Life And Fate (Orange Inheritance)
7
Two hammers, one to the north and one to the south, each composed of millions of tons of metal and flesh, awaited the signal to advance.
It was the forces to the north-west of Stalingrad that launched the attack. On 19 November, 1942, at 7.30 a.m., a massive artillery bombardment began along the entire length of the South-Western and Don Fronts; it lasted for eighty minutes. A wall of fire came down over the positions held by the 3rd Rumanian Army.
The tanks and infantry went into the attack at 8.50 a.m. The morale of the Soviet troops was exceptionally high. The 76th Division went into the attack to the strains of a march played by its brass band.
By the afternoon they had broken through the enemy front line. Fighting was taking place over an enormous area.
The 4th Rumanian Army Corps had been smashed. The 1st Rumanian Cavalry Division near Krainyaya had been isolated from the remaining units of the Army.
The 5th Tank Army advanced from the heights thirty kilometres to the south-west of Serafimovich and broke through the positions held by the 2nd Rumanian Army Corps. Moving quickly towards the south, it had taken the heights north of Perelasovskaya by midday. The Soviet Tank and Cavalry Corps then turned to the south-west; by evening they had reached Gusynka and Kalmykov, sixty kilometres to the rear of the 3rd Rumanian Army.
The forces concentrated to the south of Stalingrad, in the Kalmyk steppes, went into the attack twenty-four hours later, at dawn on 20 November.