118th Rifle Division


The 118th Rifle Division was thrice formed as an infantry division of the Red Army, first as part of the prewar buildup of forces. The first formation was based on the shtat of September 13, 1939. It was based at Kostroma through its early existence. After the German invasion in June 1941 it was rushed to the front as part of the 41st Rifle Corps and arrived at the Pskov Fortified Area between July 2–4. Under pressure from the 4th Panzer Group the division commander, Maj. Gen. Nikolai Mikhailovich Glovatsky, requested permission on July 8 to retreat east across the Velikaya River. There is some question if he received written orders and in any case the retreat fell into chaos due to a prematurely-blown bridge. Glovatskii was arrested on July 19, sentenced to death a week later and shot on August 3. The battered division had by then moved north to Gdov and came under command of 8th Army but could not be rebuilt due to a lack of replacements and on September 27 it was disbanded.
A new division began forming in the Gorki Oblast of Moscow Military District in January 1942 based on the shtat of December 6, 1941 and was soon numbered as the second formation of the 118th. It spent a full six months in formation and training before it was assigned to the 31st Army in Western Front. It was soon committed to action in the summer offensive to eliminate the German forces in the RzhevSychyovka area and contributed to the liberation of Zubtsov in late August. The division saw limited action in Operation Mars in November–December and in March 1943 was one of the first units to enter Rzhev as it was evacuated by German 9th Army. The division had performed well enough that it was redesignated as the 85th Guards Rifle Division in April, serving under the 10th Guards Army.
The third 118th Rifle Division was raised in mid-May 1943 in Southern Front under the shtat of December 10, 1942, based on a rifle brigade. It was immediately assigned to 28th Army and remained under that headquarters until November, fighting through the Donbas and towards the lower Dniepr and winning a battle honor following the protracted battle for Melitopol in late October. After an abortive attempt to force its way into the Crimea it was transferred to the 9th Rifle Corps of 5th Shock Army and then moved to 57th Army with that Corps in the spring of 1944. After the Soviet offensive stalled along the Dniestr River the division was moved to the Reserve of the Supreme High Command in June before being reassigned to the 5th Guards Army where it mostly served in the 34th Guards Rifle Corps for the duration of the war. In early August it entered the Sandomierz bridgehead across the Vistula and remained there until the start of the Vistula-Oder Offensive in January 1945 when it broke out and advanced through Poland and into Germany with the rest of 1st Ukrainian Front. During the Berlin operation the 5th Guards advanced toward Dresden and following the German surrender the 118th was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for its part in the late April battles southeast of that city. The division was disbanded in 1946.

1st Formation

The division began forming at Kostroma in the Moscow Military District according to a decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union dated July 6, 1940. It was a successor to an earlier unit of the same number that began forming in September 1939 at Novocherkassk but was never completed and was disbanded in December. As of June 1941 it had the following order of battle:
  • 398th Rifle Regiment
  • 463rd Rifle Regiment
  • 527th Rifle Regiment
  • 604th Light Artillery Regiment
  • 621st Howitzer Artillery Regiment
  • 191st Antitank Battalion
  • 472nd Antiaircraft Battalion
  • 132nd Reconnaissance Battalion
  • 282nd Sapper Battalion
  • 283rd Signal Battalion
  • 259th Medical/Sanitation Battalion
  • 260th Chemical Defense Company
  • 663rd Motor Transport Battalion
  • 422nd Field Bakery
  • 521st Field Postal Station
  • 439th Field Office of the State Bank
Major General Nikolai Glovatsky was appointed to command on July 16. He had been in command of the 26th Rifle Division until March 1938 when he was arrested during the latter stage of the Great Purge and imprisoned until October 1939. He then served as deputy commander of the 43rd Rifle Corps until his appointment to the 118th. When the German invasion began the division was assigned to the 41st Rifle Corps and within days was aboard trains moving toward Leningrad. After delays owing to German air attacks and the general chaos of the time the Corps detrained north and west of Pskov during the first days of July where it was assigned to 11th Army in Northwestern Front.

