Russia – Soviet: A fine Berlin offensive Battle of Halbe Dresden Highway Order of Glory 2nd Class to Guards Master Sergeant Nestor Vakulovich Guzhva, Quartermaster of the 1st Artillery Squadron, 167th Guards Light Artillery ‘Vistula’ Red Banner, Kutuzov and Alexander Nevsky Orders Regiment, 3rd Guards Light Artillery ‘Bakhmach-Kiev’ Red Banner, Kutuzov and Suvorov Orders Brigade, 1st Guards Artillery ‘Glukhov’ Red Banner, Suvorov and Bogdan Khmelnitsky Orders Breakthrough Division of the Supreme Command Reserve who on 29-30th April 1945 fought off large scale German counterattacks that were seeking to breakthrough their encirclement and reach the western Allies, in the process destroying 40 Hitlerites and taking 50 prisoners, when the Germans approached the firing positions he repelled them with hand-grenades with the war cry ‘For the Motherland! For Stalin’, personally killing 12, he forced them to retreat.
Order of Glory 2nd Class, type 2, reverse numbered 46670
Condition: central gilding mainly faded as commonly seen.
Nestor Vakulovich Guzhva was born in the village of Fedorovka, V. Khortitskij District, Zaporozhie District during 1908 and served in the Red Army between 23rd June 1941, the day after the outbreak of war until 27th September 1945.
Serving on the South Western Front between 22nd June 1941 and 16th July 1942, suffering a wound on 18th August 1941 whilst presumably involved in the fighting around Kiev, he then transferred to the Stalingrad Front and saw action around the fateful city between 16th July 1942 and 10th February 1943. The Stalingrad Front became the Central Front on 10th February 1943 and it was on 15th March 1943 that Guzhva received his first decoration, this being a Medal for Combat Merits by Order of the 167th Guards light Artillery Regiment, this most likely for a role in the fighting around Stalingrad.
Through the summer of 1943 his unit would have fought at Kursk during the great battle there, and up to and over the Dnieper, the Central Front becoming the 1st Ukrainian Front on 19th October 1943 and just days later Guzhva would receive a Medal for Bravery by Order of 167th Guards Artillery Regiment. The winter of 1943-44 saw the Red Army involved in numerous offensives that swept it across the Western Ukraine and involved the pocket battles of Korsun-Cherkassy and then the Hube pocket.
By the summer of 1944, Guzhva would have taken part in the great summer offensive and was wounded in the area of Lvov on 21st July 1944 during the Red Army’s offensive upon the city. Only 8 days later Guzhva would receive the Order of the Red Star by Order of the 3rd Guards Light Artillery Brigade. The Red Army subsequently would reach the Vistula River in the late summer of 1944 and would remain stalled there in heavy fighting around the bridgeheads whilst its logistics caught up until January 1945.
In January 1945, the Red Army launched the Vistula-Oder offensive which saw it rapidly advance and capture the bulk of Poland within a few weeks, the 1st Ukrainian Front being locked in fighting in south-west Poland and Silesia, whilst engaged here Guzhva was awarded the Order of Glory 3rd Class by Order of the 1st Artillery Division on 21st March 1945.
During late March and early April the Red Army reorganised its front lines, and the 1st Ukrainian Front lined up along the Oder-Neisse River junction in preparation for the climactic battle of the war, the Battle of Berlin. Breaking out of the bridgeheads around Frankfurt on the morning of 16th April 1945, the front’s units made rapid advances up to the southern suburbs of Berlin itself in competition with Zhukov’s 1st Belarussian Front.
As a result of the advance of these two opposing fronts, several large pockets of German troops were formed including the largest centred around the area of Halbe in the Spreewald to the south-east of Berlin. The bulk of the 9th Army was encircled here, and in a desperate attempt to make its way to the American lines to surrender, as opposed to surrendering to the Red Army, large numbers of troops mounted numerous large scale counterattacks to cross the heavily defended highways which formed the march routes of the Soviet Tank Army’s and blocked their way to the west. It was during the defence against the largest such attack on the 29th and 30th April 1945 that Guzhva performed the act that led to his award of the Order of Glory 2nd Class, whilst he was serving as a Guards Master Sergeant and Quartermaster of the 1st Artillery Squadron, 167th Guards Light Artillery ‘Vistula’ Red Banner Kutuzov and Aleksander Nevsky Orders Regiment, 3rd Guards Light Artillery Regiment ‘Bakhmach-Kiev’ Red Banner Kutuzov and Suvorov Orders Brigade, 1st Guards Artillery ‘Glukhov’ Red Banner Suvorov and Bogdan Khmelnitsky Orders Breakthrough Division of the Supreme Command Reserve:
‘Quartermaster of the Headquarters of the 1st Artillery Squadron Guards Master Sergeant Guzhva exhibited exceptional examples of courage and bravery in the combat engagements for elimination of the enemy pocket 3km west of the village Oderin on the highway Berlin-Breslau in intensive fighting during 29-30 April 1945. In a fierce struggle, a group of fighters led by Guzhva eliminated 40 Hitlerites and took prisoner 50 men of the German infantry. Comrade Guzhva was always in the first row and inspired his men by personal example. By the end of 29th April, when the Hitlerites approached right to the firing positions. Comrade Guzhva threw his hand-grenades at the Germans and, with a war cry ‘For Motherland! For Stalin!’ raised his men into an attack. In the course of these 2 days, comrade Guzhva personally killed 12 Hitlerites.’
