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

by Wolfgang Faust

  As soon as our tracks bit into the dry ground here and threw up dust, an aircraft appeared in the sky overhead. This was a Russian ‘Lame Duck’ type, the little biplanes used for spotting and nuisance bombing. Our Flak vehicle drove it away with bursts of tracer which spiralled up luminously in the grey light – but not before the plane had dropped a white parachute flare marking our location.

  In this sinister glow, I saluted the Capo, as his Panther and the old Panzer IV moved off to guard the Northern flank of the crossing point, while I moved South with the Hetzers.

  As soon as we approached the Autobahn itself, we came under fire from the far side. A red tracer round flashed from a clump of trees and hit the Hetzer which was next to me. The range was less than a kilometre, and the force of the round lifted the whole top of the Hetzer’s body from the hull, sending it up into the air in front of me. The little vehicle caught fire immediately, and continued rolling forward for some distance, with its crew burning within the open hull. My gunner responded to the attack with a high explosive round which blew aside some of the trees where the enemy was located. I could make out a huge, block-shaped machine, equipped with a massive gun: an SU tank destroyer. These colossal machines were nothing more than mobile steel fortresses, but their battleship guns could be fatal to any panzer in their path.

  To my North, the two SS King Tigers broached the Autobahn and came to a halt straddling the black road and its lines of wreckage. They engaged the SU at a range of about 1.5 kilometres, firing together across the plain. In moments, the SU was hit with a strike that knocked its massive gun mantle off to one side, and smoke began to coil from its hull.

  With the two remaining Hetzers, my Panther too came onto the Autobahn, and we positioned ourselves along it with the Panther on the left and the two surviving Hetzers staggered on the right. Our two Hanomags of SS men leaped from their transports and took up positions beside the road, with heavy machine guns and Panzerfausts. Dusk was gathering, but overhead the drifting parachute flare cast a light similar to dawn; fortunately, a strong breeze was carrying it away from us, to the South West.

  I surveyed the long, straight Autobahn through the cupola periscopes, trusting to the King Tigers on my right to guard our rear as they broke through the Red lines. The landscape was being lit by flashes and bursts of fire as they engaged the armour they were encountering. I took a quick look in that direction – and, with the drugs affecting my mind, I was transfixed at what I saw.

  On the great, open plain, one King Tiger stood out in the glow of dusk, silhouetted against the skyline. It was immobilised, with its massive tracks twisted around, and one drive wheel lying beside it. Unmoving, though, it continued to fire as its comrade Tiger moved ahead, covering the other Tiger against a group of SU destroyers which were approaching. The immobile Tiger crew seemed determined to use all their ammunition, and were shooting at a rapid pace, again and again, each shot illuminating the huge, doomed machine.

  I saw one of its rounds streak across the plain and blow the hatches off one of the SU machines. The Red destroyer emitted a pall of smoke, and tipped into a crater, spinning around to expose its flank. The Tiger pierced it through the side with another round, which exited upward through the engine grilles and rose perhaps a hundred metres into the air, the tracer still glowing. The crew of that SU began to clamber out, but they were caught by a horizontal burst from one of our Flak half-tracks, cutting them to pieces where they stood.

  The King Tiger engaged in a death duel with the two remaining SU guns. The Reds slowly shot the great panzer to pieces, one round knocking off its running gear, and causing the wheels to spin wildly over the ground. Another shell exploded on the turret, sending the cupola off into the air. Still the King Tiger kept firing, as its comrade panzer pushed forward to the west, shooting up the resistance that it was encountering there. The stricken Tiger, wreathed in smoke and with its wheels and tracks destroyed, fired on, immobilising one of the SUs by exploding a high explosive shell low on its front plate. I could see the SU’s drive wheels spinning, but the tracks were separated and it was unable to move.

