by Tom Zola
Brinkmann's field of view narrowed as he plunged through the darkness. He heard his soldiers snorting behind him. Russian bullets filled the air, but the darkness protected the German soldiers. The crawler tracks of the T-34 started up again, then the tank turned slowly and rumbled towards the road. Russian cries became loud, the enemy infantry unleashed. Brinkmann could almost feel the breath of the enemy in his back.
In the glow of moonlight, he had no chance to distinguish the second trench from the ground and finally tumbled into it. A stabbing pain shot through his right ankle, but he ground his teeth together and only moaned loudly. At that moment, Russian artillery shells whistled over his head and descended into the heart of Nikolskoye with a loud roar. Walther jumped next to him into the ditch, and they ducked together.
"Where's Remme?" the sergeant gasped. He nearly couldn't breathe.
"I don't know," Walther panted.
Brinkmann glanced with a racing pulse into the night, when suddenly the contour of a typical Wehrmacht stahlhelm appeared out of the night.
Tillmann's facial skin shimmered like a light blob through the darkness. The private first class dashed towards the ditch, heading to his comrades. Suddenly a bullet pierced through his abdomen. Tillmann fell to the ground, hit it with his helmet, and dug his fingers into the dirt.
"Scheisse … " groaned Brinkmann. He wanted to jump out and pull his comrade into the protective trench, but something held him back. Russian Mosin Nagat rifles and PPSh submachine guns were still rattling everywhere.
A German infantryman with his K98k, which had five rounds and had to be bolt-fed each fresh cartridge, usually was no comparison against the concentrated firepower of the Soviet soldiers with their semi-automatic and fully automatic weapons.
So Brinkmann and Walther merely took cover in the ditch, pressed themselves against the earth wall, while at that moment Tillmann began to cry in terrible pain. Walther pushed his teeth together, and Brinkmann bit his right hand. The desire to help his comrade fought against his fear of Russian bullets.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!" Tillman’s nerve-wracking cry resounded over the battlefield. His screams mixed in with the racket of weapons. Tillmann sniveled; he coughed and his breathing bubbled.
Brinkmann couldn't bear to hear his fellow soldier like that. He first tasted the iron tang of blood in his mouth, only then did he feel the pain in his hand. His teeth let go of the lacerated flesh.
Carefully, the sergeant looked over the edge of the trench. The Russian fire had almost completely died out, with only a little combat noise still sounding in the distance. Ivan had challenged Droste’s Iltis perimeter, everywhere, for a full hour.
Tillmann was lying only 20 meters from the salvation the trench offered. He roared and gasped for air as he held his abdomen and wound like a doomed man hanging from the gallows. And Tillmann was a doomed man, because belly shots were rarely recovered from.
"Give him his coup de grâce already!" Brinkmann pleaded aloud. The Russians who hid somewhere in the darkness remained silent. There was also nothing more to be heard from the tank. Brinkmann felt the pistol in his hand. He himself could never shoot a comrade ... a friend.
Brinkmann let himself sink back into the trench and pressed his helmet into the earth wall behind him. Cool lumps of damp sand and topsoil rolled into his sweaty collar, giving him a pleasant feeling in his back for a moment. But Tillmann's screams tore at his spirit.
"Ha-Jo!" the private first class cried all of a sudden for Brinkmann. "Ha-Jo! Emil! Please ... please." He coughed and gargled and begged for help. He screamed for his comrades, then for his mother and father. He screamed as only someone with a piece of metal digging through his intestines could scream.
"We won't leave Remme behind," Brinkmann clarified. Walther nodded decisively and grabbed his rifle.
"Then come on!" The two soldiers jumped out of the trench and stormed towards the screaming Tillmann. Brinkmann felt his pulse hammer its way up his throat, how the throbbing beat louder and louder in his ears and finally louder than all the sounds of his vicinity. His field of vision narrowed to a tunnel. Suddenly Tillmann appeared in front of him as a dark grey mass that lay struggling on the black ground. Immediately the sergeant holstered his pistol and crouched down next to the wounded man. Walther also stopped, lifted his rifle, and checked the area around them. He couldn't detect any enemy movement, but in the darkness the Russians could have been 30 meters away and Walther wouldn't have seen them.
