by Tom Zola
“Damned bastards!” Engelmann groaned and held both arms over his head to protect himself while he was showered with clumps of dirt. Then he could clearly see a Russian land mine that had been torn out of the ground by the explosion. It was hurled more than one hundred and fifty feet through the air; then it hit the grass and bounced several times like a soccer ball before it came to rest.
In the meantime, Elfriede’s engine grumbled even louder when Münster stepped on the gas. Groaning, the treads dug through the dirt. The smell of gasoline filled the air, and the speed of the tank accelerated to 15 mph. The terrain did not allow for more, but by then they had reached the end of the swath anyway. Suddenly a machine gun started to crackle in the distance. Tiny feathers of dust sprang out from the ground in front of Engelmann's tank; then sparks flew around the hull. Engelmann ducked down, disappeared into her protective belly, and quickly closed both parts of the hatch.
“Machine gun to the right!” he yelled and sat down on his commander’s seat, which was in a raised position between that of the loader and that of the gunner.
“They want to blind us!” Nitz chimed in, grabbing for his MG now – he might still need to use it. Instantly smoke rose between the hills up ahead, the next Russian shell was launched. It exploded on the ground between Engelmann’s and Müller’s panzers even before the sound of the shot roared away over their heads. A wall of soil rose like a wave and spilled over the beasts of steel. Müller’s tank fired back. Too short! Soil rained on the shrubs on the other side.
“Did Müller see the enemy?” Engelmann wheezed, holding onto the steel of his tank with both hands.
His question was directed at Nitz, who immediately got back on the radio.
“No!” he replied mere seconds later. “They’re shooting with HE-explosives on the off-chance that they’ll hit something!“
“Damned waste! Münster, turn to 11 o’clock in the direction of the enemy!“
Engelmann’s tank reached the end of the passage, and at once Münster turned left.
Don’t ever show the gun your backside! Engelmann thought. The Russian machine gun was still firing its load indiscriminately between the tanks.
“Sepp?” Born asked nervously and already had his fingers on the ammunition. “Should I load?” The machine gun knocked on the armor. From the inside it sounded like someone was throwing pebbles at the tank. Then Engelmann peered through one of the eye slits in the turret and realized that the enemy’s position was only 270 yards ahead. His thoughts ran in circles: These SOB’s made us come pretty close! They probably know themselves that it’s a suicide mission. He still had no idea if it was a gun or a tank that had been positioned on top of the hills. Suddenly he saw the shield that was typical for Soviet anti-tank guns gleaming in the sun.
“Blast it!” he ordered. Born knew what he had to do. He grabbed the first round of a total of 87 and heaved it into the breech. Through his window, Engelmann kept his eyes on the enemy’s position. Again the shrubs ahead of them started to spit smoke. The lieutenant didn’t even have the time to tense his body. There was an ear-shattering bang as if King Kong himself had kicked the side of the panzer. A direct hit! Inside the tank, the crew members flew back and forth. Hans stalled the engine as he was thrown violently against the wall, and the tank creaked to a halt. One moment later Müller’s panzer fired a shot that finally stopped the guns up ahead. Now the wind softly carried the agonized screams of human beings in their death throes across the plain. Engelmann, however, couldn’t hear them. His ears were ringing and his eyes were throbbing as if he were drunk. He pressed both hands against his skull and blinked. Groaning and cussing under him, Münster pressed the electric starter and brought the engine back to life. Fortunately the Panzer IV was able to take quite a beating as long as the hostile firepower was limited. Although the anti-tank gun hit had torn a deep scar in the turret, it hadn’t penetrated the plating.
“Report!” Engelmann barked with hoarse voice.
“The engine is okay! I think we got lucky.”
“Müller caught a severe hit,” Nitz reported after a short conversation with the next tank. “A wound in his neck is bleeding profusely. Meinert’s taking over Anna 3.“
“Copy that,” Engelmann confirmed, chewing on his lower lip. Müller was a generally popular soldier of the platoon – and he had a pregnant wife and three kids at home.
“Ebbe, the platoon shall take up defense positions, once they are through the passage, and call for transport of the wounded through the company command. We have to get Müller to the rear.”
“Copy that. Defense positions and transport of the wounded.” Nitz squeezed himself behind the radio again.
“And, Ebbe?”
“Ja?”
“Laschke should go to the right and take up position there.”
“Roger.“ The staff sergeant immediately contacted the other units of the platoon and forwarded the orders while Hans continued to step on the gas so that Engelmann’s as well as Müller’s tanks approached the hills from the left. The lieutenant would have liked to go back outside but there was still a hostile MG troop roving around through the hills up ahead. Engelmann was brave but not suicidal. However: If the Russian MG shooters had been thinking the same thing, then they would have already taken a hike. So now it was important to push farther forward quickly, because by now even the last Russian soldier had probably figured what was closing in over the Soviet front line right now.
North of Ponyri, Soviet Union, May 3rd, 1943
Heeresgruppe Mitte – 75 kilometers north of Kursk
When Bongartz and Berning finally reached their own trenches, a radio message had been sent to the platoon leader, Staff Sergeant Claassen, via the heavy machine gun team, detailing the events the reconnaissance patrol had encountered. Consequently the battalion had sent a whole company to clean out the woodland that originally had been just circumvented when the front troops pushed forward.
Assigned with the reserve troops of the operation, the Schnelle Abteilung 253 still had time until tomorrow, anyway, before they were scheduled to move forward. Less than twenty minutes later additional infantry soldiers started on the double. If there were still any wounded comrades to rescue, they couldn’t lose any time. Lance Corporal Bongartz was ordered to take Berning into the area designated for the wounded via the command post.
*
Bongartz had carried Berning and his machine gun all the way back to the command post, where a number of soldiers now looked up and stared at the sergeant’s blood-soaked pants. The lance corporal was completely pumped out and sweating whole waterfalls. Trembling, he pushed the air out of his lungs while Berning’s face cheered up considerably. The thunder of shots in the distance, as well as fire nearby, filled the air; while here the platoon, after having moved to an open forest, prepared to cover the return of the reconnaissance patrol again.
Moaning with exhaustion, Bongartz put the sergeant down and set him very carefully on his feet so he could help him to sit gently on the grass. But when Berning’s boots touched the ground, he groaned and made a face. Bongartz suddenly lost his balance and fell back into the grass due to the counterweight of his machine gun. Berning just remained standing. Pushing his stahlhelm back onto his neck, Bongartz stared at his squad leader who was standing firmly in front of him. Berning could tell that the lance corporal was raging. His face was distorted with fury.
“You can still stand on your feet?” Bongartz asked, stunned. But Berning didn’t understand what he meant. He looked down and noticed that the projectile had torn his pants, which were now soaked with blood. He was genuinely surprised that the pain had decreased noticeably.
“YOU CAN STILL STAND UP?” Bongartz’s eyes turned into narrow slits; his hands turned into fists. Though he could barely breathe, his rage seeped out of every pore. It was the first time Berning witnessed the usually so debonair lance corporal being in such an angry mood.
He took a step towards Bongartz. He winced but the p
ain was bearable.
“YOU CAN WALK?!” Jumping up, Bongartz looked as if he wanted to punch his squad leader in the face.
“Calm down, will you, Bongartz,” Berning stammered, visibly afraid of getting beaten up. He waved with his arms and stepped back.
“Why don’t you calm down? Do you have any idea how many men we’ve just left behind?”
Berning’s deep blue eyes stared at Bongartz. His lips formed a soundless “Oh”, and then he understood. All of a sudden he felt feverish and dizzy. He rubbed his eyes with trembling hands.
A harsh voice interrupted the chaos. “Berning!” The platoon leader, Staff Sergeant Mauritius Claassen, stepped between the two soldiers. The stocky non-commissioned officer, a man in his early forties who sported a thin mustache, focused his dark eyes on the sergeant, who was trembling all over. Then Claassen looked at the sergeant’s torn trousers.
“What are you doing standing around here, Sergeant?” Claassen was not amused. “Your whole squad has been eliminated, and you just stand here and wait for a change in the weather? Are you out of your friggin’ mind? Why didn’t you report to me immediately?”
Berning stared at his platoon commander with eyes glazed over. He no longer had his body functions under control. His joints were quivering as if he was in the middle of an earthquake. Finally he opened his mouth, wanted to say something but didn’t know what. He knew that from the troop’s point of view he had failed miserably. And again Berning felt sick. The dizziness and the seasick feeling in his stomach, telling him that he was about to throw up, hit him like a kick in the groin. He sensed – as he had done when he had been with the reconnaissance patrol that morning – that he was totally out of place here, that he neither belonged in this uniform nor in this part of the world. He wanted to go home, nothing else. All he desired was to get away from these shooting Russians and his yelling comrades who were never satisfied, regardless of what he did.
He wanted to go somewhere else where he was accepted the way he was. Yet the fact that the platoon commander was tearing his head off in front of the lance corporal was the least of his concerns.
“Bongartz!” Claassen enunciated. “You’ve done a good job, son.” He nodded sincerely at the lance corporal. “Report to Staff Sergeant Schredinsky, 1st Squad.”
Bongartz lowered his head. The expression on his face showed how much the loss of many good comrades hurt him. He nodded slightly and trudged off towards the 1st Squad’s site while putting a cigarette between his lips.
“Oh, and Bongartz?” Claassen called after him.
Stopping in his tracks, the private turned around. “Herr Oberfeldwebel?”
“VFL Bochum against Alemannia Gelsenkirchen last Saturday: six to three.”
For one second the lance corporal’s face lit up but the smile disappeared again just as quickly.
“As I said, Herr Oberfeldwebel. We still manage to get fourth place!” With these words Bongartz disappeared in the shrubs.
Claassen smiled for a second and whispered something like “fucking son of a bitch.” His face hardened, and he turned to Berning, who was still standing there like an idiot.
“So, you will now report to the military physician ASAP.“
Berning nodded.
“And afterwards, I want a word with you ... and you won't like it!”
South of Osërovka, Soviet Union, May 3rd, 1943
Heeresgruppe Süd – 97 kilometers south of Kursk
In 1941 German airplanes had still controlled the airspace over Russia, but those days had long since been over. Milch’s military branch had lost a great part of their fighting power due to the mismanagement of his predecessor as well as the progressing wear-and-tear after four years of war. And while German fighter planes were desperately spraying into crowds of thousands of the Allieds’ planes back home, the pilots of the Luftwaffe on the Eastern Front were increasingly aware that the Soviet Air Forces were gaining more power by the day while the Luftwaffe was losing ground perpetually. In a tremendous effort, the Germans had managed to round up enough aircraft for Operation Citadel. Those would be of course missing on other fronts for the duration of the battle, but at least, over the battlefield in the Kursk salient, the German Reich once more dominated the air.
Lieutenant Engelmann looked up at the sky while his Panzer IV, Elfriede, advanced across the vast Russian steppe. Behind him and next to him were his platoon, his company, his battalion.
He could hardly believe it when he saw more than seventy panzers of types II, III and IV rush by in small wedge-shaped formations and fan out as broadly as several miles towards the first Russian defense ring. Even three self-propelled anti-aircraft guns that were supposed to fight enemy aircraft moved with the steely masses of III Abteilung. Right in front of Engelmann, merely a mile ahead, 34 Panzer VI Tigers steamrolled across the plain – six others had broken down due to technical defects and were immediately picked up by the maintenance platoons. As the fighter planes of the Luftwaffe circled over Engelmann's head, Stuka’s kept flying north to hammer away at the Russian lines there, or south for refueling and reloading ordnance. Engelmann hoped that the capacities of the German Air Force would suffice to support the whole operation on this level, because nothing was deadlier for a tank jockey than the enemy’s air dominance.
The Tigers lumbered on relentlessly. At times the high grass here on the Russian plains covered them up to the tracks. They formed a wedge of tanks so as to break through at one point with brute force. Here and there Russian artillery fire dribbled between the German panzers; then huge balloons of dirt flew up as high as the trees and exploded in every direction. But the shrapnel and rocks filling the air could not hurt the big steel beasts and their smaller brothers. Now and then the crews inside just heard the patter of dirt against the metal skin that sounded like sudden rain pouring down.
Engelmann reached for his field glasses to look into the distance, which wasn’t all that easy while the tank was moving. Yet it was enough to get a quick glance. Here and there a wooden hut or worn-out path, a single tree or a little clump of wood, were scattered over the land. Engelmann could make out several connected buildings in the distance that looked like a collective farm. That was Osërovka. Smoke was already billowing between the houses. One blink of an eye later thick smoke also started to rise from the adjacent woods. The Russians had opened fire, but over this distance they could only scratch the Tiger’s paint job. New waves of soil spilled over the German tanks as the front row came to a stop and started to return fire. The recoil of the 88-millimeter guns made the tanks rebound with every shot. One could literally see the strain, the enormous pressure of the explosions caused by the firing of the rounds, put on the steel. Yet, the Tigers stayed intact and transformed the positions in the enemy’s first defense ring into a smoldering mess of debris. Explosive projectiles tore anti-tank guns in half while armor-piercing ones had no problem whatsoever penetrating the armor of a T-34 head-on, either. Engelmann had his platoon stop under the cover of the Tigers and take position. Far ahead a buried T-34 turned into a ball of fire. The turret of the tank was ejected above the flames and thrown up into the air. Engelmann found the Russian tactics of burying their tanks, making them into stationary arms, fatal because this way the T-34’s lost the necessary mobility they needed so badly to stand a chance against the superior Tiger.
Up ahead the Tigers turned the horizon into a series of geysers that spit out pitch-black smoke. The battle didn’t even last five minutes; then the last Russian gun was silent. The engines of the heavy tank battalion roared, and the vehicles dashed towards the lane that had been cut into the Russian defense line.
“Stay with it, Hans,” the lieutenant ordered; although he didn’t have to give that command at all, because his driver was already accelerating to the max. Engelmann peered at the area ahead and squinted. Despite his sunglasses and the fact that the sun was behind him, the day was so bright that he had problems observing the battlefield. At the same time, they had
to be especially careful now. The Russian infantry certainly would not risk a battle with the Tigers but would let themselves be overrun by them so as to attack the weaker tanks or the infantry troops that followed. Equipped with mines, hand grenades, and anti-tank rifles, they definitely posed a danger to Engelmann’s platoon.
The first Tigers were already emerging through the hole in the front line up ahead.
Engelmann’s brow was covered with sweat, and the breeze blew dust into his face that immediately stuck there. He put his head into the tank for a moment and looked at his men, whose shiny faces were fully focused on the action. The heat lingered inside Elfriede, mixing with the smell of gasoline and sweat to form a highly unpleasant atmosphere. Yet the crew members had other, more serious problems. At that very moment their tank reached the shattered defense line.
“The old man says we should go to the right and up to five hundred meters into the depths of the trench positions,” Nitz repeated the commander’s orders he had just received via the radio. “Old man” was a regularly used term for commanding officers.
“Roger,” Engelmann confirmed. “Hans, you heard the man?”
“Yep, Sepp!” At once Münster turned right.
“Ebbe, let the others fan out and follow. Take up position in the current sequence, hundred meters from tank to tank.”
