Despite the urgency, I ran back over the railroad to look for him.
The Capo’s Panther was stuck fast on the Eastern side of the ridge, its tracks ripped off and its transmission burned out. In five minutes, we had drained its fuel and ammunition, and added them to my Panther, and then we blew the Panther up with a demolition charge. I looked back to see the engine blown out through the grilles. Around it, a great mass of people was already starting to make its way West: the thousands of foot soldiers, stragglers and civilians that had emerged from the Kessel overnight. I installed the Capo and his crew on my Panther, and we followed the single King Tiger as it spearheaded the way to the West.
Behind us, the sprawling column followed at a running pace: horses, carts, men and women on foot, and numerous motorcycles, a few cars and Hanomags. I could not count the people, but I guessed at four or five thousand that I could see, with many more evidently still behind them. For many of these people, though, their journey was about to end.
As the dawn broke, the sky behind us, to the East, erupted in red – not the red of sunrise, but the orange and black explosions of Katyusha incendiary rockets. The explosions were tearing across the mass of people advancing over the railroad, sending men, women and children flying through the air in flames, throwing horses, wagons and vehicles end-over-end in spouts of fire. The people close to the railroad began to run like demons, the wounded dragging themselves, soldiers throwing away their guns, civilians becoming trampled in the mob.
The breakout was being sealed by the bombardment, with a line of pure fire that prevented any further Germans coming West. Before I turned away, I saw a single horse charge through the wall of flames, streaming fire, his rider dead in the saddle. Nothing else came through that curtain of death, except pieces of debris and burning liquid.
Those few thousand of us that had crossed the railroad quickly accelerated, fleeing the incendiary bombardment, knowing that each moment made it more likely that we would be caught in the firestorm like those we left behind.
*
Reaching the Elbe
Our column of a few thousand now moved through a landscape seemingly untouched by the war. There was no road, so our panzers moved slowly between copses of oaks and orchards of apple and pear trees, hiding as best we could in each area of cover before dashing on to the next. The foot traffic followed us, but the human column was thinning out as people gave up in exhaustion or from their wounds, and lay down to accept their destiny.
In the occasional house that we found, the civilian occupants urged our troops to enter and remove their uniforms, and to put on the work clothes of absent menfolk. Some of our troops accepted the offer, and disappeared into the houses. There was little attempt to stop them; we all knew that each person now had to face the end of the war as he or she best could. Small fires appeared in the yards of the houses, where uniforms and insignia were burned. Many of these houses took in women and children, who were too tired or fearful to continue, and many civilians left our column in this way.
And yet, as the day continued, the sky overhead remained clear of Soviet aircraft, and the sound of the terrible explosions behind us did not come any closer to us. Again, as our Panther creaked and rattled behind the King Tiger in the lead, I had the feeling that the Reds, for their own reasons, were allowing us to advance towards the Twelfth Army and then the Elbe.
Our group was so small that we could see our flanks in the fields on either side, the left and right of each column being guarded by the most able-bodied infantry, mostly the Fallschirmjager or SS men. At times, they shouted a warning, and Russian armoured cars appeared in the distance. The Red vehicles did not fire on us, and this added to our confusion. The rumour went through the column that the war must be officially over, and that we had missed the momentous announcement. Why else would the Reds stand and observe us without shooting? As the kilometres passed, we became sure that this was the case: that the Reds were now under orders not to fire on us, and our hearts lifted at the thought. We estimated that we had perhaps ten kilometres further to travel before we reached the Twelfth Army’s positions, and the corridor that would lead us to the Americans on the Elbe.
As we left the cover of a beech wood, we rounded a copse of trees to find a group of German soldiers standing in front of the King Tiger.
‘German troops,’ my gunner said, with a yell of excitement. ‘We’ve made it. We are through to the Twelfth.’
I put a hand on my MP40, remembering the Seydlitz men that had tricked our people at Halbe. Beside me, the Capo, standing beside the turret, had his pistol ready, and he gave me an order in a low voice to proceed carefully. The Panther ground to a halt beside the King Tiger, and we studied the German troops in front of us.
