Cannon's High Priest

(See Cover)

This was the Ukraine in spring: sparkling puddles, shell craters, blistered, blackened tanks, the sullen stench of battle and unburied soldiers. Along the muddy roads, Red Army tractors tugged at stalled trucks and mired cannon. Red artillerymen whipped their foamy horses. Red cavalrymen trotted briskly through the muck, bespattering weary, sweating infantrymen on the way to another battle.

No one looked upon the carnage. It was an old sight. It had been thus at Stalingrad and Kursk, at Kiev and Gomel; it was the Red artillery's savage imprint.

It was the work of that man Voronov.

The Decision. Years ago Nikolai Nikolayevich Voronov, Chief Marshal of Red Artillery, a giant of a man with the soul of a great professional soldier, had staked his reputation and his country's fate on the cannon. German generals, whom he would ultimately fight, went in for newer-fangled things. They built their army around the team of tank and plane.

War came to Russia. For five months the Germans moved with wondrous speed and dazzling power. Stubborn Voronov stuck to his artillery. There came a time when the Wehrmacht's great blitzkrieg machine stood at the gates of Leningrad, Stalingrad, the Caucasus. Voronov still stuck to his artillery.

What was going on this week along the vast Russian front was final proof that Voronov was right--for Russia. The specific proof was that the Red Army, spearheaded by the greatest concentration of artillery ever gathered on any front, was winning. Voronov's bludgeon had beaten down the German's rapier; the might of other elements of the Russian Army was trampling it in the mud.

Artilleryman's Progress. At his headquarters, the giant smiled; there was no substitute for cannon. He read the reports streaming in, studied maps, made plans for new action. He was in rare humor.

Twenty-six years earlier--a broad-shouldered, barrel-chested youngster--he had joined the Red Army. He was 18, spoiling for a fight, devoted to Bolshevism with a youth's unquestioning faith. He fought, starved, earned a decoration.

He was blue-eyed and blond. He was a growth from Russia's rich soil--earthy, sturdy, solid in mind and body. His open face was typically Russian, as was his name (voron means raven). A big man, he liked big, sturdy things. On Russia's battlefields he saw guns in action: he liked them.

When the civil war died down, Voronov turned to artillery. He went to artillery schools, elementary and high; commanded an artillery regiment; directed an artillery school; headed a corps.

At 38 Voronov became boss of Red artillery. This was 1937--the year of the great Army purge, of unease and turbulence. Mikhail Tukhachevsky had been "liquidated," and his death left a vacuum in leadership and military thought. Unostentatiously, Voronov moved into the gap. He tightened discipline, increased the number of artillery schools, devised a new system of training, opened special schools for cannon-struck youngsters.

Tradition and Ideas. From Peter the Great, from Suvorov, who carried Russia's flag across the Alps, from Kutuzov, who beat Napoleon, the thread of traditional reverence for the cannon ran directly to Voronov. He was a product of Red training, but he took pride in being heir to Russia's rich martial tradition, and he tried to inspire his aides with this pride. He would sit for long hours bulked behind his desk --all 6 ft. 5 and 225 Ib. of him --quietly talking to his officers.

From the old, white-bearded professors at Red Army colleges he had heard that in World War I the Russian artillery had done well against the Germans where other branches failed. When that war began, Russia had 7,030 cannon to Germany's 11,258, France's 4,792, Austria-Hungary's 4,138, Britain's 1,352. German generals themselves had borne respectful witness to the deadliness of Russian gunnery.

If vast numbers of guns could be used --if cannon could be placed hub to hub --what power could break through? And if the cannon, besides spreading their fire over an area, could hit small, individual targets one after another, what system of defenses could survive? Thus, out of the body of Russian tradition, out of the mass of ideas, doubts and speculations, emerged Voronov's tactic of Massed Fire & Individual Targets.

Friends. Voronov was witty, shrewd, well-read. He made friends easily. Among them were Klim Voroshilov, the pudgy ex-miner who became War Commissar, and a young air officer named Alexander Novikov, who seemed destined for great ness. Among them, too, was Joseph Stalin.

Like Voronov, Stalin liked cannon. This was no new-fangled weapon: the gun was strong and dependable, like the Russian muzhik who handled it. The cannon, Stalin said, is "the god of war." Voronov made a good high priest. Beginning in 1938, he began to call at the Kremlin to make personal reports to Stalin. When Voronov needed help to put his ideas across, he now knew where to look for it.

Rehearsals. But schooling and war games do not make an artilleryman, he needs war. On the Soviet-Manchukuoan border in 1938, Voronov's guns took the measure of Japan's artillery, neatly shaved off a few hilltops, complete with Japanese pillboxes. In 1939, the Red Army again fought the Japanese, on the border of Outer Mongolia, though this was primarily Georgy Zhukov's tank show. In 1940, Voronov came against Finland's famed Mannerheim Line.

What Voronov did in Finland, after Russia had had her first humiliating but educational reverse, set the pattern for today's battles. First, his artillerymen took positions far in the rear, practiced with replicas of the Finnish strongholds. Then they moved their heavy guns close to the Mannerheim Line. Firing over open sights at individual bunkers they methodically uprooted them, and the infantry moved in. For the feat, Stalin made him Colonel General of Artillery.

When the Germans struck on June 22, 1941, Red Army commanders were green. Their teamwork was bad. The Red Air Force (then being re-equipped with new models) was weak, tank tactics faulty. In the bitter days of retreat, Voronov found himself woefully short of the weapon his foe had aplenty--trench mortars. But his heavier guns fought with skill and stubborn valor: of the few thousand German tanks disabled in the first months of war, Voronov's guns wrecked every third.

