Fighting degenerated into brutal house-to-house combat among burning wooden huts.

At Valyava, the 72nd Infantry Division, backed by armor from the SS Wicking Division, held firm amid smoke, fire, and collapsing buildings.

They blocked repeated Soviet efforts to cut the road between Corsun and Dashukka.

Amid the violence, psychological warfare was also deployed.

A Soviet envoy approached the front of the 258th Regiment of Core Detachment B under a white flag, offering surrender terms.

He was politely received, given a glass of French cognac, told that an answer would be provided in due course, and sent back.

Other attempts followed.

Members of the National Committee for Free Germany, composed of exiled German communists and captured officers who had defected, infiltrated the pocketwearing German uniforms.

Their vice president, General Walter vonidz, broadcast messages urging surrender, promising safety, food, and shelter.

Millions of leaflets rained down repeating the same asurances.

None of it shook the resolve of group Steerman.

The encircled troops ignored the appeals and continued fighting.

Soviet efforts to split the pocket failed when Steamman executed a timely withdrawal from the southeastern sector.

By February 10th, the encirclement had shrunk into a rough triangle with Morinsy at the northern tip, Stable forming the western base and Corson anchoring the east.

The airfield at Corson was already under direct artillery fire.

Yet Eighth Air Core continued flying supply missions by night, threading through flack and darkness to keep the pocket alive.

Outside the encirclement, slowed by mud and mounting Soviet resistance, Third Panza Corps abandoned its sweeping maneuver and shifted to a direct thrust toward Group Steamman.

Once again, the Giloy Tick River stood in the way.

Battle Group Bake, Battle Group Frank from the First Panza Division, and elements of the 16th Panza Division forced crossings at Bushanka and Franovka, establishing fragile bridge heads under fire.

One of Baker’s Panthers was the first to cross a captured bridge at Franovka.

Its crew was later rewarded with 8 days of leave.

A short radio message was sent forward.

They were coming.

A bridge head had been secured.

On the morning of February 13th, Baker advanced east toward Dashukka.

With elements of the 16th Panza Division guarding his left flank when two T34s were spotted moving suspiciously into a shallow depression, Bake immediately called for air support.

White flares fired from German tanks marked the target.

Moments later, Stukus screamed down onto Soviet armor hidden in ambush.

Forced into the open, the T-34s were met by the 88 mm guns of Bakes Tiger Battalion, firing from roughly 2,000 yards.

More Soviet tanks appeared, attempting to outflank the Tigers, only to be engaged by Panthers from Bakes Battalion and the 16th Panza Division.

Stookers tore apart Soviet anti-tank gun positions.

When the fighting subsided, German units claimed 70 Soviet tanks and 40 anti-tank guns destroyed at the cost of five Tigers and four Panthers.

Dashukka, Chesnovka, and Kiji fell into German hands.

Watching the advance, Mannstein sent a message to third Panza.

Despite the mud and the Russians, much had already been achieved.

What remained, he emphasized, was the final step.

Teeth clenched forward.

Lieutenant Colonel Hinesfrank’s battle group pushed further east and forced its way into heavily defended Lissanka on the Giloy Tik.

The fighting was close and deliberate, supported by Stooka dive bombers, Panthers, and Panza grenaders fought their way down to a ford and established a fragile bridge head on the northern bank.

Progress beyond that point slowed almost immediately.

Large elements of Frank’s parent formation, the first Panza division, were immobilized in deep mud south of Lissiana.

Engines running but tracks going nowhere.

To the north, the Livestandata Division, what remained of the 16th Panza Division and the entire 17th Panza Division were tied down defending the northern flank of third Panza Corps.

At the same time, the 198th and 34th Infantry Divisions were fully engaged against the Soviet 40th Army around Vinegrad and Tinovka, fighting to prevent a counter-stroke that could collapse the entire relief effort.

Vonvorman continued attacking wherever he could, determined to draw Soviet attention away from Bri’s advance.

With grenaders clinging to the hulls, tanks of the 11th Panza Division forced a crossing of the Shbulka River at Yorkie.

North of the town, mortar shells slammed down among the advancing vehicles.

Infantry scattered for cover as Soviet anti-tank guns opened fire from concealed positions.

The Panthers responded immediately, knocking out the gun crews without suffering losses.

Yet success on the battlefield meant little without fuel.

