threatening to cut the railway behind the III SS Panzer Corps and the two division-sized units of Army Group Narwa. The Soviet author Fyodor Paulman depicts the battles for Auvere station as ferocious, causing serious casualties to the 314th Rifle Division. Two regiments of the 125th Rifle Division were sent to assist them. The renewed Soviet units captured the railway crossing near Auvere station on 6 February, losing it on the same day under the fire of the German coastal artillery. From then on, the Soviet forces remained passive in the direction of Auvere, giving Army Group Narwa valuable time to regain their strength. Omuti, Permisküla and Gorodenka bridgeheads in the south Two Soviet platoons of the 147th Rifle Regiment volunteered to cross the river to the settlements of Omuti, Permisküla and Gorodenka forty kilometres south of Narva on 2 February. The bank was defended by the 30th Estonian Police Battalion. The defence was built as an array of small bridgeheads on the east bank, appearing to the Soviets as a carefully prepared defence system in front of the main defence line. Repelled for the first time, the Soviet headquarters took some hours to prepare the attack by the 219th and 320th Rifle Regiments. The Estonians pulled back to their bank during the Soviet attacks, stopping the advance of the Red Army and causing heavy losses. Despite the heroics of the Soviet commanders, only a small platoon commanded by Lieutenant Morozov fortified themselves on the west bank. Soviet difficulties in February The Soviet operations were accompanied by major problems in supply, as the major transport connections had been largely destroyed by the Germans and the remaining poor roads were threatening to fall apart in the thaw closing in. Another failure was in intelligence, as all Soviet partisan troops that had been sent to Estonia were destroyed. In their report on 8 February, the War Council of the Leningrad Front saw the preparations for the landings across the Narva river as unsatisfactory: The 98th and the 131st Soviet Armoured Divisions established a bridgehead on the west bank near the settlement of Siivertsi further north from Narva on 12 February. The bridgehead soon became the most critical position on the whole Narva front. If the Soviets succeeded there, Narva city would fall quickly and the Narva bridgehead on the east bank of the river would be cut off. All available units were