"Ha-Jo!" Tillmann groaned at the sight of his sergeant. Joy and fear sounded in his voice at the same time. Tears had flooded his face. The sergeant grabbed the hands of the grenadier, hands that were freezing cold.
"Remme, boy," he whispered.
"Ha-Jo," Tillmann whimpered.
"We'll take you back, then you'll see a doctor."
Tillmann just nodded and twitched, but the sergeant had already grabbed his body and lifted it over his shoulders, groaning.
"Fucking mess," Walther muttered.
Suddenly shots slammed into them from the edge of the forest. Walther was hit immediately and collapsed in an exclamation of pain. Brinkmann felt the bullets penetrate Tillmann's body. Suddenly the human on his shoulder fell silent and went slack. A blink of an eye later, he sensed a biting pain in his loins that robbed him of all strength. Brinkmann collapsed under Tillmann's body. He felt it get all warm around his abdomen. He tried to lift his legs, but they didn't move. He was trapped under his dead comrade. Brinkmann heard Walther's soft lament before Russian yelling drowned everything out. Men approached out of the darkness, and the engine of the T-34 came back to life. It howled and roared before setting the squeaky crawler tracks in motion.
*
The majority of the regiment bypassed the village of Nikolskoye on the left, where the combat formation's pioneers would soon begin to build a floating bridge across the river. This way the Germans could cross the water under cover of night and could then immediately fall on the Russian flank. 12th Company, however, had received orders to enter the village directly and to secure it. Von Burgsdorff had already met Captain Droste, and a sitrep was announced via radio com: The enemy had reached the main road on the outskirts of Nikolskoye, and had clawed its way through the German defense perimeters into the settlement. In many other places, by nightfall the Ivans had occupied individual buildings and pushed the Germans back into the interior of Nikolskoye. Just moments ago a German gun on the main road had foiled a Russian attack and destroyed a T-34. But now there were only two shells left for the cannon. It wouldn't be able to repel another attack. Therefore von Burgsdorff decided to deploy 12th Company on the main road to seize it to the end of the village. From there, the panzers could also quickly be dispatched to any point in the town as a quick reaction force.
In a long column, the German tanks rolled through the night and crossed the narrow bridge over the Toplinka River into Nikolskoye. The buildings to the right and left of the street disappeared into the gloom. Engelmann didn't like it at all, having to drive through urban areas in the deepest night. A fast-acting and clever tank killer team could be a real danger to the German panzers here.
"This is Wels." That was the codename of Captain Stollwerk. "To the right of the B 12-19, there is a large B 24-12, where the company will assemble and wait in readiness for deployment," the captain’s voice cracked from the speakers of Engelmann's headset. The lieutenant had had Nitz switch him to company frequency. Stollwerk obscured site designators and other important terms by the use of codes from the radio notebook, which was changed regularly.
Engelmann climbed back into the turret and looked at Nitz, who had been listening, with expectant eyes. A slight twitch around the sergeant’s mouth told the lieutenant that he had already deciphered the codes.
"B 12-19 denotes a church, B 24-12 the cemetery," Nitz explained.
"Thank you, Ebbe."
"Bär follows me down the B 02-01 to the front of our comrade's positions, called Biber perimeter. I'm assessing
the situation, radio silence until then."
"Main Street," Nitz commented, without looking into the notebook. Engelmann nodded with clenched teeth. It worked for him. In front of Franzi II, the first panzers passed the church and turned right just beyond it. Suddenly, Russian artillery shells whistled over 12th Company. They went down on the other side of the Toplinka River at the edge of Nikolskoye, and the dull detonations reverberated for a long time. Engelmann keyed his throat microphone and began to speak: "Wels! Anna here. Request permission to follow you in Bär's place."
Münster looked up and moaned.
"You're not satisfied until the Ivans shoot up every single tin can our asses ever sat in."
