"THE ARC OF FIRE" III. THE LIFE-OR-DEATH FIGHTING IN THE BATTLE OF KURSK

 Bombing raids cleared a way to the slowly advancing  German tanks. A participant in that battle, military historian Nikolai Andronnikov says that 

 "the Germans enjoyed a superiority in forces. They ironed everything out. And our spirits sank. On the first day of the battle the Germans broke our frontline positions and penetrated about five kilometers deep into our territory. It means that we were directly engaged by the enemy in the morning of July 6. And I cannot forget how my Brigade Commander Kuzma Ovcharenko looked on receiving the order for a counterattack. Sadness and despair were painted all too clearly on his face as he led his 65 tanks to counterattack the Germans." 

 Most of Ovcharenko's men would be killed in that  counterattack.

 The enemy kept advancing on July 8,9 and 10. But not everywhere. The well-oiled military machine of Nazi Germany would soon break up. Another war vet, Mikhail Ovsyannikov, says that 

 "the fortified railroad station of Ponyri proved to be the hardest nut to crack. A good deal of tanks and self-towed guns were committed to action in the effort to seize it on the very first day of the German offensive. Fierce fighting was reported for three straight days at Ponyri. Morning attacks continued into daytime engagements.

 Our division was the first to be engaged by the enemy. It lost 2500 men in the two days of fighting. And it was not until July 12 that we had been able to launch a counteroffensive." 

 The German plans for a blitz operation were doomed to failure. The Soviets appeared to be exceptionally stubborn fighters. That is nowhere had the enemy been able to wedge in for more than 35 kilometers into the Soviet positions.

 Soldiers ran, fell into bomb craters, shot, killed and were killed in the hell that broke loose on that scorched and ravaged land. There was no time to pick up the wounded and bury the dead. Nor was it physically possible to do this.

 The Soviets braved all the difficulties and hardships and worked wonders in the stubborn effort to rebuff the enemy attacks. 

 Light Colonel Tsukanov was in charge of an artillery regiment. He says that 

 "the Germans ordered one tank division and one infantry division to make short work of our regiment. They expected the Soviet infantrymen to be swept away by their armor. But not a single of our men lost heart on seeing hundreds of tanks, including a number of Tigers, close in on our positions. The Soviets engaged the Germans. Men under Senior Lieutenant Malinin hit 15 tanks while the antitank elements under Golubev and Medvedev set 10 more armored vehicles on fire. The fierce fire forced the undamaged tanks to turn back. The Soviets rebuffed 28 fiercest enemy attacks." 

 The attacking enemy received a powerful blow and had to change the direction of his main attack. 

 On July 6 fresh German forces were committed to action in an attempt to seize control of the railroad station of Ponyri. Captain Grigory Surzhan, who was second in command of the special antiaircraft mortar division, says that his men helped, on July 6 alone, the defending infantry elements to rebuff 13 enemy attacks. But the enemy managed to drive a wedge into the Soviet positions and seize control of Height 255. The Soviets responded with a formidable blow. 400 jet-propelled projectiles simply sliced off the top of that height. Seven tanks were destroyed and up to a battalion of German infantrymen were made to disperse. The Germans launched no more attacks in that direction.

 That was the first successful attempt to defend the Soviet positions at Kursk. General Alexander Gubenko sees what happened at Kursk and Stalingrad as - 

 "two different kinds of war. The new combat engagements left no room to compromise, were fierce but short. We lost few men in the Kursk battle. Lots of hardware - but few men."

 The 50-day battle of Kursk could, indeed, seem short after the six-month-long battles of Moscow and Stalingrad. The very first days and nights of that battle were the most difficult and crucially important. But tension mounted so high, the fighting was so stubborn, so much hardware was committed to action and so much was lost that the battle of Kursk is seen as the main battle of the war between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. For that same reason it was comparatively short. It was beyond human endurance to keep fighting so fiercely for more than 50 days and nights.

 The Soviet counteroffensive was met with all-arms fire, and hundreds of enemy dive-bombers could be seen in the morning sky. 

 The arrival of fresh forces enabled the Germans to push back some of the Soviet elements. But the Germans advance was halted by the second echelon of the Soviet forces. 

 It was hot, the sun showed up only to hide again in the smoking air. There were burning Soviet and enemy tanks, burning houses and railroad stations, burning fields of wheat and angry bubbles of paint on the smoldering gun barrels. The fighting went on around the clock. Enemy armor and infantry units were unable to move on. The Germans lost more than 40,000 men, several hundred tanks and self-towed guns, about 500 war planes just on July 5 to 8. 

 It was evident that the enemy was getting out of breath. And, on July 12, the biggest tank battle in human history took place near the old village of Prokhorovka...