I drove our Tiger back between the low hills, with Wilf in the turret firing occasional shots at the retreating Stalins – firing so slowly that I knew that something was wrong with our gun or with our turret crew.
All along our remaining line of Tigers, the firing was coming to a stop, as crews guarded their ammunition, not expending it on a withdrawing enemy. I drove us back to where we had begun the battle, where the prisoner Hanomag had been hit. Rounding one of the low hills, I saw a sight that made no sense at all.
There were Russian infantry here.
Where the scheisse had they come from?
There were three tall, tough-looking Russian soldiers – not tank crew, but heavily-armed ground troops, picking their way across the ice and mud, holding heavy-calibre automatic weapons, and looking as if they were searching for something, as if they were looking for something among all the debris and wreckage of the Hanomags.
Beside me, Kurt opened fire on them immediately, knocking down two of them, leaving their bodies wreathed in smoke. Kurt’s MG34 clicked empty, though – and he scrabbled around for a fresh magazine, cursing eloquently.
The remaining Ivan soldier took a look at us, seemed to judge the situation, and ducked in between two of the dunes to escape. I drove the Tiger fast around the low rises of earth, and turning the corner after that, I came face to face with another Stalin tank.
The soldier we had shot at was vaulting into it, disappearing into the hull hatch, and the vehicle was vibrating as the engine revved up. Its huge gun barrel traversed a fraction, to face directly into our turret. Why did we not fire? I glanced around to look at the turret cage – and saw from its position that it was traversed way over to the other side, our gun pointing in completely the wrong direction to fire at this vehicle. Reversing would do no good either; the Russian gun was already directly on us.
I rested my head on the control wheel, and waited for the impact of the Russian shell. I had just seen in that other Stalin the way a projectile flew around inside a crew compartment, slashing and ripping whatever it hit.
A second passed, and I heard the JS engine crash into gear, and then rattle away from us. I looked up, and the tank still had its gun pointing at us, like a bank robber who coolly retreats down the street while pointing his revolver at the guards. In this way, he was saving himself from being set upon by all our furious Tigers at once, and so ensuring that he lived to tell the story.
I watched him go – the last one of the great Stalins, getting smaller as he finally span around and roared away in forward gear, disappearing into the dusk of the steppe.
What the scheisse was that about?
I clambered around, wriggled through the bulkhead behind my seat and peered up into the turret. Wilf, our gunner, still had his face to the gun sight. Stang, our loader, however, was slumped against the turret bars, with blood pouring from his neck. Helmann was taking a long drink from a hip flask. He threw it down to me, and Kurt and I shared a swig.
‘What’s happened to Stang?’ I said.
‘We need a new loader,’ Helmann muttered. ‘And we need to get moving.’
*
Stang had been killed when a Stalin shell struck the side of the turret. Although the shell didn’t penetrate, the shock wave blasted a scab of metal off the inside of the turret wall, which severed the back of Stang’s spinal cord at the base of the skull. We placed him on the frozen ground, together with our dead Panzergrenadiers.
Living men driven by foreboding of death, we hurried to regroup from our losses, reorganising our destroyed panzers, our half-tracks and men. We had lost seven Tigers in all, leaving only eight Tigers remaining now, plus four Hanomags and their crews of Panzergrenadiers, plus the Russian prisoner woman. All her companions had been killed by the Sturmovik assault on their transport. She remained alone, her red hair streaked with ice, rocking herself back and forth as she stood in the tundra. We put her in a working Hanomag with our wounded, the poor souls who lacked medical care or even basic pain relief. In with them went our Luftwaffe friend; his elegant one-piece flying suit now drenched in mud.
This was a time of frantic activity, with no chance to reflect or discuss the battle in depth. We checked the panzers’ running gear, and decided we could press on for twenty or thirty kilometres, in order to put space and darkness between us and the main body of Ivans advancing on us from the north. We left our panzer dead in their vehicles, burning like Vikings, and we withdrew from that evil place with its dunes and smashed bodies.
