The author of the article was told about him in his distant childhood by his grandfather, a comrade in arms of the Hero of the Soviet Union, Colonel General of the Engineering Troops Arkady Fedorovich Khrenov. “Remember,” he said, pointing to a lean man of short stature with intelligent, calm eyes, in which a sly cunning was hidden somewhere deep. “This general did a lot for the Victory. Especially then, in ’41, when many had already lost faith in it.”
Contemporary of the century
Arkady Fedorovich was born in Ocher in the family of a factory worker in 1900. Contemporary of the century - that’s what he called himself and under the same title he conceived a book telling about the turbulent events of the 20th century. He had something to tell his descendants. Red Army telephone operator of the famous Blucher division in the civilian, the main destroyer of the impregnable “Mannerheim Line” in the White Finnish, the head of the engineering troops of a number of fronts in the Great Patriotic War, one of the first Heroes of the Soviet Union in the Kama region... He was appreciated by the main saboteur of the USSR, Colonel Ilya Starinov, and the writer - intelligence officer Vladimir Karpov, the poet Konstantin Simonov and the editor of “Red Star” David Ortenberg liked to argue with him about literature.
Leaving Odessa-mama
The evacuation of the troops of the Odessa defensive region, oddly enough, is a classic example of the highest military art. For the first time in the history of wars, a huge army, armed with sophisticated military equipment, in one echelon, secretly from the enemy, withdrew from the front line to the port in one night, then within a few hours loaded onto ships and was transferred to another strategic direction without losses. This looked even more advantageous against the backdrop of the sometimes panicky retreat of 1941, when they abandoned everything: weapons, equipment, and people. Arkady Fedorovich was then entrusted with the most responsible task: everything that could not be evacuated was to destroy, carry out mining, camouflage, disinformation. The general paid special attention to what seemed to be a completely non-military facility - the UNKVD state security house on Engels Street. The fact is that our intelligence managed to obtain a plan for the deployment of occupation troops in Odessa, which the pedantic and confident Germans, of course, drew up in advance. In the “house of the Chekists” the fascists intended to locate the headquarters of the Wehrmacht command, the bloody Romanian secret police - the Siguranza - and its no less bloody sister - the German Gestapo. At the suggestion of Arkady Khrenov, it was decided to prepare a surprise for the invaders in the form of a good mine, the charge of which should have been more than enough to bring the kingdom of heaven to both insolent warriors and executioners.
Surprise from General Khrenov
In order not to arouse anyone's suspicions, the Khrenov house was inspected with sappers under the pretext of placing rear guards from the military field construction department there for winter quarters. The “tenants” worked in strict secrecy under the watchful eye of the security officers. There were cobwebs hanging everywhere in the basements, they were not touched or removed - this was also an element of camouflage. The sappers knew that, according to intelligence data, above these basement compartments there would be an office of the future commandant of Odessa, a reception room and a meeting room. It took six days to complete the mining task: about three tons of TNT were laid. The igniter with the detonator was carefully filled with stearin to keep the primer from moisture, and the detonator was attached to the terminal of the radio receiver. For greater reliability, two 100-kilogram aerial bombs and two additional mines, set to non-removable, were placed in the underground. In case enemy sappers tried to open the stone slabs and neutralize the main radio mine.
To the music of Wagner
At dawn on October 16, the defenders left Odessa. General Khrenov sailed on the last ship. Only the underground workers remained in the city, who were supposed to report when the maximum number of fascists would gather in the NKVD house. Four days later, intelligence officers radioed to the mainland about the upcoming important meeting of the occupation authorities - right in the house on Engels Street. The information arrived on time, and Khrenov gave the order to use a radio bomb. In the evening of October 22, signals of a coded command went on the air, unnoticeable against the backdrop of bravura Prussian marches and Wagnerian music. When the last signal arrived at the mine receiver, a powerful explosion was heard in Odessa. The building was completely destroyed, down to the last stone, and under its ruins 18 generals, dozens of senior officers and more than a company of SS men found their graves.
“Well, now we have already completed all operations in Odessa, we are handing over the watch to our partisans and underground fighters,” Arkady Fedorovich then said to his sappers.
General and man
However, General Khrenov is known not only as a destroyer, leaving behind twisted iron, piles of ruins and mountains of enemy corpses. On the contrary, he was remembered by his contemporaries as a creator, a creator. The work of a sapper also means clearing enemy mines, restoring cities and villages destroyed by the war, building roads, bridges over water barriers - bridges to Victory (that, by the way, is the name of Arkady Fedorovich’s book about the hard times of war). Khrenov also did a lot for the development of military engineering science after the war: almost all famous Soviet sappers are proud to consider themselves his students. But perhaps the most important thing is that Arkady Fedorovich, with all the brilliance of the general’s stars, was never a martinet, a sort of Griboyedov’s Skalozub. Everyone who knew him emphasizes Khrenov’s exceptional intelligence, modesty and at the same time unshakable strength of character when it came to issues of honor, truth and justice. Even in front of the formidable and unpredictable Stalin in his behavior. And, as you might guess, all these qualities did not contribute to career growth and proper assessment of the general’s merits neither in Stalin’s, nor in Khrushchev’s, nor in Brezhnev’s times. Here are lines from the memoirs of war correspondent Ivan Dmitrievich Pyzhov, a friend of Konstantin Simonov: “We discussed all sorts of topics! Sometimes I would argue with him and disagree with something. And he? He will boil, jump off the chair, step aside, remain silent and say conciliatoryly: “Sorry, I’m probably wrong.” How important it is when the general does not kill the person in himself! Honesty, readiness in any situation not to rub one’s glasses in, but to insist on the truth, no matter how bitter it may be. At least in front of the front commanders, at least in front of the Supreme Commander himself, even in the situation of 1941, when everyone was nervous, unsettled by failures at the front.”
This was all the real Khrenov: the one who is no sweeter than a radish for cowards and selfish people, and a good comrade for those who did not give up in difficult times for the country, did not throw down the rifle and believed that after June 1941 there would be May 1945- th.
Risked his son
However, the war did not end with a victorious May for Khrenov - alas, he still had to suffer... In the summer of 1945, when the whole country continued to celebrate the Victory, Arkady Khrenov with the shoulder straps of a lieutenant colonel on his jacket and under the false name “Fedorov” was traveling to the Far East. The undefeated enemy, Japan, was still raging there.
Marshal Kirill Meretskov was appointed commander of one of the Far Eastern fronts, who greatly appreciated Khrenov, calling him “Totleben of the 20th century.” Upon his appointment, Stalin recalled the obstinate truth-teller: “You have a cunning engineer there with a caustic name who will find a way to deceive the Japanese. He fooled both the Finns and the Germans, and this is not the first time he has torn apart fortified areas.” And the front was given the task of quickly capturing the occupied Chinese cities of Harbin and Girin. Before the start of hostilities, Khrenov carried out detailed engineering training, and when the offensive began, the general proposed landing airborne assault forces on enemy airfields, playing on surprise. At first glance, it was a pure adventure, in which the command did not believe. “You will destroy people in vain,” they warned Arkady Fedorovich. However, he believed in success, and the following fact served as proof of this: the general’s own son, young lieutenant Pyotr Khrenov, took part in one of the landings, which was entrusted with the most difficult task. And the operation, daring in concept, ended in complete triumph with almost no losses, bringing the surrender of the Japanese troops closer by several weeks. By the way, this story was reflected in the Russian television series “The Order”, in which the role of our fellow countryman, an honorary citizen of the city of Ocher, General Khrenov, was played by actor Alexander Naumov, and the role of his son Peter was played by Nikita Lobanov. So, they still remember the humble general...
P.S. Well-known Ocher journalist Evgeny Pepelyaev said that when fellow countrymen wanted to name one of the city streets in honor of Arkady Fedorovich, somewhere at the top they protested: the name, they say, was dissonant. Well, it really has always been unfavorable: both for the enemy at the front, and for various hypocrites, sycophants and scoundrels in peacetime...
Text: Maxim Shardakov
Photo from the funds of the Ochersky Museum of Local Lore
Russian.
A native of the city of Bykhov, Mogilev region of the BSSR.
Born into a family Arkady Fedorovich(5.2.1900 – 29.12.1989) – graduate KUKS at Leningradskaya KVISH with KUKS (1929), Soviet military engineer and military leader, Hero of the Soviet Union, Colonel General of the Engineering Troops and Sofia Vasilievna, née Khondogo from Stary Bykhov.
 | Member of the Komsomol since 1941 Graduated from 9th grade of secondary school. In the ranks of the spacecraft from July 16, 1943. Instead of 10th grade, he voluntarily entered Military Engineering School in Bolshevo, Moscow region. Cadet. Participant Great Patriotic War . He fought on the Volkhov, 2nd Belorussian (from 2.1945), Karelian, 1st Far Eastern fronts. «… lieutenant Petr Khrenov. Yes, by that time my eldest son had graduated engineering school , arrived at our front, and I assigned him to a platoon in the 20th assault engineer brigade, away from his father’s care. I wanted the young man to fully experience front-line life and sapper service. But, being in Moscow, I decided to make an exception to the rules and took it with me - the brigade was in reserve, in Yaroslavl, and the trip to the activethe army could benefit the young lieutenant». Acting commander 3rd engineer 2nd Guards Oshisb 20mshisbr RGK. Guard Lieutenant. |
During offensive operations (7-8.1943) in the area of the villages of Porechye, Voronovo, commanding an assault group, broke through the enemy’s defenses and reached the specified line, ensuring the success of the battle for an important height. Under fierce enemy fire (2.1945), he completed the assigned task of equipping a ferry crossing across the Vistula, despite the failure of 3 subordinate officers. For a week he led the crossing. The brigade commander was presented (30.5.1945) and awarded the order Red Star(Project No. 1/n dated June 7, 1945, 20th Mshisbr RGK).
Company commander 2nd Guards Oshisb 20mshisbr RGK.
Awarded the medal “For the Defense of Leningrad” (delivery certificate No. 1051 dated June 7, 1945, 20th Mshisbr RGK).
Participant Soviet-Japanese War .
Under enemy fire, he skillfully organized engineering reconnaissance in the area of 3 tunnels near the station and the town of Pogranichnaya, identified the approaches and photographed the fortifications. During the offensive, he repeatedly clashed with groups of suicide bombers. NS brigade major A.N. Salomadin presented (28.8.1945) and awarded the order Patriotic War 2 Art. (Project No. 84/n dated September 9, 1945, 5A).
« The 1st Far Eastern Front was tasked with quickly capturing the cities of Harbin and Girin. Before the start of hostilities, Khrenov carried out engineering preparation and provision of an offensive bridgehead in Primorye. When the offensive began, Khrenov proposed landing airborne assault forces on enemy airfields, playing on surprise. It was a “pure adventure.” But it was impossible to allow the explosion of bridges across the Songhua River. The daring landings - operation codenamed "Bridge" - ended in complete triumph. A.F.’s son took part in one of the landings. Khrenova - lieutenant Petr Khrenov ».
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Continued his service in the spacecraft (SA). Guard senior lieutenant.
1953 – graduated from VIA named after. V.V. Kuibysheva. Military engineer.
He served in the troops of the Leningrad, Baltic, and Belarusian Military Districts, and in the GSVG.
1968 – graduated from the Higher VA of the USSR Armed Forces. Colonel.
Senior lecturer at VIA named after V.V. Kuibysheva.
1972 – teacher, senior lecturer at the Department of Engineering Troops of the Higher Military District of the USSR Armed Forces named after K.E. Voroshilov. Major General of the Engineering Troops.
1979 – Deputy Head of the Department of Engineering Troops of the Higher Military District of the USSR Armed Forces named after. K.E. Voroshilov.
On the occasion of the Victory anniversary he was awarded the Order Patriotic War 1 Art.
(1985).
Resigned (4.1987).
11.1987 – head of the secret library of the Higher Military Academy of the USSR Armed Forces named after. K.E. Voroshilov.
Place of residence: Moscow.
Married.
Died (11/26/1992) in Moscow. He was buried at Troekurovskoye Cemetery.
Difficult Spring
Awards of the Motherland. - Land torpedoes attack. - Unstable balance. - Before becoming a legend... - Recognition of the enemy. - Kerch Peninsula. - Lost defense
In February '42, a group of old Primorye residents were gathered to present orders. These were awards for Odessa. A lot of time has passed since then. We have been holding the defense in Sevastopol for a hundred days.
It was not possible to gather all the awardees. Some fought outside the bridgehead, others healed their wounds in rear hospitals, and others fell in battle in the Crimea. And yet, a fairly large group of comrades, named in the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council, ended up in Sevastopol. My name was also included in the list of those awarded the Order of Lenin. I did not think that my participation in the creation of Odessa defensive lines would receive such high praise.
This award, the first during the war, was especially dear. It could be understood in such a way that the command was satisfied with the engineering and operational decisions that were made in Odessa. And what could be more pleasant for a military man than recognition of his professional worth? This meant that both pre-war combat training and the lessons of the conflict with Finland were not in vain.
At the same time, another joyful event happened to me, which greatly lifted my spirits: I established a connection with my family. I. Frishman returned from Moscow, where he was finally sent with a report from the headquarters of the engineering troops. He also fulfilled my personal instructions: he found my relatives. It turned out that they settled in Kirov. That is why my telegrams did not arrive, and that is why my address remained unknown to my wife. Now, even before Frishman returned, I received two letters from home. Life was difficult for the family, of course, but no worse than for everyone else who was evacuated. The wife worked, the children studied. These news lifted a heavy stone from my soul. During this relatively calm time, I had the opportunity - both spiritual and physical - to somehow comprehend the Odessa experience, and the desire to write about it. I greedily took on the work that I loved and for which I always managed to find time at the expense of sleep and rest. The decision was also ripe to use a new weapon against the German defense - land torpedoes. Such torpedoes were serial wedges with remote control via wires 600 meters long. The weapon was removed and replaced with an explosive charge.
The production of these torpedoes was launched at one of the Moscow factories. The chief engineer of the plant, A.P. Kazantsev, who later became widely known as a science fiction writer, became an enthusiast for introducing them into production. While working in Moscow, I met and became friends with him. Finding myself in Simferopol, at the headquarters of the 51st Army, I remembered about the new weapon and sent an application for it to the People's Commissariat. They responded to my request surprisingly quickly. Literally a few days later, accompanied by Kazantsev himself, a batch of wedges arrived in Crimea. I ordered six pieces to be left in Sevastopol, the rest were sent to Simferopol. During those difficult, extremely busy days, I still managed to snatch a few hours to conduct exercises on the use of torpedoes.
The results of the exercise were encouraging. The wedges were easy to control and moved briskly through the mud and rain-washed soil. Satisfied, Kazantsev flew to Moscow. And we... We never had time to use this weapon, designed to influence the enemy’s defenses. The Nazis broke through the front. The combat use of torpedoes became simply impossible.
And now, it seemed to me, the right moment had come to catch up. The talk, of course, was not about solving any serious problems. The emphasis was placed mainly on the moral effect.
They decided to launch torpedoes on the left flank, in the fourth sector. With the commandant of the sector, Colonel A.G. Kapitokhin (he recently replaced V.F. Vorobyov as commander of the 95th division), we walked around the front line, carefully selecting targets for attack. Of the three targets we settled on, the largest bunker was of greatest interest. It stood on the outskirts of our former airfield beyond the Belvbek Valley, in the Lyubimovka area. The terrain between him and our trenches was open and level.
The torpedoes were in service with the radio engineering platoon of Lieutenant Löch - the same platoon from the 82nd Engineer Battalion that carried out the remote explosion in Odessa. During the calm period, the fighters repeatedly trained in controlling wedges and were fully prepared for their combat use.
Early in the morning of February 27, three pairs of tankettes crawled out of their shelters and, their engines rumbling, moved towards the German positions. A couple rushed forward, heading towards the bunker. We didn't take our eyes off her.
Light vehicles, not armed with cannons or machine guns and walking as if nothing had happened across no-man's land, aroused the enemy's intense curiosity. When they entered the enemy's defense line, the soldiers jumped out of cover and ran next to the wedges, apparently trying to understand what these outlandish things were. But then the self-propelled torpedoes approached the bunker, and the fighter-operators turned on the explosive devices... I still regret that we didn’t think of photographing this spectacle. The effect produced was worth it. The bunker was swept off the face of the earth. None of those who ran for the tankettes survived: there were a great many fragments of fragments from the explosion.
The second pair of wedges worked worse. She had to overcome a ravine, and when the tankettes got out of it, the Germans opened fire. The torpedoes had to be detonated before they came close to the target. They didn't cause much destruction. The enemy met the third pair with accurate artillery fire. Both wedges exploded from direct hits from shells.
We did not plan to use the tactical result of this attack, since we had no idea what it would turn out to be, since the weapon was used for the first time in real combat conditions. But the moral impact it had on the enemy exceeded our expectations.