  The other destroyer shot up our King Tiger with slow, repeated rounds: one that hit the front plate and deflected off, then another which hit the gun mantle and deflected down onto the hull in a puff of metal fragments. The SU prowled to the flank of the Tiger, even as our panzer sought to traverse its turret onto the enemy. Two final shots blew off the Tiger’s engine covers, sending burning gasoline over the hull, and then punched a hole clean through the side of the turret.

  The Tiger’s hatches flew off in trails of sparks. One lone crew man climbed out, and stood for a moment on top of the turret, as the flames spread over the panzer around him. Then the whole machine erupted in a flash of gasoline flames, and sent out a ragged starburst of detonating ammunition and fuel.

  Behind it, a dark mass of German infantry began to pour across the Autobahn – so many that the SU destroyer could only stand and fire at the living column. Infantry moved towards the monster, those men remaining brave enough to take on a Red panzer, determined perhaps to destroy this one by bombs or Panzerfausts.

  ‘Herr Feldwebel! In front of us.’

  I had been negligent: in my drugged state, I had been mesmerised by the sight of the doomed King Tiger that I had taken my eyes away from the Autobahn to the South. In the gathering dusk, but lit by the parachute flare drifting west, a number of machines were advancing on us along the dead straight asphalt road. These were T34s, I was sure, with the sloped front plates and bulbous turrets of the 85mm gun type. They were about one kilometre from us, but starkly outlined as the flare dropped to earth behind them, showing up their exhaust fumes. To make up for my error, I was determined to be the first to knock one out – but I also saw the two Hetzers in front of me twitch from side to side as their drivers lined up the turretless machines with the track differential, to align and aim their short 75mm guns at the enemy.

  I glanced at our ammunition rack below the turret: it held barely a dozen rounds of armour-piercing in all, and half a dozen high explosive. Plus one round in the breech, and one in the loader’s brawny hands. I told the gunner to fire when he was sure of a strike.

  The Russian panzers fired first, while still moving, and we took an impact on our front plate which rang through the hull with a deafening echo. Another round went straight past us, towards the mass of infantry behind who were breaking out across the Autobahn, and a third slammed into one of the empty SS Hanomags, splitting open the half-track and sending it spinning over on its roof, trailing flames.

  My gunner fired, and the tracer flew directly onto the leading Red panzer. There was a puff of debris on its turret front, and then the whole machine, travelling at perhaps thirty kph, span around on its axis, with flames shooting from its hull hatches. With its ammunition exploding, it reared up and ploughed off the Autobahn, crashing into a culvert and shuddering with explosions. Behind it, though, a whole pack of T34s were taking its place, the lead ones firing as they raced towards us, and the ones behind – I could just make out as the parachute flare died away – loaded with infantry holding on behind the turrets.

  I shouted orders to my gunner. With such a pack of armour coming directly towards us, we were a stable firing platform shooting at targets which were getting constantly closer and larger, rather than moving laterally. The T34s perceived us through their sights in the same way – but their rolling motion, even over the flat surface of the Autobahn, impaired their firing accuracy. They were obviously well stocked with ammunition, though, and kept firing as they advanced, each shot causing a slipstream of smoke through which the panzers charged on us.

  They had not seen the Hetzers beside the road, I realised – and in a second, our two small destroyer machines opened fire with their 75mm guns. The range was less than five hundred metres, and their combined shots blew the tracks off one T34, causing it to veer sideways and collide with its comrade. That second Red panzer was carrying a squad of troops o
n its rear, and I saw the soldiers being thrown off by the impact, tumbling onto the asphalt, while the T34s that followed simply drove over their bodies without slowing or swerving.

  The tiny size of the Hetzer was its greatest strength: low and compact, difficult to see in the dusk, but with enough punch to halt a T34 in its tracks. The Red panzers began to fire high-explosive at the points where the Hetzers were concealed, trying to flush them out. As they did so, they slowed down to steady their aim.

