Chapter 37 8.The tongs are closed

Convinced that the offensive was in full swing and that the fascist high command was now unable to stop it, the commander-in-chief decided to return to Voronezh, where other urgent matters awaited him.When he bid us farewell, he sternly enjoined: "Be careful, don't let the Yelets Group go!" We ourselves know how important this is.However, to cut off all the enemy's way of life, our army has to play a higher mobility than Hitler's troops.Therefore, we ask General Kryuchonkin to advance northward with maximum speed.Whether the Yelets group was trapped in the encirclement or escaped depended on the cavalry.When the commander of the 13th Army reported that the fascists had been beaten out of Yelets and were fleeing westward, we no longer doubted that the fascist high command no longer wanted to attack, but only wanted to save its own army from the threat of encirclement. rescued.

Neither the severe cold nor the deep snow nor the stubbornness of the Hitlerites can stop our soldiers.Encouraging news came from Moscow: Soviet troops were advancing on the wide front from Kalinin to Yelets, and for the first time since the war, three fronts were attacking at once.The enemy was driven farther and farther from the capital. Our rapid cluster has advanced forty to fifty kilometers before December 10.Since Kastornoe became more and more difficult to communicate with them, we decided to transfer the command post to Terbny.I sent Colonel Kaminski there in the evening to set up a communications hub at the new location.

In the morning, Bo Jin called me.At first, the Chief of Staff of the Front insisted that I stay in Kastornoye until Kostenko took command of the army at the new command post. "We have lost contact with the army, how can I command here?" I objected. After a moment of silence, Borgin said: "Then there is really no need for you to stay. When are you going to arrive at the new place?" "Eighteen o'clock." "It's too late. I'm going to have the railroads give your trains a green signal path." The green signal road is not provided.The railways were severely blocked, and fascist planes bombed our train twice, blocking train traffic.In the evening, I finally arrived at Derbny station and started the two radios I brought with me.

"Where's the army?" asked General Kostenko, as soon as he had greeted Colonel Kaminsky, who had come to meet us. "Contact was lost two hours ago and has not been restored." "Here it goes again! The faster the divisions advance, the more often the communication fails." Kostenko glanced at me: "Do something, Ivan Khristoforovitch. The most important phase of the campaign is approaching. How much we need correspondence now." I nodded silently, and went to disturb my exhausted signal soldiers. "Well, my friends, you can just put me in touch with Rusyanov and Kryuchunkin by radio."

At that time, fascist radio activities were rampant, often jamming and destroying communication links.There are also many difficulties-it will take a lot of time to translate everything into a code, and because of the poor audibility, the telegrams are often seriously distorted during the broadcasting process.I didn't rely too much on the radio, so I sent two officers to fly to the cavalry and guards. After great effort, we were finally able to gather a very incomplete report on the state of the army by the end of the day.General Rusyanov's Guards moved out to the Sosna River in front of the entire front and surrounded the enemy's entrenched villages along the Yelets-Livny road.The 3rd and 32nd Cavalry Divisions cut off the road in the northwest and captured the villages of Hukhlovo and Priliepe.

Colonel A. E. Yakovlev sent a denoted our cluster December 10 A map of the situation before the end of the day.The fronts of the attacking corps surrounded the enemy.However, between the villages of Nikitskoye and Pyatnitskoye and the Vargor River, this encirclement has not yet been closed.At both ends of the arc there is a gap twenty-five kilometers wide. "However, General Moskalenko's troops should have gone out to the Nikitskoye area!" I said in surprise. "Where did they go?" Yakovlev simply shrugged in answer. "Why don't you ask the 13th Army Command?"

"Tried it," he replied. "But to no avail: we don't know their passwords." "It's also good to contact the front army headquarters." "It's being done now." Where did the 13th Army go?Will we have time to rendezvous with its strike group?Will the enemy slip through this gap?When I reported the situation to General Kostenko, he ordered that the cavalry corps be moved to the northwest without waiting for a report on the location of General Moskalenko's assault group; Going due north to Izmarkovo. He glanced at me twice: "The commander-in-chief would know the order and say: 'I warned them. You know, he suggested from the very beginning that we attack Livne.'"

I said that it is impossible to attack Livny with the main force, even now, because this will widen the gap between our army and the Moskarenko assault group, and then it is impossible to even think about encircling the enemy.Moreover, the German Yelets Group may not escape if we do not use the main force to attack its rear. Kostenko thought about it and agreed that this was the case. We had just sent an officer to General Kryuchynkin with the order to speed up the advance to the maximum and divert the divisions to the Rossoshnoe station of the Yelets-Orel railway, when the communications officer came to report , Marshal Timoshenko asked us to talk.

