As rivers are natural obstacles and an important tactical barrier in fortifying a front, trenches supporting defence lines were dug on both sides of the lower reaches of the Pärnu River.
Even here, on the bank on the Paikuse side, a 500-metre defensive ditch has survived as a military heritage site and is identifiable in the landscape.
The Nazi German invasion of the Soviet Union began on Sunday 22 June 1941. The Soviet occupation authorities anticipated that military action would reach Estonia, and by 28 June they had begun constructing anti-tank ditches and trenches around the city of Pärnu.
Things accelerated from 4 July when, after heavy fighting on the Koiva River, the Red Army chose to withdraw its 8th Army Corps to a new defensive line along the Pärnu-Viljandi-Emajõgi River. This new line was supported by natural barriers in Pärnu County like the marshland and rivers of the local river basin, as well as by additional defensive positions being built over a large area from Reiu through Vaskrääma and PõIendmaa all the way to the marshes.
An order was then issued to the residents of both the city and the county to present themselves for forced labour. All adults were obliged to participate – men up to the age of 60 and women up to the age of 55 – except those employed in strategically important positions under martial law. Thousands of civilians were thus drafted for earthworks and organised into brigades assigned to specific sections. The overall coordinator of the fortification works was union leader Voldemar Sassi, dispatched from Tallinn, and the headquarters for the construction efforts was located in Raeküla schoolhouse.
The works were never fully completed, as the troops of the German 26th Army Corps under the command of Colonel Wilhelm Ullersperger arrived in Pärnu via Mõisaküla and Kilingi-Nõmme on the morning of 8 July. The Germans were reportedly astonished not only by the absence of Red Army units in Pärnu, but also by the fact that the bridges across the rivers had been left intact.
Sassi, who had organised the fortification works, and those with him were killed at noon that same day on the Sindi-Lodja bridge: returning to the city after inspecting the works, they were unaware of the frontline situation and their car was struck by a shell from a German anti-tank gun. No one escaped with their life from the burning vehicle. Their remains were initially buried beside the road at the site, then in a mass grave in Pärnu’s Old Park.
By 1944, the tide of war had turned completely against Germany. On September 16, Hitler gave the order to abandon mainland Estonia and Operation Aster was launched. Retreating German troops moved through Sindi-Lodja on their way from Central Estonia toward Riga, and the withdrawal continued for a full week.
On the evening of 22 September, the Soviet air force carried out an air raid on Pärnu, but the German retreat across the Sindi-Lodja bridge continued into the following morning, 23 September. At around 10 o’clock that morning, the last departing troops first blew up the concrete bridge over Türk’s Stream, and half an hour later also destroyed the Sindi-Lodja bridge. By noon, the bridges in Pärnu had likewise been blown up.
The Sindi-Lodja bridge was rebuilt in a similar form to the original in 1955, and in 1957 a new concrete bridge was also built across Türk’s Stream.
At around 4.00 pm on 23 September 1944, the same day that the Sindi-Lodja bridge was blown up, four or five Soviet tanks reached the destroyed bridge across Türk’s Stream from the direction of Sindi. The tanks simply plowed through the stream, but came to a halt in front of the ruins of the Sindi-Lodja bridge. To cross the Reiu River, the troops had to move towards the old Reiu Manor, where a ford in the river allowed them to get through. By the following evening, a temporary footbridge had also been built at the mouth of the Reiu River.
To commemorate the tank convoy that passed through here towards Pärnu, and to mark the 25th anniversary of its ‘liberation’, local authorities unveiled a monument at Sindi-Lodja on 23 September 1969: a T-34/85 tank mounted on a pedestal. Although Soviet propaganda claimed that this very tank had taken part in the ‘liberation’ of Pärnu on 23 September 1944, it later emerged that the vehicle had actually been manufactured in 1945.
The monument – one of five tank memorials in the Estonian SSR – was dismantled on 10 October 1990. The tank was later restored to working order and is now on display at the Museum of the Estonian Struggle for Liberty in Lagedi.
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