‘My God,’ said the Capo. ‘What has happened here?’
A small battle had taken place on the edge of the woodland, where a rough track led out into the plain. A section of German infantry were lying dead in the burned-out shell of their truck. Behind them, another group of women lay dead – but these women had been stripped, their naked bodies bearing witness to the violation they had endured in their final moments. Each had a bullet hole in her forehead – five bodies in all, five shots to the forehead.
‘This is what awaits our civilians,’ the Capo muttered. ‘And yet we can’t bring them with us.’
We ducked into the shadows as a pair of Soviet fighters raced over the treeline. The planes strafed the open plain for no evident reason, their cannon fire ripping through the abandoned vehicles there, setting some alight in spouts of flame. Then there was the echo of their departure, and the constant noise of the fighting beyond the forest.
The Capo turned away from the women’s bodies, and pointed out across the plain.
‘The SS King Tigers will go first,’ he said. ‘They will move at speed, close to the forest where the ground is firmer. We will follow them, and hold off any Reds that appear on the flanks of the plain. The infantry will move behind us on the edges of the trees. Then we will charge down the slope towards the village of Markhof, and go through it. The main Ninth Army is assembling five kilometres beyond there, in the Spree forest beyond the plain. When we are with them, then the fighting will really start.’
I nodded, looking at the path along the edge of the trees. We would be moving like ducks on a fairground shooting stall, one after the other. Even now, there were surely Russian eyes in Markhof, on the other side of the plain, or hidden among the trees in the forests on either side, watching our trees for signs of a breakout. The Russians had limitless ammunition, endless supplies of their panzers, infinite quantities of troops which they regarded as expendable. All that, against our few King Tigers and three Panthers, and a rag-tag army of hungry and disoriented infantry desperate to reach the Americans. So desperate that they would abandon their own civilians to the Reds.
There was no other way.
Dusk was gathering, and, as we went back to the encampment, the horizon beyond the plain was illuminated by tall columns of flame, stretching to a great height under the stars. We guessed these were the remains of one of our transport columns that had been caught on the other side of the open ground. How many trucks, panzers and wagons would have to burn to create such a pillar of fire? Closer at hand, the sky was lit by flares as the Russians tried to illuminate the forest. One parachute flare drifted down on top of us, its white magnesium setting the pine branches alight and turning the whole area to daylight until we scrambled away from its glare, back into our hiding place deep in the trees.
Although no lights or fires were visible, it seemed that the whole forest was awake in the twilight, and working like devils. We passed shadowy areas where we knew the Waffen SS King Tiger panzers were concealed under piles of branches, and we heard sounds of these branches being thrown aside and the mighty engines trial-started. In other areas, our infantry were readying themselves for the first light. Nobody was sleeping – how could they, knowing what the morning would bring? Among them, the cries of civilian children, and their mothers, reminded us of the imminent fate of these compatriots as soon as the Reds moved into the forest. I put that out of my mind, and went back to my Panther.
My crew were good soldiers: in the last daylight, they were cleaning out the Panther’s long gun barrel, using the six-metre long rods to drag a wad of cloth down the barrel, using a new wad each time until the cloth passed down the tube clean. This scoured the rifled bore clean of explosive residue, ensuring the gun would fire accurately and without warping. We also checked over the tracks, the lubrication points inside the turret, the hydraulics and the oil filters above the engine. Then we sat inside the Panther: myself, my gunner and our loader on our perches in the turret; the radio man at his machine gun point in the hull, and the driver beside him at the controls.
Were we sleeping? Or were we awake and thinking of the morning’s battle to come? I did both, moving between sleep and thought, as flashes and explosions lit up the glass of my cupola periscopes.
*
At first light, the civilians stood to watch us go. Grey, spectral figures in their shawls and blankets, the children clinging to the women’s knees, some began to form up behind us as we started our engines. The Panthers’ exhausts sent up sparks into the air, lighting the civilians in flickering red and orange. I had my last sight of them from the cupola: a phalanx of these forms, stumbling and running after us as the Panthers swayed between the trees towards the plain.
