In the northern section of the Eastern front the temperatures were still stuck far below zero. A January attack by the Soviet army had pushed a large salient into the German lines near the Volkov river south of Leningrad. The Germans launched their counterattack on the 15th March with classic thrusts from north and south in an attempt at another encirclement.

William Lubbeck1 had travelled with his artillery regiment almost 200 miles by train to join the attack. He describes the fighting in the week beginning the 20th March as the Red Army sought to break out:

By the time our two pincers met on March 19, we had trapped almost 180,000 Red Army troops in a Kessel (pocket).