Valkyrie: The Story of the Plot to Kill Hitler, by Its Last Member by Philip Freiherr von Boeselager Read Free Book Online

light machine guns. The heavy squadron had only twenty-nine soldiers under the command of a single officer. Finally, the lieutenant who commanded the cyclist squadron had only twenty-twofighters. It is true that several dozen men were on furlough or in training, but since June, the dead and wounded had not been replaced. The battalion as a whole now counted only half as many troops as the squadron that Georg had commanded up until the spring of 1941 … and the remaining forces were exhausted because the Soviets were attacking day and night.
    On December 29, the enemy launched a new offensive between the Volga and the Tma. The front line was no longer tenable, and our troops had to retreat and take up positions more to the southwest, not far from Rzhev. That city, located where the Volga begins a vast, meandering curve to the north, was an industrial center of about fifty thousand inhabitants, and especially a major railway junction. It could not be left in Russian hands. The 110th, the 126th, and the Sixth Infantry divisions gathered in this sector, where our defense was organized around what was soon to be called the Königsberg position.
    On January 1, Georg went to meet the Third Battalion of the Eighteenth Infantry Regiment, which formed the rear guard of the retreating Sixth Division. Its commandant, Kageneck, had died three days earlier. Georg found exhausted men, officers on the verge of a nervous breakdown after countless nights without sleep and weeks without rest. While the soldiers, who were not very close to the defensive line, continued their march, Georg took the officers to his command post to tell thembriefly how the Königsberg position was organized. “It is not an ideal front line, but it respects the tactical imperatives and has certain potentialities,” he said. “Now, that’s not all. Sit down for a moment. I’ve got a quart of nice hot bouillon for you,” he continued with his usual liveliness, even though the Russians were only a few kilometers away. One officer got up to serve. “No,” Georg said, shaking his head in protest, “I’ll serve today.” That was the way my brother was, mixing discipline, lucidity, and good-heartedness.
    The front was being stabilized. Rzhev was finally lost only in March 1943, after very fierce fighting. But until the beginning of March 1942, the Russian harassments were incessant, while full-scale attacks came almost daily—dreadful butcheries, the unfurling waves of men drunk on vodka and the cold, cut down by machine-gun fire, but each time reducing our resistance a little. In February, a Russian cavalry division, with the help of partisans, managed to penetrate our rear and create a pocket of territory along the railway from Vyaz’ma to Moscow that was completely outside our control.
    The situation in my sector was no better. But the story of my adventures at the turn of the year 1941–42 is briefer than that of the episodes Georg was involved in during those bloody weeks, because a wound I’d received during the first hours of combat, which nearly cost me my life, sent me away from the front. Since the beginning of December, fighting had raged around Moscow, and theEighty-sixth Division had been violently torn out of its torpor. On December 10, it was decided to retake a town called Ignatovo, which the Russians had seized. An artillery regiment had left a valuable part of its equipment there. The temperature was now –42°C (–43°F). The cyclist squadron, commanded by Lieutenant Blomberg, was to attack from the south, supported by three heavy machine guns, an antitank gun, and a light cavalry mortar. 1 My cavalry squadron was assigned to lead the attack from the north. We first had to go around the village on the west and through the forest. The snow was so deep that it blocked the antiaircraft gun and the cavalry mortar. Only our heavy machine gun made it to the site.
    A merciless battle began that was to last several hours. The Russians resisted