First Victory. Voronov worked around the clock. Dark circles ringed his eyes. He lost his quick grin. Time was an enemy too; the army's defects had to be whipped before it was too late.

Voronov virtually rewrote the artillery manual, changed commanders again & again. He preached constantly: reconnoiter thoroughly, camouflage tirelessly, do not fear close-range combat, do not fear encirclement. Stalin helped him out: a separate commissariat was set up to build trench mortars.

In the forests west of Moscow, in December 1941, the first big test came. By this time Voronov had already amassed a reserve--three field guns to the enemy's two; two mortars to the enemy's one. The road to Moscow lay clear before Hitler, save for a mob of armed Moscow workers and Voronov's guns. The workers fought, and died. Voronov's guns sent Hitler's armies reeling back.

On the lessons of this battle, Voronov based new reforms. From each infantry division he took an artillery regiment, put it into his Headquarters Reserve. From this vast pool, Voronov could now draw cannon to plug up a hole, or hit the foe.

Stalingrad. All through the summer of 1942, the Red Army retreated--and Voronov hoarded his cannon. Like Stalin, he gambled on Stalingrad's guts. If the city held out, the hoarded men and guns would play havoc with the Germans. Stalingrad held out.

On Nov. 19, Voronov's guns struck. Three and four hundred to a mile, they were dug in along the Volga and the Don. When the 5,000-gun barrage lifted, Red tanks, infantry and cannon plunged into the holes. That day the Army knew: Voronov was right. His guns had fired 689,000 shells, destroyed 160 batteries, 293 machine-gun nests and 322 fortified points, killed 9,000 Germans.

Fifty-one days later, Voronov watched the destruction of 22 trapped German divisions, said soberly: "There are only two salvations from this hurricane of fire --death or insanity." The Germans died, went insane, surrendered by thousands.

Voronov became Marshal of Artillery, journeyed to the Kremlin to receive the platinum Order of Suvorov. At a crowded Kremlin banquet, Stalin toasted him with vodka. (A U.S. official took one look at Voronov, whispered: "What football team did he play on?")

For the first time the Russian man-in-the-street knew what Voronov looked like. One photograph showed him receiving his medal from small, bearded President Mikhail Kalinin, and smiling self-consciously, like a boy in his first long pants. Another showed him questioning beaten Field Marshal Friedrich von Paulus in a bare room near Stalingrad. On Moscow's Kuznetsky Most, an enterprising art gallery exhibited his portrait in oil--blue eyes, bulbous nose, big, friendly mouth, heavy jowls.

Tactics. After Stalingrad came other triumphs. At Kursk last summer Hitler made his final, desperate attempt to win in Russia. Voronov's cannon mauled many hundreds of the thick-skinned, monstrous "Tigers" (60-ton Mark VI tanks) and "Ferdinands" (70-ton self-propelled guns), crushed Hitler's hopes. At Leningrad, two months ago, Voronov's guns reduced to rubble one of the Wehrmacht's most powerful defense systems.

For each of these battles Voronov helped to chart the blueprint, for he was now a member of the seven-man Supreme Command. Each blueprint gave his cannon an honored place. But Voronov was now more than an artilleryman; he was a top-rate, all-round field commander.

He knew the use of every armed branch; he knew that teamwork produced victory. The teammates were all his intimate friends--young Novikov, now Chief Marshal of Aviation, Zhukov, Marshal Semion Timoshenko.

Guns. Voronov won and still wins his victories with the number, not quality, of his cannon. His order to the designers was: make them simple to handle, sturdy enough to survive the harsh terrain and weather, effective enough to stop the tanks. The order was filled well. The Germans proved it by shipping captured Russian guns for use in Africa.

The backbone of Voronov's artillery is formed of the 76.2-mm. (3-in.) field gun, the 45-mm. (1.8-in.) all-purpose gun, the 122-mm. (5-in.) and 152-mm. (6-in.) gun-howitzers--in that order of popularity. The standard antitank gun is the 37-mm. gun, with a 4.5-mile range. The standard ack-ack gun is the 105-mm. gun, with a range of 42,000 feet.

Voronov's special pride is the secret Katyusha (endearing for Katherine), of which the Russians said, "Where Katyusha strikes, nothing lives." Newsmen guessed: it is a multi-barreled, electrically operated rocket gun, set roughly at a 45DEG angle. Last week U.S. movie audiences saw newsreels of the capture of Gomel, goggled at shots of Katyusha's rockets, streaking like lightning through clouds of dense smoke.

For Voronov, as for every Russian soldier, the dry whistle of Katyusha's rockets and the booming of the heavy guns were sweet music. To this music, the Red Army this week marched to new triumphs.

Attack. A fortnight ago it was relatively quiet along the 500-mile reach of the Ukrainian front. But the peace was deceptive. By night Red scouts wormed their way across No Man's Land. In staff dugouts, officers had charted the position of every German battery, every pillbox and tank trap.

At night, too, men, guns and tanks moved toward the front, and burrowed underground. Snow still lay thinly upon the soggy soil, and prime movers pulled sleds loaded with cannon and ammunition.

At three H-hours on three successive days the guns struck. Never before had so many cannon been fired at once; seldom had the devastation been greater. Into the huge gaps torn in the enemy defenses poured the waiting Russian tanks and men. Along with them went the "support artillery"--light field guns and trench mortars--to destroy what men survived the first barrage. Behind, the big guns rumbled up.

Within a week, 65,000 Germans died, 9,000 surrendered. They straggled out of their battered dugouts and mumbled: "Kanonen . . . Kanonen . . . wir koennen nicht mehr. . . ." (We can stand the cannon no more).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.