Cavalry charge at Musino
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November. It was a grey and hazy morning.
Towards 0900 the sun appeared through the fog as a large red disc. The
observer post of a heavy battery was on a hill.
About two miles farther ahead the edge of a broad belt of forest could
just be made out. Everything else was flat fields under a light cover
of snow. It was cold. Everybody was waiting for the order to attack.
1000 hours. Field-glasses went up. Horsemen appeared on the edge of
the wood. At a gallop they disappeared behind a hill.
"Russian tanks!" a shout went up. Three T-34s were approaching over
the frozen ground. From the edge of the village the anti-tank guns
opened up. It was odd that the tanks were not accompanied by infantry.
Why would that be?
While the artillery observers were still busy puzzling out the mystery
their reconnaissance units, then pickets of forty or fifty horsemen.
Now the number had grown to one or two hundred. A moment later they
They formed up into one gigantic line abreast. Another line formed up
behind them. It was like a wild dream. The cavalry officers' sabres
shot up into the air. Bright steel flashing in the morning sun.
Thus they approached at a gallop.
"Cavalry charge in regiment strength. Spearhead of attack at 2500
yards!"
The artillery spotter's voice sounded a little choked as he passed the
information back over the telephone. He was lying in a hole in the
ground, on a sheet of tent canvas. His trench telescope had been
painted white with a paste of chalk tablets immediately after the
first fall of snow.
Now it did not show up against the snow blanket which, still clean and
white, covered the fields and hills of Musino. Still clean and white.
But already the squadrons were charging from the wood. They churned up
the snow and the earth : the horses stirrup touching stirrup, the
riders low on the horses' necks, their drawn sabres over their
shoulders.
The machine-gun crew by the artillery observation post had their gun
ready for action on the parapet. The gunner pulled off his mittens and
put them down by the bolt. The gun commander's eyes were glued to his
field-glasses. "2000 yards," they heard the artillery spotter shout
down his telephone. He followed up with firing instructions for his
battery.
Barely a second passed. And across the snowy fields of Musino swept a
terrifying vision such as could not be invented by even the most
fertile imagination. The 3rd Battery, 107th Artillery Regiment, 106th
Infantry Division, had opened fire at close range. With a crash the
shells left their barrels and burst right among the charging squadron.
The HE shells of the antitank guns in the village, which had only just
been attacked by T-34s, landed amid the most forward Russian group.
Horses fell. Parts of riders and horses spun high into the air.
Flashes of lightning. Black smoke. Fountains of dirt and fire.
The Soviet regiment continued its charge. Their discipline was
terrific. They even pivoted about their right wing and headed towards
the village. But now salvo after salvo of the heavy guns burst amid
the squadrons. The batteries were firing shrapnel which exploded 25
feet above the ground and tore them to shred. The effect of the
splinters was appalling. Riders were torn to pieces in their saddles;
the horses were felled.
But the terrible spectacle was not yet over. From out of the forest
came a second regiment to resume the charge. Its officers and men must
have watched the tragedy of their sister regiment. Nevertheless they
now rode to their own doom.
The encircled German batteries smashed the second wave even more
quickly. Only a small group of thirty horsemen on very fast small
Cossack animals penetrated through the wall of death. Thirty out of
two thousand. They charged towards the high ground where the artillery
observer was stationed. They finished up under the bursts of the
covering machine-gun.
trampled to death, wounded. A handful of horses were loose in the
fields, trotting towards the village or into the wood. Slightly
wounded horsemen were trying to get under cover, limping or reeling
drunkenly. That was the moment when Major-General Dehner gave the
order for an immediate counter-attack.
Out of the village and from behind the high ground came the lines of
infantrymen of 240th Infantry Regiment. In sections
and platoons they moved over the snowy ground towards the wood.
Not a shot was fired. Sick with horror, nausea and disgust, the
infantrymen traversed the graveyard of the 44th Mongolian Cavalry
the Second World War. When they reoccupied the village of Spas Bludi
the grenadiers found that their comrades of 240th Infantry Regiment,
taken prisoner there after being wounded, had been done to death.
The Russian attack had been senseless from a military point of view.
Two regiments had been sacrificed without harming a hair on the
opponent's head. There was not a single man wounded on the German
side. But the attack showed with what ruthless determination the
Soviet Command intended to deny the German attackers the roads into
the capital, and how stubbornly it was going to fight for Moscow.
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