Two days later I received a telegram from Moscow from L.Z. Kotlyar, who then headed the Engineering Department. Headquarters, he wrote, demands to report what kind of weapon and with what combat success it was used on the Sevastopol bridgehead. From the radio interception records it became known that Manstein reported to Berlin about our attack, and Hitler in response ordered a hunt for explosive wedges to reveal their secret. This order was impossible to fulfill: we no longer had land torpedoes.
I compiled a detailed report on the first experience of using the new weapon and sent it to Moscow.
At the end of February and March, we were especially looking forward to news from the Kerch Peninsula. But they came rarely - communication with the headquarters of the Crimean Front was poorly established, and we had a rather vague idea of what was happening there. They only knew that the troops were occupying the Ak-Monai positions, which at one time they were in such a hurry to build. The news also reached us that on February 27 the front tried to go on the offensive, but without success...
There were no more reinforcements arriving at our bridgehead. But ammunition was delivered, two companies of T-26 tanks and a division of guards rocket mortars arrived. All this was very helpful. And we felt a sense of gratitude that the mainland does not forget about us, shares with us weapons that are so necessary on other fronts.
However, the enemy did not weaken the forces blockading Sevastopol. Our actions aimed at improving our positions received increasingly harsh resistance. The Nazis counterattacked, in some areas they launched attacks, and not always to no avail. Intelligence revealed that units of one of the two German divisions withdrawn from here in January had appeared in front of us.
An unstable, but threatening to become long-lasting, balance of power remained, in which neither side was able to achieve decisive success without serious outside help. And more and more often we thought that we obviously could not avoid another enemy offensive.
In this situation, the engineering troops continued to do their job. I worked closely with V.F. Vorobyov, who temporarily headed the headquarters of Primorskaya instead of N.I. Krylov. Back in January, Nikolai Ivanovich, while touring positions, received a severe shrapnel wound and was hospitalized for more than two months. It was also a pleasure to work with Vasily Frolovich: he knew fortification well and attached due importance to it.
Lieutenant Colonel K. Ya. Grabarchuk became deputy army commander and chief of the army engineering troops. We quickly established a complete understanding. But I would be lying if I didn’t say that I still really missed Gabriel Pavlovich Kedrinsky, with whom I was connected by a common past and a newly strengthened friendship...
We did not stop working in the city. A reinforced concrete extension to the flagship command post was completed, thanks to which its premises expanded and became more convenient. New tunnel shelters were created for the population, and adits were equipped to accommodate new hospitals in case of need. But the main efforts of builders and sappers were still aimed at further improving the defensive lines.
The plan, adopted on November 30 last year, and the additions to it provided for the consistent development of the lines in depth until they merged into a continuous defensive line. And this plan was methodically carried out. In the second half of March, although the end of the work was not yet in sight, we could already note with satisfaction that much had already been done since the start of the defense. In engineering terms, the bridgehead's ability to resist enemy forces has increased significantly. Each new pillbox, each new trench made the soldiers stronger and less vulnerable in the event of an attack by the Nazis.
Many years after the war, I received a letter from Ivan Dmitrievich Pyzhov, who was an artillery captain during the Sevastopol era. He wrote, in particular:
<“I always remember with gratitude the military engineers who did so much for us. Here's just one very small episode. The command post of our artillery regiment was located on Sapun Mountain, closer to the Sevastopol - Balaklava road. Before the third assault, one night military engineers built a concrete prefabricated head over the command post in just two or three hours. Later, the Nazis dropped about 280 bombs on her, but she survived and saved people’s lives... How grateful we were to the sappers then! And for the lives saved, and for the fact that in the hottest days of the fighting they were able to direct the fire of their batteries.”
It was for the sake of these results that the engineering troops carried out their hard work...
One day - it was the twentieth of March - returning from the front line, I, as usual, stopped at the FKP.
Comrade General, you have finally appeared! - Oktyabrsky’s adjutant greeted me joyfully. - And the commander is looking for you everywhere.
What's the matter, what's the rush? - I asked. It was an ordinary day, seemingly not promising any surprises.
I can’t spread the news before my superiors - it’ll get caught,” the adjutant smiled slyly. I went into the commander's office.
“The time has come to part,” Philip Sergeevich stood up to meet me. - Congratulations on your promotion, Arkady Fedorovich!
So how?
Yes so. An order has been received for your appointment to the post of deputy commander of the Crimean Front. Congratulations.
I didn’t immediately find what to answer - it was too unexpected. Over the course of several months, I became so accustomed to life and work on the bridgehead that I simply could not imagine my fate outside the general fate of the besieged garrison. But an order for a military man is sacred. I had to get ready for a journey, a short one, to be sure, but one leading to a completely different world - to the mainland. And in my place, military engineer 1st rank Viktor Georgievich Paramonov was called from Tuapse.
The preparations were short-lived. I gave the last advice to my closest assistants K. Ya. Grabarchuk, I. V. Panov, V. V. Kazansky. I warmly said goodbye to everyone with whom I had become friends during almost five months of combat work in a besieged city.
See you soon in Simferopol! - they admonished me.
See you soon! - I answered, not at all imagining that this was the last time I would see many of my comrades.
And could I have foreseen then that in just two months terrible events would take place here that would draw an end to the eight-month defense of Sevastopol and forever connect its name with the word “legendary”.
We understood the inevitability of the next Nazi offensive and were preparing for it, but we had no idea what capabilities the enemy would have during the third assault, which began on June 7 and lasted almost a month. And these possibilities surpassed everything that had existed before. The Germans managed to ensure a twofold superiority in manpower, the same in artillery, including anti-tank and super-heavy mortars of 615 mm caliber. The enemy was more than ten times stronger in terms of the number of tanks, and almost six times stronger in terms of the number of aircraft. And what is very significant is that this time Sevastopol was tightly blocked from the sea by aircraft and torpedo boats. Only high-speed warships and submarines managed to break through to the city. It became impossible to replenish the dwindling forces of the bridgehead defenders from the mainland.
The garrison of Sevastopol fought the enemy with unprecedented tenacity and bitterness. What the city’s defenders endured was something only Soviet people could do. No matter how formidable the enemy was, the average rate of his advance barely exceeded 500 meters per day. And when he finally reached his final goal, entered the city, it did not look like a military triumph. Quite the opposite. As “an outsider” - an English correspondent in the USSR during the war years - Alexander Werth wrote, “the fall of Sevastopol was one of the most glorious Russian defeats in the entire Soviet-German war.”
In those June-July days, the events in Sevastopol attracted the attention of not only our people, but the whole world followed them. The interest in them was also explained by the comparisons that involuntarily suggested themselves. On June 19, German tank units in North Africa besieged the British base of Tobruk and, with air support, launched an attack on it. Despite large reserves of food, equipment and weapons, the garrison capitulated on June 21. 33 thousand British soldiers and officers were captured.
Somewhat earlier, in February, Japanese troops broke through overland to Singapore, the British naval fortress in Southeast Asia. The fortress had 15- and 9-inch coastal defense artillery, a large garrison, and airfields. In terms of geographical location and the forces defending it, it was in many ways comparable to Sevastopol. On February 8, after a week of preparation, the Japanese crossed the narrow Strait of Johor, separating the island of Singapore from the mainland, and captured airfields and reservoirs. A week later the fortress capitulated.
Against such a background, the eight-month defense of the Black Sea stronghold seemed to bourgeois observers a mysterious phenomenon. It was difficult for them to understand how purely spiritual factors: Soviet patriotism, socialist ideology, selfless readiness to defend every inch of land in the name of common victory - could turn into a real force that was necessary for the strength of the defense.
<“Everything has its limits, including human capabilities. The defenders of Sevastopol raised this limit to unprecedented heights. Belgium did not resist even five days, Holland - four days, huge France was defeated in 16 days, and a small group of Russian troops in Sevastopol continued to resist for many months. The struggle of the defenders of Sevastopol is an example of heroism,”
One of the Turkish journalists wrote in those days.
Correspondence appeared in a Hamburg newspaper containing the following assessment:
<“Sevastopol turned out to be the most impregnable fortress in the world. German soldiers have never encountered a defense of such strength.”
However, even the enemy’s assessment could not be different: Hitler’s propaganda machine had to somehow explain the months-long trampling of Wehrmacht soldiers on the Sevastopol lines, the snail’s pace of the third assault!
I did not have the opportunity to become either a participant or an eyewitness to the events that unfolded in Sevastopol in June - July forty-two. Therefore, I do not undertake to describe either the general picture of the third assault or the exploits of the defending Soviet warrior-heroes. I will not examine the operational-strategic consequences of the Sevastopol defense, which pinned down large Nazi forces and influenced the entire course of the war in the south - this issue, quite fully covered in military literature, goes beyond the memoirs of the engineer chief of the defensive region.
But it seems to me that it should be said about the qualities of our fortification, about what an obstacle the lines we equipped became on the enemy’s path. And it is best to do this through the mouths of those who had to overcome them in many days of stubborn battles - through the mouths of representatives of the Wehrmacht,
“The built pillboxes and bunkers on the lines of ground defense (we are talking about the fourth sector. - A. Kh.) were reinforced with machine gun nests, rifle trenches, points and ditches... They were built quickly. The speed of their construction was decisively influenced by the inherent Russian ability to build such structures, as well as the use of all the forces and means at their disposal...
Given the tenacity of the defender, the attacker had to overcome this defensive system, suppressing each point separately. Strongholds had to be knocked out by artillery and a smoke screen to capture them by attack from the rear...
In the Southern (that is, the first. - L. X.) sector, there were undoubtedly defense centers, but it was not possible to detect them either with the help of aerial photography or with the help of observations from the ground. Narrow communication passages, deep and narrow pits, machine gun nests, concrete pillboxes with machine guns and guns, tank infantry pickets, minefields, and a number of lighting points were scattered everywhere and presented thankless targets for both artillery and air fire.
More powerful structures: armored observation posts, armored guns, concrete pillboxes, etc. were located in such a way that it was difficult to find them among the mass of others, so a fight with each of them was required. Each fighter was left to his own devices and defended himself stubbornly and fiercely, to the point of self-sacrifice.”
These lines from the official report of the Nazis, which ended up in our hands after the war, are quite objective evidence, since the document was intended for internal use.
The military engineers, sappers, and builders who participated in the creation and equipment of the Sevastopol defensive lines accomplished a tremendous feat in a short period of time. Unfortunately, most of them died during the third assault. Among the leaders of engineering defense, military engineers of the 1st rank V. G. Paramonov and I. V. Saenko, Colonel V. V. Kazansky, Lieutenant Colonels K. Ya. Grabarchuk and I. D. Kolesetsky were no longer there...
But let's return to the events at which I interrupted the story.
On the evening of March 30, Frishman and I boarded the leader “Kharkov”, which, with the onset of darkness, left Sevastopol heading for Novorossiysk - no other opportunity to the mainland was expected in the near future. The transition went smoothly, and on April 1 I set foot on the Novorossiysk pier. The first person I saw there was Nikolai Mikhailovich Kulakov. Shortly before this, he had gone on official business to the Caucasus and was now planning to return to his place on the Kharkov, which was used for loading ammunition for Sevastopol.
Nikolai Mikhailovich was the first to bring me up to date with what was happening in the Caucasus and on the Crimean Front. Having said goodbye to him, I went to the commander of the Novorossiysk naval base, Captain 1st Rank G.N. Kholostyakov. We met. Georgy Nikitich, a short, agile, very energetic man, was also aware of the situation on the Kerch Peninsula. The main flow of people and cargo, feeding the troops of the Crimean Front, passed through the base he headed.
Listening to him, perhaps for the first time I clearly imagined all the difficulties that were associated with feeding the armies landing on Crimean soil. In January, the Kerch Strait was frozen. We had just established an ice crossing from Taman when a thaw set in. The crossing is out of order. The slush that formed on the site of the ice cover made the strait inaccessible for ships. Only one gate remained open - Feodosia.
Fortunately, even more severe frosts soon struck, the strait became clear again, and the ice roads remained until spring. In the meantime, the power of the front again fell entirely on the ships, although the strait had not yet been completely cleared of ice. Interruptions in supplies and reinforcements apparently seriously affected the front's attempts to go on the offensive.
All of the above circumstances were known to me in general terms, but now they formed a whole picture, which I looked at through the eyes of a deeply interested person. And then I understood with utmost clarity: the Kerch bridgehead is, of course, not besieged Sevastopol, but also not the Great Land in the full sense of the word...
On the morning of April 2, we approached Kerch on a patrol boat provided by Kholostyakov. German bombers hovered over the city, taking turns diving. Black columns of explosions rose above the blocks. The tracks of anti-aircraft guns, pale in the daylight, stretched into the sky, and shells exploding next to the planes left black clouds. When we moored at the port pier, the raid was already over. They showed me the way to the location of the naval base. She was quite close.
On the territory of the base there were fresh craters gaping and bitter smoke smoking. A team of sailors quickly dismantled the ruins of a small house. A sailor with rear admiral's stripes was pulled out of the ruins and led out under the arms. I did not immediately recognize him as the commander of the Kerch base A.S. Frolov, with whom I had been briefly acquainted before. Alexander Sergeevich looked bad. He was taken aside and sat on a box.
He soon caught his breath and declared that he did not need any help. We talked about affairs on the peninsula, and my ideas about them became much more complete.
Frolov ordered that I be taken to Leninskoye, where the field administration of the Crimean Front was located, and on the same day I introduced myself to the commander, Lieutenant General D.T. Kozlov. We knew each other a little from the Finnish campaign, and the meeting turned out to be humanly simple and relaxed. Dmitry Timofeevich spoke a lot and willingly about the situation, resorting to the help of a map, about the difficulties that were innumerable and which prevented the launch of a decisive offensive. And now, in particular, the spring thaw turned out to be a very serious obstacle, turning all the roads into a liquid mess.
I wanted to understand and accept the commander’s point of view, but I did not feel internal agreement with him. I did not understand, for example, why after the landing of three armies on the peninsula, a whole chain of objective reasons prevented the development of the offensive and forced the front to stop at the Ak-Monai positions, Feodosia. Didn't operational surprise and numerical superiority belong to the category of objective factors? Couldn't they have been used more effectively with strong intentions and skillful leadership? Or now, when the spring thaw hampered the maneuver of forces (by the way, not only for us, but also for the enemy too), when the insufficient preparation of some formations made it difficult to conduct active operations - which forced the command to pull all the armies into one line along the front, without seriously taking care about your own defense?
Of course, I couldn’t and didn’t ask the commander these questions: I wasn’t sent here for an inspection, and I didn’t want to look like a critical wise guy. And I still knew the situation superficially - from stories, and not from my own observations. For now, it was more important to understand what tasks were set for me, what was expected of me. As it turned out, they were waiting for measures to ensure the offensive: the preparation of sappers to clear mines from enemy barriers, the construction of bridges and roads capable of passing T-34 and KV tanks that appeared on the bridgehead. Things have been slow in this regard so far.
From the commander, I went to the chief of staff, Major General P. P. Vechny, then talked with a member of the Military Council, divisional commissar F. A. Shamanin, with whom I served together back when he was the military commissar of the sapper battalion. Having thus enriched my understanding of the situation, I crossed a small rural square and found myself in the house where the representative of the Headquarters, Army Commissar 1st Rank L. Z. Mehlis lived.
We met like good friends.
“I must admit, I had a hand in your transfer here,” he said. - Well, tell me about Odessa, about Sevastopol, I want to hear everything first-hand.
We talked all night. Lev Zakharovich recalled how attempts to launch an offensive were thwarted three times, complained about the unfortunate circumstances, and mentioned the “defensive psychology of some generals.”
The former chief of staff looked back, not forward, he said. - I replaced it with the Eternal. He was an indecisive man, to say the least; I myself saw him crawl under the bed during the bombing. Can you imagine?
I, Lev Zakharovich, in Odessa demanded the same from my subordinates: if you find yourself in a house bombed, get under the bed. There is a greater chance of surviving if the ceiling collapses, of surviving until the moment when the ruins are cleared away. And you know, many people were grateful to me later.
Well, you are too much... In a word, things are now better for us. The main thing that needs to be done is to ensure engineering preparation for the offensive.
But there is an old proverb: “If you want to attack, strengthen your defense.”
The old proverbs do not apply to a war in which the armies of different class states collided,” Mehlis resolutely snapped.
I delicately expressed my concern about what I had learned. The forward line was poorly equipped, almost no work was carried out on the Turkish Wall (in Crimea, this name was borne not only by positions on Perekop, but also by the remains of ancient fortifications on the way to Kerch, beyond the Ak-Monai border). But Mehlis shrugged it off. “We need to look forward,” he insisted, “to prepare column tracks and bridges, to practice barriers.”
Our conversation did not ease the worries. Of course, back then I didn’t see everything as clearly as I do now; I imagined a lot intuitively, but it didn’t bring me peace. However, the conversation with Mehlis did bring some practical benefit. Firstly, I understood well the conditions under which I had to work. Secondly, I received consent to call from Moscow a specialist in deciphering aerial photographs, military engineer 1st rank F.F. Kizelov, as well as A.P. Kazantsev with a batch of land torpedoes.
The next day I took over business from my predecessor, Colonel Nikolai Ivanovich Smirnov-Nesvitsky. We knew each other well for a long time. He spoke candidly about the difficulties he encountered in implementing the engineering defense plan. There was no help from the front command; on the contrary, every now and then he had to listen to reproaches that he was allegedly doing the wrong thing. We said goodbye briefly - Nikolai Ivanovich remained at the bridgehead, he was appointed deputy army commander and commander of the 51st Army.
After this, I began inspecting the forward and rear positions. I quickly got acquainted with the situation on the ground, since the length of the front on which the 47th, 51st and 44th armies were located was small. The width of the main defense line was only 27 kilometers. And the places were well-known - I checked the progress of defensive construction here back in October...
Soon Kizelov arrived, and we managed to establish aerial photo reconnaissance. Later Kazantsev appeared on the bridgehead with his wedges. We hoped that this weapon, already tested in battle, would help break through enemy defenses at the beginning of the offensive. The front's engineering troops included the 61st and 132nd motorized engineering battalions, the 6th and 54th pontoon battalions, the 57th hydrocompany and the 15th special mining platoon. Three military field construction departments - 15, 83 and 153 - had five construction battalions. In addition, each army had two engineering battalions. And finally, unlike besieged Sevastopol, we had training sapper battalions. In one of them, at the front, squad commanders were trained from among the best Red Army soldiers; in the other three, at the armies, junior command personnel were retrained.
It was possible to do business with these not so powerful forces. And we tried not to waste time. At the forefront, full-profile small arms, machine gun and artillery and mortar trenches, systems of company and battalion defense areas, covered from the front by anti-tank minefields and barbed wire obstacles, were created. The equipment of artillery anti-tank areas began in mid-April.
The main line was further equipped - full-profile trenches with communication passages along the front and in depth created a general system of a field fortified area. Strong points were built for machine-gun and artillery companies in six battalion areas. The backbone of the defense consisted of 11 gun pillboxes, their firepower was supplemented by 46 machine gun pillboxes and 366 bunkers; Almost two hundred buildings located in the fortified zone were adapted for defense, and about one and a half hundred sites for guns were prepared. Anti-tank ditches stretched for 22 kilometers, and wire fences for 30 kilometers. To this must be added more than 30 thousand mines laid by sappers.
Construction also began along the Turkish Wall, but the pace was affected by a shortage of workers. Things went better with the equipment of two lines of the Kerch defensive contour.
At the bridgehead I again met with Anatoly Sergeevich Tsigurov. He was engaged in engineering supplies and, as always, did an excellent job with his duties. In my opinion, there was no work in military engineering that was beyond his capabilities. Remembering the instructions to prepare for the offensive, I, for my part, did everything possible. But bridges in the rear area, where it was required, had already been built, column tracks were laid and maintained in proper condition. So the main thing was to focus the combat training of engineering troops on conducting offensive operations and establish thorough engineering reconnaissance. We did both thoroughly. I monitored the adjustments to the curriculum and established control over their implementation. He demanded that reconnaissance be strengthened both by sappers and from the air - fortunately we now had the best codebreaker in the Red Army.
This intelligence gave rise to serious concerns. Analysis of the movements of enemy troops, recorded by aerial photography, suggested that Manstein’s army was itself preparing for an offensive in our sector. Moreover, its forces are converging on the southern flank, where our defense was held by the weakest of the three armies - the 44th. Three of its poorly trained and unfired divisions were at the forefront and main lines, the other two were in reserve. The 47th and 51st armies occupied the center and the right, northern flank, where our attack was planned. If the Nazis get ahead of us and go on the offensive, the left-flank army may not be able to resist, which will be fraught with very unpleasant consequences.
I shared these concerns with the head of the operational department of the front headquarters, Major General V.N. Razuvaev. He completely agreed with me. Our views on the situation coincided.
But the chief of staff, P.P. Vechny, considered our anxiety exaggerated.
“The Germans are bluffing,” he said. “Manstein has no time for an offensive, he has Sevastopol like a bone in his throat...”
No, I did not have the same relationship with the chief of staff that I had with N. E. Chibisov, G. D. Shishenin, N. I. Krylov...
However, the Eternal’s point of view was probably determined not so much by his own assessment of the situation as by influence from above - after all, Mehlis adhered to this opinion. I also tried to convey my thoughts to both him and Kozlov. But the commander simply did not take them into account, and Mehlis began to temperamentally object: do not panic, they say, in vain, do not take the enemy’s false maneuvers for truth, you yourself see that preparations for the offensive are going according to plan, in mid-May we will start it in the best possible way ...
Preparations really did not stop; moreover, a directive came from Moscow obliging us to go on the offensive. But this preparation was carried out in an extremely disorganized manner; the headquarters could not work out the system of command and control of troops and still did not plan defensive actions. My warnings about the need to provide for engineering proportions to the upcoming operation were also not met with understanding.
“What's the matter here? - I thought. - Well, Mehlis, apparently, was taken over by a speculative offensive scheme. He is unable to refuse her and therefore cannot soberly assess the situation. And Kozlov? And the Eternal? The first taught general tactics at the academy. The second served in the General Staff...” And then it dawned on me! The generals on the bridgehead had no experience in conducting large offensive operations. I didn’t have one either, except for the battles on the Karelian Isthmus. This undoubtedly left an imprint on the actions. Therefore, obviously, in January, after the landing, there was no bold and decisive pursuit of the retreating enemy, which could have led to his defeat...
On April 21, the Headquarters created the North Caucasus direction, which included the Crimean Front, the Sevastopol defensive region, the North Caucasus Military District, the Black Sea Fleet and the Azov Military Flotilla. Marshal of the Soviet Union S. M. Budyonny was appointed commander-in-chief of the troops of the direction.
About a week after his appointment, Semyon Mikhailovich came to us in Leninskoye. I wanted to meet the marshal, but it was not so easy to catch him on the spot. I asked the guarantor to report on me. He soon called:
Semyon Mikhailovich asked me to tell you to be there in two hours, he is ready to listen to you.
But the wait was in vain. The meeting did not take place the next day. It was only on April 29 that the marshal called me himself in the evening.
Sorry, Khrenych, that I was never able to meet you,” he said friendly. - I'm leaving in a few minutes. Tell me what's bothering you.
I talked about the analysis of intelligence data, the intensification of special reconnaissance of the enemy on our left flank, and the testimony of defectors received in recent days. Everything indicated that the enemy on the left flank was preparing an attack, and in the very near future.
“Perhaps you’re right,” Semyon Mikhailovich agreed. - Razuvaev is of the same opinion. But Kozlov and Vechny do not agree with this assessment. I instructed the commander to go to the left flank with you and Razuvaev tomorrow, personally understand the situation and take appropriate measures. Be healthy!
The next morning we actually went to the left wing of the front. We met with division commanders, regiment commanders and some battalion commanders, listened to their reports and opinions about the situation and the enemy’s intentions. These commanders did not note anything suspicious, with the exception of increased reconnaissance activities by enemy aircraft and sappers, as well as increased artillery shelling. Kozlov noticeably calmed down. In the evening he left for Leninskoye, and Razuvaev and I ordered to stay and carefully examine the actual state of the troops, starting from the front line and ending with the rear of the divisions.
By the evening of May 4, we returned and immediately reported to the Military Council of the front, which was attended by L.Z. Mehlis, about the results of our work. The first impression formed when visiting the left flank turned out to be deceptive. In reality, a terrible danger was brewing there. The most terrible evil was the carelessness of division and regiment commanders. They did not attach serious importance to the defense of the anti-tank ditch and minefields. The coast was not only not defended, but not even guarded. The minefields were unmasked: after the snow and rains melted, white-painted mine shells were exposed in many places. We demanded that tank-hazardous areas be reinforced with new minefields and ensured that this work was completed under our watch.
Troop training has not changed for the better. They remained poorly trained and therefore insufficiently combat-ready. Our proposals boiled down to the following. Units of the 151st fortified area, located on the left flank, immediately take their positions and introduce garrisons into all pillboxes and bunkers. Parts of the rifle divisions should begin to actively develop their defense areas on the main line. Pull up the most combat-ready divisions from the right wing to the left flank sector, and send the 72nd Cavalry Division, which was in the front reserve, to guard and defend the Black Sea coast.
Our message was heard in deep silence. Nobody objected or challenged our proposals. They were accepted. But... their implementation moved at a snail's pace. On May 7, only units of the UR took their combat positions. Nothing more than planned was done. And on May 8 thunder struck...
In the morning the Germans went on the offensive. In general, their group had forces approximately equal to those of our front. Moreover, in terms of the number of tanks and artillery, superiority was on our side. But one cannot help but pay tribute to the skill and determination of the enemy. In the direction of his main attack, that is, on the southern flank, he created a powerful fist that was far superior to the opposing forces. A landing force consisting of a reinforced infantry battalion was sent to our rear, to the unguarded coastline, in assault boats.
The front line was attacked by dive bombers, artillery hit it, and the unfired fighters wavered...
The minefields did not fulfill their purpose. First they were plowed up with shells and bombs. Then German sappers appeared, covered by infantry. By this time, our fighters had retreated from their positions, and the minefields remained uncovered by fire.
To strengthen the minefields, we sent the 132nd and 61st motorized battalions to the left flank. On the night of May 9, these battalions laid about three thousand anti-tank mines. But undefended barriers could not hold back the enemy. The sappers quickly made passages through which the tanks rushed.
The enemy acted according to a pattern that was familiar to him and quite effective at that time. Having broken through the southern flank, he directed a blow to encircle our troops - first to the northeast, then to the north. Without well-established management, we were unable to resist this maneuver. And a general retreat began.
Fortunately, on May 3 we had a ferry crossing across the Kerch Strait, intended for
supplying troops through Taman. I appointed A.S. Tsigurov to lead it, who rose to the occasion here too. He had the difficult task of adapting the crossing for the evacuation of troops. F.F. Kizelov was sent to Taman, who, in particular, was ordered to quickly bring the 109th heavy pontoon company to the crossing.
The sailors, led by the base commander A.S. Frolov, acted hand in hand with us - without the watercraft they provided, we would have had a very difficult time.
On May 10, Headquarters ordered the withdrawal of troops to the Turkish Wall and organize a stubborn defense there. But the left flank of this line was captured by the enemy before our units arrived there. And to the north, where there were no Germans yet, the scattered and battered formations were unable to gain a foothold. Everything could have turned out differently if, in advance, with the start of the enemy offensive, two or three fresh divisions were withdrawn here.
On the central section of the Turkish Wall, the positions were broken through on May 13. And the next day the enemy crossed the still unfinished Kerch bypass and reached the southern and western outskirts of the city. On May 15, Kerch fell.
It was then that the crossing across the strait began to operate...
It's hard to remember those days. The retreat was carried out unorganized. Events became almost uncontrollable. The air defense of the retreating troops was not provided, and the fascist dive bombers howled towards defenseless people. Many soldiers and commanders gathered in the crossing areas. Tsigurov and his subordinates had difficulty maintaining basic order. But even on the ships that moved away from the shore, people did not feel safe: fascist planes attacked everything that floated on the water.
The Black Sea Fleet came to our aid. By order of F. S. Oktyabrsky, boats, longboats, barges, tugs, minesweepers, torpedo and patrol boats were sent from Batumi, Tuapse, Novorossiysk to the Kerch area. On the Caucasian coast, the exported troops were received at all berths from Taman to Temryuk.
Despite the damage we suffered at the embarkation and disembarkation points and at the crossing, we managed to transport about 120 thousand people across the strait, including over 23 thousand wounded. The crossing ended on May 20. But we were not able to evacuate everyone. About 18 thousand soldiers remaining in Crimea went underground, to the Kerch quarries. The famous Adzhimushkai garrison was formed there, which held the defense for another five and a half months. The military affairs of this garrison are one of the most heroic and at the same time tragic pages in the history of the Great Patriotic War.
The defeat in Crimea was unexpected and difficult. The forces and means located on the Kerch Peninsula made it possible to hope for a completely different course of events. The engineering preparation of the bridgehead, in my deep conviction, made it possible to both attack and staunchly defend.
I will not cite the Supreme High Command’s assessments of the actions of the leaders of the Crimean Front, or quote the famous telegram of J.V. Stalin to L.Z. Mehlis - this can be read in many works on the history of the Great Patriotic War. Let me just remind you that Mehlis was removed from his posts and demoted in rank. D.T. Kozlov and P.P. Eternal were also demoted. All three were summoned to Moscow for a report. Headquarters impartially analyzed their actions. After this, a special directive appeared, which examined in detail the reasons for the defeat of the front and noted the lack of understanding by its command of the requirements of modern war...
After completing the crossing, I met with Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny. I asked him to send me to Sevastopol, since I know everything there and hope to be useful.
Semyon Mikhailovich shook his head:
I cannot resolve this issue. I'll report in Moscow. A few days later the marshal himself called me:
Your matter is decided. You are heading to the disposal of the People's Commissariat. You can take two or three specialists with you. At your own discretion.
On May 25, I flew to Moscow, accompanied by F. F. Kizelov and A. P. Kazantsev. A new stage of my front-line biography began.
On the banks of the Volkhov
Recreated front. - To help besieged Leningrad. - Unsafe corridor. - Sappers in the “brown jungle”. - Again - to break the blockade. - Disruption of enemy assault
With reverence I stepped onto Moscow soil, which had become close to me during the year of pre-war service. In front of me lay a completely rear-facing, albeit darkened, city, still exposed to enemy bombers. It was hard to even imagine that just six months ago the enemy stood on the outskirts of the capital. This breakthrough cost him dearly! The defeat of the Nazis near Moscow clearly marked the failure of the blitzkrieg on the Eastern Front. It was joyful to realize this, and even the recent failure in Crimea seemed to me not so tragic at that time.
I didn’t want to go home to an empty apartment, so I stayed with one of my friends.
The next morning, May 30, I was received by the Deputy People's Commissar, Chief of the Red Army Engineering Troops, Major General M.P. Vorobyov. We knew each other from Leningrad, where he headed the Military Engineering School from 1936 to 1940, served together in the People's Commissariat of Defense,
Mikhail Petrovich asked me for a long time about Odessa and Sevastopol, which was quite natural: few direct participants in the events that took place there had managed to visit Moscow. In addition, the situation on the Sevastopol borders had already begun to deteriorate, and interest in the besieged fortress and its capabilities to resist the enemy was very great.
I, in turn, listened with great interest to Vorobyov’s story about the organizational changes taking place in the army. The troops began to re-establish previously disbanded rifle corps. Air armies were formed on the basis of the air forces of the fronts, which promised a more purposeful and centralized use of aviation in the main directions. New anti-tank regiments, regiments and separate divisions of guards mortars were formed. Tank and mechanized corps were recreated; moreover, a decision was made to form tank armies.
All this news could not help but rejoice. They talked about the activated reserves, about the fact that the amount of military equipment in the troops was not decreasing, but on the contrary, growing, and the art of managing them was improving. What we were forced to painfully abandon in the summer of '41 was not just restored, but received new development.
Naturally, the changes did not spare the engineering troops either.
Even before the war, immediately after the creation of the GVIUK, it was decided to replace individual sapper and pontoon battalions in the districts with a slightly smaller number of corresponding regiments. The reorganization proceeded slowly and was not completed by the beginning of the war; it had to be suspended. As was clear from my story, in the south the battalion organization was maintained at the fronts and in the armies.
In October, when engineering and defense construction required a truly immense frontier of work, sapper armies appeared for the first time. There were ten of them in total. Each was divided into two to four engineering brigades and six to eight battalions. Mikhail Petrovich himself, who held the post of chief of the engineering troops of the Western Front, simultaneously received the 1st Engineer Army under his command. Its forces created defensive lines and barrier systems on the immediate approaches to the capital, and then provided engineering support for the offensive of our troops.
In February, five armies, including the 1st Engineer Army, were disbanded - where they operated, there was no need for such a high concentration of engineering units, and the new structure itself turned out to be too cumbersome. But they decided to keep the engineering brigades and make them the main form of organization of the RVGK troops. Vorobyov also spoke about the planned changes: in the near future it was planned to disband the rest of the engineer armies, create brigades designed to perform specialized tasks, and provide each front with a regular fleet of engineering vehicles.
Vorobiev had been in the position of Deputy People's Commissar since April, but it was felt that he had already become firmly established in the business. He had enormous experience. He began his army service as a private a year before October, then graduated from the school for warrant officers and served as a civilian. Before being drafted, Mikhail Petrovich was a student at the Petrograd Mining Institute, but failed to complete his studies. But later he received an education at the Faculty of Engineering of the Military Technical Academy, where he also completed his postgraduate course. He was the author of two works devoted to the construction of barriers, held many command and staff positions, taught and then headed the faculty at the Military Engineering Academy, and a year before the war he became inspector general of the Red Army engineering troops. In a word, this was a man who could not have been more suitable for the new position...
Well, where would you like to fight now, Arkady Fedorovich? - Vorobyov asked in conclusion.