Back on the road of crushed stones, in the ice and mud, we formed a slow column of four Tigers in the lead, then the four Hanomags, and the last four remaining panzers bringing up the rear, with their turrets traversed to face backwards in case the enemy caught up as we retreated. Several times, we heard aircraft overhead, swooping low, but by then we were swallowed up in the night of the endless plain, shielded by darkness.
It was hopeless to try to continue the journey in the dark. Driving a panzer at night, with no lights, is almost impossible, and an invitation to wreck the vehicle. Each driver followed the exhaust glow of the panzer in front, keeping fifty metres of space to avoid collisions, progressing at only ten kph because of the danger of hitting obstacles or ditches that could finish us.
Helmann said that he had found us a place on the map, where we might wait for a few hours and make repairs to our vehicles. At first light, we would then need a sustained drive, using all our remaining fuel, to reach the western river and help in its defence against the onslaught.
In this way, bunching and halting, cursing ourselves and each other, with our minds still buzzing from the intense combat, we entered a shallow valley away from the road. A moon was rising, the colour of gunmetal, but it seemed to give almost no light at all. In the darkness, we steered to a halt on Helmann’s command: four Tigers in front, then four Hanomags, and then the final four Tigers.
We cut our engines, while a team of Panzergrenadiers went ahead on foot to investigate the valley. As the clump of their boots on the frozen ground faded, I listened to the engine bulkhead clicking as it cooled, and the impatient tap of Helmann’s boot against the turret. Fog grew around us, sparkling with ice crystals. When the Panzergrenadiers returned, Helmann climbed down to consult with them, standing in front of the panzer. I opened my hatch slightly to hear their voices.
‘Well? Is the zone safe?’
‘It seems to be safe, Herr Ober. The valley goes on for two hundred metres, and the road is passable. It is rough, but frozen hard. We saw no sign of the enemy.’
‘Then we will stop here.’
‘And also, sir, we have found, as you see . . .’
The soldier stood to one side. Behind him, emerging from the fog, wearing greatcoats, faces not quite obscured in scarves were . . .
Kurt whistled in appreciation.
‘German nurses,’ he said. ‘What are two fine young German nurses doing here, eh?’
Helmann introduced himself – then asked the women the same question.
‘We are with the German Red Cross, Herr Oberleutnant,’ one of them said, in a Berlin accent. The red symbol on her white dress was very prominent under her oversized greatcoat. ‘Our hospital was evacuated in the retreat, but we were left behind. We are very eager to accompany you. We must not be left to the Reds. Please.’
‘Well, our wounded men need attention. Have you ever been in a Hanomag?’ Helmann asked.
‘Never, Herr Oberleutnant.’
‘Then this shall be your first time, ladies.’
‘First time for everything,’ Kurt said, winking at me.
*
As the nurses boarded the Hanomag which contained the wounded and the surviving Russian prisoner, we panzer crews climbed down from our machines and looked around.
We were in a valley with broad slopes, well-hidden from the steppe above. There were a few indistinct shapes of trees, some large boulders, but nothing else visible. The time was precious, and, using torches with black shiel
ds to minimise the light, each crew set to work to maintain their vehicle before the renewed march.
Our Tigers were never designed to drive sustained journeys, not even on smooth city roads. The stress and wear to the running gear was too great, and the entire engine and transmission itself only lasted for 1,000 kilometres before being completely replaced. Several of our panzers were at that point now, and their crews muttered gloomily about the prospects of them finishing the journey at all without burning out or seizing up. Even the track links – those great chunks of steel weighing ten kilos each – wear quickly under the duress, and the tracks must be tightened and adjusted if the track is not to snap or become tangled on the drive wheels. The pins that hold these links together are thick steel rods, as heavy as the poker from your grandfather’s fireplace – but they eventually bend under the massive strain, and if just one pin breaks apart, the whole sixty tonne panzer can be stranded and helpless.
