Last Citadel wwi-3

by David L. Robbins

  Luis wanted to exult at the Russian charge. He wanted to shout, Come on! at the Reds, but he bit the bellow back, it imploded in his chest and fed his temper. The cut in his chin stung from sweat. He switched palms clapped against it, bloodying both hands.

  In the valley now, his Tiger had fired no shots into the host of Russian tanks swarming and spreading his way. Luis held Balthasar in check for the first moments when it became plain the Soviets were not going to stop short and duel from their side of the sunflowers. He marveled at the charging Russians, watched the swaying yellow expanse between the Reds and his Tiger grow narrower by the second. Across a broad front, a hundred and more T-34s came nose-to-nose with the first ranks of Leibstandarte’s sixty-seven. The Reds ran so much faster than the German tanks, it was awesome to see at point-blank range. Not many rounds were exchanged in these initial seconds when the two forces mingled their armor. There was too much momentum, none dared to stop and take aim. Then the Russians ran right past Leibstandarte’s leading tanks, incredible! The two armies were like ghosts, passing into and through each other, a dreadful and unprecedented thing to see. Once contact was made, the ghosts slowed and stared at each other, both furious and invaded. Turrets whined now, treads squeaked to a halt, brakes and gears howled; to Luis the squealing sounds recalled the abattoir, screaming cattle, butchery, also the private whimpers of pain the bull makes, heard only by those close enough in the ring, the ones hurting him.

  A hundred tanks of both sides came to a halt and fired their opening volleys. Many were broadside, aimed at enemies only-thirty, forty meters away. The toll in the initial minutes was vicious: cannons rang, gunsmoke spit, tanks erupted into flames. A haze enfolded the valley. A hundred other tanks kept moving, slicing through the flowers, dashing across crushed paths where Red or German tanks had just been a moment before. Luis watched a smoking T-34 tear past him through the flowers. He had no strategy to deal with this. He pressed his driver to continue forward, wading into the valley with his company wavering around him. He ordered them to stay close-knit but instantly saw how impossible that would be in this melee. One by one his Mark IVs peeled out of formation, engaged with one or several Soviet tanks at knife-fighting distance. Luis let them go.

  Balthasar asked for firing instructions.

  Luis made no response, just rode the Tiger deeper into the clanging flower field. A burning piece of a plane plummeted through the thickening battle fog; the battle for Prokhorovka was a tall thing, too, a giant rearing into the clouds.

  He spun his gaze left and right, behind him. The purple smoke was all wafted away, no need for warning anymore, the battle was joined. Russian tanks ran everywhere, on every side. The vast yellow field was fast being crushed, ground down, and erased in curling paths under the two hundred tanks jockeying through the stalks. Dead hulks smoldered at the terminus of many of the routes. Balthasar asked again for instructions, where to shoot, when to begin fighting. The rest of the company was already engaged. Luis opened his mouth. Blood dribbled from his chin, he felt it separate and fall. He could not speak in the face of this titanic morning. He was shocked at himself.

  He looked down at his SS uniform, glistening with crimson spots, and wondered: Am I a coward? No, I can’t be. He sensed the collision of his long-held anger with an unexpected and primal fear. This battle, he thought, Prokhorovka, it’s something I’ve never seen before. The Reds have carried the fight too far across the sunflower field, too close for strategy tanks swirling around each other, every distance lethal, in the dust and concussion, it’s impossible to tell ally from enemy.

  Luis didn’t know what to do; the fear drove him backward. This took him home, to Spain. This was where he found his father. He appealed for a lesson from the man. Quick, Father, I have little time here.

  Fear. What? Fear, Father.

  Yes. An old and worthy theme. I’ve said many times that I’ve been afraid in the ring. I’ve told you, Luis, you remember. Some bulls, they come out snorting snot and clear-eyed and they will knock your knees for you, nothing you can do. The bravest don’t show it. But we all feel it. Nothing is harder to do than to match what makes you afraid. Nothing will make you more a man than the moment your knees stop knocking. The roses, hats, the wine sacks flung into the ring, these are for the man who stands his ground, and the toro who tries to take it from him. Be afraid, Luis. But stand. I’ve seen you do this. Do it again.

