I began to think that success was upon us.
Ahead, behind the retreating T34s, pursued as they were by our angry tracer rounds, the bunker line stood smashed and burning against the ridge of higher ground that it was supposed to defend.
Ahead of me, I suddenly saw the retreating T34 grind to a halt and face us defiantly, its muzzle shooting three rounds in rapid succession along our line. There was a colossal crash as we were hit in the turret, causing a shrieked curse from our loader and a grim chuckle from Helmann. In response, our cool gunner put an 88mm shell straight into the halted tank’s frontal plate; the round blew off the driver’s vision block armour in a starburst of debris – but still the T34 remained defiant.
‘Ah, I see, I see why,’ Helmann muttered, and I heard his polished boots click behind me on the floor of the turret cage as he moved around, checking the view from the radial periscopes in his cupola. ‘I see. There’s an anti-tank ditch behind that Ivan tank. It’s deep, too. It goes all along our line. Verdamm!’
I brought the Tiger to a halt, and along our row of panzers, the other Tigers stopped or slowed as their commanders too realised the danger.
From my hull position, I couldn’t see the ditch – I could only see the T34, still firing at us – but if it was like the other Ivan ditches, it was four metres deep and the same wide, just enough to trap a magnificent Tiger and its handsome German crew by toppling it nose-down into the Russian depths. Sometimes these ditches contained mines or aircraft bombs which were rigged to explode when a panzer fell in; others were filled with pools of gasoline which were primed to detonate, incinerating the trapped vehicle.
I had seen some of these ditches that had been dug by German prisoners, with the bodies of our men still strewn in the pit, dead where they laboured and dug; and, of course, our own anti-tank ditches were full of dead Soviet prisoners who were worked to death likewise. This was Russia.
Helmann swore long and hard at this obstruction, his boot soles scraping around behind me as he studied the situation. Then his cursing turned to a crescendo, and he yelled,
‘Hull gunner! Where are your eyes, man? The Reds are in front of you.’
In justice to Kurt, I could not see the problem either. Being low down and right at the front, our vision apertures were coated with mud and ice, and the sighting glass on the bow MG34 was notoriously prone to become obscured. But then Kurt grunted viciously, hunched over and began firing his MG34 in long bursts, moving his shoulders around frantically as he aimed at the targets he saw.
In front of my block, I suddenly witnessed a lone Red soldier, in a fur cap and quilted jacket, appear from a hole in the ground barely twenty metres away, throwing back a straw cover and vaulting out onto the steppe – followed by another Ivan doing the same. In moments, the ground in front of us was dotted with these brown scarecrows, all of them dodging and weaving between our MG tracer as they battled to get close to our panzers.
I feared these devils more than I feared a T34.
These Red Army anti-tank infantry lived and breathed for killing Tigers; they fought with hand-mines, satchel bombs and even Molotov bottles thrown onto the fan grilles of our engine decks. It took just one of them to get close, to throw his bomb – and our engine would suck in fire or fragments through the rear grilles, setting off our oil and gasoline and bringing our Wehrmacht careers to a fiery conclusion.
Kurt was doing what he could, hosing down the ground with MG fire, giving the Reds no chance to approach, and the Tiger on our left was blasting away, lowering its main gun too so that the co-axial MG could aim at the ground, and traversing left and right to keep up a murderous semi-circle of bullets. All the time, though, that T34 behind the emerging infantry was shooting at us, and I felt the Tiger rock as we took hit after hit on our turret and bow plate.
One of the T34’s shells actually saved our necks: it deflected off our bow, and flew straight back in a burst of metal scabs. The spinning warhead tore into a Russian soldier as he was running towards us, carrying a mine, crouched down low. The shell decapitated him and then hit the belly of the man behind him. Both bodies kept running towards us for a moment, until they slumped down. They exploded as their mines detonated, sending their severed limbs flailing across the ground.
Our gunner silenced that verdamm Ivan tank with two shots, one through the driver’s visor, and another that tore off its left track and wheels, sending bits of the drive wheel into the air for hundreds of metres. That tank began to smoulder, the barrel slumped, and our gunner immediately lowered our main gun and began spraying MG onto the infantry, as our comrade panzer beside us was doing.