Then the infantry came out to follow us.
In a few seconds, huge groups of our infantry emerged behind us from every shadow and gap in the trees, swarming in the dust and fumes we threw out, knocking aside the few women who could still keep up, and finally blotting out the last of the civilians behind a solid wall of ragged, grey and blue uniforms. In the dawn light, they were unshaven, haggard, their eyes filled with blank determination. The civilians, left in their wake, were on their own now. The dash to the Spree Forest was beginning.
My Panther turret was humid, filled with fumes and the roar of the Maybach engine through the crew compartment wall. We moved at walking pace between the trees, following an old forestry track lined with the hulks of abandoned vehicles, felled trees, wounded men unable to walk who looked hopelessly for help, and at every moment more and more of our infantry were emerging from the depths of the forest, ready to join the escape route to the West. As we neared the edge of the trees, close to where I had patrolled with the Capo in the dusk, we came on a phenomenal sight.
Two of our massive King Tiger panzers were already in position to make the first bid to leave the forest. Almost one and a half times the weight of my Panther, they towered over the narrow path, belching exhaust fumes, their mottled camouflage well adapted to the light and shade conditions. Their ultra-long 88mm gun barrels projected to the West, away from the density of trees – with such a long barrel, the danger was that it would hit the trees as the vehicle manoeuvred. The commanders were visible in the turret cupolas, their faces blank, betraying no emotion at all. As they saw us, they waited barely a few seconds more, and then the Tigers shook and moved towards the plain. The air behind them quivered with the heat of their exhaust, and their tracks threw out branches and clods of earth as the massive steel treads bit the earth.
On the edge of the forest, a squad of engineers were at work cutting down a handful of remaining trees with axes: the final trees that screened the interior of the woods and prevented vehicles exiting or entering. One by one the trees toppled, and as the last one fell, the two Tigers crushed it under their tracks as they advanced over the debris. Smashing aside the carcasses of burned-out trucks, the two Tigers moved out to the edge of the plain. Behind them, another King Tiger emerged from the depths between the trees, its sloping front plate and long, slim turret draped with foliage. It misjudged the narrow passage between the trees, and had to ram down a series of huge pines to reach the perimeter, wasting time and petrol and risking a damaged track in the process of destroying the trunks. Finally, in a hurricane of fumes, sparks, crashing trees and roaring engines, the King Tigers were out on the plain and advancing along the treeline towards the West.
The Russians responded immediately.
As our Panther manoeuvred up to the exit point, past the massed lines of infantry being held back by their officers, I put my forehead to the periscope and squinted along the treeline. I could see the last of the King Tigers ahead of us, blowing sparks in the grey light, with its turret pointing left across the plain to the opposing side. In seconds, a flash of tracer struck it on the side of the turret, and a shell deflected off the angled side wall and span off into the trees, still glowing brightly. The Tiger rocked, but kept moving, traversing its gun to aim at the possible origi
n of the shot. I ordered my gunner, who had control of the turret traverse through his foot pedals, to rotate our gun likewise. Through the aiming bracket on my cupola, I saw only a solid wall of shadowy trees, with mist hanging between them, betraying no sign of enemy activity. Then the tracer came again, and flashed across the plain towards the King Tiger.
I saw the shell hit the Tiger, on the rear this time, near the tracks and the idler wheel at the back. This was a high explosive round, and it burst in a white star. I saw the entire rear wheel of the Tiger – a metal disc that took three men to lift it – fly off and tumble away over the grassland. The Tiger’s track links fragmented and span out, and the whole seventy-tonne panzer slewed around out of control to one side, blocking the way ahead in a spray of earth and stones as it came to a halt, its track hanging out behind it, quivering with the beat of the panzer’s engine. Those Red gunners knew how to bring down a King Tiger in stages: not with armour-piercing rounds, but firstly by blowing the running gear off, leaving it stranded.
