Stalingrad.
The Battle of Stalingrad was one of the turning points of the Second World War, one of the episodes which Churchill termed "the end of the beginning", showing the world that the rampaging Axis armies could be stopped, could be defeated. Starting in end-July 1942, with German air attacks on the city and shipping, it finally ended with the surrender of Generalfeldmarschall Freidrich von Paulus on February 02, 1943.
On August 23, 1942, the 16th Panzer Division tanks reached Gumrak airport, 15 km from the city. 37 anti-aircraft guns belonging to the 1077th Anti-Aircraft Regiment opposed them. To the antiquated Soviet battle doctrine, an attack from this direction had been unexpected, leaving the anti-aircraft (AA) defenders of the airport without infantry support. According to the Soviet official report, they held up the tanks and mechanised infantry for two days, with those AA guns and obsolete rifles, till the literal last drop of blood. The report mentions that they accounted for 83 tanks and 15 other vehicles destroyed or damaged, over three battalions of assault infantry destroyed or dispersed, and shot down 14 aircraft. The tanks were tackled using the AA guns at maximum depression, at point-blank range, and over open sights - the most dangerous position from which to fight a tank! (source: Wikipedia - 1077th Anti-Aircraft Regiment)
After the battle, the Germans were shocked to discover that almost all the defenders (except the few officers) were young girls. Hardly out of high school, at an age when most young people their age would be thinking of college, or jobs, or parties and picnics, or boyfriends, these little girls had volunteered for this hazardous job!
The following may have been the story of one of them.
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Episode 2: In the ruins of Stalingrad, August 23, 1942
The young girl Soldier walked slowly to her appointed post, loader for gun no. 24, one of the M1939 anti-aircraft guns of the 1077th Anti-Aircraft Regiment of the Red Army. It had been over a month now, they had been fighting back those German invaders. Hitlerite hordes, the Leader (i.e. Joseph Stalin) called them. She didn't know why the German madman was attacking her country, but she did know that it was worth fighting for.
Her ancestors had fought Napoleon's Grande Armee when they had similarly rampaged through the great steppes. Her father was dead, somewhere to the northwest. Her brothers, both of them, had been drafted for the defence of Stalingrad, Stalin's city. She hadn't heard from them in months. She hoped her mother had managed to get out of the inferno that was Stalingrad in August, 1942.
Every day since the end of July, wave after wave of German planes had come over to bomb the city she was born in. They attacked the airport she was defending, along with the other girls from her school, and old Colonel German, their commander. The Stukas would swoop in like eagles, dive-bombing the buildings and defences. They had lost the fear of Stukas after a few days, and now sang loudly as they fought, to counter the banshee wail of the Stukas' dive sirens.
The other 7 girls reached no. 24 the same time as her, as dawn broke over the ravaged landscape. Silently, they settled down to their places. Colonel German was making his rounds, accompanied by his officers, all of them either old or crippled. It was only old men, cripples, and teenage girls who served the AA guns, all the fit men, and many older women, were in the infantry and armoured troops.
The very young, one-armed Sub-Lieutenant smiled at her. Two years her senior at school, he had paid attention to her, with his shining, starched, and crisply ironed uniform marking him as an officer in the Red Army. They had danced together that May. And then he had gone away, and returned only a week back, the empty left sleeve pinned to his now shabby uniform jacket, the youthfulness gone from the 20-year-old face, the thick brown hair streaked with grey. There was no convalescence for crippled Soviet soldiers that year. If you can stand, you can fight.
But she liked him. What would it be like to have a one-armed husband, she wondered, as she returned his smile, surreptitiously.
A dust cloud to the northwest seemed to have attracted the officers' attention. The Colonel was looking at it through his field glasses. Suddenly........"Tank attack"...... the alarm blared stridently, as the drone of approaching German aircraft hit their senses.