I am a soldier, Mikhail Petrovich, where I am needed, I will go there. If we are talking about desire, then I would prefer Leningrad. Firstly, it’s a familiar place, and secondly, I have some experience working under blockade conditions.
Well, our desires coincide. That's why they recalled you from the south. But do you know what the situation is near Leningrad, what problems are being solved there and how?
“Only in the most general terms,” I answered cautiously.
Then listen...
Leningrad was besieged by the enemy in September '41 and found itself surrounded by a blockade. These words, which had become familiar, fully reflected the essence of what was happening, but did not in any way characterize the configuration of the bridgehead. Neither a ring nor a half-ring, as in Odessa or Sevastopol, existed here. The front line in the north, where we held the line against the southeastern Finnish army, began beyond Sestroretsk and crossed the Karelian Isthmus from the Gulf of Finland to Lake Ladoga, repeating the contours of the old state border. The enemy was reliably restrained here by the Karelian fortified area. The main front in terms of danger, tension, and the forces involved in it also began at the Gulf of Finland, but on the southwestern outskirts of Leningrad, bent in an arc to the south and, having passed along the upper reaches of the Neva, abutted Ladoga at Shlisselburg (now Petrokrepost), captured by the enemy . Here we were confronted by the German 18th Army, which was part of Army Group North.
The railway connection between the city and the country was cut off. But, owning a section of the Ladoga coast, eighty kilometers long, the Leningrad Front maintained contact with the mainland across the lake. In this sector, the enemy held in his hands a coastal strip only twelve kilometers wide - from Shlisselburg to the village of Lipka, from where the front line turned southeast, to the Volkhov River. The southern shore of Ladoga (and part of the eastern - up to the mouth of the Svir) remained ours. A railway track approached it, which made it possible to preserve a thin “blood vessel” that meagerly fed the forces of the besieged bridgehead (later, with the onset of freeze-up, the lake section of this artery went down in history as the famous Road of Life).
The headquarters was in a hurry to begin the operation, as a result of which Leningrad would be released: famine was already raging in the city. And such an operation was launched by the troops of the Volkhov and Leningrad fronts on January 7, 1942.
Those who traveled from Moscow to Leningrad in the daytime probably remember that after the Bolshaya Vishera station the train passes over the bridge over the Volkhov. About eight minutes later, the large Chudovo station flashes outside the windows, and then, almost half an hour later (this is thirty-five kilometers away), a smaller station - Lyuban. The front line, which then ran along Volkhov, left Bolshaya Vishera on ours, and Chudovo and Lyuban on enemy-occupied land. In the direction of Lyuban, along the railway and highway, it was decided to deliver the main blow, which is why the whole operation was called Lyuban.
By January 25, troops of the 52nd and 59th armies broke through the enemy defenses in the areas of the villages of Spasskaya Polnet and Myasnoy Bor - 10 - 30 kilometers southwest of the place where the Volkhov River crosses the Oktyabrskaya Railway. The 13th Cavalry Corps and the 2nd Shock Army were brought into the breakthrough, which in a narrow arc-shaped wedge made its way forward 70 - 75 kilometers, deeply enveloping the enemy's Lyuban-Chudov group from the southwest.
At the end of February, the 54th Army broke through towards the 2nd attack in the direction of Lyuban. It operated in the area west of Kirishi, where it came into contact with the right flank of the 4th Army, but was organizationally part of the Lenfront, although it remained outside the blockade ring. The depth of its breakthrough reached 20 kilometers. As a result, the Lyuban-Chudov group found itself in a pincer movement that was about to close.
The enemy also hastily replenished the 18th Army operating against us with fresh troops and bomber aircraft, sharply strengthening the resistance. Heavy, protracted fighting began. The offensive impulse of our troops was running out. In March, enemy counterattacks became increasingly acute. On the 19th, the Germans managed to plug the neck of our breakthrough at Myasny Bor, cutting off the communications that fed the 2nd attack.
On March 27, the troops of the 52nd and 59th armies again punched a hole at the base of our wedge, but it was extremely difficult to supply the 2nd strike through the beginning of the muddy roads through a fire-raided corridor three to five kilometers wide.
On April 23, a reorganization took place, which adversely affected the course of affairs. At the suggestion of the commander of the Leningrad Front, M. S. Khozin, the Headquarters transformed the Volkhov Front into the Volkhov Operational Group, subordinate to the Lenfront. The goal was good: to improve the organization of operational-tactical interaction between troops that had previously been part of different fronts. However, things did not improve after this; on the contrary, the 54th Army was forced to retreat. From April 30, the exhausted 2nd Shock fought heavy defensive battles, being surrounded - the Nazis again cut off its communications. The interaction between the Leningrad and Volkhov operational groups of the united Lenfront did not improve.
Having told about the situation at the front, M.P. Vorobyov asked:
So where would you like to go - to Leningrad or to Volkhov?
I would prefer Leningrad.
Well, let's call the Leningrad group of troops, Govorov. Let's listen to what he has to say.
Soon I heard the familiar voice of Leonid Aleksandrovich Govorov in the telephone receiver - at one time, in preparation for breaking through the Mannerheim Line, we had the opportunity to work in very close contact.
Won't you take me for a ride? - I asked after mutual greetings,
I would be glad, Arkady Fedorovich, but don’t blame me - my boss Bychevsky is in perfect health, his work does not cause any complaints.
The question, therefore, disappeared by itself.
“It’s okay, don’t be upset,” Vorobyov consoled me. - But in the Volkhov group you are desperately needed. General Chekin, whom you know, was there. Recalled to Moscow due to illness, replaced by General Gorbachev - do you know this guy? So, he was shell-shocked. Now there is acting Colonel Chekalin. He’s a good chief of staff, but it’s too early to name him. And the places along the Volkhov are yours, blood, they were part of the Leningrad district. I won’t talk about difficulties - you know them better than me.
I realized that everything had been decided a long time ago, but Mikhail Petrovich, out of delicacy, arranged this diplomatic game with a call to Leningrad.
And now, Arkady Fedorovich, until the appointment takes place, consider yourself on a ten-day vacation. You deserve it, don’t argue, don’t argue... We have prepared a surprise for you: your wife has already received a call to Moscow and will arrive from Kirov any day now.
I was overjoyed beyond measure. It was very difficult to make private trips at that time, Sofya Vasilievna took a long time to get there, and the meeting turned out to be short...
On June 8, the Headquarters decided to recreate the Volkhov Front. Kirill Afanasyevich Meretskov, summoned to Moscow from the North-Western Front, where he commanded the 33rd Army, flew on the same day by plane to Malaya Vishera to take command of the front. And Lieutenant General of Artillery L.A. Govorov was appointed commander of the Leningrad Front three days before.
Early in the morning of June 10, after saying goodbye to my wife, I left for a new duty station. Frishman accompanied me, as usual. Sergei Artamonov was driving the emka. The crew, which began their joint combat journey a year ago, was fully assembled. The day was fine and sunny. The car was running at good speed along the Leningradskoye Highway.
In the middle of the day we reached Malaya Vishera and quickly found the front headquarters - it was located outside the city, in the forest. The first person I met was M. S. Khozin. I introduced myself to him as an elder.
“I, Khrenov, am no longer in command here,” he replied. - And Meretskov with the representative of the Headquarters Vasilevsky is now at the headquarters of the fifty-ninth. Your engineers have settled in that house over there, they will tell you everything you need to know.
Five minutes later I was already listening to the report of the chief of staff of the front engineering troops, Colonel S.V. Chekalin. He also said that they were waiting for my arrival and asked me to immediately go to the headquarters of the 59th Army. Chekalin got into my car, and we set off again.
On the way, the chief of staff brought me up to date. All the attention of the front was now focused on the 2nd strike. Her situation turned out to be much worse than I expected, based on the information received from Vorobiev.
The divisions and brigades of the encircled army were exhausted to the limit. Their supply of food and ammunition along the spring impassable roads, through a narrow corridor in the front line, did not meet all the needs of the troops. By the time the corridor was cut, there were no supplies at all. The bloodless army concentrated in the area of Myasny Bor and Spasskaya Polist. In the same area, but on the outer side of the ring, were the forces of the 59th and 52nd armies, stretched out along a wide front. Meretskov and Vasilevsky, who arrived two days ago, decided to urgently launch an offensive with the goal of making a hole in the encirclement and rescuing the 2nd strike. A tank battalion, three rifle brigades and several other units were brought to the breakthrough site, and today this battle began.
The car was approaching Volkhov. Rare sounds of gunfire, muffled by the distance and the forest, indicated that there was a lull at the front. But it was not clear who was successful?
The forest road led us to a clearing where wooden houses and a half-dugout stood scattered, and cracks cut through the ground. There were quite a few military men wandering between the buildings. This was the headquarters of the 59th. Near one of the houses I noticed Meretskov and Vasilevsky surrounded by a group of commanders. We drove up there. After my statutory report on arrival, Kirill Afanasyevich and I hugged tightly - more than a year had passed since we had seen each other. We shook hands with Vasilevsky. Then I met the assembled commanders. Among them was the commander of the 59th Army, Major General I.T. Korovnikov.
It’s very good that we didn’t stay in Malaya Vishera,” Meretskov said. - Now familiarize yourself with the affairs and the situation, and in the evening come here, we’ll go together to the front headquarters.
Chekalin and I headed to the house occupied by the army engineering department. There I was introduced to the commander of the 59th, Lieutenant Colonel E.N. Basilier. Soon, Major D.K. Zherebov, chief of staff of the 539th mine-sapper battalion, also approached. From them I learned that today's offensive ended in failure. The hastily gathered forces were not enough to break through the encirclement. Separate groups of fighters and commanders manage to break out of the ring. So this morning, the commander of the 2nd Shock Army, Colonel Melnikov, with a handful of sappers, emerged from encirclement.
Where is he? - I asked. - We need to ask him about it.
“It’s not worth it, Comrade General,” answered Basiliere. - He is unable to answer questions coherently. You can't really recognize a person. He was sent to rest in the second echelon, under the supervision of doctors.
My interlocutors told me what tasks the engineering troops had to solve to support the Lyuban operation, which began six months ago. The breakthrough of the 2nd strike into the depths of the enemy defense attracted almost all of the front’s then available engineering forces: seven separate sapper battalions of five hundred people each. The sappers made passages in the minefields, cleared the mine opening as it expanded, mined the flanks, built fire structures to cover their minefields, and laid column tracks in the most difficult conditions. They also built a narrow-gauge railway, which played a particularly important role with the onset of thaw: reinforcements and ammunition were brought up along the road, and the wounded were evacuated. In the spring, small rivers and channels began to be used for the same purposes - cargo was floated along them on rafts and boats. Bunkers were built on the flanks of the corridor, and anti-tank and anti-personnel barriers were built in some areas of the breakthrough. In the spring, the creation of crossings across the Volkhov added to the worries: after all, the front line passed here along the western bank of the river, and the supply of troops had to be carried out uninterruptedly. At the same time, the floating bridge on rafts was built in five days.
The enemy fired at the crossings, bombed them from the air, and then began to use floating mines, which they lowered down the river. The 4th separate motorized engineering battalion, Major N.V. Romankevich, was allocated to combat mines. The fire guard, which consisted of several lines, coped with its task well: so far not a single mine has managed to pass through the fire guard. True, there were some casualties. The chief of staff of the battalion, Senior Lieutenant Gimein, was killed while trying to disarm a mine of a hitherto unknown design. But during subsequent meetings with the insidious mine, her secret was unraveled. A description of the new weapon was sent to the headquarters of the Red Army engineering troops.
Finally, over the winter and spring, the Sappers completed a huge amount of logging. Logs here were the most necessary available material - the construction of barriers, fortifications, roads, crossings could not be done without them...
Now, with the engineering proportionality of the actions to break through the neck in the encirclement ring, the sappers were faced with the same task: to conduct a barrier in the path of the attackers and provide their flanks with mining.
That day I had time to have a detailed conversation with General Korovnikov and visited the units assigned to the starting lines. And in the evening I met with Meretskov and Vasilevsky and together with them went to the front headquarters.
Almost the entire night passed in conversation. Kirill Afanasyevich began asking me (I was already accustomed to such questions) about Odessa and Sevastopol, about affairs on the Crimean Front. Alexander Mikhailovich Vasilevsky was more aware of these events, but also listened with interest.
There was especially much talk about the failure on the Kerch Peninsula. What happened there had almost the same reasons that put the 2nd Shock in a catastrophic situation. And the conversation itself turned to the Lyuban operation, to the circumstances that led; to failure.
At the end of the conversation, Meretskov repeated that the front’s main task for today was to remove the 2nd strike from encirclement. Another important task is to improve the defense system in the zone of each army in the shortest possible time. Well, he wanted me to quickly get used to the situation, check the readiness of the engineering troops allocated to ensure a breakthrough, and develop an action plan to strengthen engineering defense by the end of June. “Due to the skillful equipment of strips and lines,” said the commander, “we should be able to withdraw from five to seven divisions into reserve.” We have no other sources for creating reserves. So Alexander Mikhailovich does not promise anything... For now, Arkady Fedorovich, it is best for you to stay for two days in the fifty-ninth. And then you will begin to get acquainted with other armies according to your plan. Report all difficulties and suggestions directly to me, immediately.
Attempts to break through the enemy defenses were made more than once or twice, until finally on June 19 they were crowned with success. The width of the corridor cut along the narrow-gauge railway near Myasny Bor did not exceed eight hundred meters; in some places it narrowed to three hundred to four hundred meters and was therefore shot right through by all types of weapons.
The surrounded troops numbering up to 20 thousand people were no longer combat-ready. They were unable to expand the corridor on their western side or secure its flanks. After a large group of wounded was brought out, everyone who was nearby reached out to the neck. The disorderly retreat could not last long - after two days the corridor was gone. True, twice more - on the morning of June 24 and on the night of June 25 - units of the 59th Army managed to break through a narrow gap in the encirclement ring, through which soldiers and commanders, staggering from exhaustion, emerged. But this was the end of the forces of the relief troops. In total, during the June days, about 11 thousand people came out from the bridgehead near Myasny Bor. Army commander Vlasov was not among them.
Attempts to find and rescue Vlasov were made for a long time - until mid-July. In these searches, the front command was assisted by partisans operating behind enemy lines. It was from them that the message was received that the commander, who had lost his army, surrendered to the Nazis without resistance and went over to the enemy’s camp.
This news shocked everyone so much that they didn’t want to believe it. This disgusting act was incredible. But, unfortunately, everything was confirmed. Moreover, we soon learned that Vlasov began to form an anti-Soviet army, recruiting notorious scoundrels from among prisoners of war who turned into sworn enemies of our Motherland. Since then, the word “Vlasovite” has become synonymous with the most vile betrayal.
As for the traitor Vlasov, he, as we know, got what he deserved - he ended his life on the gallows.
On the physical map of northwestern Russia, the Volkhov River stretches as a blue vein from Lake Ilmen to Lake Ladoga along solid greenery with black shading, which means lowlands and swamps. The river slowly and smoothly rolls its waters along a two-hundred-thirty-kilometer-long bed, saturating the surrounding lands with moisture.
The wooded and swampy Volkhov Front stretched along the upper and middle reaches of the river, from Ilmen to Kirishi, where (the reader already knows) it turned sharply, almost at a right angle, to the left, to the southwestern corner of Lake Ladoga. But Volkhov was not a watershed between our and enemy defenses. The front line, starting on the eastern bank at the source of the river, in the area of occupied Novgorod, then moved to the western bank. Twice more it seized areas on the right bank, forming two relatively small bridgeheads near the village of Gruzino and Kirishi - they were occupied by the enemy. Most of the left, western, bank was in our hands.
The recreated front included the following forces: the 52nd Army stood in the Novgorod direction, then, from the left wing to the right, the 59th, 4th, 54th and 8th armies held positions. The 2nd strike was taken to the rear for rest and reorganization. And on the basis of the front-line air forces, the 14th Air Army began to be created in June.
At that time, the member of the Military Council of the front was Army Commissar 1st Rank A.I. Zaporozhets, the chief of staff was Major General G.D. Stelmakh, with whom we quickly worked together.
Well, what were the engineering troops that came at my disposal? They were based on two strong formations at that time - the 1st and 3rd engineer brigades. In addition to them, there were seven separate motorized engineering battalions - 3, 4, 5, 109, 135, 136 and 248 and one mine-sapper battalion, 539. The troops were also replenished with two motorized pontoon battalions - the 38th and 55th. True, one of them had to be sent entirely to the factory, where the soldiers began manufacturing wooden pontoon parks and other transportation means, which were in dire need. The troops also included two separate units - a hydro company responsible for water supply, and a camouflage company. And finally, we had a very small fleet of engineering vehicles and a front engineering warehouse that was unable to satisfy all front-line needs. Three branches of this warehouse, the so-called letuchki, were located in the 4th, 8th and 59th armies.
Apart from a powerful construction organization, which was clearly lacking here, the rest of the forces of the front engineering troops were far superior to those we had in Odessa, Sevastopol and on the Kerch Peninsula. True, the spatial scale of the defense here was different - its length reached 350 kilometers, taking into account all the whimsical bends of the front line. This required a more complex and precise organization of leadership and control of troops.
This is what Meretskov advised, I spent two days at the location of the 59th Army, and then traveled through all other sectors of the front. I got acquainted with the front line of defense in the zone of each army. There were no particular surprises - in general, the landscape and natural conditions remained the same as during the years of my pre-war service in the Leningrad District. Although, to be honest, we didn’t visit these places often back then. No fortifications were built here (deep rear!), no exercises were conducted. That’s why I knew the Volkhov basin much worse than, say, the Karelian Isthmus or the Baltic regions.
The forest thickets left a painful impression, where the sun, barely breaking through the dense crowns of trees, could not dry the mossy ground. The emerald clearings turned out to be swampy swamps, turning into brownish-rusty bottomless swamps. Clouds of mosquitoes hung in the air. This is where our fighters came from - the “mosquito front”. The Germans expressed themselves more exotically - “brown jungle”. This expression often appeared in unsent letters seized from the “tongues”.
And how much pain and tricks any sapper work cost! Here, even in dry places, you cannot dig the required “ten meters” under the trench - water appeared after only 30 centimeters. In Crimea we were tormented by rocky, rocky soil, but here we were faced with viscous, shapeless slurry. Instead of trenches and cells, it was necessary to build embankments and platforms for firing points, often 70 - 100 meters from the enemy’s defensive line. They also set up bunkers on rafts floating through the swamps. Shelters and dugouts were built from poles, logs, and brush mats, and these materials were used to equip communication trenches. Gati and maneuverable roads made of wooden gratings (rows) stretched for many kilometers.
The scope for engineering invention was colossal here. In many places, in tank-dangerous directions, rubble and abatis made of felled trees, thickly stuffed with mines, were built, as in the old days. In the 54th Army, where among the engineering specialists there were many Leningrad architects called up from the reserve, familiar with ancient Russian architecture, including military, they built wooden fences from two rows of logs with soil filling between them. But these fortifications had not yet become widespread - they seemed too labor-intensive and required a very large amount of timber.
A huge amount of dedicated work went into all this. And not only engineering troops. Everyone built - riflemen, artillerymen, tankmen. They themselves equipped their positions, observation posts and ammunition shelters. Any change of position was fraught with the greatest difficulties and began with the construction of roads. Without this, a tank or a gun, turning slightly off the wooden track, immediately got stuck in a quagmire...
Overall, I couldn't help but give credit to everything that has been done so far. And yet many gaps and shortcomings were discovered. To begin with, in most areas there was only one line of defense, consisting of two trenches (or, rather, what replaced these trenches). And all previous experience convinced me that only a defense that has at least two lines - the advanced and the main - can be truly stable.
But even those lines that existed were not, in my opinion, sufficiently reliable. The basis for such reliability is a system that connects all positions with fire interaction. I saw everywhere separate, each in itself, artillery, machine-gun and mortar positions. Such a defense structure proved to be untenable in the face of the force of fire and the surprise of the Nazis’ maneuver. The proximity of the enemy front line threatened that each single firing point without the support of others could easily be blocked or destroyed.
Therefore, the first task that I set before the army and division engineers, demanding its immediate implementation, was that the defensive lines in their sectors combine the fire system of all types of weapons with the nature of the terrain and the capabilities of engineering equipment. This required, in some cases, the installation of new fire installations, in others, the removal of old ones, and in others, the strengthening of defenses with barriers and minefields. The subsequent task was to create a second defensive line.
By the end of June, as ordered, I reported the plan to strengthen the front defense to Meretskov and Vasilevsky (Alexander Mikhailovich was still with us). Each line of defense, according to this plan, represented a system of two lines - the forward and the main, and each line consisted of two positions, one and a half to three kilometers away from each other. The basis of each position was a system of battalion defense areas and anti-tank strongholds, which included sites for weapons and tanks and were interconnected by communication passages or solid wood-earth fortifications. At the same time, the total depth of the division's defensive zone reached five to eight kilometers. It was planned to create intermediate and cut-off positions between the stripes, so that in the event of an enemy breakthrough there would remain the opportunity to actively counterattack his flanks.
I particularly mentioned the issue of creating army and front-line defensive zones. After all, even with a general focus on offensive actions, no one can guarantee that the enemy will not be able to make a deep breakthrough and force us to defend ourselves on the lines of the current front rear.
Both Vasilevsky and Meretskov agreed with my arguments and accepted the proposal to create army defensive zones with a depth of 25 to 45 kilometers, and to build a front line at a distance of 60 to 80 kilometers from the front line. At the same time, I raised the question of attracting additional labor. The front needed a fairly powerful construction organization. And I was promised that in the very near future the Engineering Troops would have the Department of Defense Construction at their disposal (this is how the Department of Defense Construction, which was subordinate to the fronts, came to be called).
The plan for strengthening the front defense was developed by the headquarters of the engineering troops under the leadership of Colonel S.V. Chekalin. As far as I remember, this was our only big collaboration. Soon, Sergei Vladimirovich, as an expert in the Northern Military Theater, was appointed to the Karelian Front as commander of the 19th Army. And in his place, Moscow sent Colonel Mikhail Ivanovich Maryin, who headed the supply department at the GVIU; He had long and stubbornly been eager to go to the front.
In August, the engineering defense had already been improved so much that the command was able to remove six divisions from the front line. And it couldn’t have come at a better time. Individual groups of soldiers and commanders who were unable to break through the corridor at Myasny Bor had barely completed their escape from encirclement, and Headquarters was already rushing the front to prepare a new offensive operation. The Leningraders had left behind an inhumanly difficult winter, during which hunger and frost claimed many thousands of lives, and a new winter was just around the corner. The blockade had to be broken!..
In the first months after taking office, I was overcome by concerns related to the procurement of timber, meeting the needs of the troops for mine-explosive equipment, and organizing aerial reconnaissance and decryption. And also with the construction of maneuverable roads and bridges. Especially on the right wing of the front, where the offensive was planned.
One of the reasons that prompted us to break the blockade this time near the Ladoga coast was obvious. Only 15 - 16 kilometers separated the Volkhov and Leningrad fronts here. That is why the operation seemed small in depth and timing. This made it possible to hope for its completion before the Germans brought up large forces from other areas. The Leningraders were supposed to break through from the bank of the Neva towards us, which promised to speed things up.
But in war, the shortest distance is not always the shortest. In the zone of the planned offensive, the enemy had the most advanced defense. It was well equipped with earth-moving, track-laying and construction mechanisms, which made it possible to quickly erect the necessary engineering structures. Each village was turned into a powerful stronghold; all traversable areas of the terrain were kept under fire from bunkers, artillery and mortar firing points, and were blocked by fortification lines and minefields. “The German command,” we reasoned, “is confident in its defense, that we also know its strength, and therefore does not expect a blow here (from the point of view of German military psychology, which we already knew quite well, this would be unreasonable, senseless step)". Therefore, we could count on tactical and operational surprise. And this was the second reason why they decided to make a breakthrough here.
The success of our actions was largely determined by the secrecy of our preparations. It was necessary to transfer a large number of troops and equipment to the concentration area. And the operational camouflage of transportation developed by the headquarters was not inferior to that carried out near Odessa. Suffice it to say that the trains with military units were sent from Malaya Vishera towards Moscow, supposedly to the Southern Front, and then arrived at their destination in a roundabout way, through Vologda and Cherepovets. In Vishera, with the help of camouflage means, the accumulation of large forces was simulated.
Despite constant aerial reconnaissance, the Nazis discovered signs of the impending offensive only a few days before it began.
As I already mentioned, intensive road construction was going on on the right wing. Roads were built of different types - separately for tanks, separately for wheeled and horse-drawn vehicles. In some cases, racks were used, in others, tracks made of logs and boards were laid on transverse poles, in others, transverse poles were laid on longitudinal bars. The commander of the 8th Army, Colonel A.V. Germanovich and his chief of staff M.N. Safronov, proved themselves to be good organizers of these works, who introduced many improvements into them.
The front was intensely preparing for the operation. His field headquarters moved to Voybokalo, a small station on the railway leading from Leningrad to Tikhvin. The Chief of Staff, General G.D. Stelmakh, and the Chief of the Operations Department, Colonel V.Ya. Semenov, and I were working on the engineering proportions of the upcoming offensive. They planned the actions of the sapper units in terms of place and time to clear the barrier, force the fortifications and destroy the fire installations. They determined the order of crossing the Chernaya River, along which the front line ran, and across the Moika, which had to be crossed later. Based on these outlines, the engineer-sapper and pontoon battalions were put on alert.
The terrain in our offensive zone favored the defenders. To the south of the coast of Lake Ladoga there are peatlands, where mining was carried out before the war. Then the Sinyavinsky heights began, the top mark of which barely reached fifteen meters. The village of Sinyavino stood here. From these low heights, which were the only truly dry place in the entire region, a good view was opened; and the surrounding lowlands were shot through with all types of fire. To the south, forests began interspersed with swamps, and an embankment rose along which the Leningrad-Tikhvin-Vologda railway stretched. The Mga station was located on this road - from it to Sinyavino no more than eight kilometers.
Our strike was aimed in the direction of Sinyavino and Mga. Taking into account previous lessons, the front command intended to inflict it with massive forces. The troops were lined up in three echelons. The breakthrough was made by the 8th Army, its success was to be developed by the 4th Guards Rifle Corps, and the 2nd Shock Corps was to complete the defeat of the enemy. True, it could be considered an army only nominally. After reorganization, it consisted of one division and one brigade. And yet, according to intelligence data, in the offensive sector we outnumbered the enemy three times in manpower, four times in tanks, and two times in artillery. Only German aviation dominated the air. Throughout the operation we were to be assisted by the artillery and aviation of the Leningrad Front. They had to bind the opposing troops and prevent the latter from being used against our advancing units. In case we had a hitch, it was planned to force the action and strike towards us from the Leningrad bridgehead.
On the morning of August 27, after a two-hour artillery preparation, the Sinyavinsk offensive operation began.
The enemy failed to detect our intentions before the deadline. But we also remained in the dark about his preparations: our reconnaissance did not work well.
In the second half of August, it became known from partisan reports about increased transportation in the enemy rear. What they meant remained unclear. They asked Moscow, but did not receive a satisfactory answer. Only on August 29, on the second day of the breakthrough, something began to become clearer. The 180th German division from Manstein’s 11th Army, which had recently been operating in the Crimea, entered the battle with our units.
What the enemy was planning did not immediately or suddenly become known. And he planned no more and no less than a general assault on Leningrad. The Nazis were in a hurry to stabilize the situation in the north-west in order to concentrate their efforts in the south, where the Battle of Stalingrad flared up and the battle was going on in the North Caucasus.
The Germans began transferring divisions from Crimea after the capture of Sevastopol. At first they were sent for a short rest to Koenigsberg. There they also practiced the conduct of street fighting in a large city, and the divisions proceeded to Leningrad. Special-power artillery was also delivered there from near Sevastopol, including a battery of 615-mm mortars and an 800-mm Dora supercannon (by the way, the Dora’s debut near Leningrad did not take place: during installation after long-distance transportation, it came under attack from Leningrad artillerymen).
In total, by the end of August, Army Group North received 12 divisions from the 11th Army, an SS brigade and the 8th Air Corps of General Richthofen, intended to participate in the operation to capture Leningrad, codenamed “Nordlicht” (“Northern Lights”) ). In the instructions relating to its implementation, Hitler wrote: “Task: 1st stage - to surround Leningrad and establish contact with the Finns; Stage 2 - capture Leningrad and raze it to the ground.” They decided to bring in the “conqueror of fortresses” Field Marshal Manstein to lead the operation. Manstein spoke about its general plan after the war in the book “Lost Victories.”
<“Based on observations,” he wrote, “it became clear to us that under no circumstances should our army be drawn into hostilities within the city of Leningrad, where our forces would quickly melt away...
The idea of the army headquarters was to, using first the strongest artillery and air pressure on the enemy, to break through the enemy’s front south of Leningrad with the forces of three corps, advancing only to the southern outskirts of the city itself. After this, the two corps were supposed to turn east in order to suddenly cross the Neva southeast of the city. They were supposed to destroy the enemy located between the river and Lake Ladoga, cut off the supply route across Lake Ladoga and closely surround the city with a ring, also from the east. In this case, the capture of the city could be achieved quickly and without heavy street fighting...”
Manstein and his army command appeared near Leningrad just on the day when the Volkhov Front launched an offensive on Sinyavino. It was this that confused all the cards of the fascist field marshal general.
Our offensive, however, did not develop with the success we had hoped for. Although by the end of the second day Soviet units approached Sinyavino, further advance stalled. The fighting became extremely fierce. The enemy, faster than we expected, brought fresh formations to the breakthrough site (it was then that we learned that the troops of the 11th German Army had appeared near Leningrad). Moreover, new divisions continued to arrive from Crimea.
You can read about the vicissitudes of this difficult battle, for example, in the memoirs of K. A. Meretskov “In the Service of the People.” There is no need to repeat. I will only say about the most important things.
The greatest depth of our breakthrough reached nine kilometers. On September 3, the Neva Operational Group of the Lenfront tried to strike towards us, but enemy artillery and aviation prevented the crossing of the Neva. On September 26, the attack was repeated, and at the cost of incredible efforts, the Leningraders managed to capture two small bridgeheads on the eastern bank of the river in the Moscow Dubrovka area. But by this time the Volkhovites’ strength had dried up, and the front command gave the order to withdraw troops beyond the Chernaya River.
It was not possible to break the blockade this time either. There were times when our two fronts were separated by some five or six kilometers. But they became insurmountable. The intensity of the oncoming battles seemed to have reached its limit. Artillery fire swept away the forests, and what remained of them burned. Peat bogs also burned. Acrid smoke hung over the battlefield...
The Sinyavinsk operation did not solve the problem. But it so happened that she fulfilled another task, which, although not envisaged by us, was no less important. From September 4, Manstein had to abandon all preparations for the assault on Leningrad and lead the actions of the fascist troops to repel the attack of the Volkhov Front. The entire 11th enemy army was involved in these actions.
<“And so, instead of the planned attack on Leningrad, a “battle south of Lake Ladoga” unfolded,” E. Manstein wrote in the same book. - Even if the task of restoring the situation on the eastern sector of the 18th Army’s front was completed, the divisions of our army nevertheless suffered significant losses. At the same time, a significant part of the ammunition intended for the attack on Leningrad was used up. Therefore, there could be no talk of a quick offensive.”
Yes, there could not even be any talk of an enemy attack on Leningrad. As subsequent events showed, this question never arose again. In the battle on the Shlisselburg-Sinyavinsky ledge, the Nazis lost about 60 thousand people, 260 aircraft, 200 tanks, 600 guns and mortars. There were 18-20 soldiers left in the German companies operating against us. But not only the fate of Leningrad was affected by the “battle south of Lake Ladoga.” It also indirectly influenced the situation at Stalingrad. The German command now did not dare to weaken Army Group North. On the contrary, it replenished its troops in the northwestern direction with fresh formations, which were urgently needed by the Wehrmacht forces participating in the battles on the Volga and the Caucasus.
Breakthrough
Serif line. - Under the code “Iskra”. - Road to victory. - Kirishi tunnel. - Friends and comrades. - Everyday work. - “Mill” and the attack on MGU
Any army that enters a war has to, if not retrain, then complete its training, replenish its combat “education”, adapting to the characteristics of the enemy. And success accompanies those who know how to quickly learn lessons from their own successes and failures, learn from the enemy, and flexibly use their experience. There is no greater error than to neglect the enemy’s experience on the sole grounds that it is not ours (as well as, on the contrary, copying everything indiscriminately, exaggerating the value of someone else’s thoughts). The strength of the Red Army lay, in particular, in the fact that we were brought up in the spirit of rejection of both extremes. In big and small.
I have already said that on the right wing of the front, in the 54th Army, several defensive structures were erected in the form of fences made of two rows of logs with soil filling between them and that this practice was purely local: such construction seemed unnecessarily labor-intensive and uneconomical. But, I must admit, not only these circumstances caused skepticism. Such barriers, not provided for by any of the pre-war instructions, seemed too unusual. It is not surprising that the idea of building them did not come to the minds of regular military personnel, for whom in such cases, let’s be honest, it is more difficult to renounce the statutory, traditional ideas, but to people called up from the reserves, who are more inclined to act “not according to the rules.” The author of the unusual project was the division engineer of the 44th division, Captain V. S. Sorokin, a graduate of the Leningrad Railway Institute.
The only thing that bothered me was the lack of data on the combat effectiveness of wooden fences: the enemy never tried to attack the area where we erected these fences. What if he tried? Would these essentially medieval structures have withstood artillery and air strikes and the onslaught of tanks? Would you be able to resist modern military means and methods of warfare? Would fire and smoke be a problem in the event of a fire?
The answer to these questions was given by the Sinyavinsk operation.