Together with Wilf and Kurt, I checked along our track length, seeing beyond the mud and debris of human flesh that the treads had collected again, to assess its integrity. Our link pins were looking distorted and loose.
‘Well?’ Helmann asked, appearing behind me. He was like a cat, moving silently on his clean heels, with his grey eyes always watching us.
‘We might make another fifty kilometres on these tracks, Herr Ober,’ I said. ‘Then we’ll have to strip off the treads and replace the pins. See how they buckle? They’re wearing badly. I think the metal is lower quality than usual.’
‘The steel must last,’ Helmann said. ‘It’s a hundred kilometres to the river, Faust. We have fuel for exactly one hundred kilometres. We must reach the river, we are needed there for its defence. And maybe we can pick up more fuel at some point on the way.’
‘Sir.’
I switched off my torch, and we stood in the freezing dark, hunched over, hands in our pockets. To take a Tiger one hundred kilometres, with barely enough fuel, being chased by vengeful Russians equipped with a whole army of those damned Stalin monsters.
‘We’ll make it, though, won’t we?’ a voice said.
This was our muddy Luftwaffe pilot, standing near us in the dark.
‘Ah, you are the pilot who shot off all his ammunition,’ Helmann observed. ‘I’m glad you are here with us.’
‘Indeed, Herr Ober?’
‘Indeed,’ Helmann purred. ‘You’re a strong fellow, with a fine set of shoulders.’
‘I am the Geschwader boxing champion.’
‘Excellent, excellent. We need a man such as you, to be the loader for our 88mm.’
‘Me? A panzer gun loader?’ the pilot spluttered. ‘But I am not trained on such a weapon.’
‘Wilf shall train you,’ Helmann said, slapping both men on the back. ‘It will take an hour or so. Then you will get some rest, because we move again at first light. Continue, please.’
*
While Wilf and the pilot were up in the turret going through the breech loading procedure, Helmann held a short conference, further up the road, with his seven remaining Tiger commanders. Left alone with Kurt, I opened a tin of ration meat and ate half of it. The meat was weird-tasting – it was old army horse, some people said, or even donkey. Whatever its origin, I chewed the stuff down rapidly, leaning against the front plate of our Tiger. The panzer’s steel was solid under my elbow, and I took comfort from its weight. Then I put the remaining ration away for later on, and Kurt lit a cigarette which we shared.
‘Well, that was quite a little battle we had back there,’ Kurt said.
I blew a plume of smoke from my nose, thinking back over the engagement among the dunes on the steppe. Throughout history, I believe, every man who has been in combat has felt the need to discuss it afterwards, to reflect and share its memories, to rejoice, to commiserate and perhaps to learn the lessons from it. It is a primitive male instinct, as strong as the sexual urge. To deny soldiers this shared memory would be like an imprisonment, like the amputation of his tongue.
We talked for some time – reliving the battle in this way, and for these reasons, in our minds.
‘You know what was the strangest thing?’ Kurt said.
‘Was it when you whimpered like a Fraulein?’
His big, ugly face broke into a grin.
‘No, my big hero. It was those three Ivan foot soldiers who came out of that Stalin tank at the end.’
‘How do you know they came out of that Stalin?’
‘One of them jumped back inside there, didn’t he?’ Kurt threw his cigarette away. ‘So they must have come from in there. Where else did they appear from – was it the healthy Russian air?’
‘But how could three big Red soldier boys be riding around in a panzer?’
‘Well, they’d have to cut down on all the ammunition storage, just to fit them in there,’ Wilf mused. ‘Maybe that’s one reason why he didn’t fire on us at the end.’
‘Maybe. But why take those three infantry guys along at all? And why were they prowling around in the dunes there? They weren’t attacking us. It was almost as if they were looking for something.’
‘Russia’s a strange place,’ Wilf said philosophically. ‘Things happen, and nobody knows why.’
‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ I said. ‘Those JS tanks are superb machines. If they break through across the river and start driving to the west . . .’
