by Eric Meyer
“Come on, we’re clear,” Mundt whispered. He got up and ran forward and I joined him with the rest of the men. Two Soviets were in the foxhole, one of them dead with his throat slit, the other apparently unhurt but shaking with terror. He looked to be about my age, what struck me as odd was that he was wearing warm, padded winter clothing, much more suited to the conditions than we had been issued with. That was unexpected, I thought the Soviets were supposed to be more primitive than us, less well equipped.
“Look!” Mundt murmured, he was looking further ahead. I made out irregular shapes, slightly darker objects that stood out from the distant horizon. Tanks. They were about two kilometres away.
“Do you have any idea of how many?” I whispered to him.
“About forty, almost certainly T34s, that’s our best guess.”
“Shouldn’t we get closer and make sure?”
“No. Unless you’d like to go and get yourself killed, Herr Untersturmfuhrer.”
I realised I was making a fool of myself in my enthusiasm. But what if there were more tanks, wouldn’t we also want to know how many infantry they had in support?
“We need to know, Scharfuhrer. I’ll go forward and check it out, I’ll need a volunteer to go with me, the rest of you can wait here.”
There was silence for a moment, I could imagine their thoughts. A gung-ho new officer, fresh from training school, determined to get them all killed. I didn’t care, I felt that it was important to bring back the intelligence.
“I’ll go with you.”
Sturmmann Josef Beidenberg, I remembered. “Thank you, Beidenberg. Let’s go.”
I didn’t wait for an answer, just climbed out of the foxhole and started creeping forward. Beidenberg was right behind me, I could hear his footsteps crunching in the snow. We were both going slowly, both nervous of hearing a sudden challenge from an unseen sentry, then the burst of gunfire that would scythe through us, but it didn’t come. We veered to the south of the line of tanks and worked our way around them, finding a path that led through some trees to give us cover. When we were behind the tanks we saw the Russian encampment, looming suddenly out of the night as the cloud drifted past and moonlight shone down on the steppe. There was at least a division of infantry camped in front of us with their vehicles, motor-rifle troops by the look of them, with towed mobile artillery and rocket launchers.
“I think that’s enough, Josef, we’ll get back and report what we’ve seen.”
“Sir.”
We retraced our steps, after fifty metres we almost ran into two Soviet soldiers. They were walking into the woods hand in hand, their intention obvious. Homosexuality was punished as severely in the Soviet armies as in ours. Both of the men were keeping watch on their own lines and didn’t notice us as we waited. We stood behind a tree and when they came abreast of us, I stepped out and simultaneously cocked my machine pistol, Beidenberg had a combat knife ready to use. Both put up their hands, even in the dark I could see that their faces had gone as white at the snow they were walking on.
“Do either of you speak German?”
One of them nodded. “I do,” he said shakily.
“Good. You are now our prisoners, if you make a sound you’ll both be killed. Clear?”
He nodded and explained it to his comrade who nodded eagerly.
“Let’s go, we need to get back as quickly as possible,” I said to Beidenberg. “Our people will need to question these two prisoners urgently.”
We walked quietly back the way we came to the south of the lines of T34s, each of us with a gun barrel pressed to the backs of the Russians. When we approached the foxhole, I called out softly to the platoon.
“This is Hoffman and Beidenberg coming in with two prisoners.”
“Very well.”
We joined the platoon and I at least had the satisfaction of seeing the men’s awed faces as we displayed our two new prisoners, we now had three in all to take back for interrogation. Despite the cold, the misery and the uncertain start to my new command, I felt I had acquitted myself quite well. I wondered if I’d stay alive for long enough to build on it.
The CO, Standartenfuhrer Brandt was impressed, one of the prisoners turned out to be a Russian major, the other two were private soldiers and they were all led away for interrogation. He turned to me.
“Well done, Hoffman, a good start. Pity there are so many Russians in front of us, we’ll have our work cut out. Muller, what’s the word on the Panzers?”
Sturmbannfuhrer Muller, the second in command, answered immediately.
