When forces of the German 6th Army launched their attack against the city centre of Stalingrad on 13 September 1942, Mamayev Kurgan (appearing in military maps as "Height 102.0") saw particularly
fierce fighting between the German attackers and the defending soldiers of the Soviet 62nd Army. Control of the hill became vitally important, as it offered control over the city. To defend it,
the Soviets had built strong defensive lines on the slopes of the hill, including trenches, barbed-wire and minefields. The Germans pushed forward against the hill, taking heavy casualties. When
they finally captured the hill, they started firing on the city centre, as well as on the railway station Stalingrad-1 under the hill. They captured the railway station on 14 September.
On the same day, the Soviet 13th Guards Rifle Division commanded by Alexander Rodimtsev arrived in the city from across the river Volga under heavy German artillery fire. The division's 10,000
men immediately rushed into the bloody battle. On 16 September they recaptured Mamayev Kurgan and kept fighting for the railway station, taking heavy losses. By the following day, almost all of
them had died. The Soviets kept re-inforcing their units in the city as fast as they could. The Germans assaulted up to twelve times a day, and the Soviets would respond with fierce
counter-attacks.
The hill changed hands several times. By 27 September 1942, the Germans had again captured half of Mamayev Kurgan. The Soviets held their own positions on the slopes of the hill, as the 284th
Rifle Division desperately defended the key stronghold. The defenders held out until 26 January 1943, when the Soviet winter offensive relieved them, trapping and destroying the German forces
inside Stalingrad.
When the battle ended, the blood-soaked soil on the hill was ploughed and mixed with shrapnel: the soil contained between 500 and 1,250 splinters of metal per square meter. The earth on the hill
had remained black in the winter, as the snow kept melting in the many fires and explosions. In the following spring the hill would still remain black, as no grass grew on its scorched soil. The
hill's formerly steep slopes had become flattened in months of intense shelling and bombardment. Even today it is possible to find fragments of bone and metallic shrapnel still buried deep
throughout the hill.