“On 23 October, fighting began inside the plant. Workshops were on fire, as well as railways, roads, trees, bushes and grass. At the command post, Kushnarev and the chief of staff, Dyatlenko, were sitting in the ‘tube’ with six sub-machine-gunners. They had two boxes of grenades, and they beat the Germans off. The Germans had brought tanks to the plant. The workshops changed hands several times. Tanks destroyed them, firing at point-blank range. Aircraft were bombing us day and night. A captured German, a teacher, told us on the 27th about the strict order to reach the Volga. His hands were black, there were lice in his hair. He began to sob.  – Vasily Grossman’s account of Colonel Gurtiev’s 308th Rifle Division of Siberians. 

From A Writer at War by Vasily Grossman