“HQ reports we have eleven Tigers operational. We also have a StuGIII that will be deployed as soon as we start the attack.”
The StuGIII assault gun mounted a 75mm StuK37 gun and was a formidable tank killer, built on a Panzer chassis it was effective in a number of infantry and armour support roles. It was also known to be much more reliable than the sophisticated and heavily armoured Tiger tank, which could dominate the battlefield but had proved to be prone to breakdowns.
“Anything else?”
“A few mobile artillery pieces, that’s about it. We’re still waiting for the half-tracks to be delivered, so the Panzer Grenadiers will have to go in on foot.”
Brandt grunted. “Again! It’s not enough, Otto, not enough. What if those T34s break through our armour?”
“We’ve issued Panzerfausts to all units,” Muller said hesitantly.
“Panzerfausts! What the hell next, do we start throwing rocks at them, we might as well?”But he nodded. “Forget I said that, Otto. If it comes to it, we’ll use the Panzerfausts and hope for the best. Very well, get the men to their jump off points and we’ll follow the Panzers in.”
I joined my platoon waiting outside the church. We’d had a sleepless night after being assigned to the scouting mission and it looked as if the coming day was going to be an even harder one. No one had said joining the SS was going to be a picnic, though, so I’d have to get used to it. The men had brewed some coffee and I was given a steaming mug of the hot, rich mixture that bore little resemblance to any coffee I’d ever tasted before. There were also a couple of slices of thick, black bread coated with dripping or some kind of animal fat, for breakfast.
“Breakfast or dinner it all looks the same, you’ll have to get used to it, Sir,” Mundt smiled.
“But look on the bright side, we may not be alive by tonight so we won’t have to eat this muck again.”
“Isn’t that kind of comment bad for morale?” I asked him firmly. It didn’t seem a good idea to suggest to the men that we were short of food. But he laughed out loud and the men around him smiled with him, obviously I had a lot to learn. We finished the food, it was indeed foul, then the regiment moved up to the jump off point and I made sure I had everything, MP38, two stick grenades that Mundt had given me and my pack. “You never know when you may need an advantage, Sir,” he said as he handed me the grenades.
Water and food in my pack, just bread of course, spare ammunition and a rudimentary first aid kit. Two of the men carried Panzerfausts.
“Schutze Bauer, have you used one of those before?” I asked the private. I’d used one at the training school and I was genuinely interested, it seemed such a tiny weapon with which to stop and destroy a tank.
“You’re not serious? I’m still alive, aren’t I?” he replied brusquely.
I was puzzled, I was about to ask him what he meant when Mundt put his hand on my shoulder. “Untersturmfuhrer, if the battle comes down to using one of those, you’re normally as good as dead already. If you ever score a hit with a Panzerfaust you get awarded a Tank Destroyer Badge. Posthumously!”
“I see.”
We marched through the wood, retracing the route our patrol had taken during the night. When we came out the other side, we waited. At first the night was quiet, there was no noise at all. Then in the distance I heard a clanking, mechanical noise. It resolved itself into the roar of powerful engines and the clatter of iron tracks. Suddenly, the
Tigers broke out of the wood, eleven of them deployed in a wide line with plenty of space between them. The leading tanks fired, star shells lit up the battlefield, the T34s were now stark, bright targets on the horizon. Even at this distance, I could see the crews scrambling to dive through the turret hatches and prepare to defend themselves. Our Tigers were all firing now, armour-piercing rounds that exploded all around the Russian tank positions. Already three of them were on fire, their ammunition starting to explode, fuel catching fire and crews running for cover. Then five more exploded as our accurate gunfire kept hitting them, but they still outnumbered us by a large margin. Now it was the Russian’s turn and they opened fire, high explosive shells landed and lit up the onrushing Tigers. One was hit and started to blaze, the others rushed on. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the STuGIII assault gun clank out of the wood already firing anti-tank rounds at the T34s and more of them exploded as the combined fire of our Tigers and the STuGIII wreaked deadly havoc.
