Sokolov takes up the story: ‘When he arrived at Kavanye with his army, Voroshilov ordered the armoured train to guard Svatovo station, and deployed his left flank along the shore of the River Krasnaia. There was a heavy engagement at Mostki, and our men were forced to retire on Kavanye under cover of armoured cars. Information came in that the Germans were outflanking us, and so Voroshilov issued orders to fall back and we entrained at Kavanye.
‘Just before sunrise, a train on the right-hand track overtook a train on the left-hand track, and through faulty loading caught the other; as a result of which an open wagon of each train and an armoured car were derailed. The line was completely blocked, so, one by one, the trains were brought to a standstill. The sun was already colouring the eastern sky, and on all faces there was anxiety and alarm, as we knew that the Germans were in hot pursuit of us. Timorous words of advice from one to another could be heard, and these gradually passed to threatening demands to tip the blocking wagons down the embankment together with the armoured car. Suddenly the commanding voice of Voroshilov cut in:
‘ “What’s the matter, what are we waiting for?”
‘ “An accident.”
‘ “Get that car out of the way. Get that wagon back on the track. Not a nail is to be left for those German bandits. What are you standing like dummies for? Get jacks, crowbars, ropes, pulleys! Look alive!’
‘In a second the men were hunting everywhere for tools. Timbers to raise up the wheels were found and the men set to work casting sidelong glances at the army commander who was here, there and everywhere, getting a jack under an axle, risking the car slipping off the track on to him, or gathering stones to put under a lever. He was so enthusiastic and confident of success in shifting the weighty truck that the crowd submitted to his will, and within two hours the trains were running again, one after another, towards Kremennoie. The last train to pass through the town was the staff train, in which Voroshilov and his companions were discussing further operations.
‘When the train came over the bridge over the Donetz, there was a loud report and shrapnel whined overhead. A second shell followed and then a third, which struck the brige just as the last coach of the staff train crossed it. The armoured train which was now the last in the string rapidly came into action and silenced the enemy battery.
‘When the trains were under a ridge of country which stretched for some two and a half miles along the track, with buildings overlooking it from the heights, there suddenly came a rattle of machine-gun and rifle fire. Our first impression was that the Germans had surrounded us, but it turned out that a Menshevik organisation of the Sodovoy factory were aware that the Germans were drawing near, and thinking that we Bolsheviks were in full retreat had decided to attack.
‘Voroshilov ordered the trains to be stopped and the men formed up for an assault. The shooting ceased immediately and a deputation, including women, came hurrying down the hill to beg Voroshilov not to send a punitive expedition, as they were agreeable to hand over the culprits who had fired upon us. Although they had wounded men and killed one in the armoured train, Voroshilov agreed, and gave the order to move on.
‘A few minutes later we hear three gun reports and learned that the men in the armoured train had sent three shells smashing into the factory to revenge their dead comrade. Alyabaiev, who commanded the armoured train, was immediately summoned.
‘ “Did you order that reprisal?” demanded Voroshilov.
‘ “I did,” Aiyabaiev confessed.
‘ “Then take note I will not allow these terrorist tricks,” Voroshilov said severely. “We may be retiring now, but that is only temporary, and in order to ensure a friendly return we mustn’t leave enemies in the places we pass through. Make it clear to your men that your shells may have killed or crippled innocent people, and that we Bolsheviks do not make war upon a peaceful population.” ’
The railway line was only the thin thread which guided the retreating army; their detachments were spread out for several miles on either side of it, but Voroshilov soon grasped the management of this large military concentration. He found that the old method of doing everything in an office from a map and reports was quite useless. Each night he made his dispositions in the staff car of the train and issued his orders, but at daybreak he mounted his horse and, with a few of his staff, rode out to visit his principal units, and see for himself what progress they were making.
When the Germans advanced on Likhaia the whole army was threatened, as there were still eighty trains to come through the junction. Voroshilov was compelled to make a stand and fought a desperate battle. On the old principle that attack is the best form of defence, he flung his best units against the town of Goundorovskaia and here, for the first time, his men came into conflict with General Krasnov’s White Cossacks.
