Chapter 31Over the next two days the German airforce blanketed the city, bombing Stalingrad to rubble. The Soviets knew that behind the airborne destruction, Field Marshal Paulus and his 6th army awaited, primed and ready to mop up. The Soviet 62nd and 64th hunkered down on the other side of the Volga. No one slept. The bombing raids jarred everyone's nerves. We existed on cigarettes and tea and sips of vodka, the only supply that appeared to be plentiful. We joked that the commissars brewed it up in the forest from discarded potato peelings.
I thought about the future. We'd heard rumours that the Germans had amassed more than a million men with the arms and artillery to support them. Meanwhile, the warmth of the summer began to give way to the sharp air of the autumn. The nights grew col