  Inside the Panther turret, seconds passed in a fog of explosive fumes and sweat, breathing and cursing, as my gunner laid his aim. Then the turret reverberated with the shot, and the shell case clunked into the collection box even as our round travelled straight into the driver’s visor of a leading Russian panzer. I had been a driver myself, and I knew the damage that would cause: the decapitated hull man, the red-hot fragments smashing around the interior, slicing and setting fire to whatever it hit. That T34 slowed suddenly, its rear deck rising up into the air and then crashing down as the panzers behind it steered around the wreck. They closed up in front of it, and we had to fire again.

  We wasted a valuable round which bounced off a T34 turret and smashed into another T34 which was carrying infantry. These troops were knocked off the tank as the deflecting shell cut through them – and again the panzers behind ran straight over the men as they fell onto the road. But where they died, it seemed that more Red panzers carrying troops closed the gap; it seemed that even if every last round of ours found its mark, it would never be sufficient to hold back the Red numbers charging against us.

  This was the force that we had provoked with our attack on the East: a force with endless resources, endless men, and an endless desire for vengeance. This was what we had created – and this was what would destroy us now; us and the thousands of people swarming across the Autobahn behind us.

  We fired again, and took a hit on our turret that smashed onto the gun mantle and made the breech of our 75mm twitch in the impact. I heard the round deflect downward and hit the top of the hull over the hull crew’s head. The driver and radio man heard it too, and let out a stream of relieved curses as the shell failed to penetrate the armour above them.

  The Red panzers were on top of us then – literally driving into us, and a vicious, confused battle erupted in our sector of the Autobahn, while the Kessel’s occupants flooded across the road only a few hundred metres behind us. That was the Reds’ objective, clearly: to smash through us and cause havoc among the foot traffic streaming out of the Kessel at last.

  My vision in the periscope was filled with the front turret of a T34 that rammed straight into us, trying to bulldoze us aside. The impact made our entire hull recoil, but the Red panzer came off worse, being thrown to one side, its turret and hull pointing away from us. My driver rotated us onto that panzer with the differential, while my gunner was lowering the gun elevation, and we fired at a range of barely ten metres. I saw the shot punch through the back plate of the Soviet panzer, splitting open the armour there so that I could see the engine flashing with fire in its bay. Then the round exited out of the front of the T34 and span away. What carnage had it caused inside – how many broken limbs and ripped bodies? The T34 shuddered once, and went still, starting to burn from the engine.

  Chaos was erupting around us.

  Someone had fired off red flares, and the lurid crimson light showed up the landscape like a new sunset. The T34s had found the Hetzers in their emplacements, and were intent on destroying them. We fired on one Red panzer as it tried to crush a little Hetzer under its tracks, with the big Russian tread links scrabbling wildly on the Hetzer’s roof, ripping off its hatches. Our round went through the exposed lower plate of the Red, and pieces of its hull sides were thrown off as the panzer exploded with the Hetzer still trapped beneath it.

  Other T34s had halted to disembark their infantry, and these riders were leaping off, outlined clearly in the red light, and surging past us towards the crossing point in our rear. The Waffen SS men rose from their positions and confronted them – and although I could not hear the shouts over the din inside my Panther, I glimpsed Russian faces contorted with rage at finding the hated SS troops in their way.

  I saw a group of SS men firing from behind the remaining Hetzer, calmly operating a MG42 held over one man’s shoulder, tearing down the Red infantry line as it charged onward. The Russians were cut to pieces where they ran, but a T34 blew up both the Hetzer and the MG team with repeated rounds of high explosive. The tank destroyer was blown onto its side, crushing the SS men around it, its tracks running at speed as its transmission raced wildly. Blazing gasoline exploded from its rear deck and flooded the ground for many metres.

  We were isolated now, with just our Panther and a handful of Panzergrenadiers against the Red mass, against a remaining trio of T34s racing past us in the light of the flares, intent on smashing the Kessel breakout. One Ivan panzer was hit in the side by a Panzerfaust as it rolled forward, which blew open the front hull and caused an explosion that sent the tracks whirling into the scarlet-tinted air. The troops that fired that rocket were immediately crushed under the next Red panzer, which ran them over and sent their bodies shooting out, dismembered, from the rear of its tracks. We hit the second T34 with an armour piercing round as it moved away from us, knocking a great scab of armour from its turret. Inside, I could see through the periscopes the Red crew flailing as their compartment caught fire, the men struggling to climb from the turret but falling back into the flames.