‘We shall stop them,’ Helmann said behind us, evidently coming back from his conference. I wasn’t sure how long he’d been standing in the shadows, listening to our conversation. ‘With our superb machines,’ he went on, ‘we will hold the river crossing, I promise you. And now we have a new gun loader. A boxing champion, too!’
‘Everything’s fine, then, sir.’ Kurt stood up straight. ‘Your orders?’
‘Send this to Divisional command in code,’ Helmann said, giving him a slip of paper. ‘Send it once only, we do not wish to have Ivans locating our radio position.’
As Kurt was manning his radio set in the hull, Helmann kept me standing outside.
‘You drove the panzer well today, Faust.’
‘Sir.’
‘I heard you just now, speculating about those three Ivan ground troops that we saw.’
‘It seemed very unusual, sir.’
‘I agree that it was unusual. It was really quite unheimlich.’ That was one of his favourite words, meaning it was suspicious, strange or threatening. ‘And what do you think that they were doing there?’
‘They were there with a purpose, sir, that was evident.’
‘That was the impression I had also.’ Helmann frowned, pursing his lips. ‘And they were near the prisoner Hanomag, were they not?’
‘I suppose they were, Herr Ober.’
‘And our prisoners were a radio signals team, which is why we were holding onto them. They may have had important intelligence for our interrogators. Although there is only one of them left now . . . just that woman.’
Helmann took off his tailored officer’s cap, and rubbed his cropped hair. In the faint moonlight, he looked pale and tense. He had over his shoulder the MP40 that he had used to kill the prisoners at the bunker, and his hand moved to it, perhaps unconsciously.
‘We have a little time of darkness before we move,’ he said. ‘Let’s use the time to interrogate the prisoner. Bring the woman into the Tiger where we can see her in the electric light. That will make an impression on her. Also, Wilf speaks some Russian. He can be my interpreter.’
*
I found the woman prisoner in one of the Hanomags, hunched up on one of the seats among the wounded, while the two German nurses did what they could to ease the injured men’s suffering. I saw that they had a satchel of morphine capsules, and they were administering these readily, giving the soldiers much-needed sleep. The two girls were already discussing what they would do that night, once all the wounded were taken care of. They looked at me and winked.
I took the Russian woman to our panzer, and sent her down into
the turret through the gunner’s hatch. I climbed in through my driver’s hatch, and crouched at the base of the turret cage, listening to the interrogation. The Luftwaffe man crouched opposite me on the hull floor, to make space for the Helmann, Wilf and the woman up there.
‘What is your name?’ Helmann asked, and Wilf translated the question in hesitant Russian.
In reply, she gave a name which had a long patronymic.
‘What is your role in your army?’
Again Wilf made the translation, and then he translated her reply.
‘Herr Ober, she says that she is a junior signals operator.’
‘Why was she at the bunkers?’
The translation came again.
‘She says that she was there with a team of operators, who are now dead, and they were there to send simple radio messages. She says she is not a combat soldier, and she asks for humane treatment. She says she has not eaten for twenty-four hours.’
Helmann’s chuckle made the hairs on my neck stand up. It was unheimlich.
‘What type of messages did her radio team know how to send?’
‘She says their messages were basic field requests at a local company level.’
‘Really?’
I saw Helmann look into her eyes for a long time. I couldn’t see her face up there, but I could hear her breathing, which was much faster and lighter than our men’s breathing.
‘Now ask her which codes she has a knowledge of, whether encrypted by hand or by machine, and what encryptions she can formulate and decipher.’
Wilf struggled to ask the question in his basic Russian, and the woman sounded confused as she answered.
‘I think she’s saying that she has no knowledge of encryption. She has not used any encryption machines, she says.’
‘Tell her to show me her hands. That’s right. Now ask her why her hands are so very smooth and unmarked.’
‘She says she only uses a pen and pencil, she does not do lifting and carrying.’
‘So, we’ve found the one girl in Russia who does not do lifting and carrying. I’ve seen Russian girl troops lifting twenty-kilo sandbags all day. They’re born to it.’
Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir Page 5