“Let’s go, let’s go!” I heard the shout along our lines. Whistles blew and we were up and running, I led my men straight towards the enemy positions, we were going to have our work cut out this morning, especially if the Tigers failed to deal fully with all of the T34s. We ran like demons towards the Russian lines, the Soviet infantrymen had advanced and set up firing positions, rifles cracked along their lines, a machine gun started to fire, then another. We had to go more carefully now, dodging from cover to cover, foxhole to foxhole. Fortunately this ground had been fought over before and it was littered with shell holes and trenches in the ground where we could shelter from the continuous gunfire and explosions that swept the battlefield. Two T34s started towards us firing their coaxial machine guns but the STuGIII continuously fired at them and they both exploded, hit by the armour-piercing rounds. Some of our men set up machine gun positions and soon we had four MG34s hammering away at the enemy.
Mundt shouted a warning, as I turned to clarify what he’d said a hand grabbed hold of my tunic and yanked me down into a shell hole. I was about to protest when a T34 swept past us, heading for the STuGIII. Then the T34 was itself hit by one of our Panzers, but when I looked up another Russian tank was bearing down on us heading for the STuGIII tank destroyer.
“Panzerfaust,” I shouted.
Bauer was crouched down in the shell hole, looking at me with terrified eyes. I didn’t blame him, the Soviet armour was awesome to a soldier on foot but there was no time to be overly worried, I needed to act.
“Give it to me, man.”
I ripped the weapon out of his hands and primed it ready to fire. I squinted over the rim, the T34 was almost on us. As it went past I leapt up, I’d done this in training though never very successfully, but that day the gods of war smiled at me, and my rocket flew true, straight into the vulnerable rear of the tank and I had the satisfaction of seeing it explode.
CHAPTER TWO
“For centuries Russia drew nourishment from this Germanic nucleus of its upper leading strata. Today it can be regarded as almost totally exterminated and extinguished. It has been replaced by the Jew. Impossible as it is for the Russian by himself to shake off the yoke of the Jew by his own resources, it is equally impossible for the Jew to maintain the mighty empire forever. He himself is no element of organization, but a ferment of decomposition. The Persian empire in the east is ripe for collapse. And the end of Jewish rule in Russia will also be the end of Russia as a state.”
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
The two officers disappeared into the regimental office and I went into our quarters in the church with the rest of the men. We had no casualties in my platoon, for that at least I was thankful.
“Sir, I’ve sent Voss to drum up some food, we all need a meal after this morning’s work.”
I nodded, “Thank you, Scharfuhrer.”
Damn, I should have thought of that first, feeding the men, but I was tired, so tired, all I wanted to do was crawl into a hole and sleep for a week. But first things first, I checked my weapons and cleaned and reloaded my MP38. I made sure my water bottle was full, then lay down for a short rest. It was to be very short, Voss brought back some loaves of bread and a container of beef dripping and we sat to enjoy our feast. Mundt brought out a bottle of schnapps, I should have disapproved but I needed it as much as they did. I realised that, to my shame, I was shaking after the action. The food and drink revived me and we sat talking about the action. I tried to underline how well we had done, after all it was my task to maintain morale.
“I know we had to pull back but we seemed to give them a real beating,” I said to Mundt.
He smiled. “Look, Sir, think of it this way. They’ve got two hundred T34s, we’ve got ten Tigers. That means that every one of our tanks has to knock out twenty of theirs. And even then they’ll just bring up another two hundred when they’re all gone, we can’t replace our losses at anything like that rate.”
“What about the Stukas?” I reminded him.
“Yes, the Ju87s are good and they got away with it today. Normally the Russians send up fighters by the dozen and just shoot the Stukas out of the sky, they can’t defend themselves against fighters.”
I pondered the enormous implications of what he was saying. “So you don’t think we can beat them?”
“Of course we can, Sir. We’re all waiting for the secret weapons that the Fuhrer promised us, then we’ll knock them down like skittles. Until then our half-tracks would be helpful, at least we could travel over the battlefield without being totally exposed.”