They kept busy those next few hours, fighting the swooping dive bombers. She fed magazine after magazine into the ever-hungry loading port, as her friends aimed and fired the unwieldy 37-mm automatic gun. Stukas dived down, sirens howling. Bombs crashed among them. Stukas went up in flames, spiralling out of control, drawing a smoke painting across the dusty sky.
The tanks broke in. And trucks, carrying the accompanying panzergrenadiers. An entire Panzer division. The order came, "maximum depression". All eight of them turned the wheels, till the barrel was horizontal. Just in time! There were two tanks in range, rumbling up like prehistoric monsters, their cannon hungrily searching for prey.
The five shots clattered away next to her head, as her friend fired the entire magazine at the leading tank. Armed with flak rounds, there was only one way the M1939 could take on a tank - at point-blank range, and fire as many as you can.
The tank went up. A huge volume of sound, flames leaping from the turret. Louder than anything she had ever heard. No time to think! The next magazine! Fast! The next tank was traversing its huge gun towards them. Another clatter, and another, and that tank too, ceased to exist.
She had lost count of how many tanks they had fought off. Her arms ached like never before. She knew some of their guns were down, and many of her friends were dead or injured. Two of their own crew were lying at their very feet, blasted by shrapnel.....from bombs or shells, they would never know. She looked at her friend, still firing the overheated gun. One of the prettiest girls at school, and now she looked a horror. Face blackened from the powder smoke, bleeding from shrapnel wounds. The Soldier knew she herself was in no better shape. The shrapnel cut on her head was bleeding, she had to wipe it with her sleeve every few moments to prevent the blood from getting into her eyes.
A giant fist hit them, lifted her off the loader's seat, and slammed her into the ground metres away, giving her away to darkness.
She blinked her way out of unconsciousness, looking around. The roar of guns, the crash of exploding shells, deafened her. She looked around for her gun, her indomitable no. 24. There it was! But who was that on the gunner's seat? Or what. She scrambled to her feet, gasping in sudden pain as her left leg failed her. Looked down, only a cut. She forced herself up, hopping on one leg towards the gun. The Thing on the seat had been her friend, now draped over the gun, unrecognisable as a human being, far less the pretty girl she had known since childhood.
She heard a whisper from near her feet. It called her by name. Then "Fire the gun, I will load". Still in shock, she looked down. And laughed hysterically. What would it be like to have a husband who has one arm, no legs, and one eye, she wondered. Then the Sub-Lieutenant of the Red Army spoke, harshly. Ignoring the blood-soaked rags on the stumps which had been his legs, the left eye hanging out of the socket. "Get on the bloody gun and help me on the loader's seat, you ******", he growled. "This not a bloody joke".
She bent down, kissed him for the first time. At that moment, the Sub-Lieutenant gave way to the love-struck boy. But the panzers wouldn't go away. The Germans wouldn't leave their country.
Somehow she managed to get the broken young man on the gunner's seat. Pull away the pieces of the best friend. The Germans must have thought her no. 24 was out of action, or the Gods she had been trained not to believe in, were looking after them. Whatever the reason, no shell fell near them, no Stuka released its bomb on them.
Teeth gritted against the pain in her injured left leg, she pushed the pedals, traversing the gun to the nearest vehicle, a truck full of infantry, as the shattered boy next to her loaded the magazine. Squeeze the firing lever. One truck less to the enemy.
Load again, fire! Load, aim, fire!
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That long, hot, terrible day in August this young girl and her young man fought on. They had dreamt together, of a family, a small house in some military post, getting progressively bigger homes as he was promoted. She would have been a doctor. And they would have been General and Madam Doctor.
If not for a failed Austrian artist with a death wish.
The official German account of the battle for Gumrak airfield notes that the tanks had to fight shot for shot with 37 anti-aircraft guns, manned by young women. There were no prisoners. All the little girls and their old, crippled officers fought to the bitter end.
Beautiful, heart tugging story
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