The battle for Stalingrad from between the 16th of January to the 3rd of February 1943.

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GCSE English Coursework: Short Story

        I was drafted in as emergency reinforcements when the battle was not particularly going well for the soviets. The way that we were made cannon fodder was inhumane the soldiers came and tore us from our families, loaded us onto trains and then sent us to the front line. How they expected us to survive was indescribable. We were given meagre rations, made to sleep in tents that were not fit for the beasts of the field. One of the main downfalls in the Soviet war effort against the superior battle hardened Germans was our lack of necessities there weren’t even enough rifles for every soldier on the battlefield! We were made charge upon gun emplacements, which tore us down like a scythe through ripened maize.

My account takes me back to the battle for Stalingrad from between the 16th of January to the 3rd of February 1943. In this battle for merely one city was undoubtedly a major turning point not just on the eastern front but for the whole war. It was a dramatic reverse for German armies, but need never have happened if Hitler had been less obstinate. One point that was made clear to us as the battle waged was that deserters would be shot. This meant that there was a decision men had to make mid battle German bullets or Soviet bullets. The number of men who tried unsuccessfully to retreat was enormous. Brought to fight for their country only to be mowed down by their own comrades.

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         I can remember clearly the day I arrived at the front line. It was the 16th of January. We were ordered to overrun Pitomnik airfield the only airfield that had any night landing capabilities and which was essential to us if we were to have any chance of supplying our pockets of soldiers scattered through out the war torn city. I can remember the blast of sounds and smells that hit as soon as I scrambled off the truck. The smell of rotting bodies, the screaming of men who had just been gunned down or had been hit by an ...

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