The Dead and the Dying ETO (id:#66788)

(ASL 16 - Twilight of the Reich ID: 298)   [next]   [previous]

Budapest, Hungary 1945-01-12 (5 others)

Overview:

Having successfully breached the southern wall of the Kerepesi Cemetery near dusk on 11 January, elements of Soviet 297th Rifle Division soon discovered that the fight for control of the cemetery had just begun. Under pressure from Major-General Afonin, commander of the 18th Guards Rifle Corps, the division's 1055th and 1057th Regiments were ordered to continue the assault northward, while elements of the Romanian 7th Army Corps would push from the east. Defending the heavily fortified cemetery were a combination of Axis forces anchored around dug-in elements of German Panzergrenadier-Regiment 66. Aiding in their defense of the cemetery, they had laid a series of barbed wire entanglements, dug entrenchments between the gravestones and the crypts, and fortified the Deal and Kossuth Mausoleums. A number of these key positions were then manned by Axis machine gun nests creating interlocking fields of fire. Nevertheless, the overwhelming numbers of the combined Soviet and Romanian forces, under cover of darkness and backed by a host of artillery and heavy mortar support succeeded by dawn in pushing the Germans out of a majority of the cemetery. As dawn broke on 12 January, the tenuous Allied grip on their newest holdings was about to be tested.

Defender: Allied ((Russian) 1055th and 1057th Rifle Regiments, and 14th Assault Engineer-Sapper Brigade, 297th Rifle Division with (Romanian) 94th and 95th Infantry Regiments, 19th Infantry Division)  

Errata (source)