Testimonies of Stalingrad

[dragos]

Excerpts of veterans' testimonies, from the book "De la Stalingrad la batalia Moldovei", edited by ANVR, 1997.

(...) Holding the pistol in the hand and followed by several riders of the command group, Colonel Hristea (commander of 2nd Calarasi Regiment) was firing at the enemy infantry embarked on tanks, which reached the command post inside the regiment controlled perimeter. Due to a long machinegun burst of one of the Soviet tanks, the Romanian cavalrymen watched horrified how "papa" (the nickname of regiment's commander) had his arm torn apart, together with the pistol. Sergeant Marica climbed the tank, covered its portholes with a blanket, and using grenades disabled it. Nevertheless, the regiment had to break the contact since a new wave of tanks was sighted.
The group of medical orderlies bandaged "papa" stopping the bleeding but could not carry him through the heavy snow. The colonel was a strong man, 2 meters tall and over 100 kilos in weight. In order to save him, the soldiers dug a hole in the snow, layed the colonel into it, and covered him with a thin layer of snow. They marked the spot with a stick and withdrew in a hurry, as tanks were approaching. The Calarasi reorganized in the village Schutov 2, while the enemy tanks were stopped by other Romanian units equiped with 75 mm antitank guns.
In the evening, sergeant Marica took a horse drawn sleigh and several soldiers and went after colonel. They found him alive, but with his legs frostbiten. The colonel survived, having the right arm and the the foot toes amputated. Sergeant Marica was awarded with "Virtutea Militara" and was promoted to sergeant-major. (...).
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Sergeant Teodor Haineala, of 4th Company/27 Dorobant Regiment, was taken prisoner on 23 November 1942 at Don's bend.
"One evening, as we were marching, we came under air bombardment. They pushed us in a forest, with 30-40 cm snow. Because of the humiditiy, soldiers gathered branches to lit a fire. We heard a big noise, but could not understand what was going on. We saw the guards firing at us, and we understood we have to extingush the fire, because we could have been spotted from the air. We gathered branches and blankets and we slept. We fell almost dead since we were awake for several days. In the morning we woke up soaked to the skin, with the clothes frozen. We helped each other to untie from the shelter, breaking the ice wich was holding us with kinfes. Many blankets were left behind, because we could not pull them from the frozen ground.
A romanian prisoner saw an empty can thrown on the ditch, and grabbed it to lick one or two drops of oil that may have remained in it, but a Soviet guard holding a big weapon, saw him and bashed his head with the rifle butt stock, the poor man's brains remaining on the weapon buttstock.
Eventually we reached a colhoz. Each two or three days we were embarked into trains, 120-160 prisoners into each car. We were moved to the station steadily, but every time they were full before we could embark into train. We received no food at all, we found a mill and we scratched for rye grains, which we shared equally among us. We also found in a warehouse goose feathers, and we searched for the larger feathers, to suck their tip.
Eventually we were embarked in a train, and we traveled about two weeks to our destination camp, of which name I have forgotten. 17 soldiers of my village were there, of which 8 have died.
The spring came, and we were pulling the plants with their roots from the ground to eat them. I was so weakened that I weighted 28 kilograms, and I was full of lice. As I was laying in bed, the lice climbed on me, and I was killing them until I was covered in blood. (...)."

[Petre]

An interesting web-site and a very good job. A collection of translated texts : The german divisions in the Stalingrad battle.

https://nordrigel.livejournal.com/

Here : Reports from the Romanian Divisions of the 3rd Army, nov.1942

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1VRwgZdjM_...rvBHvp56wjsUqtE