"Shut up, Hans!" Engelmann demanded. Nitz, too, gave Münster a bitter look, while Ludwig and Jahnke remained silent. Shaking his head, Münster turned to his levers.
"Permission granted," Captain Stollwerk's voice was heard over the airwaves. "I'll take B 02-01 with Anna in order to reach Biber."
One by one the other commanders confirmed as it crackled in the speakers. Engelmann pressed his back against the uncomfortable commander's seat. He rubbed his eyes, as if that would dispel his tiredness. Finally he looked up, pulled his tanker’s cap off, and turned his attention to Münster.
"Listen, gearbox clown," he snarled at his driver.
"Just leave me alone," Münster responded and clutched so that Franzi II lost speed. On the road, the panzers of the company temporarily dammed up as one after the other turned into the cemetery. The tank treads leveled God’s acre with mindless violence.
"If you want to get your EK 1, find another driver. I'm still young, I don't want to die in this shithole."
The lieutenant grimaced. For saying that, he could make life really difficult for the sergeant, but Engelmann trusted that an intelligent conversation could dispel any tension better than draconian punishments.
"Listen to me," he said to Münster. "If you think I'm a medal-grubber, you really don't know your commander well, I can tell you that. I just want to take the reins myself rather than be demoted to a recipient of orders. That's why I want to be at the point of the spear, want to come up with my own impression of the whole situation, want to make my own decisions."
"Everyone here is a recipient of orders, Sepp! God, even von Manstein is merely a recipient of orders," Münster muttered.
"Lord in heaven! Be glad that you have the lieutenant as commander," Nitz suddenly intervened in the conflict. "We should all be happy. We could do a lot worse!"
"Thank you." Engelmann nodded to his radio operator, then he made a long face: "... if that's a compliment."
Nitz grinned. Münster, on the other hand, mumbled something else, but nobody understood him. Maybe it was better that way.
Franzi II, and Stollwerk’s Panzer IV whose turret and hull looked like a lunar landscape due to the dozens of hits it had taken, rolled gently down the main street. In front of them, isolated gunfire flared up, otherwise it was relatively quiet. Russian artillery continued to slam into the northern outskirt of the village, but there were hardly any German forces there. Von Burgsdorff had already left Nikolskoye to oversee the regiment's flanking maneuver. 12th Company was to ward off the assault forces of the Russians as long as possible, but nobody knew exactly when the counter-attack of the regiment could be expected. Von Burgsdorff had failed to consult sufficiently with the pioneers, and could therefore not say with certainty how long the construction of the floating bridge would take. But now radio silence was in place for both the 12th and the regiment, so the Germans had to laager in the village and wait for the surprise.
Creaking, Stollwerk’s panzer came to a standstill alongside a Ratsch Bumm with German crew. Engelmann, who protruded from his commander's hatch and perceived the surroundings in the shimmer of the camouflage light as dull surfaces in different shades of grey, instantly recognized the large Soviet gun with its extra-long barrel. The Wehrmacht gave it the designation 7.6-cm-Feldkanone 269(r). The r in brackets hinted at its origin as a Russian weapon.
Stollwerk clambered out of his cupola, then jumped down from the tank hull onto the paved road. Immediately he scurried over to the AT-gun, which apparently had a crew of only two men. Engelmann also got out of his tank and sprinted towards the gun, where he and the others were protected by the big metal shield of the Ratsch Bumm. In the twilight of the moon and the camouflage lights, Engelmann thought he could identify the gun crew as a sergeant and a private.
"Give me a sitrep," Stollwerk demanded. The one Engelmann thought he had identified as a sergeant started babbling immediately, with a pronounced Upper Silesian accent: "The road down at the entrance to the village – about at the Iltis perimeter's line – there’s a immobilized T-34. Place is teeming with Russians."
"Immobilized?" Stollwerk asked. "Did you zap it?"
"No. We suspect transmission damage. That tank failed without taking fire," explained the gunner. The two officers nodded, then Stollwerk took a quick look over the shield. Apart from darkness and the outlines of the buildings as well as a shot-up Russian tank, its barrel pointing like the bony paw of death in the direction of the German positions, nothing could be seen out there.