By February 13th, only three out of 20 Panthers in the division were still combat capable.

The rest stood silent, empty of fuel.

The bridge head at Iskanoi had already been abandoned and renewed attempts by the 13th Panza Division to force a crossing at Yukka were beaten back by determined Soviet resistance.

Like their machines, the men themselves were being ground down.

Many German soldiers were suffering from what was known as Volhineian fever, a typhoid-like disease that spread rapidly under frontline conditions.

Even Major General Gustaf Fonvasheim, commanding the 11th Panza Division, required regular injections just to remain on his feet and continue issuing orders.

Worn out boots and socks left feet exposed to frostbite and trench foot.

Licefested uniforms.

Sleep came in minutes snatched between shelling and movement.

Endurance was becoming as decisive as firepower.

Inside the pocket, SS Wing captured the village of Shenderka on February 11th.

It was designated as the main assembly point for the planned breakout.

To shorten the distance to the approaching relief forces, Steemerman ordered attacks toward the southwest.

Wrapped in white snowmoks, the remaining 689 grenaders of Major Robert Kner’s 105th regiment struck without warning.

They surprised and overwhelmed the first Soviet defensive belt in the darkness.

Around midnight, Kishnner called forward a self-propelled 20mm anti-aircraft gun.

It rad a Soviet fuel column on the outskirts of Novau Buddha.

Trucks erupted into towering fireballs, lighting the night sky.

Kashnner’s men seized Novab Buddha while two other regiments of the 72nd Infantry Division supported by elements of SS Wicking and SS Wonian captured Karivka and Kilki.

The German gains triggered alarm at the highest level.

Stalin responded by placing Konv in command of all Soviet forces surrounding the pocket.

As groups demerman pushed closer to the relief formations, Soviet pressure on the eastern edge intensified.

The Germans were forced to abandon ground they could no longer hold.

On February 13th, Soviet troops occupied the airfield at Corsun.

By that point, the ground had become so soft that aircraft could barely take off anyway.

With the airfield lost, survival depended entirely on breaking through to third Panza core.

Bri flew into Lissiana in a feaselless storch observation aircraft to assess the situation personally.

From the ground, the problem was immediately clear.

A narrow but steeply banked stream blocked Frank’s advance toward Octi.

In the fading light of dusk, Sergeant Hans Stripple’s Panther moved forward and destroyed two camouflage T34s guarding a 40-tonon bridge across the stream.

The bridge was captured intact.

The moment proved decisive.

Bri shifted the main effort away from Bake and the 16th Panza Division, whose route east of Kiji led into terrain unsuitable for tanks and placed his weight behind Frank’s battle group.

To block third Panza core, the Soviet 18th tank corps dug in around Jojinsi.

At the same time, two tank brigades from the 20th tank corps pushed toward Lissanka, tightening the ring.

North of Kiji, France Barker’s six Panthers ran into Soviet armor and destroyed eight T34s, but at the cost of three Panthers knocked out.

Swinging south of Kiji, Barker committed his six Tigers.

At close range, they brewed up 11 more Soviet tanks.

Several Tigers were hit and immobilized, sitting helpless in the mud as crews prepared to fight on foot if necessary.

Frank scraped together reinforcements from the Leapstand Darti.

Grenaders crowded onto whatever armor was still running.

One assault gun, a Panza 4, a Panther, a Tiger, men clinging to steel, already scarred by battle.

The relief force was painfully thin.

With such limited strength, the prospect of reaching Group Steamman looked increasingly hopeless.

Tank battles raged between Gjinsi and Okjaba on February 16th.

German artillery pinned down Soviet infantry while Sergeant Han Stripple and seven Panthers maneuvered through smoke and broken ground.

In a series of sharp engagements, they claimed 27 T34s destroyed for the loss of a single Panther.

Columns of black smoke rose where stukers from the Imulman wing struck Soviet anti-tank gun positions along the forest edge east of Octi.

As Soviet crews scrambled back to their remaining guns, Baker’s Tigers caught them in the open and finished the job.

Bake and Frank then established a defensive screen west of Jojinsi and Hill 239, bracing for counterattack.

To the west, the horizon burned.

Cannon fire flashed through the night and the distant thunder of armor rolled across the frozen fields.

Inside the pocket, one question consumed every man.

When would the relief force arrive? Hitler had forbidden any breakout from what he still called the fortress on the Denipa.

