For the trapped Second Shock Army, the thaw brought only new misery. The corridor connecting it to the rest of the Russian front became impassable, halting delivery of supplies and evacuation of the wounded. Horses died and were eaten; dugouts flooded and shells had to be carried by hand, the men wading up to their waists or jumping from tussock to tussock ‘like rabbits’, to derisive German shouts of ‘Rus, kup-kup!’ For daytime cover they built ‘breastworks’ of branches, moss and dead leaves; at night they slept in the open around fires, scorching their sodden felt boots and quilted jackets. To reanimate the offensive, Stalin reshuffled his generals, recalling Meretskov and subordinating the Leningrad to the Volkhov Front under Zhukov’s protégé Mikhail Khozin. Andrei Vlasov, a tall, spectacled professional soldier who had led the 37th Army out of encirclement at Kiev and spearheaded the December counter-attack in front of Moscow, was flown in to take over the Second Shock Army. On 12 May, having received intelligence that the Germans were bringing up reinforcements, Khozin ordered Vlasov to break out of encirclement and rejoin the rest of the Volkhov Front. Though five divisions and four brigades made it back through the Myasnoi Bor corridor, and at least two thousand men, according to German records, deserted, that left another seven divisions and six brigades — about 20,000 men in total — still trapped inside the German ‘cauldron’.19 ‘The enemy would first surround a unit’, a survivor remembered, ‘wait for it to weaken for lack of supplies and then start pounding’:
We were completely helpless, since we had no ammunition, no petrol, no bread, no tobacco, not even salt. Worst of all was having no medical help. No medicine, no bandages. You want to help the wounded, but how? All our underwear has gone for bandages long ago; all we have left is moss and cotton wool. The field hospitals are overflowing, and the few medical staff in despair. Many hundreds of non-walking wounded simply lie under bushes. Around them mosquitoes and flies buzz like bees in a hive. Come near and the whole swarm comes after you, covers you all over, gets into your mouth, eyes, ears — unbearable. Mosquitoes, flies and lice — our hated enemies. . Nothing new about lice — but in such quantities. . The grey devils eat us alive, with gusto, completely covering our clothes and bodies. You don’t even try to squash them; all you can do, if you have a free moment, is shake them off on to the ground. You find six or seven on a single button. .
The main problem, though, was hunger. Oppressive, never-ending hunger. Wherever you went, whatever you were doing, the thought of food never left you. . Our food supply now depended on air deliveries by U2 [a type of small, one-engined biplane]. Each could carry five or six sacks of sukhari. But there were thousands of us — how could there possibly be enough for everyone? If a sack lands successfully, without bursting on impact, that means one piece of dried bread for two soldiers. Otherwise, you’re on your own, you have to eat what you can find — bark, grass, leaves, harnesses. . Once somebody found an old potato, buried among the ashes of a hut. We cut it up and each got a tiny piece. What a feast! Some men licked their piece, some sniffed it. The smell reminded me of home and family.20
Another reshuffle of the top brass, removing Khozin and separating the two northern commands again (the Volkhov Front was handed back to vindicated Meretskov, Leningrad to a taciturn, poker-faced artilleryman, Leonid Govorov), came far too late to make a difference.21 By mid-June the remnants of the Second Shock Army had been pushed into a small stretch of swamp to the west of Myasnoi Bor:
