3. ROMAN KNIGHT
OBLIVKAVIA, RUSSIA, December 3, 1942: Covering the northern flank of the German Sixth Army in Stalingrad, General Lascar’s Romanian Third Army had been shattered when the Russians launched Operation Uranus on 19 November. Poorly equipped to meet the massed tanks of the Russian 5th Tank Army, the Romanians had been quickly surrounded. The embattled Lascar Group, as it became known, was refused permission by the German High Command to breakout. Despite this order small units did attempt to escape but were typically liquidated by marauding Russian Tanks. A Battalion of the 6th Division, under the command of Major Gheorge Rasconescu, did manage to evade the Russians as it retreated in good order due south towards the vital bridge and airfield at Oblivkavia on the Chir River. Meanwhile, covering the western flank of the 5th Tank Army, the 8th Cavalry Corps was tasked with the capture of bridges along the length of the Chir. From the 26th of November Rasconescu’s men were fending off the increasingly aggressive Russian probes towards to Oblivkavia. At dawn on the 3rd of December, a mixed Russian force consisting of the remnants of earlier attacks plus fresh units attempted to break through the exhausted Romanians.