Yet reality could no longer be denied.

On February 16th, Mannstein radioed a single message.

The password was freedom.

Objective: Lizanka.

Time 11 p.

m.

replied without hesitation.

There was no other chance.

It was now or never.

Voler ordered that Lee would lead the breakout.

Stemmerman would stay behind with the rear guard.

Word spread quickly.

Exhausted mudcovered soldiers straightened up.

Waiting was over.

They would move.

That night, despite low cloud, Soviet U2 biplanes skimmed over Shendereka, strafing positions at treetop height.

Fires from the burning village lit the ground below, guiding Soviet artillery onto the densely packed German troops.

Amid the destruction, the headless body of a staff officer lay outside the core headquarters.

Men paused briefly, scribbling final lines on scraps of paper, making duplicate copies and exchanging them with comrades in case they did not survive.

Classified documents were burned.

Vehicles that could not cross the terrain or had no fuel were destroyed where they stood.

The hardest decision came at the field hospital in Shenderefka.

1,450 critically wounded men were left behind with volunteer medical staff.

Others were loaded onto carts and sledges wrapped in blankets against the cold.

Steman issued a final order.

No violations of the laws of war were to occur.

Any brutality would invite reprisals against the wounded left behind.

The breakout route funneled through Shendereka, but disaster struck immediately.

The only bridge collapsed under the weight of a tank, creating a deadly bottleneck.

Repairs under fire turned the crossing into a killing ground.

Soviet rocket launchers, known to the Germans as Stalin’s organs, saturated the area.

Every type of vehicle was caught in the barrage.

Fuel trucks burned fiercely.

Horses screamed and thrashed in the snow as they died.

Clusters of soldiers were cut down by machine gun fire, some coughing blood as they lay face down, others staring blankly upward.

A few still tried to crawl forward through the mud and smoke.

Major Leon Degril later recalled the scene as pure annihilation.

A flood of men and machines crushed under fire with no way back and no shelter ahead.

Only four to 5 m now separated Bri’s forward elements from group stemermen.

Burdened with ammunition and moving on foot, Major Robert Kner’s 105th regiment led the 72nd Infantry Division out of Kilki.

The time was 11:00 p.

m.

on February 16th.

The sky was black and moonless.

Temperatures had dropped sharply and icy winds cut through snow-filled gullies and over frozen ridgeel lines.

Absolute silence was enforced.

No fires, no smoking, no talking.

Every sound carried in the still night.

Once again, the 105th achieved surprise.

The first Soviet defensive belt was eliminated at close range.

knives, entrenching tools, rifle butts, quiet, brutal work in the dark.

Reconnaissance teams soon identified T34s guarding the road south of Zhinsi.

Using folds in the terrain, Kisner’s men slipped past the tanks unseen.

They reached the second defensive belt, facing outward toward the west.

Soviet soldiers slept in their foxholes, unaware.

They were killed where they lay.

Some managed to fire a few shots before dying.

That was enough.

Soviet tanks suddenly switched on their search lights, slicing through the darkness and illuminating the following battalions of the 72nd Infantry Division.

Kner and his men melted back into the night, hearts pounding, pushing forward through shadow and snow.

Then they saw new silhouettes ahead.

For a moment, fear seized them.

Then relief.

German crosses were visible on the holes.

They had reached third panzer core on the northern and southern flanks.

Core detachment B and SS Wicking experienced similar initial success.

Forward battalions surprised Soviet positions and managed to infiltrate gaps in the tank screen.

But the rest of group Steerman was not so fortunate.

Lacking sufficient anti-tank weapons, large columns were forced southward by alerted Soviet armor along the Pochapinsy road.

Mortars, artillery, anti-tank guns, and machine guns opened up.

German units were caught in the open and shredded.

Snowstorms and darkness degraded Soviet accuracy, but sheer volume compensated.

In the confusion, formations dissolved.

Units fragmented into knots of men moving blindly westward, guided only by instinct and trace of fire.

The most dangerous task fell to the rear guard.

They faced an enemy now fully alert and dawn stripped away the last protection of darkness.

At the northern corner of the pocket, the 88th Infantry Division held until 5:15 in the morning.

The 57th Infantry Division abandoned Kamarivka an hour later.

Around the same time, General Theo Helmet Leeb personally led the final infantry column west out of Kilki.