Defense of Pskov

After falling back from the frontier with its surviving forces on June 25 Northwestern Front began attempting to establish a defense along the Western Dvina River but this was preempted the next morning when the 8th Panzer and 3rd Motorized Divisions arrived along its banks and by nightfall seized a significant bridgehead. Heavy fighting raged in the Daugavpils region until June 30 but the bridgehead was held. With no major defensive barrier remaining to protect the axis towards Leningrad the Front commander had ordered his 8th Army to withdraw northward into Estonia and the 11th and 27th Armies to fall back eastward to Opochka. These moves left the Pskov and Ostrov axis virtually unprotected.
On June 29 the STAVKA ordered the new commander of Northwestern Front, Maj. Gen. P. P. Sobennikov, to organize new defenses along the Velikaya River near Ostrov anchored to the Pskov and Ostrov Fortified Areas and to reinforce these defenses with the 41st Rifle Corps, commanded by Maj. Gen. Ivan Kosobutsky. On July 2 the OKH ordered Army Group North to advance with its main force through Pskov to Leningrad with 4th Panzer Group leading. The 1st Panzer Division captured Ostrov on July 4, piercing the former Stalin Line defenses. At the same time the 6th Panzer Division crushed the Soviet defenses along the Velikaya south of Pskov, largely due to the delayed arrival of the divisions of 41st Corps; as of that morning although 20 of the trains carrying the 118th had unloaded, two were still en route.
While senior German officers argued over future strategy and their forces struggled to overcome the swampy terrain on both sides of the Velikaya the XXXXI Motorized Corps fended off heavy Soviet counterattacks at Ostrov on July 6–7 and the following day captured Pskov, utterly compromising the remaining Stalin Line defenses and largely isolating the 111th and 118th Divisions on the west bank. On the night of July 8 General Glovatsky twice requested permission from Kosobutsky by phone to pull back across the river. This was granted on the second attempt, but Glovatsky did not get the order in writing and Kosobutsky failed to inform him that two regiments of the 111th were to withdraw over the same bridge. As the two divisions converged they became intermixed and command and control were lost. Further, as the retreat was underway an engineering officer of the 111th, without authorization or immediate threat, ordered the bridge destroyed. Up to two regiments of each rifle division were forced to cross the Velikaya using improvised means under German fire, at considerable cost. On July 16 Kosobutsky was arrested for unauthorized withdrawal from positions and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment although in the event he would be released in October 1942 and return to corps command.
Glovatsky was in turn arrested on July 19 and faced a tribunal in Leningrad on the 26th. Because he had no written order to justify his withdrawal and Kosobutskii denied having given him the order verbally he was condemned to death and executed by firing squad on August 3. He was one of two general officers in command of rifle divisions to suffer this fate during the war. Glovatsky remained on the books as commander of the 118th until Col. Afanasy Safronov took over on August 20. Glovatskii would be officially rehabilitated in 1958.

Approaches to Leningrad

On July 4 the Red Army's chief of staff, Army Gen. G. K. Zhukov, had ordered the Northern and Northwestern Fronts to begin construction of a new defense line along the Luga River, roughly 100 km south of Leningrad. By July 14 the 118th had been assigned to the Luga Operational Group along with the rest of 41st Corps and assorted other units. However, in the confusion following the fall of Pskov the division had moved almost due north along the eastern shore of Lake Peipus, eventually taking up positions near Gdov. In fighting with the 58th Infantry Division from July 16–20 the 118th was surrounded and forced to break out, in part with the assistance of the Peipus Flotilla, and reached Narva but lost 1,200 men taken prisoner in the process. As of August 1 it had been detached from 41st Corps and reassigned to the 8th Army in Northern Front.
German infantry forces occupied Kingisepp on August 16 and forced the five rifle divisions of 8th Army defending the Kingisepp axis from the Narva region to the west bank of the Luga on August 21. The 18th Army's XXVI and XXVIII Army Corps attacked north toward the Gulf of Finland from August 22–25. By September 1 the 8th Army had been forced to withdraw to new defenses forming a tight bridgehead south of Oranienbaum, a bridgehead that Soviet forces would retain until 1944. The vigorous assault left 8th Army in a shambles. By September 9 the 118th had been reduced to a strength of only 3,025 personnel, 14 76mm regimental and divisional guns, three 152mm howitzers, seven heavy and 47 light machine guns; in addition almost all of its regimental and battalion commanders had been lost. On September 27 the division was disbanded. Most of its remaining forces were transferred to the 48th Rifle Division when Colonel Safronov took command of that unit and would continue holding the Oranienbaum pocket into early 1944. Safronov was promoted to the rank of major general in September 1943 and would be mortally wounded in fighting along the Narva River on August 17, 1944, dying the following day.
From 1957-64 the successor unit to the 48th Rifle Division was designated as the 118th Motor Rifle Division.