Free War Without Garlands: Operation Barbarossa 1941-1942 by Robert Kershaw Page B

barbed wire on their side of the frontier north-east of Augustovy, near one of the border crossings. The forested area of the Suwalki region had been particularly tense, suited as it was for the passage of agents moving in both directions. German reconnaissance had been active in this area, producing detailed overviews of tracks, the road network, the state of bridges, Soviet defence positions and field landing strips for aircraft. The removal of the wire was clearly an indication of impending attack.
    Similar suspicious activity had been identified on the border of the Kiev Military District. Nikolai Kirillovich Popel, the Chief Political Officer of the VIIIth Mechanised Corps, attending the usual Saturday evening entertainment in the Red Army Garrison House, was not enjoying the party. He was totally preoccupied with distracting and disturbing developments. ‘What’s happening now on the opposite bank of the San river?’ he constantly asked himself.
     
‘No, it wasn’t a premonition. How many times afterwards did I hear of that night “my heart told me” or “my mind felt it”? Neither my heart nor my mind told me anything. It was just that I – like many of the senior officers in the frontier formations – knew more facts than I could explain.’
     
    The commander of the Sixth Army, Lt-Gen Muzychenko, decided to split up a running artillery competition. Only one regiment was allowed on the range at the same time. Infantry were also surreptitiously moved from barracks to fortified areas. The VIIIth Mechanised Corps was placed on high alert at dawn on 22 June by the Twenty-sixth Army commander, Lt-Gen Kostenko. The corps commander, Lt-Gen D. I. Ryabishev, was informed to ‘get ready and wait for orders’. He confided to Popov, his political officer, ‘I don’t know what this means, but anyway I’ve given the order to stand to, and commanded the units to go out to their areas.’ Staff officers alerted by the call-out appeared at headquarters to man their desks. They carried ‘alarm-cases’, so called by families, holding two changes of underwear, shaving gear and a small stock of food; the minimum necessary to go off to war without returning home. Popov noticed:
     
‘The staff officers were grumbling. Really, what can be more unpleasant than an alarm on the eve of Sunday. The day is spoiled, the plans which the family has been making all week are broken. How could they not grumble!’
     
    Popov was concerned. ‘Our corps was not ready to fight.’ They were in the process of regrouping. Newer KV and T-34 tanks were still arriving to replace obsolete T-26, T-28 and T-35 tanks. Some had arrived that week. The new arrivals lacked repair equipments and spare parts. ‘How could our minds reconcile themselves to beginning a war in such unfavourable conditions?’ Popov opined. (6)
    Back in Brest, the weather conditions were idyllic. Colonel Starinov declared:
     
‘On the warm evening of 21 June 1941, the staff officers of the Fourth Army, which was covering the approaches to Brest, were following a typical Saturday routine.’
     
    Starinov’s exercise had been cancelled, so ‘we wandered around the picturesque town for a long time’. Georgij Karbuk, also in Brest that night, described how:
     
‘On Saturday, the day before the war, we met with friends in the park. It was about ten or ten-thirty in the evening. Many people were in the park. In fact, it was the only place where you could get together. Orchestras and brass bands played, people danced, and we were happy. It was lovely and pleasant.’
     
    But lurking beneath this carnival atmosphere ‘was a certain tension within the town’. Like the anxiety prevalent along the frontier, a paradoxical feeling of pending unpleasantness was incongruously juxtaposed with glorious weather. Karbuk noticed as the evening wore on that:
     
‘Groups of men in uniform began to surface. They all seemed alike, and attentive. They entered the park. We stayed at