Wearing a tall white fur cap and mounted on his geling, Lee rode straight into the snowstorm, refusing to leave his men behind.

At Nova Buddha, Walloon platoon disengaged one after another, each covering the next.

The last held until 10:00 a.

m.

On the eastern edge of Shenderka, the final German tanks of Group Steamman made their stand.

They fought until ammunition was gone, holding off waves of T34s and newly arrived Joseph Stalin 2 heavy tanks.

They churned the snow into black mud as they withdrew through the collapsing mass of infantry.

Not one survived.

Near pockapincy himself was killed when his halftrack was struck by an anti-tank gun.

The commander of the pocket died where he stood.

Years of occupation, scorched earth retreat and German atrocities now exploded into raw vengeance.

Soviet tank crews crushed wounded Germans lying on PJ wagons.

Horses screamed as tracks flattened them.

Soviet soldiers later claimed they found wounded Germans shot in the back of the head and ambulance vehicles burned with bodies inside.

Some of these killings were acts of rage.

Others were carried out deliberately to spare the wounded from torture or mutilation once captured.

Mercy and brutality merged into the same act.

West of Pocha, Corporal Fritz Hammond of Panza Jagger Battalion 389, accompanied by his staff sergeant, crawled up a slope towards Soviet tanks firing downhill at fleeing Germans.

The tank crews never noticed them.

Each man carried three Panzer Fousts.

One by one, they fired at point blank range.

Five tanks were destroyed in rapid succession.

The shape charge warheads punched effortlessly through T34 armor.

Fireballs and smoke engulfed the slope, masking their position.

The remaining four tanks withdrew.

A narrow escape route opened toward the beach forest southwest of Pocha Pinsy.

Through that gap, the last survivors of Group Steamman fled westward.

Although Soviet machine gun positions ringed its edges, the wood offered one priceless advantage.

Tanks could not enter.

Within the trees, groups of Germans found temporary refuge and a chance to fight their way west in small, scattered elements.

Among those who reached the cover of the forest were Leon Degril and most of the Woon volunteers, having already survived tank fire and repeated Ksac cavalry charges in the open, the Woons regrouped in the woods south of Hill 239.

there, joined by several thousand stragglers, including Ukrainian civilians, fleeing west in terror of Soviet retribution, the remaining 632 Woons, finally reached an outpost of the first Panza division.

On February 18th, most German survivors, including Fritz Haman and his Panza Jaggers, bypassed the forest entirely and drifted south toward the Giniloy Tik River.

Elements of the 72nd Infantry Division were the first to reach its banks.

The river itself was deceptively narrow, barely 20 to 30 yards across, but it was deep, fastm moving, and bordered by steep, icy embankments.

After dawn, a Soviet tank appeared on the far bank and opened fire on German supply vehicles clustered near the water.

Moments later, it drove into a deep gully and became immobilized, a silent witness to the chaos unfolding around it.

Throughout the day and into the night, shattered remnants of core detachment B and SS Wiking arrived along different stretches of the river.

Desperate attempts were made to construct makeshift bridges from horsedrawn panges, branches, and saplings.

The current swept them away almost immediately.

Soviet artillery soon found the mass Germans on the eastern bank.

Shells tore through packed ranks of men, carts, and animals.

As more T34s approached, panic spread.

Men stripped off equipment and plunged into the water, exhausted, wounded, and numb from cold.

Hundreds were dragged under by the swirling current.

General Lee spurred his horse forward and forced it into the river.

He reached the far bank alive.

His horse did not.

Hammon attempted to cross where the river appeared frozen nearly halfway across.

Crawling forward on his stomach, he felt the ice crack beneath him.

Then it gave way completely.

For nearly half an hour, he clung to drifting ice flows, fingers numb, body weakening before a rifle butt was thrust toward him from the western bank.

He grabbed it and was hauled to safety.

Behind him, his staff sergeant was swept away and vanished beneath the water.

The 57th and 88th Infantry Divisions were the last to reach the river.

Among them were Ukrainian women who had served the Germans as auxiliaries and now feared what Soviet captivity would bring.

By the morning of February 18th, crude foot bridges had finally been completed.

They swayed under the weight of men and animals, but held long enough for many to cross.

Panges carrying 600 wounded were dragged over plank by plank, every step under threat of artillery fire.

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