He had a straight face when he mentioned the secret weapons, was he being serious or sarcastic? But I knew that our High Command had vastly more resources than Scharfuhrer Mundt realised and I explained that we’d soon have much more equipment than the men knew about, and that not every aspect of high-level strategy was obvious to the troops on the ground. I was certain that a couple of good victories would convince them. I didn’t elaborate on the Fuhrer’s secret weapons, it was a subject best avoided. I made a mental note to enquire about the half-tracks.
“Believe me, men, we’ll be back knocking on the front door of the Kremlin before too long.”
I’m not sure I believed it myself. I was certain that the men didn’t, but I had to try. A messenger came up to me. No salute, as usual.
“Untersturmfuhrer Hoffman, you are to report to the regimental adjutant immediately.”
As I walked across the camp, an officer stopped me, a Hauptsturmfuhrer, a captain.
“Are you that bloody fool that nearly got us all killed, the one that stood up and fired the Panzerfaust?”
I was utterly bewildered, there was a huge contradiction in what he was saying. How could my destruction of a Soviet tank be foolish, wasn’t that what we were here for?
“Well, yes, Sir, that was me. I did destroy a T34.”
“And what about the other two hundred T34s bearing down on us, Untersturmfuhrer? When they saw you shoot at their tank several of them swung around and headed towards your position. We were slightly to the side and in front of you, when they fired at you their shells went wide and came close to our position. It was only sheer luck that prevented us being hit. You nearly got us killed, you idiot! Next time, keep your fucking head down and mind your own business, clear?”
“Yes, Sir.”
I saluted and he stormed off. What the hell was that? Were we fighting the enemy or not? I hurried on to the regimental office, a flag hung outside next to a sign, ‘HQ, SS Standarte Deutschland’. A corporal was standing outside smoking a cigarette. He glanced up, “Untersturmfuhrer Hoffman? You’re to go right in.” Then he turned away and lost interest in me. I knocked and went through the door into the CO’s office. Sturmbannfuhrer Otto Muller sat behind the desk, temporarily in command of course, after the death of Standartenfuhrer Brandt. Another officer sat in an old armchair beside the stove at the side of the office. I felt a moment of trepidation. SD Sturmbannfuhrer von Betternich. Whatever the reason for the Intelligence Officer be
ing here, it was not likely to be anything good. Was it about that Russian tank? I saluted and waited for them to speak.
“Yes, Hoffman, I need to speak to you. You know the Sturmbannfuhrer?” he indicated the SD man.
“We met on the train, Sir.”
“Of course. Before I go on, I have had a complaint that you deliberately put the life of one of my officers and his men in danger by drawing the fire of enemy armour. Is that true?”
I was still utterly bewildered. “Er, well, Sir, I did destroy a Soviet tank, a T34 with a Panzerfaust. It seemed an opportunity to me, it came close and there was a weapon to hand. I’m sorry about that, Sir, it just seemed the right thing to do.”
“Next time, wait for orders and don’t do anything stupid, do you understand me?”
I felt annoyed, I thought I’d joined an elite regiment, one that would stop at nothing to destroy the enemy, not a band of cowards.
“Yes, Sir, you want me to avoid firing on the enemy in the middle of a battle unless so ordered, I see, Sir.”
He gave me a hard glance. “Don’t fuck with me, Hoffman. Just do as I say.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“I’m leaving you with this officer. You will consider yourself under his orders.” He got up and left the office.
“Hoffman, pull up a chair and sit down by the stove,” von Betternich said cheerfully. “I imagine you’re a little confused.”
I pulled up an old bentwood chair that looked to be in imminent danger of collapse and sat down. “Yes, I confess I am rather puzzled as to what you might want me for, Sir.”
“Very well, I will do my best to enlighten you. Firstly, my congratulations on killing that tank, that was a brave action. The officer who made the complaint is the nephew of a Party Gauleiter, an old friend of the Fuhrer’s. Muller is under orders not to put him in too much danger, do I make myself clear?”