Bob Carruthers - Tiger Command!

With his free flowing Bavarian sense of fun and irrepressible outlook, Wohl could always be relied upon to lift the spirits with a relentless stream of droll observations. It helped morale, but von Schroif had to keep a lid on Wohl’s natural exuberance. In the wrong ears, Wohl’s remarks could easily be interpreted as defeatist. Now that events had turned sticky, the Gestapo were always keen to hear of any potential dissenters and the last thing von Schroif needed was to find himself without the services of Otto Wohl. Nor, for that matter, could he do without SS-Panzerschütze Bobby Junge, the wizard at the steering controls, who somehow managed to keep Magda going forward when virtually nothing else could get through the rollbahn of endless mud. Or, as Otto Wohl so aptly called it, the “scheissebahn.”

An unofficial truce appeared to have been declared for two months, with both sides seemingly immobile, stuck in the endless mire. The season of mud had exercised such a deadly grip that, until 02:30 hours this morning, even the Ivans had been forced to halt most of their activities, but now the cunning bastards had shattered the peace at the worst possible time, with an artillery bombardment of a scale and intensity which even von Schroif had not witnessed. The old military cliché was being reinforced once more, and von Schroif sensed that the months of boredom were about to be replaced by brief moments of sheer terror. Everything which had formerly seemed so unimportant now needed to be done in a tearing hurry, mud or no mud. Suddenly there was no time to get the Kompanie in order. He had been given thirty minutes notice of the mission and here he was with seven tanks… just seven!

Russia had indeed taken its toll alright and, as they rolled past another identical stretch of panje huts, von Schroif was forced to come to grips with the reality of his situation. No matter how hard the battalion and divisional workshop engineers worked, the reality was that the latest strength report stated there were five total write-offs awaiting replacement, four more of his panzers were under short-term repair at the battalion workshop and six were at the divisional workshop, awaiting engines.

Logically, Hans von Schroif accepted that there was nothing that could be done, but the tired, cold and hungry part of his brain railed against the fates which had brought him here. Stuck in the damn turret hatch of an ailing vehicle, he could clearly hear the ominous, fitful, spluttering sounds emanating from the engine compartment and the rasping noise of the gears which told him that his own machine was about to go the same way as eleven others.

He needed more force for this mission and his tired brain was not easily satiated. Defying all logic, it screamed back at him that surely some of the other panzers could have been made ready! Mentally, he inveighed against the gods once more. Irrationally, he convinced himself that this was obviously just another excuse from the rear-area echelons to hide their rank incompetence.

Following a further wave of internal cursing, von Schroif decided that he could at least get warm inside the tank. He had performed the move a thousand times, but on this occasion, perhaps because of his extreme tiredness, as he moved to close the hatch his knuckles somehow caught on the catch side of the open turret hatch lid and a sharp pain flooded over him, bringing him back to resentful wakefulness. This new indignity triggered a fresh mental tirade as the fast receding pain was conflated with dislike for the mission, with life in a tank, and the war in Russia.

“Fuck! Fuck them all, fucking bastards. It can’t be that fucking difficult. Fuck Voss and his stupid fucking death fucking mission. Fuck this fucking war!”

Hans von Schroif was right, there were clearly insufficient tanks for this mission, but then there were insufficient tanks for any mission these days.

He had attended the 04:00 hours emergency briefing and his heart sank when he learned that his Kampfgruppe would once again be thrown against Hill 15. Old man Voss had detailed the mission, which was to provide fire support and reinforcements for the few desperate grenadiers still fighting to stabilise the line, but surely Voss knew that the whole area was now the preserve of Ivan’s T-34s. Their wide tracks gave them a huge advantage over the battered Panzer IVs of Kampfgruppe von Schroif. They could still move if necessary and they carried a deadly high-velocity main gun. Countering the T-34 demanded mobility, and a better weapon than the short and stubby low-velocity gun of the Panzer IV.

As every East Front tank commander knew only too well, the Panzer Mark IV had originally been designed as an infantry support tank. They weren’t supposed to be tank killers. The standard tactical doctrine proclaimed that engaging enemy tanks was the job of the Panzer III. Von Schroif ruefully reflected for the thousandth time that, against the T-34, the main gun of the Panzer IV was all but useless. It was essentially a howitzer, to be used against entrenched infantry positions, and once again von Schroif cursed the lack of real tank-killing potential. What was needed was a high-velocity Kampfwagenkanone which could match the T-34.

The theorists back in Paderborn would no doubt pronounce that tank duels were intended to be the exclusive realm of the Panzer III, but that was the theory. In practice, this was impossible, as the Panzer IIIs in his Kompanie were now all out of action. In any event, the puny 50 mm weapon on the Panzer III was demonstrably no match for the strong, well-sloped cast armour of the T-34. And when it came to facing up to the monstrous KV-1? Well, it was time to pack up and go home.

It was a badly kept secret that the design boffins were already working on a long-barrelled, high-velocity 75 mm gun for the Panzer IV, a new and much more effective Kampfwagenkanone, which could still fit inside the smallish turret of the Panzer IV. The F2 was rumoured to be on its way, but it would take time to roll out the new machines and, out here, there was no time left any more.

His war now boiled down to a case of needs must, and von Schroif and his crew had become experts in the deadly game of cat and mouse which ensued every time he attempted to get as close as he dared to a T-34 in order to get in a side or rear shot from his unsuited main gun. The gunnery team of Wohl and Knispel did a great job and worked miracles time after time, but every time felt like it could be the last.

Mobility and manoeuvrability were the deciding issues and in deep mud, as Junge never tired of complaining, the narrow tracks of the Mark IV were as much use as a pair of ice skates. Various bodged attempts to add width had been conjured up by the battalion and divisional workshops. Even in their augmented incarnation, the tracks were no more than forty centimetres wide. Sure, they were better than the previous thirty centimetre tracks which did so little to spread the weight and made the vehicle cut into the mud, but, even with the improvised enhancements, the tracks were obviously still too narrow.

“They’re slightly narrower than the tyres on my dad’s Volkswagen and about as much fucking use!” was driver Bobby Junge’s, only slightly exaggerated, description of the track design.

From his cramped position in the bowels of the fighting compartment, Bobby Junge certainly had his work cut out keeping Magda’s forward momentum going at all, but Junge’s problems were of little concern to the grenadiers in their grubby off-white snow camouflage overalls perched on the engine deck. They knew they would have to do the dirty work soon, but for now there was still time, and they fell into the rhythm of the familiar journey and rearranged themselves so that they were bunched together on the engine deck of each of the tanks, where they gladly absorbed the heat emitted by the engines.