  The last T34 span around to face us, opting to finish my Panther before advancing on the crossing site. We fired first, but our round deflected off his front plate and disappeared into the air. His shot on us hit my radio man’s gun point in the hull, where the ball-mounted MG34 was located under a curve of armour plate. My radio man screamed, and then went silent – and before we could afford the time to attend to him, we fired on the T34 at a range of twenty metres, putting a round between the gun mantle and the turret ring. The turret jolted, and the gun slumped. The hull hatch opened, and sparks shot out. I could see that the panzer was burning inside, and in a moment two crew men came out of the hatch, one after the other, their uniforms on fire, but armed with a drum-cylinder machine pistol.

  My sight of that was obscured by a human face – close up, right against the cupola periscope. It was an Asiatic, Mongolian type face, and in the red light it was twisted into a mask of absolute hatred. Red infantry were climbing onto us, even as we fought their panzers.

  I ordered the driver to reverse – and as we lurched backward, I saw the Russian soldier’s face disappear as he was thrown off the panzer in the momentum. I caught sight of his tumbling legs as he went, and then a flash as his grenades exploded on the ground. Our engine stalled, and the Panther filled with foul smoke, so thick that we could barely see across the turret. Smoke coiled around the outside too, making external vision through the periscopes impossible. I threw aside the cupola hatch and put my shoulders up into the air.

  The Red fighters were all around us, and the SS men were grappling with them, fighting them to the death. I saw an SS man beat down two Red tank crews with an entrenching spade, then seize their machine pistol and turn it on the other Russian infantry. The SS man was blown apart by a grenade, and the Reds swarmed on towards the breakout point.

  Below me, in the smoke-filled hull, my driver was trying to restart the engine. There was no sound at all from the radio man.

  I saw some of the Red infantry begin to retreat, followed by tracer and grenade flashes. Our men in the crossing point were beating them back, forcing them away from the thousands of people on foot hurrying across the road. One Red soldier was pursued by two civilians, who shot the man down with a shotgun and a rifle, then stood over him and searched his pockets rapidly. Another wounded Russian dragged himself away, unarmed, until a civilian woman chasing after him shot him in the back with a pistol.

  All across the ground between us and the exodus over the Autobahn,
such scenes were taking place, as the last of this initial Red attacking force was wiped out by the desperate Germans of all classes and arms.

  The crossing point had been kept open.

  Our engine started, and we rotated the hull again to face the southern Autobahn where I expected more enemy panzers to appear. We opened all the hatches to ventilate the compartment, and then I shouted down for a report on our radio man. There was no answer, so I climbed down under the turret ring and craned my neck through the forward bulkhead to see the situation in the front hull.

  On the left, the driver was green-faced, holding his head up to the open hatch and gulping in mouthfuls of outside air. On the right, across the bulkhead, the radio man was sprawled in his seat, with his head thrown back. A piece of the T34’s armour-piercing round had entered the compartment through his machine gun port, destroying his gun mounting, and had come to a halt within the radio man’s chest. His whole rib cage was torn open, and inside, I realised as I leaned over to see, a fragment of the conical projectile was embedded through his back, into the steel bulkhead behind him.

  I opened the hatch above his head, and asked the men to help me remove his body from the panzer.

  *

  The force that came to relieve us was not impressive.

  It consisted of a pair of Stugs, one with smoke pouring from its exhausts, a Panzer IV and a single Panther. These were to guard both the North and South borders of the crossing point, together with two 88mm guns towed by half tracks and about one hundred infantry. In a few hours, these units too would join the exodus West and be replaced by units from further back in the pocket – until the entire mass of men, civilians and machines in the Kessel crept westward like a caterpillar, coiling itself up one step at a time, and then uncoiling as it moved.