bunker!

[Spartacus]

"The Soviets have been crossing all along the Dnepr river in 22 different places. The battle-ground spread on a few hundred kms. They have been climbing up and Germans held defence on the hills. Russian Katyusha rockets poured everyone with iron from the left bank.

German machine gunners had two directives 1) to be able to reload cartridges 2) not to go insane of all amount of people they were killing."

"Soldiers there too, under leaves, bones, skulls, jaw-bones... teeth mostly good of young people. In Soviet army of those who were born in 1922 only 3 out of 100 came home from war, the rest 97 on those hills.
I believe, for German army statistic must be similar as young people the same everywhere, do not know the value of life, have no fear and for their regimes it was easier to fool young."

 

[Spartacus]

especially for Matt

"Below is from modern history. In the 1990's these were the homes of rich people. Today the owners are in jail and homes are left standing unfinished. One day, their owners have been prosperous people who thought the success would last forever... but then, the politics and economic situations changed and every time when it happens the skinny crows coming to power to eat the fat ones.

We have many such houses in neighbourhood, whole villages. We call them the burials of money. They are from time when Soviet Union collapsed and many became rich quick and then fell in flames...

This one located in a beautiful place, on some of the hills of Bukrin battle and look like a memorial to me. The memorial of people hopes for better life. In this country a rich people will never be safe."

 

[swole]

I'm a huge military history buff, and this is awesome! Thanks bor

 

[Spartacus]

"I served as a chief of the KOMSOMOL of the battalion which waded the Dnieper River and defended the Bukrin bridgehead (Around Bukrin, Dnieper was forced by a mech brigade of the 3rd GTA on September 22, 1943. By September 24 the bridgehead was widened to 20 kilometers. Units of the 40th, 27th, and 3rd Tank Armies crossed there. They were opposed by up to 10 German divisions. Comment by Artem Drabkin). It was very frightening there. We were just left on our own, without any food or help from the outside. We were used to decoy some of the German troops so that our main forces could liberate Kiev by November 7.

By the end of September we reached Dnepr. Our infantry waded to the right bank of the river without heavy weapons, because we didn't have pontoons. We were lucky. We had a chance to dig trenches in a steep slope, and that saved our lives. When we expanded the bridgehead, we found poppy seeds stored in a shed and ate it, because we were very hungry. It was an ugly story. We fell asleep and when the Germans attacked some people couldn't wake up. At Bukrin the first internal security units appeared. They were large and well equipped. There we first saw "Katiushas" which we'd heard so much about. We dug in on the floor of a valley while these deadly rockets spewed above our heads with terrible thunder and fire. We were shelled day after day, the sky looked black because of abundant German war planes. Our air forces? We first saw them at the end of the war. It is strange, but when you see a bomb falling, you feel like it is directed right at you. Actually, it is falling above you but can land anywhere. Most people lay face downwards and hid their head in hands. I always lay belly up; I had to watch what was going on. It seemed safer to me.

Lots of people were killed at Bukrin bridgehead. I had a friend in a neighboring battalion. They had 280 graduates from a military college. After the battle at Bukrin, only 16 of them were alive. Bear in mind, they had been trained. Our recruits after the battle were the boys of 16 and older from the nearby villages. They knew nothing and were scared of everything. These were our fresh forces."

http://www.iremember.ru/others/peshkova/peshkova.htm

a female soviet soldiers' recall of Bukrin Bridgehead
and our guys are whining about up armored humvees

 

[Spartacus]

I'm a huge military history buff, and this is awesome! Thanks bor

check out the game
http://korsunpocket.wargamer.com/

February 16, 1944. Korsun Pocket Breakout. By the new year in 1944, the Soviets had pushed the Germans all the way back to the Dnieper River and had retaken Kiev. The Germans held only one stretch of the east bank of the river, between Kanev and Cherkassy. It wouldn't last.

The Soviet offensive began on January 25th. Three days later the two pincers of the Soviet attack met in the town of Zvenigorodka and two German corps found themselves in a pocket centered on the town of Korsun. Nearly 60,000 men were trapped. Naturally Hitler vetoed a breakout attempt by the encircled divisions. Instead, the Germans launched several relief attempts.

Finally, on February 16th, Manstein had had enough and ordered a breakout without consulting Hitler. The breakout met with initial success and things were looking up for the trapped men until they ran into the Gniloy Tikich River, swolen with the recent thaw. Thousands who had survived the encirclement and breakout died trying to swim the river. Of the 56,000 men trapped in the pocket, less that 20,000 made it to German lines.

 

[Spartacus]

" We are in Korsun. The historic name for this place is a "boykove pole", which in Ukrainian means a battlefield.

Second photo shows how this field looked in February 1944. Photo is from painting of a soldier.

190.000 Soviet and German army men died in Korsun and most of them on this field."

http://www.serpentswall.com/page27.html

 

[big_bad_buff]

"If I had two ear-rings or one ear, I'd wear this beautiful ear-ring."

 

[Spartacus]

i have to correct her here
that's a panther turrett
PZKWV german 75MM/L70

http://www.serpentswall.com/page28.html

 

[Spartacus]

"On left photo is German General Stemmerman, the commander of a surrendered army in Korsun and on right photo is Kirponos, commander of Soviet army that died in 1941 in a marsh. Both commanders have been a victims of the situations which Hitlers and Stalins Headquarters created for them. They had a chance to leave on airplane, they refused this offer and both died with their soldiers."

 

[Spartacus]

"If I had two ear-rings or one ear, I'd wear this beautiful ear-ring."

heh
her observations are so typical of a people that have survived
I dated a russian gal in '03

we broke each other's hearts

I'm really quite surprised at her respect for the "invaders"(i.e the Germans)