They were grimy, unshaven and their uniforms were ragged. They looked hungry and scared. In answer to our challenge, they said that they were Panzergrenadiers of the Twelfth Army, and their insignia matched this - unlike the Seydlitz brigades who wore no emblems. They said that the road ahead was mined, and they had been sent to guide any breakout groups through the fields.
‘In five kilometres you will be in the corridor,’ their Feldwebel called up to us. ‘Many people are passing through there to reach the Americans.’
‘Is the war over?’ we called down.
‘No, but the Reds are going slow today. They had their May Day celebrations last night. They know they have won the war. Lots of Red vodka and ladies for them. See there!’
Two Russian soldiers were asleep under a bush beside the road, surrounded by empty bottles. The German troops had taken their machine pistols as souvenirs.
Of course – it was the day after the great Red Communist festival, May the First, or May Day. It sounded plausible that the Reds would be hungover on this morning, and with the war so close to ending, perhaps they would be less inclined to pursue us.
‘We should make the most of this,’ the King Tiger commander called to me. ‘Before the Reds sober up.’
We took these Twelfth Army German troops up onto our panzers among the wounded, and we followed their directions. It was mid-morning by now, clear and warm, and the unscarred landscape was full of meadows, orchards and timbered houses. The foot traffic followed behind us, a ragged column stretching for several hundred metres in the bright sunlight, men shouldering their weapons, supporting each other and stumbling in exhaustion; other men with no guns, walking in a daze, civilians stooping to drink from animal troughs by the gates between the fields.
The Twelfth Army soldiers guided us down into a road that ran in a cutting between two higher fields on either side: a sunken road with walls of chalk growing with ferns and wild roses. The scent of these flowers was noticeable even over the stink of the panzer and our bodies. It was a scent that suggested to my exhausted mind that we were finally going home. We halted at the command of the guides, who then jumped off and went ahead on foot to reconnoitre.
‘We’ll check for Reds and come back to you,’ they shouted.
We waited, with the engines cut out to save fuel; the King Tiger in front, and my Panther behind. There was the contraction of the engines, the moaning of the wounded, the singing of birds and the tramping of feet coming to a halt as the walking column behind us caught up and halted too. The Capo, standing on my rear deck and leaning on the turret, wiped his face on his sleeve and muttered a prayer that our journey was over.
A few minutes later, a person appeared on the edge of the sunken road. He was an officer, his hands on his hips and his pistol holstered.
He was Russian.
Our troops raised their guns to aim at him, but we held fire as the Red officer stared down at us. One by one, other Red troops appeared above us on the edges of the cutting: fresh infantry with almond-coloured faces, clean uniforms, guns that looked straight from the factory. Fifty or sixty of them stood there on either side, looking down on us. I don’t know if the two ‘drunken’ soldiers from under the roadside bush were among them, but I suspected that th
ey were. Finally, one of our German Twelfth Army guides appeared beside the officer, and shouted to us,
‘Comrades, there is no point in fighting any more. The war is not over yet, but it will be over in days, or hours.’
There were jeers and insults from the panzer crews and the troops in the sunken road. But still nobody fired a shot.
‘Listen to me,’ the German defector shouted. ‘Those people who followed after you from the Kessel, at the railroad crossing point. Remember them? They are all dead. Not one of them is alive this morning. The Russians can do as they please with us these days.’
‘And what do they want with us in this column?’ the Capo shouted to the German. ‘Why have they trapped us here?’
‘You must understand,’ the defector shouted back. ‘Among the Russian officers, there is competitiveness. The war has become a sport for them. They are playing games with the Germans now.’
‘What do they want?’ I demanded.
‘The panzers,’ the defector called. ‘Give this Red officer your panzers in working order, without damage, and leave all the women here. You panzer crews and infantry can go on ahead on foot, but you must leave your civilians here.’
The commander of the SS King Tiger turned around in his cupola to look at me on my Panther. We did not speak, but his face was set in stone. He turned back and began speaking to his crew in the hull.