  ‘Balthasar.’

  The intracom crackled. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘We’re close enough.’

  Balthasar laughed. Good, Luis thought. The gunner believes this was courage to come so far into the heart of the valley before opening up.

  ‘AP loaded and waiting, sir.’

  ‘Driver, halt.’

  The Tiger slowed with a great metal sigh. Luis needed both hands to raise and steady his binoculars. He’d have to let the chin drip awhile.

  The Russians knew this was a Tiger. They kept their distance as best they could, trying first to surround and overwhelm the lesser Mark IVs. Luis peered hard through the haze, smoke growing more impenetrable with every fired round.

  From here in the center of the field the Tiger’s range extended to every corner of the valley. There was no T-34 he couldn’t reach.

  0920 hours

  ‘Go, go, Papa, go!’

  Dimitri worked the gears. The General flattened out and ran like a thoroughbred over the ruts of the sunflower field.

  Valentin had gotten them into a race with a Mark IV Dimitri didn’t know how far away the German ran beside them but he guessed it was ridiculously close; everything in this field was.

  Valentin’s boots were not on Dimitri’s shoulders now.

  ‘Ease left!’ Valentin ordered. The Mark IV must have tried to shear off, quit the race, but Valya wasn’t relenting.

  ‘Straighten out.’

  Valentin’s voice flipped between steely and excited. He’d already left one Mark IV burning in the first minutes of the battle. Valya had shot him from behind; Dimitri had never in his life been behind a German tank! Now this sprinting Mark IV was their second target. Valya was the commander and gunner. He handled both duties – each was enough for one man – with skill and a measure of cool, even in this deadly valley coiled with the SS. Their two forces had rushed into a tank fight no one in either army could have trained for, never imagined would happen. Two hundred tanks inside four square kilometers, it was like a saloon brawl, but not with fists, with cannons! Dimitri wanted to be proud of his son, that would ease his fright at their situation, but he had his hands full flogging the General back and forth at Valentin’s snap orders, stopping to fire, cranking into gear, and accelerating to keep moving, keep alive. And suddenly this race to the death. For that’s what this was: Whoever pulled ahead could hit the brakes first. The other, still moving, would slide by, straight into the sights of the winner. This was an impromptu strategy, made up on the spot. What else could they do? Who knew how to fight like this? Cossacks on horseback, yes, but these weren’t horses.

  Dimitri eased the General in line and felt the speed climb again. The German wasn’t getting away so easily.

  The yellow field began to scorch and collapse under the great armored fracas. More and more the sunflowers were trampled, or burned by exploding fuel. Dimitri could only see straight ahead, flashing in and out of thinning green and gold patches, through drifts of gray smoke. He dodged other tanks that lurched in his way, tanks locked in their own confrontations; he avoided wrecks. The German was somewhere beside them. Dimitri did everything he could to be faster, to get his son the shot he needed.

  He sped over the valley, searching through the whipping flowers for an advantage, anything. The Mark IV was a fleet enough tank to make this race dicey. Fifty meters ahead to the left, a thick column of smoke caught his eye. A T-34 and a Mark IV had rammed each other. The Mark IV had ridden up the Soviet tank’s front. They’d both burst into fireballs. Through the smoke Dimitri spotted their crisscrossed turrets.<
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  Valentin thought of the move the same moment Dimitri did.

  ‘Come left.’

  The smoking pylon of the two fused tanks was only seconds ahead. Dimitri knew what his son intended: Valentin was going to shove the racing Mark IV, putting the two dead tanks right in his path. The German will have to swerve left – he won’t dodge right, closer to us – or stop. Either way, he’ll have to slow down. Valya will guess which way the German’s going to jump. We’ll stop first and have our cannon waiting.

  ‘Everyone hang on. Papa, full stop!’

  Dimitri crammed on the brakes. The General skidded, Dimitri corrected to keep the treads sliding straight. He downshifted fast.

