Chapter 47 Crisis on the Zill Front

In the area of ​​Holliday's Army (that is, in the area of ​​​​the Romanian Third Army), the development of the situation is very serious.Here, on the lower reaches of the Chill, from its junction with the Don to a point about forty-five miles upstream, the ground forces, apart from a few groups of anti-aircraft artillery, consisted only of B-rank units and the Sixth Army. A security unit composed of personnel who return to the team after leave.Two air divisions were added later (which were originally assigned to Holliday's Army), but because of their complete lack of combat experience and their lack of experienced officers and non-commissioned officers, their usefulness was extremely limited.

When the Russians broke through the defenses of the Romanian Third Army in November, a gap was torn between the Bolshoi Ternovsky Bend of the Zill and the still intact Don front. gap.As a result, the right flanks of the units of the Romanian Third Army on the Don River (the First and Second Armies) were bent back, and the dilapidated 22nd Armored Division and the remnants of the Romanian Army were filled in, and it was finally blocked. .But in fact, the infantry divisions that had been assigned to Holliday's army had to be used here, so that the seventy-five-mile-long line of defense could obtain a minimum degree of stability.At the beginning of December, the enemy showed a tendency to launch a major offensive on the front of the Zill River, and two days later in the lower reaches of the river, the enemy's powerful artillery began to be discovered.On December 3, the Russian army began to attack, hitting various points continuously.The more the enemy tries to break through, the more urgent the situation becomes.This line along the river is what we must hold, because our bridgehead positions at the crossing of the Zir and Don rivers, including the Don bridge at Nizentirskaya, are crucial to the rescue of the Sixth Army. , is of paramount importance.In addition, if the enemy breaks through the Chill line, he can go directly to the two airfields of Morosovsky and Tatsinskaya, the distances between which are only twenty-five miles and fifty miles respectively, and he can also go deep into the Rostov crossing on the Donets River.In these circumstances, the Army Group had no choice but to agree to temporarily use the 48th Panzer Corps (whose 11th Armored Division and the 336th Infantry Division had arrived by this time) To reinforce the defenses of the Lower Zill.What this corps does is a kind of fire brigade, rushing from here to there so that this fragile line of defense does not collapse immediately.Naturally, this temporarily deprived Holliday's Army of its only available force for the offensive.However, as soon as the situation permits, we still hope to get the corps to cross the Nizentirskaya Bridge in order to cooperate with the reinforcements of the Fourth Panzer Army.

On December 9, after heavy fighting, the enemy's attack on the Sixth Army began to stall.It could also indicate that the enemy was mobilizing forces to counter the German attempt to break the siege. On the Zier front, the enemy continued to increase pressure, but to the north of Fourth Panzer Army, the enemy seemed to be on the defensive after their defeat at Kotnikov.