‘Comrades, give them the panzers,’ the defector pleaded. ‘They want the vehicles in working condition. They want to send them back to Moscow for their parades and their ceremonies, that is all. They will let your men pass through here in return. Even the SS can pass through. This officer is the only Red who will make you this offer. There are other Red officers around who will kill you for sure. Comrades, the war is lost! Accept this offer.’
The King Tiger started its engine in a sudden roar of fumes, and jerked forward a few metres in an aggressive show, making the Russian troops step away from the edge of the sunken channel. The SS Tiger commander stood tall in his cupola, outlined against the sky. I saw the German defector’s mouth moving, his hands outstretched as he pleaded with us, and then I told my driver to start up too, and the Panther crashed into life in a cloud of oily smoke.
I don’t know who fired the first shot, but from then on the sunken road became a place of death for us all – German, Russians, soldiers and civilians. Through my engine smoke, I saw a bullet pass through the German defector’s head, exiting from the back of his skull in a cloud of red and white against the blue. The Red officer beside him was shot through the stomach, and doubled up, his face contorted. The Russian troops along the edge of the channel initially stumbled back, perhaps confused by the lack of leadership – but then they clearly decided to perform their duty as their training dictated. They began firing down onto us in the sunken road, raking the panzers and the foot column behind with their machine gun fire.
I heard the Capo grunt in pain, and saw him tumble off the Panther, falling among the people on foot who were beginning to scatter up and down the roadway. The Capo was hit again, repeatedly, and I knew that there was no hope for him, that he was now one of the many fallen of the Kessel who would surely have no grave or headstone.
One of his crew men leaped down from the Panther and went to the Capo’s side. All that could be done was to remove his Iron Cross from around his neck, and this was thrown up to me on the Panther’s deck. In all the danger and confusion, it was a point of honour to us that a dead man’s Iron Cross medal should not fall into enemy hands, but be returned to the wearer’s family.
The King Tiger in front of us lurched forward again, its tracks demolishing the rose-covered walls of the channel, causing a landslide that brought several Red troops tumbling down under our treads. I remained up on the turret roof, and, with the Capo’s Iron Cross in my hand, I shot at the Red soldiers with my MP40, even as the Panther crunched forward over the landslide and juddered after the King Tiger, aiming for the higher ground where this sunken road came up into the meadows.
Grenades exploded on the rear of the King Tiger, the shrapnel streaming back at my panzer, and I saw the rear deck of the Tiger burn with flame for a moment. That huge, seventy-tonne vehicle leaped up out of the sunken track, its whole front end losing contact with the ground, and then slammed down in the pastures beyond. I saw the commander in his cupola shot through with Russian bullets, his body jerking as he was hit. The King Tiger rolled straight on at twenty kph, straight ahead, aiming West, with flames streaming from its engines. Then my Panther too was up on the grassland beside that panzer, and we ploughed forward, side by side, until I told my driver to rotate back and return to the land beside the sunken road.
We drove back in a cloud of dust to find the Red troops firing down into the path. They were firing off entire magazines, and then reloading and firing again. In my hull, the panzer training man opened up with his MP40, and in the turret we depressed the gun elevation and fired off our remaining coaxial MG bullets at the Red troops. We cut them down in a long scything motion, throwing them off one side of the channel and then the other side. I jumped down from the Panther with my MP40 and ran to the edge of the sunken road, and looked in.
The foot column was decimated in there. Infantry, wounded, civilians and horses were jumbled up in heaps of kicking limbs. The able-bodied were emerging from that carnage, and running towards my Panther, dragging a few civilians and walking wounded with them. In this way, perhaps a hundred people came out of that sunken track, and fell in behind the Panther as it turned and moved out onto the plain. Walking with them behind the Panther, I urged them on – men, women and children, shouting at them to speed up as best they could while we stumbled and tripped after the Panther as it rattled across the meadow to the west. I could see a copse of trees beyond the meadow, with good, dark foliage that might shield us, and I knew that my Panther crew would head for that immediately.