I saw the origin of the shot, though, and called it out to my gunner, as he had control of the Panther’s turret. In the trees, where the mist was dissipating, above a small lake of reeds . . . there! There was the outline of a T34 tank, wreathed in the smoke of its gun.
On my order, our driver slowed and halted to give us firing stability. My gunner grunted as the Panther rocked and went still, then he laid the shot with the hydraulic controls, and fired. The tracer streaked out and the Panther bucked gently, as our muzzle brake and hydraulic dampers absorbed the gun’s recoil.
We moved again, and approached the stranded King Tiger. Over in the trees, I saw that our shell had hit the T34, because its frontal plate was emitting a dark smoke, and it was beginning to advance out of the tree line to shorten the range against us. Ahead, the damaged Tiger was firing at the T34, its hull rocking as it discharged the shot. It fired again, and then again, and I realised that the crew were determined to fire all their ammunition before they relinquished the stricken vehicle. From the opposing treeline, I saw through my periscopes more T34s emerging from the woods, knocking trees aside as they lumbered out to face us. For panzers which were barely equal in armour and weaponry to the Panther, let alone the King Tiger, they showed no hesitation in streaming out towards our panzers, slewing around the ridges and ponds in the plain.
The King Tiger in front of us fired like the devil himself, sending round after round screaming onto the row of six T34s that advanced on us. The Tiger’s massive 88mm gun made short work of two of the Red panzers immediately. One Red was struck on the turret, smashing off a large scab of metal plate which shot away across the plain in a stream of sparks. The T34 whirled around, out of control, and crashed nose-down in a bed of reeds. I told my gunner not to fire on it, but to conserve ammunition, as it was already starting to burn. The Tiger hit the second T34 directly through the glacis plate, and I saw large pieces of the hull fly off as the Red machine exploded inside.
My own gunner hit a third Red tank as it raced towards us, hitting it in the gun mantle with a force that knocked the top surface of the Red’s turret completely away from the walls. The T34 kept advancing on us, with its dead commander hanging out of the broken turret, his body on fire. We did not fire on it, but let it approach, slowly running out of momentum, until it stopped and erupted in an orange fireball.
I checked all round in the periscopes to assess the situation now. The remaining three T34s were retreating in reverse gear, keeping their thick front plates facing us, firing wildly with their undoubtedly ample supply of ammunition. The King Tiger was shooting at them, clearly determined to get a strike with its last rounds. It shot one of the retreating Red tanks through the front track, which unwound and shed itself loose. That T34 veered to one side, crashed down into a depression, and tipped over, with its upper hull exposed and its working track still running freely. The Tiger fired one last shot, and pierced the tank through the engine deck. The whole vehicle shook as the engine exploded, and even as the Red crew men struggled to leap from the hatches, its fuel erupted in a furnace that lit the heath for a wide radius. I looked away as the burning crew men disappeared in the flames, to see the King Tiger crew disembarking and gesturing to my Panther for assistance.
In the forests beside the King Tiger, massed ranks of our infantry were moving between the trees, rushing onward after the leading King Tigers which were rolling ahead towards the West. Behind us, the Capo’s Panther and our third Panther brought up the rear, as we had planned, shielding the infantry from further attacks.
I allowed the stranded King Tiger crew to climb onto our Panther, and in moments they were clinging onto the back deck among the engine fumes. As we skirted around their abandoned vehicle, I saw it explode internally, the hatches blowing out and tumbling into the air. The crew, professional to the last, had set a demolition charge to prevent the powerful machine being captured by the Reds. After that, we were rolling ahead again, keeping on our right the forest with its moving mass of men, and the plain on our left. About six hundred metres ahead, the King Tigers were leading the way, their great turrets rising and falling as the hulls ploughed across the undulating ground. We had progressed about two kilometres, and had three more kilometres to go until we reached the village. The light was increasing, and the pines began to show their green hue as the day began to break.
