happy about so far was that he managed to maintain good communication with all three of his divisions and was well aware about the situation in his corps. However, throughout the day, Rokossovskiy was extremely concerned about the total lack of communication with the South-Western Front’s headquarters.

  XIX MECHANIZED CORPS

  Unlike Major General Rokossovskiy, who moved his corps as a cohesive unit, Feklenko’s XIX Mechanized moved in two echelons: the “mobile” echelon, comprising almost all operational tracked and wheeled vehicles, and the “dismounted” echelon, comprising troops marching on foot and some horse-drawn supply wagons and artillery. Colonel Tsibin described his 43rd Division’s departure:

  By the start of combat, operations division was made up of two groups: a) mobile group—tank regiments, each of two-battalion composition . . . and two battalions of motorized regiment on trucks; b) dismounted group of approximately 1,500 men, composed of parts of motorized rifle regiment and other specialists without vehicles (reconnaissance troops, combat engineers).18

  Lack of mobility of reconnaissance detachments was endemic among Soviet forces at the beginning of the war, and their effectiveness was largely negated. With their mobility severely reduced, Red Army recce troops could not provide their commanders with sufficient information about German strengths and dispositions or scout out their own routes of advance. In the similar manner, combat engineers were usually absent from locations that required their specialist attention.

  The 43rd Tank Division, in the manner similar to other divisions of the IX and XIX Mechanized Corps, experienced shortages of all kinds and operated virtually without instructions:

  During the march . . . division experienced major difficulties obtaining spare parts and petroleum/oil/lubricants, which had to be foraged for, with the [foraging parties] ranging out to 60-80 miles away from their units. During the march, up to June 26, 1941, there was no information from higher headquarters about situation at the front. Lack of intelligence information and situation reports did not allow us to correctly appraise the situation, especially about situation on the flanks. There was mostly conflicting and contradictory information about the enemy.19

  Ironically, and almost defeating the purpose, these foraging parties, while looking for resources, were, in turn, using up valuable resources themselves.

  1ST ANTITANK ARTILLERY BRIGADE

  Another person whom Potapov’s urgent telephone call ripped out of bed was Maj. Gen. K. S. Moskalenko, commander of the 1st Antitank Artillery Brigade. He was supposed to meet with Potapov in the morning of the 22nd and spent the night in Lutsk in a temporary apartment which Potapov provided for him.

  After Potapov informed him that they were under attack, Moskalenko immediately called Kivertsi to his political deputy, Battalion Commissar N. P. Zemtsov, and ordered an alarm sounded. Interestingly, Moskalenko did not inform Zemtsov of the nature of emergency.

  As Moskalenko’s car sped along the road to Kivertsi, he witnessed a German air attack on a small airfield housing about thirty Soviet aircraft. Not a single one of them was able to take off, with most of them burning on the ground.

  When Moskalenko arrived at his brigade’s base camp, he found everything quiet: soldiers were still largely in their bunks, no efforts to get the brigade ready to move were taken. As it turned out, Commissar Zemtsov, not sure of what to make of Moskalenko’s vague phone call, delayed taking any actions until the latter’s arrival.

  As Moskalenko rushed up the flight of stairs to his headquarters office, he was greeted by a smiling Zemtsov.

  “What, maneuvers started already? I keep hearing explosions and shooting, but our brigade is not taking part.”

  Moskalenko curtly cut him off:

  “The hell you say, maneuvers! WAR! The Germans attacked us! Can’t you hear they are bombing the airfield!”20

  Moskalenko and Zemtsov rushed to the safe containing secret mobilization packet. Hurriedly, Moskalenko ripped the envelope open. According to instructions, the 1st Antitank Artillery Brigade was to proceed southwest to Lvov vicinity, in the area of operations of the Sixth Army.