When ours attacked the enemy in the area of the grove, which bore the name “Round” on the maps, they came across a line equipped with wood-and-earth fences, very similar to those we had. The advancing formation had difficulty breaking through the fortification. But behind him, about two hundred meters away, there was a second line in the form of the same fence. Our division was unable to break through this line.
Having learned about this, I immediately went to the advanced formations of the attackers. I climbed around and felt the first broken line. I carefully examined through binoculars all the wood-earth fortifications in sight: fences, dugouts, firing positions. It turned out that the Germans’ thoughts worked in the same direction as ours. Only they did more. I think the best equipment with engineering equipment played a significant role in this. The problem of labor intensity of work was different for them and for us.
Well, it was not a sin to adopt and develop the enemy’s experience. It was then that the idea arose: to create a continuous line of wood-earth fortifications along the entire front, in low swampy places, a kind of abatis line, which in the 16th century protected Rus' from the south from Tatar invasions. The task, needless to say, was large-scale, complex, requiring a lot of labor, effort and resources. We were not able to begin solving it immediately: more urgent matters were on the agenda and attracted all our attention.
But I didn’t want to put off the implementation of the idea indefinitely. After all, the “notch line” opened up the opportunity to free more than one division from the defense, which was needed for active, offensive actions of the front. Therefore, to begin with, it was decided to build something like a testing ground in the 54th Army zone - there was some experience and suitable people there. It was they who were asked to thoroughly study the German fortifications, compare them with their own and create the most effective defensive structures.
Former architect L.A. Timofeev made dozens of sketches of enemy wood-and-earth fences, firing points and observation posts from the front line and from the neutral zone. Another former architect, division commander of the 177th division, Captain N.A. Solofnenko, carefully familiarized himself with them and with what had already been done in the 44th division by his colleague V.S. Sorokin. Solofnenko was one of the experts in Russian wooden architecture, including military. He had a clear idea of what ancient fortresses made of logs looked like, how they were built, and took pleasure in developing his own projects.
On the site of the 177th Division, they decided to build a demonstration defensive line, equipped with wood-earth structures. The projects of Nikolai Alekseevich Solofnenko were reviewed, they were recognized as tactically competent and engineering sound. The division commander, Colonel A.G. Koziev, treated the task with understanding and interest. Solofnenko was greatly assisted by the head of the technical department of the headquarters of the front engineering troops, N. N. Rendel (in the post-war years, the chief architect of Riga) - he supervised the development of the designs of the main defensive structures.
And the work, taken under the personal control of the division commander, began to boil. Hundreds of fighters attacked them every day...
As soon as the Sinyavinsk operation ended, planning began for a new offensive to break the Leningrad blockade. As last time, both fronts were involved in the operation: Leningrad and Volkhov. Headquarters appointed K.E. Voroshilov and G.K. Zhukov to coordinate their actions. They came to us to familiarize themselves in detail with the situation.
At the end of October, K. A. Meretskov visited L. A. Govorov in Leningrad and discussed with him the procedure for interaction. The breakthrough was still planned there, on the Shlisselburg-Sinyavinsky ledge. Only this time they decided to make their way even closer to the Ladoga shore, where the bottle neck was the narrowest. The arrows of oncoming strikes on the maps extended to two nameless working settlements of peat miners, designated by numbers five and one (the first settlement was located four kilometers north of Sinyavino, the second - seven).
We carefully analyzed the mistakes and miscalculations of the previous operation. Taking them into account, artillery support for the offensive was developed. We were preparing for a powerful massing of forces in the direction of the main attack. This time the reconnaissance worked well, and we knew with reasonable certainty that we would be opposed by five fully equipped divisions of the 18th Army, which could be supported by four divisions from the operational reserve.
The basis of our strike force was the 2nd shock army under the command of Lieutenant General V.Z. Romanovsky. The shock group of the Leningrad Front included the 67th Army.
The joint plan for the command of the two fronts was submitted to Headquarters for consideration, and about a month later it was approved. At that time, large operations began to receive code names. The breakthrough of the Leningrad blockade was encrypted under the Iskra code. The operation was scheduled for January.
By the time the development of Iskra began, changes had occurred in the composition of our front-line command. G.D. Stelman was recalled to Moscow (they found it expedient to use him at work at the Academy of the General Staff). Major General M.N. Sharokhin became the new chief of staff of the front. Member of the Military Council A.I. Zaporozhets was replaced by a corps commissar, and from December by Lieutenant General L.Z. Mehlis.
By that time, changes had also occurred in my own official position. I received the rank of lieutenant general of the engineering troops. Of course, I could not help but rejoice at this event, so significant for every military person. In addition, I seemed to receive an additional guideline, showing that I was following the right path, that I was acting within the limits of responsibility assigned to me without serious mistakes.
The whole of December was spent in preparation for the operation. As last time, great importance was attached to operational camouflage and disinformation of the enemy. We tried to give him the impression that we were preparing a strike in the Novgorod direction. In our workshops we made models of 120 tanks, 120 guns, stuffed animals of 100 horses and 1000 soldiers. Trains reached the stations from which the only possible path of attack lay towards Novgorod. “Military equipment” and accompanying “personnel” were placed on open platforms. Unloading took place at destination stations.
All this was recorded by enemy aerial reconnaissance. And at night the models were dismantled, loaded into closed carriages, and the trains set off on their return journey. A total of 49 echelons were used in this unusual manner.
But the main efforts were spent, of course, on preparing people for combat. Meretskov and I remembered well how three years ago, after the first failure in the assault on the Mannerheim Line, the troops were forced to interrupt the offensive and begin training on the ground. Then this largely predetermined subsequent success. The same method of practicing the actions of each unit and each soldier in conditions simulating a real battlefield was used here.
The tactics of attacking the enemy's fortified zone were based on actions as part of assault detachments. They consisted of sappers, machine gunners, machine gunners, flamethrowers; They also included accompanying artillery and tanks. The sappers had to go first - to scout and clear the path of the rest of the soldiers from mines and other obstacles, and to join the battle, using explosive equipment if necessary.
The engineering units quickly built training camps, reproducing those defense centers and strongholds that, according to aerial photography, lay on the path of our advance. The towns included an ice rampart (the frost was already cracking with might and main), models of bunkers and other military structures. All 83 assault detachments created to participate in the operation, as well as 14 detachments and tank escort groups, underwent training in the towns.
Intensified training was also carried out in engineering units, which were significantly increased at the beginning of the operation. Among the reinforcements sent by Moscow, another, third brigade arrived under the command of Colonel G. A. Bulakhov. In total, we were able to attract 30 engineering battalions to Iskra’s engineering support - both individual and part of brigades (and this is in addition to divisional medical battalions and regimental sappers!).
From the available forces, 32 road-bridge detachments were created, which were to follow closely behind the advancing regiments, as well as reserve barrage detachments and mobile obstacle detachments. They also needed to practice their combat duties in order to act in full harmony with the infantry and other branches of the military.
Thus, the foundation was laid for the interaction on which the entire edifice of engineering proportionality of the operation is built. Other, higher and more complex elements of it were practiced at command staff meetings and command and staff exercises with the participation of engineering chiefs and commanders of sapper units.
Of course, as always, I would like to have more time for preparation. But what was released was not so little. Watching the progress of the training, we were imbued with confidence that everything would turn out well, that in battle both commanders and subordinates would know their place, would not make mistakes, would not get confused. And with weapons and ammunition supplies, things were much better than three months ago.
That’s when I remembered a conversation with Vorobyov about organizational changes in the troops, behind which stood new opportunities for the national economy, which was recovering from heavy losses, and the military industry, which was gaining rapid momentum. The labor feat of the home front brought generous fruits. We received a lot, although the main battles that decided the fate of the Motherland thundered not here, but between the Volga and Don rivers, in the North Caucasus...
In the oncoming strike zone, the total forces of both fronts were brought to such a strength that created superiority over the enemy in people by 4.5 times, in artillery - by 6 - 7 times, in tanks - by 10 times, and in aircraft - by 2 times.
A new year, 1943, has imperceptibly approached. And then January 12th came - the day when the Iskra was supposed to flare up at 9:30 a.m. And it broke out in the thunder of artillery and aviation preparation, which did not cease for two hours.
The operation has begun. Volkhovites and Leningraders moved towards each other. The sappers paved the way for the infantry and tanks without a hitch. While at the 2nd Shock CP, I received reports indicating that the engineering troops were carrying out the tasks of ensuring crossings on the ice of the Chernaya River and clearing obstacles in full accordance with the planned plan.
From the very beginning, the stumbling block, like last time, was the Round Grove. It remained a grove more in name than in essence - almost all the trees in it were cut down with artillery fire. But the wooden-earth fences, restored by the Nazis, still served as a serious obstacle on the approaches to Kruglaya. However, we have already worked out ways to overcome such fortifications.
The Nazis resisted skillfully and desperately - as if the defended land was somehow especially dear to them. Their unusual persistence, as it turned out, was associated with the order of the commander of the 18th Army, Colonel General G. Lindemann.
<“For the strength of the Soviet system,” he wrote, “the possession of Leningrad is of the same importance as the defense of Moscow or the battles at Stalingrad... If we do not hold the Volkhov bridgehead and Novgorod, we will lose the war, if we hold on to this line, we will lose the war.” we'll win."
The SS men, disposed accordingly by their commander, fought for the Round Grove with the fanaticism of suicide bombers.
But who really fought for their native land, who went into battle with holy faith in a just cause, who was ready not to spare their lives in the name of delivering Leningraders from torment - these are our fighters. And of course, moral and spiritual strength was entirely on their side.
The fierce battle did not subside all day. But the enemy was unable to restrain the offensive impulse of the Volkhovites, and by the evening the resistance center was taken.
In the battle for Kruglaya, not only riflemen, artillerymen, tank crews, but also sappers acted heroically. The soldiers of the 136th separate motorized engineering battalion distinguished themselves here. On the battlefield, suffering considerable losses under enemy fire, they returned 15 tanks that had sunk in the swamp to service. In the same area, sappers brought 4 damaged heavy KV and 27 T-34 tanks to the rear, and prepared another 12 KV for evacuation.
During four days of fighting, sappers of this unit discovered and neutralized more than 560 anti-tank mines, 86 of which had anti-removal devices...
During January 13 and 14, the second echelon of the advancing shock army was introduced into the battle. Our units reached Workers' Village No. 5. Lenfront soldiers were making their way to it from the west. They were supported by aviation and naval artillery of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet.
The German command transferred fresh formations to help the defenders, trying to change the course of events in their favor. But in vain. The martial art of the Soviet troops has increased noticeably. They did not try now, as had happened before, to take all the nodes of resistance head-on, but bypassed them, leaving them in their rear and firmly blocking them. And the enemy group, cut off from its own, pressed against the Ladoga coast, was cut into pieces and destroyed. In addition, she was unexpectedly struck in the rear by a ski and rifle brigade of Volkhov residents, who made a forced march across the ice of the lake.
All this gave the operation dynamics and prevented it from turning into a protracted one, which was envisaged by our plan. The Germans did not have time to transfer large enough forces from other areas to the battlefields. And those fresh divisions from the nearby reserve that they managed to bring into action could not solve anything.
On January 18, troops of the Leningrad Front broke through to Workers' Village No. 5, already occupied by units of the Volkhov Front. On the same day, soldiers from both fronts made their way to Workers’ Village No. 1. It’s done! The enemy blockade of Leningrad was broken! Now the Leningrad bridgehead was connected to the mainland by a twelve-kilometer corridor. Its width was small - from 8 to 12 kilometers. In the north it was limited by the coastline of Lake Ladoga, in the south by the front line, which ran north of the village of Sinyavino (the railway station with the same name was in our hands).
Of course, we wanted this corridor to be wider. But it was not possible to develop success to the south. The Nazis continued to bring fresh forces here and firmly held the Sinyavinsky Heights. Moreover, apparently, the enemy did not lose hope of restoring the blockade. Therefore, the 67th Lenfront Army and our 2nd Shock Army were ordered to go over to a tough defense on the recaptured line.
I met the morning of January 19 in Workers' Village No. 5, or rather, among the ruins of this village. Before my eyes stood the pictures of yesterday’s meeting between Leningraders and Volkhovites, firmly etched in my memory. The joy was great. Many warriors could not hold back their tears and were not ashamed of them. And the feeling of fulfilled duty forced each of us to see especially clearly those great concerns that arose immediately after the breakthrough in full force. Anticipating the victorious outcome of Operation Iskra, Moscow set the task in advance: to lay a road and, most importantly, a railway through the breached corridor in the shortest possible time. Units of the road maintenance troops of central subordination, the 2nd Department of Military Reconstruction Works, units of the railway troops and special formations of the NKPS have already begun to arrive here, at the work site.
All this directly affected the engineering troops of the Volkhov Front. It fell to my lot to take measures for thorough reconnaissance and mine clearance of the strip along which both routes were supposed to pass. Some sections of it crossed dense minefields. There was plenty of work for sappers here. Having made the necessary orders, I ordered reports on their implementation every two hours. And he ordered the chief of reconnaissance of the engineering troops, Major D.K. Zherebov, to study the enemy’s fortifications and firing positions in the strip adjacent to the corridor within three days. There was no doubt that the enemy would try to interfere with the construction work with artillery fire, and it was important to prepare in advance for a counter-battery fight.
The builders immediately got to work. They were on the heels of the sappers. We allocated a significant part of the people from the 19th UOS to help the builders. Fire attacks by Germans trying to disrupt the construction of roads were immediately stopped by attacks from our batteries.
Just 17 days after the start of work on the railway track, the first echelon passed. And this immediately brought changes to the life of suffering Leningrad. Rations have been increased in the city. The significance of this event for Leningraders is difficult to overestimate. But the new prospect played an even greater role: the dark shadow of a mortally hungry winter receded from the inhabitants of the besieged city. A sustainable highway on land has started working! And even earlier, before the freeze-up, it was possible to lay a high-voltage cable and pipeline along the bottom of Lake Ladoga. Thanks to this, electricity and liquid fuel from the mainland warmed the city and increased the production capacity of its enterprises.
Leningraders called the difficult Ladoga supply route the Road of Life, and the new communication - the Road of Victory. “Not just survive, but definitely win!” - such was the symbolic meaning of this name...
This new road was difficult for us. But what efforts and true heroism its operation required from the railway workers! The trains had to be driven under bombing and artillery fire. The fragments overtook the drivers, stokers, and conductors. Track repairs were often done with improvised means, using a living thread. And the track itself, laid through peat bogs! With the onset of summer, the trains, contrary to all existing rules and ideas, moved hub-deep in water. And yet they walked, the road worked, saving people, bringing the hour of victory closer!..
With the breaking of the blockade, the expression became very popular among us: “The besieger is besieged, the surrounding is surrounded.” I don’t remember who was the first to say such words, but in general it doesn’t matter. Something else is important. The complex configuration of the front line really now looked like it was the 18th Army, which made up the left wing of Army Group North, that could in the full sense be considered besieged and encircled - to the same extent as the Leningrad bridgehead. This was a case when the answer to the question of who was surrounding whom was given not by the relative position of the opposing troops, but by their awareness of their position, their mood for defense or offensive. And it is no coincidence that at that time it was the Soviet troops who were active in the conduct of hostilities near Leningrad.
The turn towards this turning point occurred gradually, step by step. Unsuccessful Lyuban operation. Partially successful Sinyavinskaya, which was a step forward in the combat equipment of troops and in their management. And now - the victorious “Iskra”, in which we achieved both equality with the enemy in terms of the quality of divisions and superiority over him in the art of war.
What happened on a gigantic scale at Stalingrad happened here too, but within a more modest framework that corresponded to the available forces and the real tasks assigned to them. The unwritten laws of the Great Patriotic War began to work in our favor!
The reader already knows that on the right, eastern bank of the Volkhov, the Nazis held two bridgeheads - near Kirishi and in the area of the village of Gruzino. They held out with great tenacity, apparently considering them as outposts of a future offensive, the thought of which had not yet left them. At that time, few people knew about these two pieces of land captured by the enemy, with the exception, perhaps, of the Volkhovites themselves. But in Nazi Germany, especially in East Prussia, they were well known, since many German divisions formed in Konigsberg received their baptism of fire precisely on the Volkhov bridgeheads. Soldiers and officers who visited Gruzino or Kirishi were given special honors in Konigsberg. Lieutenant Gunther Heibing wrote about this in his book “Brown-Green Front on Volkhov”.
<“For us, both of these bridgeheads were like an eyesore. Especially Kirishi. On this coastal strip of land, five kilometers wide and two kilometers deep, there was a slightly elevated place covered with a grove called Vysoka. The hill dominated the area and blocked enemy crossings across the Volkhov from our eyes. Whoever owned this patch had many tactical and operational benefits.
For attacks on Kirishi and Gruzino, we did not skimp on ammunition even when we were in great need of it. From June 4 to June 15, 1942 alone, more than forty thousand shells and mines were fired at the Kirishi patch alone. We destroyed 18 artillery and mortar batteries, disabled about 850 soldiers and officers, but the enemy repelled the attacks of our infantry.”