The Bolsheviks stormed the town and drove out the Cossacks. Spurred on by victory they felt no fatigue, and chased the retreating enemy for a couple of miles. Beside themselves with delight, they took up a position on a rise of ground, and began to paint pictures of further victories which would enable them to clear the Ukraine, but they had little experience of warfare, and did not realise that this was only a single skirmish on a fair-sized front.
The worker Mikhail Ovski recounts the engagement:
‘We had got ahead of the other units and had lost contact with them. Taking advantage of hollows and ravines the enemy outflanked us and our whole detachment would have been cut to pieces had not Clim Voroshilov saved us.
‘He observed the outflanking movement; despatched the other officers with him in various directions and then came galloping up to our hill on a foaming horse.
‘ “Retire at once,” he shouted; “you’re being surrounded on the right from the Donetz. Hurry or you’ll be cut off.”
‘We filed back through burning Goundorovskaia and behind it was a deep hollow which made a dangerous defile. It was only by the skin of our teeth we were able to get through it in time and save ourselves from the machine-gun and artillery cross-fire of the Whites. Had we delayed another half-hour it would have been too late.
‘The following day we found ourselves surrounded on three sides at Likhaia. The Cossacks were pressing us hard from Kamenskaia while the Germans were coming up the line from Rodokovo. A large number of our columns had met at Likhaia and the units were in great confusion. The incessant artillery fire from the enemy put many units in a state of panic, but in spite of that Voroshilov managed to save the eighty trains and the majority of the capable units after his first pitched battle, which raged for three days without ceasing.’
The trains crawled on through Likhaia to Belaia Kalitva, and now they had left the factory country for the open steppes. For spring it was surfocatingly hot; the steppe was like a furnace. Drawn up in squares, like the old British infantry formation, they fought off Krasnov’s Cossacks again and again. As they marched, in short, uneven spurts, the morale of the troops sank lower and lower; the hope of a successful break-through seemed an impossible thing, but Voroshilov was everywhere among them and wherever he heard despondent murmurs he waved his automatic shouting: ‘Who’s spreading panic! Who’s leaving? Show me the man and I’ll shoot him on the spot.’
Mikhail Ovski relates another incident: ‘In one of our biggest engagements, Voroshilov was with the Kharkov detachment and Mamontov’s cavalry bore down upon the column with cries that froze the blood.
‘A sharp order came from Clim: “Don’t shoot. Let them draw near.” The order was caught by the junior officers and passed down the line. The Cossacks came thundering across the grass waving their sabres. There was another sharp order: “Fire!”
‘Our men opened a hellish fire from rifles and machineguns, The front ranks of the charging cavalry seemed to stagger; men and horses rolled to the ground.
‘ “Comrades,” yelled Voroshilov, “follow me to the attack.” There was a tremendous answering “Hurrah!” from the men and the Red infantry poured down the hill like a flood of lava
on to the disorganised cavalry. We had used all our ammunition and had no cartridges left, so we went at them with the bayonet.
‘A Cossack colonel was immediately in front of us. Ivan Lakatosh, the Commander of the Kharkov detachment, did not shout but shrieked in an unnatural sort of falsetto: “Clim, Clim, shoot!” … An oath followed…. Voroshilov aimed. His automatic cracked…. The colonel seemed to jump in his saddle, his fur cap flew up and he rolled off his horse. Our men leapt at him, tore off his silver-mounted sabre and handed it to Clim.’
Again and again Voroshilov’s men were driven in, but again and again they rallied round the long lines of halted trains, crawling beneath them and using the wheels and wagons for protection. At last they reached the great railway bridge over the Don at Nizhniy-Cherskaia. It had been blown to smithereens and there seemed no possible way to get the trains over the broad river. Many of Voroshilov’s lieutenants wanted to abandon them and, taking only a minimum of stores with horse wagons, continue on down the banks of the river; but he knew that without the armoured trains to give them some protection they would all be massacred.
