Kiev, where he formed a bridgehead. The river, a considerable obstacle at this point at over 900m, was spanned by army engineers with a pontoon bridge and 6th Army began filtering infantry forces across to the eastern bank, where they could threaten Soviet forces east of Kyiv and eventually link up with 2nd Army units coming from the north. Meanwhile, far to the east, tanks of 1st and 2nd Panzer groups met, forming a huge cauldron and encircling elements of 5 Soviet Armies. The German command needed to break up the pocket as quickly as possible and trap and destroy the Soviet Armies inside it. The 44th Infantry Division was ordered to leave the siege lines outside of Kiev and cross the Dnieper by the pontoon bridge, from where it went forward to block Soviet forces fleeing eastward trying to escape the German trap. In the last days of September the fighting in the cauldron concluded, and the division resumed its advance eastwards, hindered more by the arrival of the autumn rains, which turned the roads to mud, than Soviet resistance. By November the division arrived in the area of Achtyrka, west of Kharkov where it went into the Army Group reserve. Winter During the winter of 1941/1942 the division was assigned a defensive sector south of Kharkov, still under command of the 6th Army, on the Army boundary with 17th Army to the south. By January, 1942 Stalin wanted to capitalise on the success of the counter offensives around Moscow, and expanded the scope of the Soviet winter operations to include northern and southern sectors of the front. As part of this effort Southwestern and Southern Fronts conducted the Barvinkove-Losowaja Operation with 6, 57 & 38 Armies. German defences in the sector along the Dornets river, west of Izyum, consisted of disconnected strong points rather than a continuous line. The attack commenced on 18 January, hit a weak section of the German line along the Dornets river, west of Izyum, and ripped away German defences along a 60-mile front. After a week the Soviets had driven 100 km into the German line, and now as well as its eastern front, the 44th division positioned on the northern edge of the breakthrough with its southern flank along the frozen Donets wide open, except for some hastily assembled reserves rushed to the area by 6th Army. The 44th bent its right