I wiped the sweat from my face. Could it be that we were going to succeed, to break through? The Red forces seemed unresponsive, other than that brief counter attack from the unit of T34s. But I knew the Reds too well to assume that they were sleeping or distracted. At every moment, with every creak of the Panther’s running gear, every growl of the Maybach engine, I expected more trouble.
It came in the form of a massive bombardment, a hail of rockets which appeared from over the tree canopy to the west, trailing plumes of sparks, and shot down onto our column in fractions of a second.
‘Katyushas,’ I shouted. ‘Keep us moving, driver, in the name of God.’
The rockets smashed into the ground along the treeline, bursting between my panzer and the King Tiger up ahead, and showering us with shrapnel which smacked off our armour plate with hollow impacts. I looked to the rear through the periscope, and glimpsed the Tiger crew on our engine deck sheltering behind our turret. A Katyusha exploded behind us, and two of those crew men were blown off our hull, falling into the path of the Capo’s Panther behind us. I saw that Panther swerve, but I could not see if he avoided crushing the men. In the trees beside us, the rockets were exploding in whirlwinds of destruction, felling tall trunks and sending them flailing around. Underneath them, the massed lines of infantry were running like men possessed, leaping over the wounded and dying as they fought to get ahead, to get out of this fire zone.
The rockets changed then from high explosive to incendiary, and they exploded among the trees in sheets of liquid flame which cascaded down onto the fleeing men below, covering the unlucky ones in a torrent of fire. Men ran on fire, jumped and rolled with their uniforms and rifles burning on their backs. Other men jumped over them, ducking between the pouring flames in their frantic search for a way through.
Ahead, I saw two King Tigers outlined against the exploding flames, at a point where the forest wall fell away and the plain sloped downward towards the village of Markhof, which we would have to traverse. I saw the huge vehicles slow, with dust shooting up from their tracks, and then come to a halt on the plain, away from the burning trees. Why had they stopped there, on the crest of the ridge itself, on the top of the slope where they could be readily seen? With the Katyushas still bursting around us, we approached the King Tigers, and then came level with them, our Panther tipping over the crest of the ridge beside them, to face downwards.
I could see immediately why even a King Tiger would halt when faced with that slope.
The village of Markhof itself was clearly visible, with flames rising from its outlying houses, its slender church spire pointing up through the smoke.
The slope leading from us to the settlement rolled down at a gradual gradient for about two kilometres, the scrubland steaming with dew in the early warmth. This slope was absolutely alive with explosions.
It was being bombarded with heavy artillery from the Red sectors, with shells big enough to scoop up chunks of earth the size of automobiles and throw them high into the air, disintegrating as they fell. The slope was strewn with abandoned and burned-out vehicles, the flotsam of our final elements who reached the West before the encirclement. As I watched, an abandoned eight-wheel armoured car was hit by a shell and thrown to the height of a house into the air, its tyres spinning off in all directions. For any vehicle to cross this zone of death was an invitation to destruction.
The Capo contacted me on the radio set, my wireless man connecting me through the headset.
‘We will have to go ahead,’ he shouted. ‘We cannot stop. See, the Tigers are moving now.’
Yes – the two great King Tigers were beginning their charge down the slope, their angled front plates set squarely in the direction of the village down there, with their long gun barrels pointing at the houses.
‘If we can take the village and the road through it,’ the Capo shouted. ‘The infantry can get through. Follow the Tigers.’
‘My God,’ our gunner said suddenly. ‘My God, Herr Feldwebel – there are wounded down there.’
As we began to move onto the gradient, into the whirlwind of explosions, with shrapnel smashing into our armour plate, I saw that the gunner was correct. To one side of the slope, a series of trailers on rubber tyres were abandoned, some still hooked to trucks, others simply dumped in the open. These were metal box trailers of a type often used as ambulances, and from their open rear doors I could distinctly see wounded men arranged on tiers inside, some gesturing to us weakly. There were five of these trailers, with perhaps fifty or sixty wounded men in total.
The Last Panther - Slaughter of the Reich - The Halbe Kessel 1945 Page 2