He refused to listen and dug himself in on a semicircle round the edge of the broken bridge with both flanks of this horse-shoe resting on the river, and for a month he sustained a siege in this position.
He had no materials to make a bridge, no instruments, no engineers, but the immense labour was undertaken of damming the whole river with earth so that it flooded over its banks, but railway lines could be laid across the embankment that dammed it.
One day while this work was in progress an armoured car was going out scouting in the direction of Pyati Izbyausk, so he took a seat in it. The car was driven into the heart of the White Cossacks’ territory and the chauffeur, being lost, pulled up at a farm. They had run straight into an ambush; the place was occupied by the enemy and suddenly there was a terrific burst of rifle fire from the farm buildings. The chauffeur panicked in trying to back out of the yard and got stuck, but Voroshilov reassured him that the steel plating was bulletproof. After fifty minutes of a hellish tattoo they succeeded in getting the car out; two hours later Voroshilov had issued the approprite orders and the Cossacks were driven out of the farm.
Men, women and children worked on damming the Don. Everybody worked, officers did not cease to be officers, but they were worker-officers; the bridge had to be made so that the armoured trains which were their base and only strength might pass over the river. The saying of a Tartar who was fighting in the partisan ranks ran through the worker-army: ‘The land-owner builds an iron bridge which can be blown up, but the worker builds a bridge of sand and the worker’s bridge is stronger.’ Krasnov made the most desperate efforts to drive the Red Army into the river, but at the end of thirty days and thirty nights of incessant fighting Voroshilov had his trains and baggage safely over the Don and recommenced his retreat towards Tzaritsyn.
Progress was slow as the Whites had torn up the railway lines for miles in advance of them and these could not be relaid at a quicker rate than three-quarters of a mile to a mile a day; so the speed of the retreat was reduced to this tortoise pace.
News now reached Voroshilov that Tzaritsyn itself was in danger. Its main railway cut, isolated from Moscow and the other centres of Revolution, it was almost surrounded by the Whites. The leaders in Tzaritsyn sent Voroshilov an urgent appeal to hurry, and now he was faced with a dual task; not only to save his own forces from destruction but to fling them into Tzaritsyn and so relieve the city.
Near the village of Morozovskaya a long and severe battle took place. Voroshilov’s force was completely surrounded and Krasnov flung great masses of his cavalry at the almost exhausted workmen; but finally Voroshilov broke through the ring and staggered on towards his goal. He reached it in the month of June—still fighting.
For three solid months Voroshilov, the untrained leader with his ragged bands, had out-manoeuvred and out-fought both the German Army and the great Russian cavalryman, General Krasnov. When history comes to be written the story of the retreat will rank with that of the immortal Ney, who saved the remnant of the Grande Armée in the terrible retreat from Moscow. By sheer will power and indomitable courage, Voroshilov, the ex-pit-boy, succeeded in conveying 35,00 non-combatant refugees across a thousand versts of enemy territory and bringing 500 trains with a great store of munitions and 15,000 fighting men to the relief of Tzaritsyn.
The Red Verdun
(TZARITSYN—LATER RENAMED STALINGRAD)
When Tzaritsyn was first attacked by the Whites the town was held by a defence committee headed by the Bolsheviks, Minin, Yerman and Toumak. The Bolsheviks were in a state of panic. Many of their detachments had to be disarmed on account of disaffection and others hung about in the streets refusing to obey orders.
Information came in that two Red concentrations were moving down on Tzaritsyn from the Donetz Basin, one under the command of Sievers and the other of Voroshilov. The Bolshevik, Serditch, tells us: ‘I remember as if it were yesterday a meeting at the French factory. The Chairman of the Tzaritsyn Soviet, Comrade Yerman, was asked: ‘What are these units? And who are Voroshilov and Sievers?” He replied: “Sievers is an officer, but according to our information he’s on our side. As for Voroshilov he is an old secret Bolshevik worker of Lougansk and absolutely trustworthy.” Messengers were sent off at once asking both groups to hurry to our assistance.
