The 385th Rifle Division was raised in 1941 as an infantry division of the Red Army, and served for the duration of the Great Patriotic War in that role. It began forming in August 1941, in the Central Asian Military District. It was first assigned to Southwestern Front but on its arrival it was seen to be far from combat-ready and so was moved north to the Moscow area for further training. It served in the later stages of the counteroffensive west of the capital in Western Front and remained in that Front until early 1944. It was on a relatively quiet sector through most of 1942 and early 1943 before joining the summer offensive towards Smolensk. It then spent the autumn and winter in the costly and difficult struggles on the approaches to the upper Dniepr River and in eastern Belarus, during which it won a battle honor. From this point on it shared a very similar combat path with the 380th Rifle Division. The division took part in Operation Bagration and was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for its successes. Following this it helped to eliminate the German forces trapped east of Minsk, for which it received a second unit decoration, before joining the advance into Poland. During the Vistula-Oder Offensive the 385th was part of 2nd Belorussian Front's 49th Army, and ended the war advancing north of Berlin towards the Baltic coast. Despite its distinguished record it was selected as one of the many divisions to be disbanded during the summer of 1945.
Formation The 385th began forming in August 1941 at Frunze in the Central Asia Military District,Walter S. Dunn, Jr., Stalin's Keys to Victory, Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg, PA, 2006, p. 81, states the division formed in September. Its order of battle was as follows: 1266th Rifle Regiment 1268th Rifle Regiment 1270th Rifle Regiment 948th Artillery RegimentCharles C. Sharp, "Red Tide", Soviet Rifle Divisions Formed From June to December 1941, Soviet Order of Battle World War II, Vol. IX, Nafziger, 1996, p. 105 403rd Antitank Battalion 456th Antiaircraft Battery (later 672nd Antiaircraft Battalion, to 19 March 1943) 447th Reconnaissance Company 665th Sapper Battalion 836th Signal Battalion (later 247th Signal Company) 470th Medical/Sanitation Battalion 463rd Chemical Protection (Anti-gas) Company 500th Motor Transport Company 252nd Field Bakery 808th Divisional Veterinary Hospital 1417th Field Postal Station 756th Field Office of the State Bank Col. Ilya Mikhailovich Savin was not assigned to command of the division until 1 October, and he would remain in command until 10 March 1942. In November the division's personnel were noted as being mostly Kyrghiz.David M. Glantz, Colossus Reborn, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 2005, p. 594 These men had practically no time to train before they were ordered to the front. They arrived in the Volga Military District in mid-November and the division was briefly assigned to the 61st Army that was forming there, but instead of sending the raw unit into combat with that Army it was reassigned to the 24th Army in the Moscow Defence Zone for more than a month of working-up.Sharp, "Red Tide", pp. 105-06. Note that on these pages Sharp thrice mis-numbers the division as the 380th.Combat Composition of the Soviet Army, 1942, p. 14. Soviet General Staff, The Battle of Moscow, states that the division was in 10th Reserve Army at Ukholovo on 5 December 1941; this appears to be in error for another unit. By the beginning of February the 385th had joined the 10th Army in Western Front.Combat Composition of the Soviet Army, 1942, p. 27 On 11 March Col. Gavriil Markelovich Nemudrov took command of the division but ten days later he was replaced by Col. Aleksandr Fedorovich Naumov. Naumov would be promoted to the rank of major general on 21 May.
Battles west of Moscow During March the division was transferred to the 50th Army.Combat Composition of the Soviet Army, 1942, p. 64 Having been reinforced with the 385th and other units, this Army, along with the 43rd and 49th Armies, was ordered to link up with the encircled 33rd Army and Group Belov in the Dorogobuzh area. Due to general exhaustion of the attacking units and dispersion of effort this attempt made minimal progress. The encircled force was finally authorized to break out in April. On 14 April, 50th Army attacked to try to join up with Group Belov, and at one point only 2 km remained between the two forces, but the next day German counterattacks forced 50th Army to fall back. On 20 April Western Front was ordered to go over to the defense,Svetlana Gerasimova, The Rzhev Slaughterhouse, ed. & trans. S. Britton, Helion & Co., Ltd., Solihull, UK, 2013, pp. 45, 47-48 and in May the 385th returned to 10th Army. In June it was again reassigned, now to the 16th Army,Combat Composition of the Soviet Army, 1942, pp. 102, 123 and in early July took part in attacks against the Second Panzer Army south of the Rzhev salient, which made enough progress to alarm the command of Army Group Center.Gerasimova, Rzhev Slaughterhouse, p. 64 In August the division returned to 10th Army and would remain under that command until April 1944.Sharp, "Red Tide", p. 106
Battles for Smolensk and Belorussia On 1 August 1943 General Naumov handed his command to his chief of staff, Col. Mitrofan Fedorovich Suprunov, who would remain in this post for the duration of the war, being promoted to major general on 2 November 1944. The 385th took part in Operation Suvorov, the grinding offensive westward towards Smolensk, which began on 7 August, but did not involve 10th Army until three days later. On 10 August the commander of Western Front, Col. Gen. V. D. Sokolovsky, ordered the Army to attack north-west out of its salient around Kirov against the LVI Panzer Corps. The command of the German 4th Army was not expecting an attack from this direction, and three rifle divisions, with the 385th in second echelon, were able to punch through the left flank of the 321st Infantry Division and advance 5 km on the first day. This was the first breakthrough achieved in the offensive, but 10th Army did not have a mobile group to exploit it. 9th Panzer Division was ordered to intervene, but before it could arrive the Soviet divisions began to roll up the 131st Infantry Division, and the right flank of 4th Army began falling back to secondary positions.Robert Forczyk, Smolensk 1943: The Red Army's Relentless Advance, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, UK, 2019, Kindle ed.
