UTTER DESOLATION

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 78, 10 March 1943, Page 3

UTTER DESOLATION

RUINS IN MOONLIGHT STALINGRAD CLEANS UP Stalingrad, Feb. 15 We drove into Stalingrad at 3 a.m. after 11 hours on the road dodging shell-holes and snowdrifts. The temperature was 31 degrees below zero, or 63 degrees below freezing point, reports Godfrey Blundcn, Melbourne “Argus” war correspondent.

One of the windows of the truck had jolted out, and by the light of the new moon we could see the ruins of buildings. It was a scene of utter desolation.

It was deathly silent. There was not even a wind blowing. A light covering of snow lay on the broken walls, splintered rails, and crumbling foundations, so that it had a grim and spectral appearance like some lunar world. It was hard to believe that there had been bitter fighting here only four days previously. It was like one of those deserted Aztec cities softly covered with vines. There was not a single living thing to be seen. Naturally, for who could live in that place when the air was so cold that one’s breath formed icicles inside one’s. nose, and dry frost on one’s eyebrows.

At last, after bumping through that dim desolation for an hour, our driver saw a glimmer of yellow light in the distance. He left us and walked towards it. There he found a group of Red Army soldiers crouched round a blazing oil drum. They told him how to find the way to headquarters of the 62nd Army, and so we about-turned and the truck edged down the bank of the Volga and along the river’s edge, until we were hailed by a sentry. This was headquarters. Without wasting time we clambered up the cliff, our felt boots slipping on the frozen ground, feeling our way along catwalks and up stairways until our guides, big, great-coated, mittened Red Army men, led us to a door in the cliff face, which, when pushed open revealed a blaze of yellow light. We tumbled into the dug-out and began working at our fingers and feet, slapping our arms, and trying to get back circulation into limbs stiffened and cramped by the long truck ride. CITY OF CLIFF DWELLERS This was one of the posts which officers of the 62nd Army had occupied during the battle of Stalingrad. There were four bunks in it, a small table, rifle rack, coat pegs, and, most important of all, a small iron stove. The previous occupant had rescued a small pendulum clock from somewhere among the ruins, and set it on the wall, where it tick-tocked away as it probably had done during the battle. There was alos tapestry cloth on one wall of the kind which schoolgirls make at their first embroidery lesson, except that the design was one of a luscious mermaid lying among waterlilies. With the stove crackling and the temperature in the dug-out rising to a comfortable fug, we slept. In the morning there was sparkling sunlight, and a slight wind, which was like emery paper rubbing one’s face. Then for the first time I obtained my first clear impression of what the Volga at Stalingrad was like. It lay below me now, white and glistening. Small tracks with guide posts and short telegraph poles sunk into the ice, crossed to the far bank, a mile distant, but I could see now that that was not actually the east bank, but a huge island, and one of the delta in the elbow of the river. The western bank, on which I was standing was a high clay cliff rising steeply off the mud beach to a height of about 100 feet. All along this cliff, north and south, for as far as I could see, there were dug-outs. It was a city of cliff dwellers, or like one of those earthen catacombs which wasps make. Some dug-outs were built deply into the cliff, with many rooms and passages, like those occupied by the headquarters staff. Others were simply built of logs, and leaned against the cliff. Here and there small fissures in the earth expelled smoke, as though the place were a volcanic area. These were the chimneys of stoves inside the dug-outs. TRAFFIC ON THE ICE Along the ice edge of the river there was a busy scene which jminded me of pictures of Anzac Cove in that other war. Hulks of barges, some burned down to the water’s edge, others buckled by bombs, had been grounded on the mud, and were now set in the ice. At one place there was a damaged barge loaded with tractors which had just failed to make evacuation. At another place scores of pine logs had been floated into the shore. All along this frozen beach men were busy. Some were stacking German rifles, which wert piled up in great heaps. Machineguns and trench-mortars were also being examined and • ‘-eked. Out on the Volga motor-trucks back-fired. Every few minutes there was a short burst of fire as a Red Army man unfroze his sub-machinegun, and occasionally there was the fanning shock of a distant explosion as sappers found another enemy mine. It was this bank that the Red Army had held out. Five times headquarters had changed position. It was here that rafts and barges drew in at night under light flares 2 d mortar fire with munitions and supplies for the troops. It was here on this mud beach that many thousands of Red Army men had stepped ashore for the last ' me. But now they were cleaning un. M. . who worked here were earth-grimed and battle-weary. Here they -. ere stacking parachute canisters, ana a few yards farther away enemy motor transport was being tested. At one place on the white ice of the Volga had been thrown refuse from the base hospital. Below the cliff there was life; above the cliff there was nothing but destruction. The light of clear day did not make the desolation we had glimpsed at night look any better. Along the edge of the cliff there was a triple set of railway tracks. Bombing had curled the iron tracks like hairpins, and heavy steel trucks loaded with shell castings had been crushed and bent and burnt. Beyond that was a cluster of what had been oil tanks, now burst and battered like old rusty jam tins. Beyond the oil tanks rose a round smooth hill. This was the famous Mamia Kurgan, named after Mamia, a Tartar chieftain of the 18th century, who was probably buried there, but known to the Red Army as Hill 102, marked thus on maps, being exactly 102 metres above the Volga. VIEW FROM BIG HILL Before going any further let me give you a picture of Stalingrad a • it is seen from the too of Mamia Kurgan. It is a picture which 1 always wanted to have during bau.e so that I could locate the direction and the area of the fighting, as reported in the Soviet Press. I did nor get that picture until I stood on the top of that famous hill. Stalingrad is a big city. In peacetime there were 500,000 people here.

It lies along the edge of the Volga for 30 miles, and at its 1 widest point is probably 9or 10 miles wide. It is like a boomerang, for it lies in the bend of the Volga. At the southernmost end of the boomm-pr" there are mostly suburbs. At the thick 'P" 1 ’ of the boomerang is the main city section, where there are big buildings. Just north of this is the Mamia Kurgan, standing up l i e a great knot which the man who made the boomerang forgot to carve away. Although it is hardly more than 300 feet high it completely dominates the surrounding country. It is n big, bare hill, several miles across, and slopes gently down to the top ol the cliff above the river.

North of Mamia Kurgan lie L.e three big industrial plants of Stalingrad, separated by a stance of three or five miles, and hugging the top of the Volga cliff. Behind and between them is, or was. a gridiron of streets where the humble cottages of .2

workers stood. This was the area referred to alwavs as ‘‘workers’ settlements.” The first big industrial plant is the Red October Works, which until six months ago produced high-grade steel from electric furnaces. Next along the river is the Red Barricades plant, which was a famous ordnance factory. Last, and largest, was the modern tractor factory with its many smokestacks and long mass-production lines.

RESERVOIRS AS FORTS Standing on Mamia Kurgan, it was easy to see why the Germans believed that if they held it they would dominate Stalingrad. Not only did it command the main city but the whole Volga in that area. Three great factories were within gunrange of the Volga, and the Red October factory and workers’ cottages surrounding it were well within mortar range. The summit is a double ridge and along each the enemy had dug a trench with firing steps and machine-gun emplacements and saps running back to mortar and gun positions. In front of this trench there was one German medium tank, the tracks of which had been disabled by grenades, and we were told of how only weeks previously Red Army men had crept up the hill and rushed this tank, knocking it out, but losing their lives doing so. In the trench and on the slope there were numbers of bootless corpses halfburied in the snow.

On the second ridge of Mamia Kurgan there had been two huge reservoirs which supplied water pressure for the factories. About 80 feet in diameter and 40 feet deep, they were made of reinforced concrete embedded deep in the hilltop, rooffed over and with interior supporting. The Germans in their first attacks had emptied these tanks and fortified them. I crawled inside one of these tanks and found what I now recognise to be the usual refuse of war: empty shell cases, fragments of clothing and equipment and mach-ine-gun belts. The Russians had already cleaned up most of the valuable material, collecting from the two tanks, they jsaid. no fewer than 200 machine-guns. The concrete sides of the reservoir showed many signs of the Russian siege. At one place the 3ft thick concrete had been blown in by a direct hit.