The Red Army marches west

1st March 1944: It is a threadbare Army, short of food and ammunition, that is pushing the Wehrmacht out of the Soviet Union

The Red Army approaches Odessa in the spring of 1944

There was little dedicated motor transport for Red Army infantry, who had to march - or ride on tanks when possible.

Despite Hitler's exhortations for ‘no retreat’ the Wehrmacht was now falling back rapidly across the Soviet Union. In many places there was little or no resistance - by the end of the month the Red Army would reach Romania and Poland.

The Soviet Army in pursuit was by no means an overwhelming force. Lend Lease supplies and equipment may have bolstered it, but the conditions for the infantryman on the ground were very rudimentary. Platoon commander Evgeni Bessonov¹ paints a rather grim picture of the progress that they made in the first few weeks of March, before they met with German resistance again:

At first our battalion did not encounter any resistance from the enemy The Germans were quickly abandoning their positions. In some places they would leave some outposts, but we would quickly defeat them.

The terrain was open, without trees, cut by ravines and with a large number of settlements.That year spring came early to the Ukraine, and spring rain showers washed away the earth roads, making them hardly passable even for tanks, not to mention the wheeled vehicles.

We had to walk on foot. That was where soldiers and officers suffered hellish pain — heavy mud stuck to our boots and we could barely drag our feet out of the sticky quagmire. Many soldiers carried machine-guns, boxes with ammo, mortars and mines.