The Last Panther - Slaughter of the Reich - The Halbe Kessel 1945

by Wolfgang Faust

  My driver shouted a question to me.

  ‘Shall I advance at speed, Herr Feldwebel? To reach the other end of the street?’

  I tried to see in front of us.

  The King Tigers were accelerating – and as they picked up speed to get away from the explosions, they struck and crushed many people on foot around them. Some bodies were thrown sideways, while others were dragged under the huge metal treads, or simply disappeared beneath the King Tiger’s massive hull. At the same time, the artillery increased even more in intensity, with rounds bursting in the street and against the buildings every few seconds, both explosive rounds and incendiary rockets.

  At this point, the road in front of my Panther exploded in a spray of white fire, a light so intense that it hurt my eyes to look at it even through the periscopes. I recognised this as a magnesium or phosphorous shell, and I felt the heat surge over our panzer as the fire grew. The burning chemical expanded in the air, creating huge spirals that grew to a height of several metres against the frontage of the house beside the street. The building began to burn, as the white substance dripped like a molten waterfall down its surface. There were civilians in the building, and I saw some of them try to jump out through windows away from the fire, but the blazing chemical kept expanding, and caught the people as they leaped. They fell, completely on fire, into the street - and the entire house began to collapse on top of them where they lay.

  In front of us was an armoured car – an eight-wheeled command vehicle – and this car reversed suddenly, away from the flames, hitting our front plate with a substantial impact. I heard the car rev and its wheels scream as they span on the cobbles, but my radio man called up to me that the vehicle’s rear fender was jammed under our front plate. There was a flash from the car itself, and flames began to spread up its angular surface. Its crew began to jump from the upper hatches. It seemed that the armoured car’s fuel tank was split and leaking, and the gasoline was pouring onto the street under our panzer. Shells were bursting around us too, and the front of the burning building was collapsing into the street. I told my driver to take us forward, regardless of what was in front of us.

  We crushed the rear of the armoured car, and bulldozed it aside. The Panther reared up into the air as we lurched over the rubble of the collapsed house, through the phosphorous flames and into the street beyond.

  Here, in the light of the flames, I could see some of our Volkssturm infantry, fighting with more Red soldiers who were firing from behind a wrecked T34. We bulldozed the Red panzer, pushing it aside and crushing some of the Russian infantry who were behind it. I saw that the survivors were set upon by our Volkssturm men, who knocked them down with carbine butts and even Panzerfausts which they wielded as clubs. As the Reds were subdued, hundreds of people began to surge forward again along the street, making for the far end. Behind us, the bombardment continued in its ferocious intensity.

  I ordered the driver not to accelerate, as I could not bear the thought of crushed women and children under my tracks, however great the danger from the bombardment. As it was, the crowds were surging and scrambling away from the central part of the street, fighting each other to get into the smashed house fronts, into the side alleyways or even under the trees that lined the edges of the boulevard, to find any shelter from the explosions. Those that made it to the edges cowered there, squeezed against each other and transfixed in confusion, while those still in the middle of the street charged madly towards the far end where they knew the route to the West lay. Slowly, the space in front of us was cleared of people.

  As the street emptied, we were able to pick up speed, and we travelled at about twenty kph for a short distance, aiming for the Western end which was framed between two high houses. I was still up out of the turret, with masonry and shrapnel whipping around me, and a few of our complement of riders was still crouched on our engine deck, clinging frantically to the grilles and equipment hooks. I thought that we were going to be successful, and reach the Western end - but without warning one of the King Tigers appeared in front of us, actually reversing backwards between the final houses into the main street again, his exhausts flaring. He came to a halt, traversing his turret, and began firing with his barrel below horizontal at something in the space beyond the street, which we could not see around the corner of the houses.

  I had the feeling now that the Reds were playing with us – simply manoeuvring us around for their sport. They had allowed our column to enter and fill the narrow street, then started their bombardment just as our people were at their most exposed. Now they were blocking us off, sealing us in to this death channel, with most of our heavy panzers already out somewhere beyond the edge of the town.

  Another artillery round exploded behind our Panther, and I heard screams from my rear deck as shrapnel cut into the people riding on our hull. Debris smashed off my cupola and hit me in the back, and I dropped down into the turret with stabs of pain shooting through my spine. I grabbed the 75mm gun breech for support, and the loader steadied me and unfastened my jacket to see the wound. Outside the Panther, metal was breaking in waves against our armour plate, and making our machine rock like a boat. The pain in my back prevented me from thinking about the effect of the explosions on the people taking cover in the street. At times, as the loader probed my back injury, I could hear long screams from outside, in the brief intervals between the explosions and the King Tiger firing his gun. I think that I also heard people beating and pounding on our armour, trying to climb aboard or calling desperately for help. At one moment, the open hatch of the cupola was filled with the hysterical, screaming face of a woman, begging to come into the panzer. I would have permitted her, but another shell exploded close to us, and she disappeared in a plume of smoke and debris.