  The General tilted forward as though to pour them all out through their hatches but Dimitri had the tank at a dead stop in seconds. Valentin did not fire immediately. The turret whined and rotated degrees right. In his head Dimitri trailed the Mark IV running away, saw it avoid the burning mess in front of it; he imagined the SS commander losing sight of the T-34 that had been broadside for almost a kilometer; the German thought, Oh, no; he screamed at his driver to swerve, evasive turns, now, now!; behind him, not far enough, carefully adjusting, the faster, smarter T-34 commander stayed in his range finder, neither fooled nor hot, following the German with the long eye of his cannon; the German counted seconds, gaining distance; does he shout, Ha ha! that he has got away? Dimitri turned in his seat to watch his son; Valentin toed the firing pedal with an oddly ginger tap for what it set loose; the breech recoiled with a massive shrug; Pasha fed it another round, all one flowing action; Valentin made a small adjustment to his aim and fired again; Pasha never left his knees, never seemed to be without a shell in his arms; Valentin fired again; three smoking casings lay on the matting; did the German commander count the shells coming in when he was done counting seconds?

  ‘Let’s get going, Papa.’

  For thirty minutes, the General wandered over the valley floor, looking for jousts like a medieval knight. The sunflower field lay in total ruin, flattened under so many tracks, so much wrath and murder. Shapes strayed in the smoke. Valentin fired only a dozen more times, reporting no hits. Dimitri had no idea how the battle was going; who was winning? The tally of stilled Soviet tanks was greater than those of the Germans. This was no surprise to him; the Red force in these sunflowers had been held in reserve until Prokhorovka, they’d been untested in Kursk. These Germans were hardened SS. Dimitri felt hunted. He was always lost, reacting to shadows, boots stamped on his shoulders, he ran through stretches of sunflowers left standing that blinded him again, then emerged to no landmarks but more dead hulks. He saw tankers of both armies, out of their machines, scurrying to get away. Sasha took shots at them. He was never certain if the boy shot at SS or Russians, they all ran like any man would. He drove, in circles, straight, he stopped and started, he swerved. He stayed in a clench on the steering levers and waited, moving, never before so scared as he was now.

  He drove past a beheaded T-34. The tank’s turret lay upside down ten meters from the chassis, pouring fumes. In seconds another ruined Red tank smoldered nearby. Valentin’s boot guided the General in a wide semicircle to the right, past four more destroyed T-34s, all of them arranged in a singed arc, a clock face of dead tanks.

  ‘Jesus,’ Valentin muttered.

  ‘What?’ Pasha demanded to know. He did not curb his impatience and Valya didn’t reprimand him. ‘What?’ the boy insisted.

  ‘Tiger,’ Valentin told them.

  0933 hours

  Luis chose the targets.

  Balthasar ruined them.

  The air hung brackish with haze. After an hour of combat in the sunflower field, fifty tanks burned. Each black spire of smoke fed the haze. Luis stood in his cupola to peer through the mists. High above, rain clouds threatened, dimming the day even more. The optics in the Tiger were excellent, but they could not pierce far enough into the swirling battle. The eyepieces did not draw out Luis’s instincts the way his raw eyes could. He remained half outside the tank, turning circles in the cupola, taking in the battle. He could not slake his hunger for the fight, keenly watching tanks of both sides dart through the shifting mists and thinning sunflowers. Packets of crackers stayed in his breast pocket, he let his body hunger like his heart. He followed one Red tank after another, even those thinly visible through the haze. When he knew what that tank would do, where it would turn, or when it would stop, he called Balthasar into the shot. Together, they rarely missed.

  The wound in his chin slowed its drip, but not before Luis’s breast glistened with blood. He ignored this and stood tall in the cupola, aware of the image he cast, stolid and brave in the Tiger’s turret. Other Leibstandarte tanks roared past his place in the middle of the field. Luis was careful to show them a smoking barrel, himself in profile, raising a blood-smirched hand to single out another target. The motionless T-34s in a cemetery ring around his Tiger were testimony. This was the makings of legend: Luis, deathly thin and pale, blood-spattered, while his Tiger was the most powerful weapon on the battlefield. There would be talk of la Daga after today.

