Word: vatutin
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...danger was still greater in the south. There Nikolai Vatutin's army of half a million men had torn a 200-mile gap in the lines of Field Marshal Fritz Erich von Manstein, and was now racing into the pages of history with furious momentum...
...days Vatutin's men had advanced 60-odd miles, captured 2,000 villages and towns. Korosten and Zhitomir, lately taken and lost, had been retaken. Berdichev, the bustling Jewish town once used by Manstein for his headquarters, was in danger. This week Vatutin pushed back the enemy, forced his way across Russia's Polish threshold...
Behind Zhitomir he had been hoarding vast masses of tanks. When Vatutin's mobile columns outraced their artillery and infantry support, Manstein struck. With more than 1,600 tanks in pursuit, the Russians abandoned Zhitomir, fled across the flat, muddy terrain. Kiev itself was in peril...
...December 1943 Manstein repeated the mistake he made in July. He let the Russians whittle down his tank force, had no reserves when Vatutin struck again with tanks. After that, there was no alternative to flight...
Late last week, General Vatutin's army -estimated by the Germans at 150,000 men - broke through on a 50-mile front, advanced 25 miles to the west, killed 15,000 Germans in three days. Before it lay an objective the Red command would love dearly to regain: Zhitomir, which Vatutin captured last November, lost to the Germans six days later. In Russian hands, Zhitomir as well as Vitebsk could well become a springboard for a jump onto the eastern ramparts of the once great Reich...