The King Tiger, however, was still careering away from us over the pasture, with flames pouring around the back of its deck.
Overhead, there was the scream of aero engines, and the stark profiles of Sturmoviks stood against the glare. Three of them were swooping on us, cannon beginning to bark over the noise of the Panther engine. We who were running on foot threw ourselves flat on the sweet grass – and saw the Red planes pass overhead, one after the other, the three aircraft all aiming for the King Tiger.
I do not believe that the Tiger’s crew intended to save us, or meant to draw the Russian fire by driving out into the open pasture, trailing smoke. I think it was a matter of those seventy tonnes travelling at speed, on a downward slope, perhaps with a transmission jammed in gear while the crew compartment filled with fumes. Whatever the cause, the massive King Tiger charged away from us, out on its own, with the body of the commander slumped on the turret, and fire flickering around its back plate. The Sturmoviks shot the panzer up with ruthless accuracy, piercing the engine deck and turret roof with their shells. I saw the engine grilles fly off in pieces, and large scabs of metal from the turret spin off from the sides. As my column hurried into the comparative safety of the trees, the Jabos turned around and came back for another run. The King Tiger was still moving, leaving a trail of flames and smoke behind it. The cannon shells tore one track off, making the whole vehicle rear up on one side and then slam down, shedding wheels and track links. Still rolling, the hull erupted in a puff of flames, until only the colossal gun barrel was visible, emerging from the fireball. Of the crew, there was no sign whatever.
We, the survivors of the entire column, now only a hundred infantry and civilians plus my creaking Panther, pushed deeper into the pine woods, still heading West.
*
The pine forest was man-made, and laid out on a geometric pattern with firebreaks and access roads at regular intervals. Apart from these open firebreaks, which were narrow, the pine trees screened us overhead, although we heard the noise of planes passing over very low at times.
The first thing that we
encountered, in the first firebreak, were the bodies of the same Twelfth Army German infantrymen who had led us into the sunken road. They were lying face down, and had all been executed with shots in the back. Stepping over their bodies, I climbed back onto the Panther to take command of the vehicle for this final stage of the breakout.
The panzer was in a hopeless state. The left and right tracks were on different tensions, making the vehicle veer to one side, and the engine grilles gave out a constant acrid smoke. I could hear the transmission front drive whining in the hull, and I guessed that it might last another ten or twenty kilometres. Driving down the narrow but evenly surfaced road between the fir trees improved our fuel use, but it also meant that we could not traverse the turret more than a few degrees, as our gun barrel was obstructed by the trees. Only in the junctions between the road and the firebreak channels which ran left and right at intervals of about one thousand metres could we turn our gun to the side – and we soon found that these junctions were to be feared.
As we approached the first one, our infantry reconnoitred ahead and gestured to us that the way was clear. We moved the Panther forward to the gap, then surged across the few metres of exposure where the firebreak extended into the distance on either side. We paused between the trees beyond, to let the foot traffic make the crossing too. The first dozen troops and civilians hurried across, keeping their heads low. As a second group stepped out, shots came from the firebreak to the left, and a civilian man tumbled onto his front and went still. Another shot felled a Fallschirmjager who was helping a wounded woman to cross, and the bullet seemed to pass through him and hit the woman also. She lay, squirming on top of the paratrooper’s dead body, until she also was hit by the sniper, her head emitting a cloud of blood before she went limp.
I could see no sign of the sniper, no smoke or movements. I had the Panther reverse across the open space to form a barrier, and the people surged across in its cover. From inside the turret, I heard bullets smacking off our armour plate, and I feared that the Reds would use an anti-tank rifle or rocket launcher on us. We traversed the turret and fired a precious high-explosive round into the trees, which went zig-zagging from one tree trunk to another before exploding further down the firebreak. When I saw that the last of the people had crossed, I moved the Panther forward.
The Last Panther - Slaughter of the Reich - The Halbe Kessel 1945 Page 12