  Luis had not moved the Tiger more than two hundred yards in any direction since firing his first shots. The Reds kept their distance, preferring to tangle with the less lethal Mark IVs, dancing in and out of the mists around Luis. Sometimes they darted at him, swooping in closer for a shot and paying for it. For minutes at a time, tanks of his company came to stand by him, idling on his flanks, hoping they were safer in the Tiger’s shadow. Luis let them rest to admire his and Balthasar’s shooting, then sent them back into the melee, like a father ordering his son outside to face a bully.

  He watched one of his Mark IVs leave his side. At three hundred meters, just before disappearing into the mists, the tank was challenged by a T-34. Luis lifted his binoculars and followed the action between the two tanks. They entered into a race, vaulting across the field at top speeds, like two stallions, dashing, almost bumping each other. The Russian was cunning, he steered the Mark IV toward a wreck, making the German commander veer hard, slow down. The Red skidded to a remarkably quick stop, the tank seemed to hop to a standstill. The third shell from the Russian hit the SS tank in the rear; another shaft of smoke added its charcoal tarnish to the sky. Luis did not pull his binoculars from this Russian tank. He watched it circle, careful and nimble all at once. The Russian drove past several of the T-34s he and Balthasar had knocked out. There was an interesting quality to how this one tank moved through the battle and carnage. That race with the Mark IV was phenomenal, but now it seemed to skulk. What did this tank carry inside? It looked like heroism and reluctance married somehow. And something more, something rare. What? Luis considered, calculating.

  The Red tank slowed, and Luis knew they had seen each other.

  ‘Balthasar. Sixty degrees right.’

  The great turret pivoted around Luis. The gun barrel did not raise at all, every target in the sunflower field was so close there was no need for elevation. Every shot was a flat trajectory.

  ‘Do you see him?’

  Balthasar did not answer for a moment. The smoke was thick, tanks ran every direction.

  ‘The one turning toward us?’ he said.

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Ja.’

  ‘Range?’

  ‘Six hundred meters.’

  ‘Wait, Balthasar. This one… wait for him.’

  Luis followed the coming Russian. He kept the binoculars up with one hand and patted his tunic pocket with the other. He grabbed a few crackers and slid them over his lips. The chewing made another drop of blood fall from his chin.

  1003 hours

  Dimitri had crossed boundaries all his life. He was a Cossack, he’d ridden over anyone’s land he cared to. He’d played tag with death many times. He’d sneered at any notion that this or that was a place he should not go. Love had corralled him once, inside one woman for their time together. Love bound him again to their children, Katya and Valya. And that was all for
the lines drawn across his life. He’d loved his freedom, Kazak.

  Now, at Valya’s command to attack the Tiger, Dimitri felt cold misgiving. He swept past the hulks of slaughtered T-34s. They were disfigured and burned, or simply perforated and still. The Tiger left marks on these T-34s that no other tank could, the destruction was utter. Dimitri skittered past them and it was like entering a bone-yard, the scat of killing at the mouth of some monster’s cave. The dead Soviet tanks were dark portents, warnings, do not come this way.

  Dimitri reached for the handle on his hatch cover. To hell with this, he thought, there’s no help from armor so close to a Tiger. One hit, even a glancing shot from that big cannon, and we’ll be done. He pushed up the hatch and gazed into the open, seething air. The sunflowers were beaten down in this part of the field, from the Tiger’s pacing, from the Russian tanks’ bids to engage it, or from their doomed attempts to flee. Even half a kilometer away in the haze, the Tiger loomed a colossus.

  Pasha objected to taking on the big tank but no one listened. Sasha stayed affixed to his machine-gun, quiet and uncertain.

  Both boots slid off Dimitri’s shoulders. He was out of the traces. What was this?

  Instead of a heel, a gentle touch of the son’s hand tapped beside Dimitri’s neck.

  ‘Take us in, Papa.’

  Valentin was ceding the tank to Dimitri. That touch said, Ride, old man, old Cossack. Show us and show this German what you’ve learned, crossing all those times into and out of death. No one else but you can do this. Take us in.