The battles of this time are covered in greater detail in the Russian language book ‘Clearing the Way for the Infantry’ the memoirs of VM Zhagala:
‘The battles with the enemy in our sector were of a peculiar character. In the densely populated forest area, military units and subdivisions of both sides moved. No one knew exactly where the enemy should be expected from. The fascists, feeling the end was near, committed atrocities and resorted to insidious methods of struggle. There were cases when they came out of the forest with their hands raised and white flags, and when they came close to the positions of our units, they grabbed the submachine guns and grenades hidden under their greatcoats and used them… but nothing could help the Nazis. Their collapse was inevitable.
Hatred of the enemy increased tenfold the strength of the warriors. Even remaining in a significant minority, showing ingenuity, composure and decisiveness, they defeated the enemy.
The scouts of the guard brigade, privates D. Kazachenko and T. Vasilenko, acting from an ambush, forced more than a hundred Nazis to surrender, and the scouts M. Nikolaev and A. Evdomikov captured 40 enemy soldiers and officers.
Together with the units of the 21st Rifle Corps, the formations of the 1st Guards Artillery Division of the breakthrough smashed the German groups escaping from the encirclement, scattered them through the forests and groves. At this time, it was necessary to conduct mainly oncoming battles, to continuously advance behind the rifle units from one area to another, not allowing enemy infantry and tanks to break through to the highway leading to Dresden.
On April 26, the 3rd Guards Light Artillery Brigade, together with the rifle and artillery units of the 21st Rifle Corps, blocked the roads north of Krausnik-Oderin, along which several infantry and tank formations of the Frankfurt-Guben group of Germans were expected to advance.
The Nazis walked crowded, straight ahead. Soviet infantrymen, artillerymen and tankers were forced to fight the fascist tanks and machine gunners in close combat, destroying them from short distances, since on both sides of the highway there was a mighty forest that prevented the use of artillery, especially large-calibre artillery.
For this reason, the units of the 167th Guards Regiment were in a difficult situation. On the night of April 29, a large force of Nazi infantry with tanks and artillery suddenly emerged from the forest and rushed to the positions of the artillerymen, covering the approaches to the highway to Dresden. The regiment’s batteries were tight, the intervals between the guns did not exceed 30 meters. In these intervals, the commander of the Guard Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Batrutdinov, placed the personnel of command platoons, signalmen, drivers, scouts – everyone who could shoot from personal weapons, machine guns, anti-tank rifles and captured faust cartridges. The cannons fired directly.
The night attack of the Nazis was repelled, but on the morning of April 29, they again went to the guards in an avalanche.
The party organiser of the 5th battery of the guard, senior Sergeant Svinukhov, led one of the crews, replacing the wounded commander of this gun. The cannon fired at the Nazis with direct fire. When it was defeated by a Faustpatrone, the crew continued to destroy the Nazis with grenades and personal weapons. Party organiser Svinukhov died heroically in this battle, but his comrades did not let the Nazis go to the highway.
50 German machine-gunners rushed to the gun of the guard Sergeant I. Goncharov. Left at the cannon, together with the guards Gunner Private Gorzinov, they continued to fire at the Nazis even when they approached the guns by 50-30 metres.
During the day, the 167th Guards Light Artillery Regiment repulsed 14 attacks, destroyed about 1000 enemy soldiers and officers, 2 Ferdinand Self-Propelled Guns, 2 Armoured Personnel Carriers and 200 Nazis were taken prisoner. All of the soldiers of the regiment fought bravely, and among the Guards Sergeants Kartashov, Kolomiets, Kryuchkov, Timofeev and officer I. Fomin, G. Vlasov, deputy commander of the 1st Division of the Guard Captain I.G. Skripka, who controlled the units fire despite being wounded, - but you can’t list them all! Thanks to the massive heroism of the soldiers of the regiment, the enemy was again forced to retreat into the forest.
After the war, Guzhva worked as a fitter in the town of Zaporozhie and lived in his birth village of Fedorovka once more.