When the cable telegraph started to work and received the first batch of questions from the Front Army Command, I checked my watch as usual: it was already past one o'clock at night.The commander-in-chief had not yet reached the telegraph, and the call was carried out by Bo Jin. "What's new about you? You haven't reported anything to us. The marshal is very dissatisfied." "We are not satisfied ourselves," Kostenko replied, explaining that due to the lack of correspondence with the army, only very simple information was collected.It is only known that Rusyanov's regiments attacked the besieged enemy from all sides at zero o'clock and were destroying them.In the morning, Rusyanov's division will advance to Izmarkovo.Kryuchonkin overcame the 95th enemy infantry division, forcibly crossed the Sosna River, rushed into Khukhlovo and Prilepe, and cut off the road.A number of Austrians were captured: that is, today Kryuchynkin's cavalry will have to deal with the 45th enemy infantry division, which is trying to slip through the gap between us and the 13th Army.Colonel Shamshin's 34th Motorized Brigade was blocked by snow and was still 20 kilometers southeast of Livny in the morning.As to where it is now, we don't know because our officers couldn't find it.Possibly it's already in Liv.

"The situation is too simple." Bo Jin expressed dissatisfaction. I request a briefing on the situation of the 13th Army. (Because we have no reliable communications with the 13th and 3rd Army, they are often commanded by the Southwest Front Army Command during the campaign.) Bogin said that General Moskalenko's assault group was blocked by the Valgor River, The 148th Infantry Division and the 150th Tank Brigade forcibly crossed the river west of Yelets. I made a rough calculation on the map: there was a 20-kilometer gap between our group and the corps to which Moskalenko belonged, and the main force of the enemy Yelets Group was fleeing to this gap.