In July - August another attempt was made to take possession of Kirishi. But it didn’t lead to success either. It was then that the head of the obstruction department of the headquarters of the front engineering troops, S.P. Nazarov (I will tell you more about him later) proposed to carry out, as was customary a long time ago, a mine undermining under the High Grove.
They were in no hurry to accept Nazarov’s proposal, but in the end they approved it. In November, complex and very labor-intensive work began. They were headed by one of the initiators of wood-earth construction, the commander of the 44th division, V.S. Sorokin, who by that time had become a major.
At night, in the place closest to the High Grove, we built a spacious and deep dugout, connected by communication with the first trench. From the dugout, the general direction of the tunnel was determined in azimuth. After this, excavation of the underground gallery began. Its cross-section was small - only 1.5 by 1.2 meters. The work was carried out manually: a shovel, an ax, a saw, a crowbar and a pickaxe - that’s all the tools that the sappers had at their disposal. The undermining undertaking could only succeed if complete secrecy was observed. Therefore, it was necessary to work only silently and completely unnoticed. That is why the soil was carried out in bags, scattered into nearby craters and masked with snow.
Soon groundwater appeared in the gallery. There was not enough oxygen. Light bulbs powered by car batteries shone dimly in the face.
The sappers of the 61st battalion of the 44th division, who tore off the gallery, were led by company commanders senior lieutenants Smiryagin and Rogozhkin, lieutenant Gruzdev and the battalion chief of staff captain Kudinov. Under their command there were two teams of twelve people, who changed every three days.
At the beginning of January 1943, I visited the command post of the 1st battalion of the 305th regiment, in whose zone a mine was being dug. I saw Sorokin. The major was one of those bosses who do not like to manage things from afar (he was distinguished by this quality even after the war, being the chief engineer of the Leningrad metro). Viktor Semenovich has just returned from slaughter. His trousers, boots, and padded jacket were covered with a thick layer of frozen mud. He reported to me in detail about the progress of the work...
After digging 180 meters, an explosion chamber was installed at the end of the gallery. Sappers placed more than 30 tons of explosives in it. Then came the most dangerous part of the job. Having removed all the people, Sorokin and Smiryagin assembled explosive networks leading from the charge to the blasting machine.
The explosion was scheduled for the holiday morning of February 23, 1943 - Red Army Day. It should have been preceded by two distracting explosions - on the railway and near the village of Plavnitsy. Two hundred meters from our forward trench, the sappers set up a starting position - a trench for the concentration of machine gunners, who were tasked with capturing the High Grove after the planted mine went off.
At about seven in the morning I contacted Sorokin by telephone for the last time.
Everything is ready, Comrade General! - he reported.
Well, no worries. Take action! Two red rockets soared into the sky near the checkpoint where I was. On the right, under Plavnica, there are two green ones. There were distracting explosions. At 7.00 our checkpoint, from which it was a good kilometer to the High Grove, shook like an earthquake. Heavy thunder rolled over the ground. We jumped out of the dugout. A huge black mushroom of an explosion settled over the grove, or rather, over what was left of it.
The assault battalion of submachine gunners of the 44th division and the sappers accompanying them rushed to the German strong point located in the High Grove. The explosion completely destroyed it, destroying the entire garrison. Our soldiers had to crawl their way along the heaving ground. They did not suffer any losses - those who could resist were not left alive. The battalion secured a new position. The enemy's Kirishi bridgehead decreased in size. And most importantly, his crossings were now clearly visible. The artillerymen hastened to set up an observation point on the reclaimed land in order to open targeted fire on the crossings.
The Nazis came to their senses only an hour later and began shelling the former grove from behind Volkhov. An artillery duel ensued. Then, after strong air raids, the enemy twice launched furious attacks on our new position. But both attacks were repelled with great damage to the enemy. After this, he was forced to come to terms with the loss of an important position.
The crater that appeared at the site of the explosion turned out to be 80 meters in diameter and 20 meters deep. In the spring, it was filled with meltwater, and a small lake of surprisingly regular round shape formed in this place.
The Kirishi undermining also became known in Hitler's Reich. One of the fascist newspapers grumbled: “The Russians at the Kirishi line undertook barbaric methods of warfare - undermining and explosions during the siege of fortresses.” The complaints of Hitler's scribbler about “barbarism” looked ridiculous. As for the method of mine warfare, resurrected from the last century, which turned out to be comparable in effect to a radiotelephone bomb, this fact itself once again confirmed that the well-forgotten old can become new.
Of course, exotic fighting techniques were not often used in war. But for combat needs it was necessary to borrow experience from other areas of life. The army had units of service dogs, intended not only for the protection of military property. On the Volkhov Front we had a battalion of specially trained service dogs - mine detectors. These were animals with a remarkable sense of smell. They did an excellent job in cases where the induction mine detector turned out to be powerless, not responding to a landmine or a mine in a wooden case, and they unmistakably picked up the smell of explosives. Such trained dogs were faithful assistants to miners until the end of the war.
The front included another unusual formation, the very name of which indicated its connection with one of the purely peaceful sciences. We are talking about a military-geological detachment that brought great benefit. The specialists of this detachment conducted geological reconnaissance for the combat needs of the front: they participated in flights over enemy-occupied territory and in decoding aerial photographs, and compared survey data with their own observations. Thanks to their work, maps appeared to indicate areas where a reliable road could be built, or marks indicating soft ground on which heavy equipment should not be driven. They also presented the justifications necessary for the placement of hydraulic structures, airfields, and bridges.
I still can’t understand why the detachment’s specialists and its commander were not considered military personnel - they were not given military ranks, and they were not subject to the rights and benefits provided for military personnel...
Both of these non-standard formations were part of the engineering troops. And this fact itself once again demonstrates how wide the range of tasks that the front engineering commanders and their headquarters had to solve was. And although the number of our main traditional units continued to grow, although it became increasingly difficult to manage them, the headquarters was quite successful in coping with the difficult workload. It contains wonderful people - knowledgeable, inventive, energetic. I have already named the head of the obstacle department, Major S.P. Nazarov, who came up with the idea of the Kirishi mine. Our first meeting with Sergei Pavlovich on the Volkhov front was unexpected and touching.
When, having taken office, I traveled around all sectors of the front and got acquainted with engineering units on the ground, my path did not pass the 109th separate motorized engineering battalion, commanded by Major Nazarov. Near the battalion command post, as soon as I got out of the car, a middle-aged, fit commander in a neatly fitted uniform stepped up to me with a report.
Comrade General!.. - he began, and I gasped: was it really that Seryozha Nazarov? Of course, there was no doubt!
I met Sergei in 1920 on the Western Front. Our service brought us together in the 2nd engineer battalion, then in the 5th pontoon battalion. Thanks to mutual sympathy and similarity of interests, our comradeship grew into true friendship.
Sergei was inquisitive, inquisitive, and sought to complete his education. He would undoubtedly have advanced far in his career. But fate decreed differently: Nazarov became a civilian and retired to the reserve. However, our relationship did not end. We continued to meet in Leningrad, and then my transfer to Moscow followed, the war began... Naturally, we lost sight of each other. Sergei Pavlovich joined the people's militia division, and then was appointed commander of an engineering battalion. And so - a meeting in the Volkhov forests...
Without listening to the rest of the report, I stepped towards Sergei and hugged him tightly.
Soon, when a knowledgeable and experienced person was needed to replace the head of the barriers department, Nazarov received this position. And it was difficult to find a better candidate. A little time passed, but his affairs were already spoken of with great respect. Kirill Afanasyevich Meretskov called Nazarov nothing more than “the main front fighter” (two years later this title was replaced by another - “the front fighter of three fronts”).
However, Sergei Pavlovich was not only an excellent mine clearer, he turned out to be an equally brilliant mine clearance specialist. His abilities were fully demonstrated when it was necessary to clear Novgorod, Petrozavodsk, and the entire vast territory of Karelia from mines. There he was the immediate supervisor of the work. Then he generously shared his experience by writing mine clearance instructions. A man of high military culture, he then became the author of instructions on reconnaissance, construction and overcoming obstacles.
The assistant to the head of the barriers department was Vladimir Yurchuk, a young lieutenant, still a Komsomol member, who graduated from the Moscow Military Engineering School before the war. Thanks to his remarkable abilities and great hard work, Yurchuk quickly advanced in his career, was appointed to the headquarters and became a good assistant to his highly experienced boss.
The reconnaissance of the engineering troops headquarters was headed by Donat Zherebov, whose name has already appeared in the book. Zherebov was an engineer by education. He graduated from the Higher Naval Engineering and Construction School of the RKKF, designed to train naval fortifiers. After graduation, he joined the army instead of the navy. But here, too, he applied his knowledge to great benefit.
On the day of my arrival at the front, Zherebov reported to me as the chief of intelligence. But before that, he had already served as chief of staff of a sapper battalion, brigade, and then of the engineering troops of the 54th Army (during this period he acted as one of the authors of the project for the first wood-earth fences). Donat Konstantinovich Zherebov became a great master of engineering reconnaissance, successfully solving the most complex problems.
Another representative of the younger generation of military engineers was at our headquarters the assistant chief of the operations department, Major I.N. Zabelin. In '41, he graduated from the V.V. Kuibyshev Academy, after which he went through a good school in the army. I noticed him when he headed the operations department at the headquarters of the 3rd engineer brigade. He impressed me as an active, very punctual person. Our joint service showed that I was not mistaken in my assessment.
My direct staff assistants, who were in charge of the logistics of all the tasks we solved, were Lieutenant Colonels V. Ya. Fokin and S. N. Kukushkin. It was on their initiative, even before my arrival at the front, that a fleet of engineering vehicles was created with three flying branches. In their desire to experiment, to look for new ways to use military equipment, both Fokin and Kukushkin were simply tireless. They were the instigators of experiments in crossing Katyusha rocket launchers on boats and pontoons, as well as in using these weapons to punch holes in wood-earth fences, to destroy bunkers and other fortifications. We owed them close ties with local industry, thanks to which we were able to provide the troops with elements of prefabricated defensive structures and bridges, crossing facilities, subtle obstacles, and trench ovens.
Fokin and Kukushkin worked closely with the head of the technical department, Major N. N. Handel, who was taken to headquarters from the post of division engineer. Whether it concerned the design of defensive structures or the choice of a place to create a minefield, this young officer was always at his best.
I cannot help but say a few words about my adjutant. A certified architect, senior lieutenant Isaac Isaakovich Frishman, held this position from the first day of the war. We worked well together and got used to each other. But Frishman stayed too long in his position. It was necessary to think about his future. And by the winter of 1943, I firmly decided to send Frishman to serve in the army. The only question was a replacement. Finding a good adjutant who has the necessary inclinations for this job is not at all easy. But chance helped here.
One frosty day I found a young lieutenant in my dugout. He had one hand in a sling, and with the other he was lighting the stove.
What is your name, young man?
Yura... That is, Lieutenant Yuri Smakovsky,” he answered, blushing.
How did you get here?
In response I heard a rather ordinary story. After school - a crash course at a military school, the front, a serious injury. From the hospital, without completing his treatment, he tried to get to his unit, but was detained in the rear of the front - his arm did not work at all. Taking this into account, for now he was assigned to heat our dugouts.
I looked closely at the lieutenant for a day or two, talked to him on occasion, and one day suggested:
It’s enough for you, young man, to be busy with trifles, come and become my adjutant!
With great pleasure, Comrade General! - Yuri immediately agreed.
This is how the issue of replacing Frishman was resolved.
Uninformed people sometimes imagine that an adjutant is something between a male secretary and an orderly. Neither one nor the other has anything to do with the truth. In fact, this is a person who is attached to the boss to carry out various assignments related to his main job responsibilities. He must be well versed in the issues with which the boss is occupied, and carry out the grunt work that helps in decision-making.
Yuri turned out to be a man of flexible, tenacious mind, energetic, brave, and efficient. He quickly understood the organization of engineering troops, understood their tasks and needs.
Usually about ten hours before leaving for a formation or unit, I sent Smakovsky there. By the time I arrived, he had time to thoroughly understand the situation and find out what kind of help the chief of the engineering troops needed on the spot. His reports always contained the most reliable information, sensible generalizations and proposals.
Once, when visiting the 128th Infantry Division, Smakovsky had to report to me on the state of its engineering support in the presence of K. A. Meretskov. I was afraid that in front of the front commander, my adjutant would become embarrassed, begin to mumble, and stumble. But nothing of the sort happened: the lieutenant, as always, was laconic, precise, and objective. When he finished, Kirill Afanasyevich, who had listened carefully to the report, called Smakovsky over and shook his hand:
Well done, Lieutenant! Be a great military leader.
It must be said that Meretskov’s prophecy came true. After the war, Yu. B. Smakovsky graduated from the Military Engineering Academy and the General Staff Academy, held high command and staff positions, and became a lieutenant general of the engineering troops.
Well, in that distant time, service brought us together for two whole years.
After the completion of Operation Spark, we had the opportunity to more thoroughly engage in everyday, everyday affairs. These cases, naturally, had a purely combat orientation. First of all, it was about improving defense, about creating a continuous “Volkhov abatis”.
I interrupted my story about the preparations for this event at how, in the zone of the 177th Division of the 54th Army, they began to create a demonstration complex of wood-earth structures. Things went even more successfully there when, in March, the post of army commander was taken by Lieutenant Colonel Vasily Spiridonovich Zaitsev, an experienced officer - this word was then beginning to establish itself in our military lexicon - representing the older generation of engineering chiefs. According to the old sapper habit, he walked around, and in some places climbed the entire front line of the defense. I got acquainted with the troops and had a detailed conversation with the division commanders and divisional engineers. He liked the idea of wood-earth fences and other similar fortifications. He made many proposals that contributed to a thorough improvement of the exemplary defensive line.
With the help of Zaitsev, things went even better for the division 177 N. A. Solofnenko, and by the beginning of summer the show strip was ready. Both I and other engineering specialists, who carried out the inspection with great precision, recognized it as the best on the Volkhov Front. Marshal S.K. Timoshenko, who visited the 177th division, was also satisfied. On his instructions, Nikolai Alekseevich Solofnenko, who had already become a major, was presented with the first (out of ten) military award - the Order of the Red Star. (After the war, Nikolai Alekseevich was just as successful in his peaceful profession of urban planning, which he did not part with until the last days of his life - he became a doctor of architecture, worked at design institutes in Leningrad and Moscow).
The front commander issued a special order, which obliged all division commanders to familiarize themselves with the demonstration defensive line and use the experience of its creators when equipping their positions. We also issued a corresponding order to the engineering troops. The creation of the “notch line” according to Volkhov began.
I won’t say that all commanders and engineering chiefs immediately appreciated the advantages of the new fortification system. It was very difficult for her. A double-walled fence up to two meters high often had to be erected under enemy fire. The consumption of materials was great. One kilometer of fortification required from two to four thousand cubic meters of logs, since in the most critical areas fences were installed in two and three lines. Filling soil between the logs caused a lot of pain. Sometimes nothing worked for a long time: the liquid swampy soil did not hold, it leaked through the cracks.
The commanders and engineers, who were in no hurry to begin work, had to not only put pressure on them, but also help them. Each division was provided with an album with diagrams and drawings of fortifications, made by our wonderful draftsmen and draftsmen L. Timofeev and V. Shvachko and reproduced in the front-line printing house. Employees of the headquarters of the engineering troops were constantly in the divisions, giving practical advice on the ground, showing how best to organize this or that cycle.
By the end of forty-three, the construction of the “Volkhov abatis” was basically completed. Wood-and-earth fences with nests for guns, mortars, machine guns and riflemen, shelters for soldiers, ammunition depots, and first-aid posts stretched almost along the entire front line. The area in front of the fences was covered with mines and barbed wire. The front line of our defense has become a reliable fortress, capable of delaying the enemy’s advance for a long time.
Was such a large expenditure of effort and labor justified on the construction of fortifications that the enemy never attempted to storm? Was this titanic work a vain reinsurance caused by insufficient ability to foresee the course of events? I will answer now, as I did then: no! Even when constructing a large civil structure, it is designed to withstand such spontaneous overloads that can occur once every thousand years, and most often the structure does not experience such overloads until the end of its existence. In war, observance of this principle is even more necessary. Yes, we knew that the initiative had passed from the hands of the enemy into our hands. But he was still strong, very strong, and the situation as a whole could have turned out in such a way that the Nazis, had they known about the weakness of our defense, would have concentrated their forces in one of the areas and taken active action. The “Volkhov attack” did not give them any chance of success. We, having such engineering cover, were able to withdraw a significant part of the forces from the defense at the end of the year, thereby increasing the offensive capabilities of the front.
In addition to the construction of the fence, a lot of effort was also devoted to road construction. And it’s not just that the road network needed to be continuously developed. Even existing roads had to be constantly renewed and restored. The wooden decks and ruts laid through the swamps gradually sank under the load of vehicles and military equipment and became covered with swampy slurry. After a month or two, we were sometimes forced to lay a new one over the old flooring. Some roads had to be resurfaced in this way five to seven times.