Beside me, my big, ugly Kurt fired MG until his ammunition cylinder gave out, and then he began to change it with a suitable muttered commentary, referring to the generally inefficient designs of the Spandau gunsmiths in terms of magazine capacity – and also to the sexual tastes of their mothers. In the pause, the Red infantry surged forward from the right hand side, these mud-covered creatures that I could just see in the corner of my glass block, grinning and shouting with their wild eyes fixed on our superb panzer. It was a desperate moment, and I took desperate measures to protect us.
Normally, a panzer did not like to approach enemy foot soldiers armed with hand-bombs; the risks were too high, and our engine grilles were too vulnerable. But now I got close to these Red bastards, close enough to give them a view of our dish wheels and steel track links working in unison. With a shout of encouragement from Helmann, I threw the Tiger into gear; my right hand forward and my left hand pulling back on the differential wheel, I span its 60 tonnes around on its axis, so that the churning wheels and tracks rotated in a circle towards the onrushing Red troops.
I didn’t even feel their bodies being crushed and chewed by the tracks – there wasn’t even a jolt as we ran them down in clusters. Human flesh was too soft to withstand these forces, too frail to even register on my dials. I saw three of the Ivans try to run, in front of my vision slit, until the square hull front covered them up and only a dismembered leg in its felt boot tumbled up onto our glacis. I span and crushed the enemies down, with Kurt beside me blasting now on his MG34 at any who jumped clear – and together, we defended that corner of Russia on behalf of the Reich.
I brought the panzer to a halt, facing the ditch, at an angle that gave me a good view of our comrade Tiger on the left. He was surrounded by dead and crushed Red infantry also, and he began to elevate his gun to take aim again at the Russian bunkers. I saw one of the dead Russians, apparently a blood-covered body, suddenly shake, crawl to his knees – and throw a bomb onto our fellow panzer.
Kurt shot him down with his MG, and for safety he machine-gunned the other bodies lying nearby – but that one small Russian bomb did its terrible work. It landed on our fellow Tiger’s back decking, where the engine fans spin under their armoured grilles, and I saw a flash of orange flame as its charge ignited. A simple Molotov – just a glass bottle of cheap kerosene and a percussion fuse, but enough to send a litre of burning liquid down into the Tiger’s mighty Maybach engine.
Helmann cursed, and I heard him kick at the turret cage with his polished boots, but his anger could do nothing against the flames that were rising from the Tiger on our left. A spiral of flame shot up out of that Tiger’s engine, accompanied by debris from the engine – and one of the grilles lifted off and span into the air. I saw the round hatch in the rear of the turret open, and the loader leaned out with an extinguisher, but the device spluttered and died in his hands. He threw it away, and the Tiger’s other hatches opened as the crew began to evacuate before their fuel exploded.
Of the five men who exited, four were immediately cut down by Red small arms fire. The fifth fell onto the burning grilles, and lay there thrashing in the flames as the gasoline took hold below him.
I looked to see where those murderous bullets came from. I saw, on the T34 that was knocked out on the very edge of the anti-tank ditch, one of the Russian tank crew, still in his ribbed helm
et, crouching behind the turret with its slumped gun barrel, aiming a machine pistol over the turret roof. Even out of the tank, these Red crews were determined to frustrate us and to cut us down. Kurt sprayed the man with MG34, and the fellow tumbled off his tank, his MP still firing into the air.
Suddenly, light and fresh air flooded down into our compartment, and I knew that Helmann had slid open his cupola hatch in the turret.
‘Take us close to the burning Tiger,’ he ordered me, and without asking why, I drove us the twenty metres over to the blazing vehicle, with its dead crew sprawled on its hull. Not all were dead, though – the man who had fallen onto the engine deck was still alive, flailing and twisting in the flames that slowly engulfed him from the burning Maybach engine under the grilles. When I halted our panzer, I heard two shots from our cupola – and the burning man ceased his tormented movements, and lay still in the flames.
That was a mercy.