Bogin finally said that the situation of the rightmost army of our front has stabilized because Guderian's army is retreating after being defeated in the Stalinnogorsk area. The Commander-in-Chief had not yet reached the telegraph.I take this opportunity to ask Boggin to get our prisoners out quickly—they are already gathered in Derbne in large numbers. He promised to instruct Colonel Luo Jiajing, the chief of the rear guard of the front army, to send escort soldiers. The marshal did not reach the telegraph until after two o'clock at night.He immediately asked: "Is Kovner occupied?" Kostenko replied that we did not know the situation in Livny, and requested that the divisions on the left wing of the 13th Army should be accelerated westward. I did not understand at first why the divisions attacking south of Yelets, which had practically caught up with the retreating Germans, had to be accelerated westward.It would be another matter to speed up the divisions that were advancing against our group north of Yelets.Kostenko then explained his intentions: it was necessary to quickly build an enclosing outer front so that the pockets containing the Hitlerites could be fastened more reliably.According to Kostenko's opinion, the divisions of the left wing of the 13th Army should also complete this task. The commander-in-chief promised to ask the commander of the 13th Army to end the day on December 13 Advance to the Verhovier and Livny lines to ensure our group's actions to encircle and wipe out the Yelets Group.He ordered us to send the main force of Kryuchynkin to the Ulyanovka, Muromtsevo, and Russell Shnoye areas, and told us to be bolder to send Shamshin's motorized infantry brigade and a cavalry division to Advance in the direction of Verhovier, Khomutovo, and Karpovo. "Don't tie the hands and feet of the division commanders. Give them complete freedom: let them insert into the enemy's deployment, let them go forward to the enemy's deep rear." Kostenko expressed concern that Hitlerites might turn to the counteroffensive from the southwest to aid their Yelets-Kovne bloc. "Don't worry about the enemy," replied the commander-in-chief. "Be bold." We understood that the Commander-in-Chief agreed with our determination, but asked us to go farther west (Verhoviye, which he ordered the motorized infantry brigade to attack, was thirty kilometers west of Rossoshnoye, to which we sent the cavalry corps. ) Kostenko asked the commander-in-chief to instruct the immediate repair of the Yelets-Orel railway, so that armored trains could be sent to support the army.The Commander-in-Chief replied that work had begun on December 10 and that everything could be repaired quickly, except for one bridge in the town of Kazaki: that bridge was large and it would take a lot of time to repair it. Daylight came, and communications with the army had not improved.We continued to receive occasional brief messages on the radio and from the Liaison Officers, who were often late due to the rapid advance of the various units.The regiments of the 1st Guards Rifle Division advanced irresistibly to the north towards Izmarkovo, and General Moskalenko's group also advanced against the division's regiments from the northwest.The cavalry divisions advanced more swiftly on Rossoshnoe, turning from the west towards the fleeing enemy units in Livny and Verhovier. I was engrossed in organizing the command of the army, and I could not take care of the prisoners who poured in from all directions to Terbne Station.And they need to be fed, and the injured have to be treated.The company commander of the guard at our small headquarters couldn't cope with these things.You can understand how happy I was when my old friend Colonel Rojatin came to us on Bokin's behalf. "Save us," said I, as soon as he arrived, "let us get rid of these captives, or we shall have no time to take those who are not captives." "I will free you." Luo Jiajing promised. "When my warriors arrive, I will set you free. Now let us go and see your dwarfs." All the empty houses near the station were filled with captives.We patrolled them.It was a pitiful sight.The Hitlerites are now nothing like those smug and conceited "supermen" who were captured by us in the summer.Now they are a frightened flock of sheep huddled together.They were all unkempt, scratching vigorously, and staring blankly ahead. When we got a little closer, I immediately moved away involuntarily: there were two small white spots crawling on the military coat of a non-commissioned officer in front of me.This lice-ridden fighter had a steel helmet tightly buckled on his head, and something pink was protruding from it. "Why are their caps so weird?" I asked Luo Jiajing in surprise. "Pink can be seen from afar." Luo Jiajing lifted the helmet slightly with his hands in disgust, and immediately laughed: "It turns out he has a woman's underpants on his head!" Yes, the fascists are no longer polite. After I handed over the captives to Luo Jiajing and his men, I breathed a sigh of relief. Correspondence is not organized well.Radio stations are unreliable.The officer who flew out never came back.The Commander-in-Chief called Kostenko and me on the phone and reprimanded us severely. "Even if you all go to the army, you must maintain communication! The communication director of the front army has gone to your place. You warn him that if he can't help you, the consequences will be very bad." Kostenko said communication was of course poor, but we did something.Two officers had been sent to the unit by plane, and three others had just left by car.Major Mathuk returned from Rusyanov to report that advance regiments of the Guards had begun the battle to capture Izmarkovo.I haven't been in touch with Kryuchongkin yet.Coordination with the 13th Army has been organized.The 121st Infantry Division of the Army Group has occupied the defense along the Keshen River, and the 6th Infantry Division is approaching the river.The 148th Infantry Division was advancing towards Livny.Army Commander A. M. Gorodnyansky will use the remaining corps to completely smash the enemy Yelets group... "Generally speaking, although we have no communications, the progress is very smooth: from December 7th to 11th, the Shan Keliuqiongjin cavalry army fought and marched 200 kilometers, liberating 180 residential areas. .” The commander-in-chief calmed down, knowing that we had done everything within our power, so he ended the call very kindly. On the afternoon of December 12, our liaison representative returned from Kryuchongkin.He brought good news: the cavalry corps made a heroic charge and captured Rossoshnoye and Shadylovo.The headquarters of the enemy's 34th Army was defeated at Shatilovo.According to the captives, the commander of the army dropped his troops and fled by plane. Kostenko hurriedly reported to the commander-in-chief that a section of the Yelets-Orel railway that was more than ten kilometers long had been seized by our army.This news pleased Timoshenko: now the enemy could not withdraw any troops from the Yelets area, either by car or by rail.The Commander-in-Chief tells us that General Moskalenko's forces had plunged north of the railway to the Polevie Lokozy River, cutting off the last possible country roads by which the enemy could escape to the northwest.This means that all the lines of communication of the enemy's Yelets group are under our control. The remarkable progress of our army has led us to consider again the transfer of our command posts: staff officers have had to spend more and more time in the various corps.But we don't have the technical equipment to deploy a communication hub at the new location. I appealed to General Bogin to send front signal corps to Izmarkovo to organize a new communication hub. "But, is there a battle going on there?!" Borgin said strangely. I replied that everything will end there today.Bojin promised to study carefully and help us. "So, how do you plan to organize the command of the attacking army in the future?" he asked. "The situation shows that your rapid group will also be directly under the commander-in-chief. It seems that Kostenko and you must not interfere with the command of the 3rd and 13th armies. If this is the case, then we will hand over all communication tools to you Use. You also need to register the seized wired communication tools and distribute them, so that no one can move them away sporadically.” I said that what worries us most now is the delivery of fuel and ammunition to the cavalry. "The commander-in-chief has ordered the commander of the 3rd Army to supply the Kryuchonkin Army." We are used to the logistics department of the Southwest Front Army not caring about our rapid grouping. At first, it pushed this task to the logistics chief of the 13th Army, who couldn't even take care of our own army.Now, in the most tense moments of the campaign, the supply of the rapid groupings, which played a major role in the offensive, was once again pushed to the logistics of the 3rd Army.And we haven't even gotten in touch with its headquarters yet. On December 12, the encirclement circle around the enemy divisions was tightened.The tighter the encirclement, the more recalcitrant the Hitlerites.However, our army no longer carries out a frontal attack, but skillfully maneuvers to detour the enemy's resistance hub and seize it from the rear.For example, the village of Ponomarevka near Izmarko was captured in this way.A battalion of the 331st Infantry Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant E. A. Mekhov, the chief of chemical services of the original regiment, attacked the village from the march.The enemy fired back wildly, and our soldiers had to lie down, so Mekhov sent the platoon of Second Lieutenant E. C. Beketov to make a detour.His Guardsmen sneaked around behind the Hitlerites and fired heavily.The fascists were in chaos and tried to escape from the village, but they were shot wherever they went.The fascist leader transferred nearly two companies from the neighboring village of Pozarovo to support the besieged defenders.But Beketov set up his machine guns on the high ground and blocked their approach with precise fire.In this way, none of the Hitlerites escaped from the village of Ponomaryovka. On December 13, Kryuchonkin's Cavalry Corps and Rusyanov's Guards joined the 13th Army. General Kostenko looked at the map and said: "Look, now the fascists don't even have a village road to escape from the encirclement!" Fyodor Yakovlevich marked an "X" on the picture with the tip of a pencil: "Now we have to The thing to do is to divide and annihilate the besieged enemy."