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The Russian bank where the bridge was to be built was low, flat and easily seen by the Germans atop their high, sheer bank. Engineer Sosnovkin therefore decided to build his bridge backwards from the German side, beginning it in the shelter of the high bank. On a night when clouds hid the moon and snow shrouded the river, the strongest swimmers crossed with the foundation stones in stretchers and in their tunics. Others swam with the logs. Blue-black with cold, praying that the ice along the bank would not crack and betray them by the sound, they laid the first sections in utter silence. Chest-deep in the waters near the bank, they were cut, bloodied and sometimes knocked off their feet by ice floes. Once the Germans sensed that something was up and fired aimlessly at the dark river, wounding several Russian sappers. But Engineer Sosnovkin's men returned a second, night and a third. Unseen by the Germans, they completed their bridge.
On a morning chosen by the Liubimets, Engineer Sosnovkin placed stakes on the thin sheet of ice just above his bridge.
Then he stood in his grey coat by the river and waited. Russian artillery suddenly loosed a great barrage. Engineer Sosnovkin saw the puffs of the shells bursting in the German positions. From the woods behind him, Russian tanks, whitened for winter war, snouted down to the bank, crunched through the ice and found his bridge. In squadron after squadron they charged toward the stupefied Germans and opened the Rzhev offensive.
The Hedgehogs. The cities of Rzhev and Vyazma lie a-flank Moscow, some 125 miles to the northwest and southwest (see map). Connecting them with Smolensk, Vitebsk, the town of Velikie Luki and nearby Toropets to the northeast are railways and roads, now the military arteries of a fortified rectangle. Against the eastern edge of this rectangle, between Rzhev and Vyazma, and against the upper edge just west of Rzhev and on two sides of Velikie Luki, the Russians drove last week. Their purpose was to surround both places, to cut the railways and roads serving them and the whole German system before Moscow, then by progressive sweeps to reduce and occupy the entire area.
The Russians cut the railway between Rzhev and Vyazma. They cut the chief highway serving Rzhev. They cut two railways north and south of Velikie Luki. They took positions between Velikie Luki and the pivotal German strongpoint at Toropets. Artillery, tanks and infantry, including ski troops, within 48 hours had repeatedly broken through the outer line of the rectangle, flowed around the German's mighty fortress at Rzhev and all but isolated some 75,000 German troops there. Very near Rzhev, where Red Army troops had won a foothold last September, they attacked the suburbs of the city itself.
Red Star said that the Russians had captured a German document, quoting
Hitler to his commanders in the area: "The advance of Soviet troops to the [Rzhev-Vyazma] railroad line will create a serious threat to Rzhev and a loss equivalent to the loss of half of Berlin." The Russians also said that a German tank commander had sent word for "help today—tomorrow will be too late."