The “harvest victory” was the only one that Yeremenko could savor. Four rings of antitank ditches being dug twenty to thirty miles west of Stalingrad offered little hope. Neither did the “green belt,” a twenty-nine-mile arc of trees planted years before to ward off the effects of dust clouds and snowstorms. Only a mile wide at its thickest point, it could not withstand the concentrated fire of heavy artillery.
