Episode 14 - Time for pancakes and Vodka among the bodies on the blood-splattered Mamaev Hill

In episode 14 we will focus on the events in Stalingrad starting from the second week of September 1942. By the 15th as we heard last week the fighting had intensified as elements of the German 71st and 76th Divisions advancing in a wedge shape towards the central station which it reached by midday. By 3.15 in the afternoon the water works were captured and the Germans had reached the bank of the Volga in the South of the city. That meant the Russian 62nd Army was now cut off from the 64th. But as I explained last episode, an NKVD battalion managed to retake the main train station which had changed hands three times by the 16th September. In the north of the city there rose the strategically important Mamaev Hill and it is here where the most powerful act performed by the Red Army in mid-September was recorded. The German 295th Infantry Division had fought its way to the far slope of the Mamaev Kurgan and eventually it fell to the Germans. The struggle became intense for this hill. IT was now completely unrecognisable from the park where lovers had strolled a few weeks before. The whole hillside had been churned and was now full of craters similar to the images of the First World War. Both sides used these as instant trenches as the bitter fighting intensified. It was on the 15th September that the Russians were to launch an aggressive counter-attack to recapture the Kurgan. I’ll use the Russian phrase from now on because it makes more sense. The Kurgan was 300 feet high and from the heights, the Germans spotters could call in air and artillery strikes on ferries carrying Russian soldiers across the Volga, as well as Russian units within the city itself. It was crucial to control this part of Stalingrad. Unluckily for those called to fight on the Kurgan, it was also open ground with all the advantages held by the Germans.