  Despite being directly subordinated to the Reserves of Supreme Command, Moskalenko had developed cordial relations with Potapov before the war. Naturally, not knowing what the secret mobilization orders would proscribe, both Potapov and Moskalenko assumed that the 1st Antitank Artillery Brigade would operate in the Potapov’s Fifth Army area of responsibility.

  Moskalenko immediately called Potapov with this unexpected development. Potapov was shocked:

  The situation along the front of the 5th Army is extremely serious: German troops forged the Western Bug River in the area of Ustilug-Sokal and are advancing on Vladimir-Volynskiy. Therefore, I am asking you, no, demanding, that you set off for Vladimir-Volynskiy and, together with the 22nd Mechanized Corps, destroy the enemy units which crossed our border and stabilize the situation!21

  While Moskalenko was very sympathetic to Potapov’s plight, he had to politely remind him that his brigade was subordinated directly to the Reserve of Supreme Command and had to carry out its instructions. Potapov requested that Moskalenko wait while he contacted Moscow or Kiev. Since the brigade was still mobilizing and not ready to move in any direction yet, Moskalenko agreed to wait for clarifications.

  General Potapov called back within twenty minutes to tell him that he could not contact either Moscow or Kiev. Moreover, they received news (which turned out to be false) that the 41st Tank Division from the XXII Mechanized Corps was hit hard by German aviation and suffered severe casualties. Therefore, Potapov on his own authority overruled Moskalenko’s original orders and ordered him to proceed to Vladimir-Volynskiy, which was about to fall into enemy’s hands. Moskalenko agreed with Potapov. After holding a meeting with his subordinate commanders, he ordered departure time set for 1000 hours.

  Both Potapov and Moskalenko very well knew that the punishment for deviating from the mobilization orders could cost them their heads. Courage to face their superiors was in far shorter supply on that fateful day than courage to face the enemy. Had more Soviet commanders, above and below them in rank, displayed similar qualities, the events of the border battle would have most likely unfolded differently.

  Moskalenko was pleased that his brigade was ready to move ahead of schedule. After a short speech, he gave a terse command: “Mount up!” Unlike the rest of the antitank artillery brigades sti
ll in the process of forming, Moskalenko’s units received all of its allocated wheeled and tracked vehicles. Therefore, he began making good time towards Vladimir-Volynskiy.

  Once across the bridge over Styr River, German aircraft carried out its first attack on Moskalenko’s columns. In his memoirs he wrote that despite very intense bombing and strafing, his units suffered only light casualties. Noting the unpaved nature of the roads, he remembers how the German bombs raised such huge clouds of dust as to completely obscure the moving Soviet columns. Even though the casualties were light, valuable time was lost reorganizing Moskalenko’s units and getting them moving again.

  By the end of the day, despite all the difficulties experienced while deploying forward, an impressive array of Soviet armor began converging on the threatened sector of the border. Panzer Group 1, commanded by General Oberst Ewald von Kleist, the strike force of German Army Group South, numbered less than eight hundred operational tanks in its five panzer divisions. Opposing them, the armored forces of the Soviet South-Western Front numbered over 4,500 tanks and 1,000 armored cars. Even allowing for the common disclaimer of roughly 15 percent non-operational vehicles, over 3,800 Red Army machines were converging on the German spearhead. The clash of the iron avalanches was promising to be a loud one. Halder’s diary seconded this:

  In Army Group South, Group Kleist was able to get its northern and central corps moving in the midday hours. If, as seems likely, they reach the Styr River still today, they will have to fight it out with the enemy motorized group east of Styr tomorrow and the day after. The outcome will be decisive for their operational freedom of movement.22

  CHAPTER 8

  Hold What You’ve Got! June 23–24

  June 23, 1941

  DURING THE NIGHT OF JUNE 22–23 almost no one slept at the South-Western Front’s command post. There was still no reliable telephone communications, and most of liaison officers sent to the major commands had not returned yet. News that did get in were often either discouraging or confusing. Colonel Bagramyan remembered: “Meager reports were coming in without any rhyme or reason.”1