  Halbe was being systematically destroyed, I realised – from one end to the other end, second by second. I grunted as my loader removed the second of two shell splinters from my back, and then splashed antiseptic on the wound. I shuddered in pain, but was still grateful that I was inside the Panther, and not outside in the raging maelstrom of the street.

  I gulped down an amphetamine tablet, and let the loader give me a short jab from a morphine capsule – enough to deaden the pain, but not enough to knock me out. I felt numb, wooden, and my limbs became distant from my body. I looked through the periscopes forward, and saw the King Tiger in front of us advancing slowly, surrounded by a mob of armed soldiers, civilians and others. There was a Kubelwagen (VW jeep) beside the rear of the panzer, and soldiers were fighting for space inside it, raining blows on each other. One man raised a pistol and shot an officer through the chest – and then the King Tiger jerked sideways as it accelerated, its massive tracks crushing the Kubelwagen, the officer and the mutinous soldier, destroying them and others under its treads.

  With explosions blowing slabs of masonry off the walls of the houses around us, and entire buildings collapsing in bursts of smoke, we advanced behind the King Tiger out of the main street, being forced to drive over the crushed Kubelwagen and its shattered human debris as we progressed. Rounding the corner, I saw what the King Tiger had been firing at: a pair of T34 panzers were wedged between two buildings, their front hulls shot away and the bodies of their crews burning as they hung out of the hatches. Was that the Reds’ last ambush, or were there more tricks still to come?

  Around us, the ragged mass of our foot travellers scuttled and jumped alongside our Panther. This road had fewer opportunities for cover than the main street, being open on one side, but this allowed the people to spread out into the fields to the left in an attempt to avoid the exploding shells which were falling all around us. In all my experience in the East, I had not seen a bombardment this intense: shells landing one on top of the other, the dust cloud of one explosion being torn apart by the explosion of the next round, and among them the incendiary rockets crashing and exploding across the street and the open spaces.

  Perhaps it was the amphetamine cocktail, but I grew immune to th
e sight of these rockets bursting among the hundreds of people who swarmed beside us, sending dozens of them tumbling in grotesque somersaults with their bodies on fire, their burning limbs carving patterns on my retina as they flailed in the dim light. A pair of horses pulling a cart were set on fire, and they stampeded insanely, throwing the civilians in the cart out behind them as they kicked and trampled on anyone unlucky enough to be in their path, until an artillery shell killed the animals in a puff of whirling flesh.

  Several times we had to halt while the King Tiger in front of us dealt with threats that appeared from one side or another, its turret traversing and spitting tracer from its co-axial machine gun into the night. The great panzer had a group of SS troops on its back hull, and these men fired with MP40 and heavy machine guns into the houses as they saw enemy troops lurking in there.

  We came on a partly collapsed building which had red troops firing from the rubble. An anti-tank rocket flew out from this strongpoint in a trail of fire and exploded against one of the huge concave wheels of the King Tiger. The wheel flew off, spinning like a coin, and for a moment I thought that the panzer was doomed. But the SS men leaped from the hull and stormed the Red position, throwing themselves onto the enemy guns. The surviving Reds swarmed out, firing their machine pistols into the mass of troops and civilians, running and swerving among the throng and shooting at random.

  I pulled myself up through the hatch to see what was happening, and grabbed my machine pistol, climbing out onto the hull when I realised what was taking place. In the light of the burning buildings, I could see these ten or twelve Red troops – who knew they were about to die, but wanted to take as many Germans as possible with them – running madly through the ranks, shooting and yelling. Half of the Reds were felled in moments by shots or blows, and they disappeared under German boots as they were kicked and mauled to death. But others charged into a mass of civilians, shooting and cutting down women and children with sustained bursts of fire. One of these attackers was killed when an incendiary rocket landed near him, bounced into the air and decapitated him as he ran. His body ran on for several metres, still firing his gun, until it stumbled and fell.

  I jumped off the Panther, feeling no pain from my wounds, and shot down two of the other Reds as they ran berserk among the fleeing civilians. Some of our troops came to my aid, shooting at the Reds and bringing them down – but many others, even those who had guns, were rooted to the ground with exhaustion or fear, and simply watched us as we, the more determined fighters, took on the enemy. In seconds, we had shot down all these Ivans, and the civilians were searching their bodies for food and pistols, even as the corpses steamed in the flickering light.

  I clambered back onto the Panther, my body still numb, my mind clouded. We drove on down this exit street for fifty metres, then one hundred metres, away from the most intense area of bombardment. The artillery barrage slackened here, with the Red guns still focussing on the central part of the town, where a dreadful massacre must surely be taking place.

  Looking back to the central area, I could make out a mass of people – not hundreds, but many thousands of them – crawling out from the street exit, dragging themselves away from the fire zone. Behind them, the buildings of central Halbe were completely aflame, and shells were still bursting over the houses with a frantic rhythm. What was the fate of the thousands who were still trying to break through back there, through the rockets and shell bursts in between the collapsed houses?

