In mid November 1942 the Germans found themselves in almost complete control of the west bank of Stalingrad. The Russians still hung on in some now quite small pockets on the banks of the Volga. Surely it would not take much more to finally dislodge them.

Yet even as they took ground they found bands of Soviet infantry popping up behind them and attacking their rear - these men were being infiltrated through access tunnels for the factory district.

Helmut Walz of the 179th Engineer Battalion devotes a chapter1 to describing just one day's fighting on the 11th November. As battalion commander, he was now only able to scrape together a group of 30-40 men for another surprise attack at dawn. He describes how the diminishing band of survivors had adapted to their grim existence in the city: