Word: rzhev
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Bridge. After the fashion of soldiers in all armies, the men of Engineer Sosnovkin's little command grumbled and, cursed. They knew well enough that the instructions came from General Mukhim, the commander on their sector of the Rzhev front. They supposed that General Mukhim had his orders from a man whom they seldom or never saw, whose name they almost never read in Red Star or Pravda, a man whom they all knew as the Liubimets (the pet, the favorite, the darling, the beloved) of the Red Army. But it was Engineer Sosnovkin, thin and unimpressive...
...wanted them to build a bridge. This bridge was to span a river near Rzhev. On the bank opposite the Russians, the Germans were waiting & watching. Yet this bridge had to be so devised that the Germans would neither see the men while they were building it, nor see the bridge after it was built. The men gaped at Engineer Sosnovkin, and in their individual ways pondered the demands of the insatiable Liubimets. Then they went to work...
...Sosnovkin saw the puffs of the shells bursting in the German positions. From the woods behind him, Russian tanks, whitened for winter war, snouted down to the bank, crunched through the ice and found his bridge. In squadron after squadron they charged toward the stupefied Germans and opened the Rzhev offensive...
...Hedgehogs. The cities of Rzhev and Vyazma lie a-flank Moscow, some 125 miles to the northwest and southwest (see map). Connecting them with Smolensk, Vitebsk, the town of Velikie Luki and nearby Toropets to the northeast are railways and roads, now the military arteries of a fortified rectangle. Against the eastern edge of this rectangle, between Rzhev and Vyazma, and against the upper edge just west of Rzhev and on two sides of Velikie Luki, the Russians drove last week. Their purpose was to surround both places, to cut the railways and roads serving them and the whole German...
...Russians cut the railway between Rzhev and Vyazma. They cut the chief highway serving Rzhev. They cut two railways north and south of Velikie Luki. They took positions between Velikie Luki and the pivotal German strongpoint at Toropets. Artillery, tanks and infantry, including ski troops, within 48 hours had repeatedly broken through the outer line of the rectangle, flowed around the German's mighty fortress at Rzhev and all but isolated some 75,000 German troops there. Very near Rzhev, where Red Army troops had won a foothold last September, they attacked the suburbs of the city itself...