Later in August the 385th was assigned to 38th Rifle Corps.Combat Composition of the Soviet Army, 1943, p. 217 A further offensive thrust began on September 15 and 10th Army was soon across the Desna River and aiming for Roslavl.John Erickson, The Road to Berlin, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, UK, 1983, p. 131 As the summer offensive rolled into the autumn, on 29 September the division forced a crossing of the Sozh River with the 212th Rifle Division and liberated the town of Krichev, for which it was awarded a battle honor:In early October, as Western Front made its first attempt to liberate Orsha, 10th Army was on the Front's left flank, and 38th Corps deployed into positions in the bend of the Pronya River southeast of Chausy. Given the relatively small size of the Army it was limited to a passive, secondary role for the time being.Glantz, Battle for Belorussia, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 2016, pp. 69-70
The Novyi Bykhov - Propoisk Offensive began on 22 November, but 10th Army did not join in until the 28th, attacking across the Pronya River just north of Petukhovka on its boundary with 50th Army. 38th Corps struck at the boundary between the German 131st and 260th Infantry Divisions' defenses south of Chausy, in cooperation with attacks by 50th Army's 369th Rifle Division. The 385th was in first echelon with the 64th Rifle Division, and the 212th in second. Within two days the two lead divisions had penetrated German defenses at Vysokoe, wheeled northward, and attacked their positions at Chausy, a city that anchored the right flank of German 9th Army. The 212th advanced as far as Shaparovo, 5 km south of Chausy; meanwhile the 64th and 385th seized Lepeny and other villages southwest of the city.Glantz, Battle for Belorussia, pp. 200-03
Chausy remained the objective of 10th Army during the following months. On 4 January 1944 the 3rd and 50th Armies launched a new attack in the direction of Bykhov. In support of this, 10th Army was ordered to attack German defenses north and south of Chausy at the junction of the Sozh and Pronya. For this diversionary assault, which began at dawn on 3 January, the 385th was detached from 38th Corps. The 290th Rifle Division, supported by most of the 160th and 76th Rifle Divisions, pushed across the Pronya between Putki and Skvarsk, 10 – 15 km north of Chausy. In heavy fighting the three divisions seized bridgeheads north and south of the fortified village of Prilepovka but were not able to take the village itself. Overnight the bridgeheads were reinforced by elements of the 385th and the next day the combined force took the village of Baryshevka, 2 km north of Prilepovka, as well as Putki, but was then halted at the outskirts of Voskhod, 5 km to the west, by counterattacking reserves of the 35th Infantry Division. Further efforts stalled, but a valuable bridgehead over the Pronya had been won in two days of fighting.Glantz, Battle for Belorussia, pp. 409, 411-13
In 10 February Army and its 38th Corps was transferred to Army Gen. K. K. Rokossovsky's Belorussian Front. Rokossovsky was determined to eliminate the German 9th Army's bridgehead on the east bank of the Dniepr between Bykhov and Chausy. 38th Corps was assigned a leading role in this attack, which began on 25 March. 10th Army was to penetrate the defenses of the German 12th Infantry Division on an 8-km-wide sector southwest of Chausy. Following this, 38th Corps would exploit to the northwest and reach the southeast outskirts of Mogilev by the end of 1 April, a total advance of 30 km. The Corps was reinforced with two additional divisions, an armored train battalion was on hand for fire support, and the 1st Guards Tank Corps was available in the rear. On the attack sector the Corps had the 64th and 139th Rifle Divisions in the first echelon and the 385th in second. The assault went in on schedule after a short artillery preparation but over three days of fighting hardly dented the German defenses. Overnight on 28/29 March the 290th Rifle Division was brought up to reinforce the 385th's attack, but this also failed after minimal gains. In an after action report it was noted that on 29 March the division was ordered to exploit gains made by the 290th, but while the distance to be covered was no more than 1.5 km, it wasted more than four hours which allowed the German force to reorganize its defense. The next day, after units of the reinforcing 49th Rifle Division made a penetration, Colonel Suprunov was ordered to commit his 1268th Rifle Regiment into the gap; in the event the regiment's commander lost control over his battalions and took six hours to cover 3 km. The remainder of the division spent the entire night regrouping and were unable to assist the 49th until it was too late. This "litany of cold and hard combat experiences" explain why 10th Army's offensive collapsed by 31 March.Glantz, Battle for Belorussia, pp. 526-33
Operation Bagration