I shook my head, and waited for Helmann’s orders. I could hear him rotating in the cupola, looking for some way over the anti-tank ditch. The other Tigers were poised all along our line, expectant, static targets that needed to be moving forward, not sitting still on the open steppe. It was down to us to lead the way across here, and spearhead the victory that was so close.
‘There is a way across,’ Helmann said. ‘There is a causeway that the T34s must have used. Advance to the edge, driver, and you will see.’
I span the panzer and drove up to the edge of the ditch. Yes, there was a narrow causeway over the anti-tank ditch; an earth ridge, barely wide enough for a Tiger to pass, but it looked solid, and capable of taking our weight. After all, it had just taken the weight of a dozen T34s that came charging out to meet us – T34s which now lay burning in our wake. This might enable us to cross over to our final objective of the bunker line itself.
‘I’ll drive over it, then, sir,’ I said to Helmann on the intercom.
‘Ja,’ Kurt mimicked me. ‘We’ll be in Moscow for schnapps time.’
‘No.’ Helmann snapped. ‘It will be mined for sure, or there will be a bomb concealed. One of those Reds will be hidden here, waiting to blow it as soon as a panzer advances.’
‘Then what?’ I mouthed to Kurt.
He shrugged.
‘Depress the gun elevation,’ Helmann said to our gunner. ‘Shoot into the causeway, use high-explosive.’
‘Shoot the causeway, Herr Ober?’ the gunner repeated.
‘You heard me.’
The gun system whined as the long 88mm declined to below horizontal, its massive barrel now visible in front of me. A moment later the gun barked. The smoke from the muzzle brake spiralled around and clouded my view, but a second later I saw the entire causeway explode.
My God, the blast.
That wasn’t just an 88mm high-explosive round – that was a concealed munition, hidden somewhere inside the earth bridge, and detonated by our shell. The entire causeway lifted into the air, and big pieces of rock and stone went spinning away, left and right, for hundreds of metres. Our whole Tiger shook in the blast wave. Chunks of debris rained down on us, clanging on the steel roof, and pulverising the massed Russian bodies around us even further. A huge clod of earth splattered onto my vision port, obscuring my view completely.
‘That has proved my point,’ Helmann commented. ‘I’d say that was a crate of howitzer shells, primed and waiting to go up.’
‘I’m blind, sir,’ I said.
‘You, or the panzer?’
‘The vision block, sir. It’s covered in earth.’
‘Get out and clean it, man. Be quick. And take a look at the ditch while you’re there, Faust – can we cross it?’
I knew better than to query an order from Helmann – above all, with our massed column of angry Tigers behind us, itching to get moving over the obstacle. I opened the hatch above me, and clambered out onto the hull top. Cold air and the smell of explosive hit me immediately, as I leaned forward and pushed the earth away from the glass vision block under its steel eyelid.
I looked around. The sight was astonishing.
There were mangled Russian bodies everywhere. The causeway was utterly demolished, being now just a pile of rubble and earth inside the ditch, which was far too deep for us to drive across. Beyond it, the shattered bunkers lay drifting with smoke from the Stuka bombs, strangely inactive in the mist still clinging to the ground.
I climbed back inside the panzer and slammed the hatch.
‘Well?’ Helmann demanded. ‘Can we cross over?’
‘It’s too deep now, sir. We’ll need a bridging unit, or we need construction troops to fill it in.’
‘No, we must cross. We must cross now. The Boss is gone, and we are the leading panzer.’
‘We’ll get stuck, sir.’
‘Use that T34,’ Helmann ordered. ‘The one on the edge of the ditch. Make use of him.’ I felt Helmann’s boot give me a sharp kick between the shoulder blades as I hesitated. He liked to hang down by his arms from the turret and kick me or Kurt in this manner, if he thought we were being slow. ‘Do it, Faust. Ram that T34 into the ditch.’
I could see what he meant us to do, but the risk was enormous.
The wrecked T34 that had sought to defy us on the edge of the ditch, whose crew man had shot our people as their Tiger burned – that tank was still in place, its tracks blown off by our shooting and by the blast from the causeway bomb, but still a big lump of Soviet iron that could fill a hole in the ground. I manoeuvred our Tiger up to its shattered hull, aware that all the Tiger crews behind me were watching my performance – and those handsome boys would not forgive a mistake. I put my glacis plate up to the sloped front of the T34, and felt the resistance as our 600 horse power pushed on the Russian’s static weight in the mud. I cursed, engaged lowest gear, and pushed again.
My whole vision block was filled with the front plate of the T34, with its smashed driver’s port and wrecked front drive wheels. The Russian machine began to slide back in the mud, slowly but clearly, a metre at a time, towards the ditch. I saw the hatch on the front deck of the T34 open; a pale, confused face appeared in the gap, covered in blood. This Russian crewman stared at me through my glass block, blinking as he apparently regained consciousness, unable to believe what he was witnessing.
I kept pushing his tank back with our nose, with this man looking me in the eyes from barely four metres distance. He seemed to realise where he was and what was happening, because he began to struggle, trying to pull himself out of the hatch as his tank started to tip back into the ditch behind. The Russian lad mouthed a few words, then opened his mouth and screamed as the whole T34 slid down, tail first, into the ditch, and disappeared from view as it came to rest upside down, on the piles of rubble in the pit.
‘Good,’ Helmann observed – the highest compliment he ever awarded. ‘The Red is lying crosswise in the ditch, filling it for us. Drive over him, Faust.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Beside me, Kurt seized hold of the hand-grabs, knowing from experience what crossing a filled-in ditch was like. Using the steering control, though, I had nothing else to cling on to; as I took the Tiger forward, our great armoured nose tipped down and crashed into the pit. I saw the T34’s belly plate below us on the remains of the causeway, filling up the lower three metres of the hole, and in a moment our tracks crashed onto his deck.
I lost a tooth as the impact shook my skull, and I felt the T34 sink as our weight hit him, but our momentum was such that, with a blast of throttle that had the transmission spitting oil at me, our tracks got traction and our front hull clawed up and over the opposite bank of the ditch. Spitting blood and tooth fragments, I brought our Tiger thumping down onto the bunker side, the torsion bar suspension rods howling in protest – although I knew that they secretly enjoyed a little rough treatment.
‘Good,’ Helmann said again.
‘Gut!’ Kurt muttered to me. ‘You’ll be Reich Inspector of Panzer Forces at this rate.’
‘The
Tigers are crossing behind us,’ Helmann said proudly. From his cupola, he had all-round vision, whereas I could only see in front of me. ‘Two panzers are across behind us, and now three.’ He chuckled his weird little laugh. ‘Now keep moving, driver, don’t remain a static target. Let’s clear out these rats nests, and then the place is ours.’
I drove over to the wreckage of the nearest bunker. This was a wide, squat concrete box with slit embrasures, in which the barrels of wrecked PAK guns pointed at crazy angles, crushed by the blown-in roof. As we approached, I saw flashes from inside, and I heard the faint jangle of small arms fire hitting our armour plate. One bullet clipped the edge of my vision block, and cracked it with a long split. Our gunner immediately lowered the 88mm, and fired three rounds of high-explosive into the remains of the bunker’s apertures. The bunker walls collapsed, and the structure slumped into dust, together with whoever was determined to hold out inside of there for his mother Russia.
Out from the back end of the wreckage, a handful of ragged individuals emerged, their quilted jackets thick with soot and smoking from the blast. They raised their hands and swayed on their feet, staring up at us. Kurt shot them down with one second from his MG, and then muttered to himself as he changed his magazines again. The Russians lay in front of us on the ice, breathing their last.
‘Now we spread out and secure the zone for our Panzergrenadiers,’ Helmann said, and he began talking on the intercom to other tank commanders, with Kurt, as the radio operator, patching him through to them with his valve set.
*
Five minutes later, we seemed to be in complete control. Helmann, as acting commander of our unit, was trying to contact our Divisional command by radio to inform them of our success. This was an uncertain process, though, as our radio set was not the Boss’s high-capacity unit; ours was designed only for contact between tanks, not over long distances. While that went on, I was given permission to exit the panzer and check the running gear and wheels for damage.
Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir Page 2