This work was carried out by sappers and Red Army soldiers of all military professions. But, perhaps, the construction battalions of the 19th UOS worked more than others here. This powerful construction organization was headed by my longtime acquaintance Anatoly Sergeevich Tsigurov, who ended up on the Volkhov Front at my request. When he appeared with us - collected and energetic, despite his far from young age - I felt that I could be calm about construction matters, I could rely on Anatoly Sergeevich as myself.
Among the many ordinary tasks that sappers dealt with day after day, there was something not quite ordinary, like extracting failed tanks from a swamp.
In liquid swampy soil, the explosion of even a small-caliber shell left a huge crater. After a few days, it was filled with brown water, which in winter was covered with an ice crust. It was not always possible to notice such a trap, and tanks sometimes sank so that not even a tower remained above the surface. We didn't have so many tanks that we could put up with these losses. And the sappers got down to business.
For a long time and patiently, they dug a gentle trench - from the surface to the tank tracks, then laid a wooden ramp. The vehicle was dug up from all sides and its combat spaces were cleared. After that, the tank crews got down to business - they refueled, cranked the engine and, finally, starting it, brought the tank to the surface under their own power.
The sappers were so skilled at doing this job that they could cope with it even under enemy fire. Moreover, they later dug up German tanks in the same way: both those that had fallen into craters, and those that were specially buried in the ground up to the tower - as pillboxes. True, in these cases the tankers had to resort to towing.
Since our experience in such work could be useful not only on the scale of the front, it was described in detail, the descriptions were provided with diagrams and drawings and sent to the headquarters of the Red Army engineering troops. Moscow recognized the Volkhov residents’ experience as useful and worthy of dissemination.
“The initiative at the front has passed into our hands...” This is not the first time I have repeated these words. And not by chance. Their meaning then determined not only our mood, but also the entire rhythm of life.
But if calm reigned in the rear of the front, there was no trace of silence at the front line. Possession of initiative does not imply inaction. In May, a two-month artillery and air offensive of our troops began. The essence of this operation was that preparations for an attack were simulated on one of the sections of the front: the enemy’s advanced positions began to be processed by artillery, and air strikes were carried out. The Nazis sent reinforcements to this area, preparing to repel the expected attack. Then artillery fire and air strikes were transferred into the depths of their defense, towards reinforcements that arrived in time. Then the shaft of fire rolled back to the front edge, then rolled into the depths again. The fire here finally died down to start in another area. Enemy reinforcements were transferred there, and everything started all over again.
Other techniques were also used, designed to achieve the greatest effect of massive artillery and air strikes. There was one goal: to grind as much enemy manpower and equipment as possible. That is why in front-line usage this operation was nicknamed “the mill.”
By the beginning of July, having suffered quite heavy losses, the Nazis finally understood our plan and learned to quite skillfully withdraw their troops from fire raids. And we responded by stopping the operation, considering that it had already played its role.
Meanwhile, the enemy has not yet abandoned preparations for active operations. Intelligence has established that Army Group North intends to resume its attempt to blockade Leningrad again. And we were ahead of the enemy's intentions. On July 22, the Mginsk offensive operation began, in which our 8th Army and the 67th Lenfront Army took part. The spearheads of the converging strike targeted the Mga station, ten kilometers south of Sinyavino. Our army advanced towards Mga from east to west, the Leningrad army - from the corridor connecting the fronts, from north to south.
It was not an easy task. Hitler’s defense, let’s face it, was in no way inferior to ours and had quite a lot of depth. It turned out to be incredibly difficult to gnaw through such a defense. And although this time we achieved a very solid advantage in the air - the Headquarters sent part of the long-range aviation to help our 14th Air Army - the offensive did not culminate in the capture of Mga. But the main goal of the operation was not this, but to once again grind as many enemy divisions as possible, to finally thwart the enemy’s plans to blockade Leningrad again, to pin down as many of his troops as possible, not allowing them to be transferred to the south, where the Battle of Kursk was raging , which foreshadowed the beginning of the decline of Hitler's Reich. And the Mginsk operation, which ended exactly a month later - on August 22 - achieved this goal. We reminded the enemy that “the besieger is besieged, the surrounding is surrounded”!
The German 18th Army suffered serious damage and was thoroughly weakened. In October, the enemy even decided to part with the Kirishi bridgehead, which he had fanatically held for two whole years!
Our 2nd strike was transferred to the Leningrad Front and transferred across the Gulf of Finland to the Oranienbaum bridgehead - a small piece of land, cut off from both Leningrad and the rest of the country. The boundaries of this patch were determined by the range of the naval coastal batteries concentrated there. And this, without a doubt, meant that a blow would soon be struck from there! The hour was approaching for the complete liberation of Leningrad and the defeat of the main enemy forces in the northwestern direction.
05.02.1900 - 29.12.1987
Hero of the Soviet Union
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| Tombstone |
born in 1900 in Ocher. In the Soviet Army— since 1918. Participant in the Civil War. Since 1929— teacher of the military engineering school, assistant chief and head of the engineering troops department of the military district. Member of the CPSU since 1931. In the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940, chief of the army engineering troops. During the Great Patriotic War he was the chief of engineering troops on a number of fronts, and in 1944 he received the rank of colonel general of engineering troops.X Renov Arkady Fedorovich - chief of the engineering troops of the 7th Army of the North-Western Front, colonel.
Born on January 21 (February 5), 1900 in the city of Ocher, now Perm Territory, in the family of a craftsman. Russian. Graduated from the College of Agricultural Engineering.
In the Red Army since 1918. Participant in the Civil War. He graduated from instructor courses at the district military registration and enlistment office in 1918. He was a telephone operator of the famous 30th Infantry Division, commanded by V.K. Blucher, then commanded a platoon, a company of a pontoon battalion, and an engineer battalion.
After the Civil War he remained to serve in the engineering troops. From July 1922 - assistant to the head, from December 1922 - head of the training class of the pontoon battalion. From September 1924 he commanded a company, from September 1925 - head of the regimental school, from October 1927 - head of the training team in the 5th separate pontoon battalion. In the mid-20s, his articles began to appear in the Military Engineering Journal. He was offered to become the author of the “Manual on the installation of reinforced pontoon bridges.” The manual was adopted as a guiding document for the engineering troops of the Red Army.
In 1929, Khrenov graduated from engineering advanced training courses for command personnel (KUKS) at the Leningrad Military Engineering School. He again served as the head of the training team in the same battalion. From September 1930 he taught at the Leningrad Red Banner Military Engineering School. In 1930, at the All-Army Competition for Pontoon-Bridge Parks, the project sent by Khrenov was approved. The industry soon began producing pontoon parks developed by the Military Engineering Academy of the Red Army based on Khrenov’s project. Since October 1931 - head of motorization at the Leningrad Military Engineering School. Since May 1932 - head of the technical department of the Detskoselsky United Military School named after V.I. Lenin. Member of the CPSU(b)/CPSU since 1931.
From March 1933 - assistant to the head of the sector under the chief of engineers of the Leningrad Military District, from February 1935 - assistant to the head of the engineering troops department of the Leningrad Military District for combat training. Since August 1937 - head of the 4th department of the Engineering Directorate of the Red Army. In 1938, he was appointed head of the engineering troops department of the Leningrad Military District. In 1938, he supervised the construction of pillboxes and other engineering structures in the Pskov and Narva fortified areas.
Colonel A.F. Khrenov participated in the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939 - 1940 as chief of the engineering troops of the 7th Army. He skillfully led the army's engineering units in organizing and implementing the breakthrough of the Mannerheim Line. Khrenov created a training ground - an exact copy of Finnish fortifications, where coordinated actions of artillery, infantry, and tanks were practiced with extensive use of engineering equipment. As a result, the second assault on the Mannerheim Line, which lasted exactly a month, was completed successfully.
U Kazom of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on March 21, 1940 for the exemplary performance of combat missions of the command in the fight against the Finnish White Guard and the courage and heroism shown to the colonel Khrenov Arkady Fedorovich awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union with the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal.
In early July 1940, in Stalin’s office, General Khrenov, in the presence of a number of military leaders and government officials, reported a plan for transforming the entire engineering department of the army into the Main Military Engineering Directorate of the Red Army. The plan was accepted, and in July 1940 Khrenov was appointed head of the Main Military Engineering Directorate of the Red Army. However, already in February 1941 he was removed from this position “as he could not cope with the work” and in May 1941 he was appointed with demotion as the head of the engineering department of the Moscow Military District.
With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Khrenov was appointed to the Southern Front, where he assumed the post of deputy commander for engineering defense of Odessa and Sevastopol (1941-42), and was the chief of the engineering troops of the Crimean Front (April - May 1942). Under his leadership, firing points arose, trenches and passages were dug into the rocks, and the “mine” map of the area was changed. In the shortest possible time, the Sevastopol fortification lines were created and equipped, where the defenders of the Black Sea stronghold held back the enemy’s onslaught for a long time. For his skillful management of engineering support in the defense of Sevastopol, Khrenov was awarded the Order of Lenin.
In the summer of 1942, Khrenov was assigned to the Volkhov Front. One of his “occupations” was the fascist bridgehead near the city of Kirishi on the right bank of the Volkhov. On a coastal strip with an area of about 10 square kilometers, the enemy firmly occupied the High Grove. Under it, Major V. Sorokin (the future chief engineer of the Leningrad Metro), under the leadership of General Khrenov, secretly from the enemy, made a 180-meter tunnel. At the end of the gallery, more than 30 tons of explosives were placed in the explosive chamber. “Bang” properly! While a huge black mushroom of raised earth was settling over the heights, the assault battalion of machine gunners had already established itself in an important position.
For two years, from 1942 to 1944, a war unfolded on the Volkhov Front not only with the Nazis, but also with the swamps. Under the leadership of Khrenov, engineering units built shelters, dugouts, and laid communication passages from poles, logs, and brush mats. Gati, maneuverable roads made of wooden ridges, were laid for many kilometers. In many places there were rubble and fences made of trees, thickly stuffed with mines. They even equipped bunkers on rafts “floating” through the swamps.
But the main thing is breaking the blockade of Leningrad. Front commander Khrenov formed large assault detachments, which were tasked with crushing enemy fortifications and starting a battle in the depths of the defense, dragging infantry and tanks with them. The infantry was being “tested” - in each rifle company, one platoon took an accelerated course in sapper work.
Operation Iskra developed rapidly. In January 1943, the first 12-kilometer gap appeared in the ring of the blockade of Leningrad... A year later, in January 1944, troops of the Volkhov and Leningrad fronts completely lifted the blockade from the city on the Neva.
Since February 1944, he was the head of the engineering troops of the Karelian Front, and led the engineering preparations for crossing the Svir River and the liberation of Karelia. A training ground was built on one of the lakes, where rifle and sapper units during the spring practiced coordinated actions to overcome the engineering-strong fascist defense along the Svir River. Moreover, 2 “false” crossings were invented to divert enemy forces. As a result, in June 1944, the troops of the Karelian Front, going on the offensive, brilliantly overcame Svir and with swift blows defeated the enemy in Karelia.
In the fall of 1944, Khrenov participated in the planning and organization of the Petsamo-Kirkenes operation. According to his idea, an unprecedented raid of shock units was carried out into the enemy rear along the mountainous Arctic with the crossing of the Titovka River and a further attack on the city of Kirkenes.
And in the summer of 1945, when everyone was celebrating the Victory, Khrenov, with the shoulder straps of a lieutenant colonel and his last name according to his documents - Fedorov, was traveling to the Far East. Stalin liked the idea that the Norwegian fjords with mountains on the shore were similar to the mountainous shores of the Far East. Therefore, the Primorsky Group was subordinated to the headquarters of the former Karelian Front, which was transferred to the east. Marshal K.A. Meretskov was appointed commander, and according to documents, Colonel General Maksimov. Upon his appointment, Stalin said: “The cunning Yaroslavl (Meretskov) will find a way to defeat the Japanese. This is not the first time for him to fight in the forest and tear through fortified areas.” These epithets were given to the commander of the Karelian Front, to a very large extent thanks to the chief of the front’s engineering troops, A.F. Khrenov.
The 1st Far Eastern Front was tasked with quickly capturing the cities of Harbin and Girin. Before the start of hostilities, Khrenov carried out engineering preparation and provision of an offensive bridgehead in Primorye. When the offensive began, Khrenov proposed landing airborne assault forces on enemy airfields, playing on surprise. It was a “pure adventure.” But it was impossible to allow the explosion of bridges across the Songhua River. The daring landings - operation codenamed "Bridge" - ended in complete triumph. The son of A.F. Khrenov, Lieutenant Pyotr Khrenov, took part in one of the landings.
In the liberated city of Harbin, this long series of brutal wars ended for A.F. Khrenov. After the war, he was the head of the engineering troops of the Primorsky Military District, then the Far East Troops (December 1945-May 1949). In 1949, A.F. Khrenov graduated from the Higher Academic Courses at the Higher Military Academy named after K.E. Voroshilov. From 1949 to 1960 - Inspector General of the Engineering Troops of the Main Inspectorate of the USSR Ministry of Defense.
Honorary citizen of the cities of Ocher, Perm Territory, and Kirishi, Leningrad Region. Honorary worker of the Ochersky Mechanical Plant.
Since September 1960, Colonel General of the Engineering Troops A.F. Khrenov has been retired. Author of memoirs. Lived in the hero city of Moscow. Died December 29, 1987. He was buried in Moscow at the Kuntsevo cemetery (section 9-2).
Military ranks:
Major (1936),
colonel,
Major General of the Engineering Troops (06/04/1940),
Lieutenant General of the Engineering Troops (12/7/1942),
Colonel General of the Engineering Troops (11/2/1944).Awarded 3 Orders of Lenin (21.03.1940, 10.02.1942, 21.02.1945), Order of the October Revolution (1980), 3 Orders of the Red Banner (15.01.1940, 4.11.1944, ...), 3 Orders of Kutuzov 1st degree (08/26/1944, 09/08/1945), orders of Kutuzov 2nd degree (04/22/1944), Suvorov 2nd degree (03/31/1943), Order of the Patriotic War 1st degree (03/11/1985), many medals, as well as foreign orders and medals.
Composition:
Bridges to victory. M., 1982.
Mannerheim Line... The name of this system of long-term fortifications on the Karelian Isthmus is probably included in all encyclopedias, textbooks and manuals of many armies of the world.
The reactionary Finnish government, with the participation of German, British, French and Belgian military specialists, built this line from 1927 to 1939. Here, in a wooded and swampy area, near Leningrad, a powerful springboard was created for an attack on the Soviet Union.
The Mannerheim line consisted of more than two thousand wood-earth and long-term fire structures. In front of the fortifications there is a chain of barriers: up to 12 rows of stone obstacles, from 15 to 45 rows of networks of wire fences. In addition, there are numerous anti-tank ditches and a system of minefields.
Each settlement was turned into a fortification center with radio communications, with supplies of ammunition, fuel, food, that is, with everything that the garrison needed for combat operations. The highway system made it possible to quickly transfer troops from one area to another.
From this powerful bridgehead, the White Finns, encouraged by their Western allies with promises of help, attacked our country in the fall of 1939. The fighting took place on a huge front from the Barents Sea to the Gulf of Finland.
Arkady Fedorovich at that time headed the engineering troops of the Leningrad Military District. He took part in engineering support for the breakthrough of the Mannerheim Line.
As a result of thorough reconnaissance, the system of fire and defense of the White Finns along the entire front from Ladoga to the Gulf of Finland was clarified. Based on these data, a plan was drawn up to break through the fortifications.
The engineering units had a huge job to do: it was necessary to make passages in minefields and barbed wire barriers, to ensure the passage of tanks through gaps and anti-tank ditches. It was necessary to take care of maintaining front-line roads in order, and the winter of 1940 turned out to be incredibly snowy and severe. It was necessary to do a lot, a lot of other things in order to create favorable conditions for the advance of tanks, infantry, and artillery, and during the breakthrough of the defense line, help them destroy resistance nodes.
Having launched an attack on the Mannerheim Line on February 11, 1940, by the end of February 13, our units had already broken through the main strip of this line, and on February 28 - the second strip, and a day later - the third, rear, and reached Vyborg. On March 11, the assault on Vyborg began. After two days of fierce fighting, it was taken by our troops.
Khrenov showed his organizational skills and talent as a military leader in these battles. He was constantly in the units, directing their actions. And the Golden Star of the Hero was the crown of his military work, done in the harsh winter of 1939-40.
During the Great Patriotic War, Arkady Fedorovich participated in the defense of Odessa, Crimea, and Sevastopol. Then - on the Volkhov Front and again on the Karelian Isthmus. The second time he had to organize engineering support for breaking through the Mannerheim Line, which the enemy managed to restore.
After the defeat of Nazi Germany, Arkady Fedorovich served in the Far East. As part of the troops of the 1st Far Eastern Front, he participated in the defeat of the Kwantung Army of Japan.
Khrenov Arkady Fedorovich // Book of Memory. 1941-1945. Ochersky district. T. 1. - pp. 112-115.