  As if in answer to my question, a truck appeared in the exit from the main street: an open vehicle with a cab and a flat body. The body was loaded with troops and civilians, their bodies streaming with smoke and sparks. The truck was on fire, with flames erupting from its engine, and it careered out of control into the crowd in the open space, running down many people, who were then left where they fell. The truck rolled to a halt, and the flames around it grew and began to roar. I saw that none of the people on its body tried to move, dismount or climb off. Either too badly hurt, too terrified or too uncaring of their fate, they remained piled on the truck while it exploded into flames and the fire consumed them rapidly.

  I looked ahead again, towards the darkness at the end of this road, a shadowy space not illuminated by flares, fires or explosions. Beside us, the survivors on foot herded forward, following the panzers towards their hope of safety. We slowed to walking pace, as I crouched on the turret top, communicating with my driver through the interphone, trying to make out what was ahead of us. I could not see the King Tigers, but I made out the exhausts of the Capo’s Panther in the darkness, progressing slowly at an even pace. After several hundred metres, I noticed the people on the ground around us beginning to pick up speed, starting to run with their remaining energy towards the dark but silent area ahead. Motorcycles, trucks and horses streamed past us, dim shapes in the gloom, these vehicles and carts swerving among the foot traffic – all of us racing for the way out of Halbe.

  ‘It seems that we are through, sir,’ my gunner said in my earphones. ‘There is nothing beyond. It looks like the road going West.’

  I grunted a response – partly in doubt, partly because the pain of my back wound was starting to lever into my senses. My back was cool and wet – and I touched it to find it slick with blood. Perhaps when we were finally through, when we were crossing the land beyond Halbe, then I could find a medic and have the wounds dressed.

  ‘I really think we’re through,’ my driver said from his position down in the front hull. ‘I can see a sign ahead. What does it say, sir?’

  I peered into the dark, my vision doubling as if I was drunk. There was a sign there: some kind of placard on a roadside tree, white with black letters, and as we approached I saw that it was a hand-painted route marker.

  All German traffic, progress right!

  The secure route is through the railroad station

  By Order

  Reich Field Police

  I told the driver to rotate right, and to advance slowly towards the station. The mass of people around us swarmed together, reading the sign, shouting out in hopes of deliverance, believing they were almost out of the Kessel.

  After a hundred metres, we passed a solitary German soldier, in a clean, tidy uniform, a man who appeared well-fed and healthy. I was so accustomed to the sight of our ragged, patched-up infantry that I noted this immediately, even in the moonlight and in my drugged state. He directed us to the right, using a field police direction pointer, and he saluted professionally. I did not have time to note his insignia – and anyway, the light was getting too dim. Following his directions, we progressed right – and in a few moments I saw the iron foot bridge of the railway station in front of us under the moon. More of these clean, professional German soldiers appeared beside the road, waving us forward and pointing to the station area.

  ‘We’re through,’ my driver said. ‘See these field police fellows? They must have come up from the Twelfth Army Zone. We’ll be linking up soon, sir, won’t we?’

  ‘If they’re the Twelfth Army, they’re too far forward,’ my gunner said. ‘They should be thirty kilometres to the West.’

  I nodded at his comment, looking at another of the field police in his smartly pressed uniform, as he waved us on to the station zone. I suddenly shouted to my driver to halt, and the Panther ground to a stop in a swirl of dust and earth. The foot traffic did not halt, but surged around us, a multitude of troops, civilians and wheeled transports following the police directions to the station. Even the troops clinging to our rear deck jumped off, now that we were halted, and joined the crowd surging forward along the road. I looked down at the field policeman, his eyes invisible under the rim of his helmet, and his uniform devoid of insignia.

  ‘What unit are you with?’ I called to him, over the noise of explosions from the town and the tramping of the foot soldiers charging past towards the station.

  ‘Field police, Herr Feldwebel,’ the man saluted.

  I climbed down from the Panther slowl
y, with pain rippling through my spine, and stood in front of him. The hundreds of foot soldiers and civilians charged around us, shouting encouragement to each other.

  ‘Which unit of field police?’ I asked the man, over the heads of the people rushing between us.

  ‘You must hurry, Herr Feldwebel,’ he called to me. ‘The Reds are close.’

  ‘Which unit of police?’ I shouted, being rocked and jostled by the many troops rushing past. A civilian woman passed between us, dragging a child in each hand – children of five or six years, trailing their feet in exhaustion.

  ‘The rail station,’ she was saying. ‘We will be safer there.’

  ‘Which unit are you with?’ I shouted to the field police soldier. ‘Which unit?’

  He was gone.

  He had retreated into the shadows away from the road, and I caught sight of his back as he ducked between trees in the pasture, dodging away from us.

  ‘Seydlitz truppe,’ I yelled. ‘These are Seydlitz men!’

  The Seydlitz men were a curse on us all.

  Seydlitz troops were German soldiers who had surrendered to the Reds in the East, and had agreed to work for them to disrupt our lines and cause confusion. I had heard of them often – but never seen one until now. They were notorious for exactly this – wearing German uniforms, they planted false signposts, directed traffic wrongly, and fouled up the plans of entire regiments.

  Hundreds of people began breaking and running past our panzer towards the station. I could see them, converging in the moonlight on the access road, running, limping, dragging themselves towards what they thought was safety.