‘Shortly afterwards Voroshilov arrived with his battered army. The Cossacks were close behind him and pressing us on three sides. Our men were just resisting them as best they could, but there was hardly any central control of the defence at all. We all lived from hour to hour, each unit in the defence helping its neighbour as best it could, but hundreds of the men were loafing in the town, occupying the station as though it were a camp and living in the trains so that these could not be used for getting supplies in from the outer districts.
‘Voroshilov showed such vigour and determination upon his arrival that the Revolutionary Committee immediately appointed him to the command of all our forces for the defence of Tzaritsyn.’
Many of the men in his own army were so war-weary that they wished to call a halt. They felt that the city was virtually certain to fall to the Whites upon which they would all be slaughtered, and that therefore the sensible thing was to get the best terms they could from Krasnov by surrendering right away. They thought that Tzaritsyn was only one among many towns that were being held throughout the country by the Red forces, so that its surrender would not materially affect the safety of the Revolution.
Voroshilov, however, insisted that Tzaritsyn was the decisive point of the whole civil war. Under threats from the Allies, the pressure of the German invaders, and with anti-Bolsheviks flocking to the White’s standards in every direction, the power of the Kremlin was rapidly slipping away. A bloody fight was being waged upon the steppes outside the new capital by Tukachevsky, but even if he succeeded in holding out, Tzaritsyn meant life or death to Moscow. Not only was the town the key to the granary, but it was also the last hope of preventing a junction between the White forces of Admiral Koltchak and General Denikin. Tzaritsyn was the only Red wedge driven into the White armies and Voroshilov insisted to his comrades that they must hold it at all costs.
He immediately set about organising the scattered units, with his own tried fighters as the nucleus, into the Tenth Army of the Republic, gave orders for the strengthening of the defences at critical points and began preparations for a prolonged siege.
Tzaritsyn lies on the west bank of the Volga, but the mighty river bends sharply away from it on both sides, forming an angle: one arm of which runs north-east towards Saratov, Simbirsk and the Urals, and the other south-east to the Caspian Sea. General Krasnov’s army occupied the west bank of the Volga encircling the town on three sides. The railway to Moscow was cut, but the pointed east bank of the river remained open to the Bolsheviks and the river itself was still free although under fire. As long as the town held out they were ab
le, by running the gauntlet of machine-guns and artillery each time, to send long strings of barges loaded with grain up to Saratov, and from there the cargoes could be railed to the starving centres of the Revolution.
Only a short time before there had been music in the gay town park and plays had been given on the open-air stage, but now the place resembled a military camp. Government buildings, theatres, cinemas and big private houses were turned into hospitals. The prisons were filled to overcrowding with Mensheviks and Whites. In the streets and at every crossroad were patrols stopping all passers-by and examining their documents. Two cruisers, a destroyer and an armoured steamer lay in the Volga. Round the town itself, which formed a ‘U’ in the great salient of the southern revolutionary front, proper trenches were dug and barbed-wire defences put up. Communications were established with the Red partisans who were fighting on an irregular front along both the far-flung wings which stretched for several hundred miles. Soon Voroshilov was directing not only the defence of Tzaritsyn but the operations of the Red forces as far north as Archeda and as far south as Astrakhan. Even the North Caucasus and, for some time, the Red front at Baku came under his control. The total length of the line he was holding exceeded 375 miles.
When Voroshilov took over the defence of Tzaritsyn he not only became the fighting general responsible for this important point, but took a hundred other matters into his capable hands as well. As a metal worker of many years’ experience he understood munition plants, and to one who had slaved like themselves the factory workers responded to his appeals for co-operation in a way they would never have done for a regular soldier. He soon had the idle machine shops running again and staffed by willing workers, who plugged at it night and day turning out every sort of munition.
Gunmen, Gallants and Ghosts Page 25