"Distance," the captain demanded to know.
"About 350."
The two officers displayed surprise.
"Eureka!" Stollwerk exclaimed. "Only 350?"
"Yes, sir." The sergeant showed no great response, and his voice remained unaffected by the news.
"Will be fun when the sun rises," he remarked dryly.
"Do the Russians know there's an AT-gun here?" Engelmann asked.
"Think so. They just don't know exactly where."
The lieutenant let his gaze wander over the scenery with a queasy feeling. The Ratsch Bumm was not particularly hidden; on the contrary – it lay in wait in the middle of the street, scantily barricaded with sandbags and junk.
"The Russians don't dare to come up with tanks anymore, Herr Hauptmann," the sergeant continued. "They've tried infantry twice, but we've got a whole platoon and several machine guns in the buildings."
"Aha," Stollwerk said and crossed his arms.
"How many enemy forces are ahead of us?" Engelmann intervened once again.
"We sent out a reconnaissance party in the evening that scouted about 25 medium battle tanks and four infantry companies."
Engelmann shook his head in disbelief. 25 tanks? Four companies? And on our side, just a cannon and one platoon? Now the lieutenant realized why the gunner had not yet illuminated the forefield to destroy the tank. One would be wise to leave the Russians in the dark about how many forces the German side really had in defense. Engelmann nodded as he followed his train of thought ... but now there were German tanks here. Now it could be illuminated!
Engelmann and Stollwerk looked at each other, and the captain seemed to suspect that his officer comrade was up to something.
"Idea, Josef?"
"Idea, Arno!"
*
Tank driver Vassili Timofej looked through the open hatch of his T-34 into the darkness. The Mladschi Serschant – a sergeant – pushed his black tanker cap into place and stretched a little.
His seat was incredibly uncomfortable. The Russian tank driver with the royal blue eyes and the dimpled mouth sucked on his lower lip and placed his head at an angle. He couldn't see what was happening, but he could hear his comrades working despite the artillery fire coming down to the north of the village. Ilyich, the eight ball, had gotten another defective tank – it had suffered a gearbox breakdown right at the village entrance.
Timofej clearly heard his comrades cursing about the defective tank. Tools clashed against each other; the metallic clanking fought through the noise of the gun thunder. Of course this was a dangerous undertaking, because nobody knew where the fascists really were now, after that outpost of them had been neutralized. Only three men had been found there. Their corpses were still where the sergeant from that rifle company had mercifully shot them. As i
f the Germans were asleep on the meadow, their resting bodies were emerging from the ground as dark outlines. Meanwhile, Soviet artillery hammered ceaselessly at the village. If all went well, they'd soften the enemy really good.
Timofej impatiently let his fingers dance over the levers of the steering brake. He hoped they would soon advance into that village. The German outpost had already proved that the fascists here in Nikolskoye were not as strong as they had thought. Timofej also had 70 other battle tanks and assault guns behind him, but the brigade commander had stopped the attack after poor Ilyich had suffered his gearbox failure.
Timofej could only shake his head at such an order. It was true that Ilyich commanded one of only three of the improved T-34s the brigade had received. The so-called T-34/85 was a prototype given to the brigade for front testing purposes. It mounted a more effective cannon, offered space for a fifth crew member, and had a radio on board as standard. Externally, the tank was noticeable above all for its larger turret. But Timofej believed they could do without this one improved tank when taking Nikolskoye. The brigade commander, however, was terribly afraid of German Tiger panzers, and it had increasingly influenced his decisions since the beginning of the year. Timofej shook his head again. If only the Tigers would come! Timofey was not afraid. Even a normal T-34 could be dangerous for this steel monster of the fascists. All you had to do was be brave and get close.
Suddenly a light-ball rose in front of Ilyich's tank, then became a bright star in the sky and slowly floated over the Russian troops. The steel of Ilyich's T-34 sparkled in the glare, and Timofey and his comrades were lit up like it was daylight.