Bob Carruthers - Tiger Command!

Huddled on the back of Magda, the small group of grenadiers swayed precariously and grumbled ferociously as they clung on to any handhold they could find. Among them was SS-Schütze Fritz Müller, a slightly built youth from Hamburg. Müller had reason to curse the sleet which drove into his face, but, as always in these situations, most of his personal anger was reserved for Herr Bauer, the local Nazi Blockleiter who, unfortunately for Müller, had also been his Hitler Youth leader. It was Blockleiter Bauer who had cajoled Müller into joining the Waffen SS. SS-Schütze Müller was now a very bitter young man and had good reason to be. As he repeatedly wiped the freezing sleet from his eyes, Müller regretfully recalled the words of their last conversation in the Hamburg sunshine during May 1941.

“I still don’t understand why you haven’t signed up for the Waffen, SS young man. A tall, fit racial comrade like you shouldn’t be hanging around, waiting to be called up. You should join now! You’ll see the Mediterranean, maybe Afrika! Who knows? I have it on best authority that the Führer has decreed that the party should be represented by its own fighters in every theatre… there’s bound to be a Waffen SS division ordered to Afrika soon. You’d best enlist now… Rommel will have the British in the bag soon and you’ll be too late. Trust me, you won’t regret it. After all, you’re a miller and I’m a farmer◦– we depend on each other.”

So he had trusted him, the bastard, and he had signed up◦– and all he had achieved was the order of the frozen meat, then the miseries of the season of mud, and now winter seemed to have come back!

Müller consoled himself by making yet another resolution to kill Herr Blockleiter Bauer as soon as he got his first leave. He wasn’t sure how he would do the deed, but he intended it to be every bit as slow and painful as this shitty journey.

Müller glumly noted that, even in April, the melting snow still held sway, but the welcome sight of patches of green stony ground speckled the landscape as the fearsome Russian winter of 1941/42 slowly gave way to an unsettled spring.

The treacherous Russian weather was obviously the ally of the Russians and, in its own way, was every bit as dangerous as the Red Army which, as they had been briefed in the assembly area, was now pouring through the gaps in the line only five kilometres distant from the battalion workshops which serviced Hauptsturmführer von Schroif and his SS Panzerkompanie.

Up ahead, the columns of black oily smoke pointed the way to the front as surely as the best Zeiss compass. As they crawled slowly down the muddy rollbahn towards Rostov, the rumble and crash of explosions grew louder and formed a continuous wall of noise which soon drowned out even the noise of the tank. Ivan was obviously throwing everything he could at the thinly-held line of main resistance.

Reluctantly, von Schroif opened the commander’s hatch. A blast of freezing air hit him and, on the muddy roadside, he observed the first fleeing fugitives hurrying in the opposite direction, slipping and sliding through the mud and sleet of the rasputitsa. Many were wounded. Others appeared to be unharmed… physically at least. Von Schroif had some sympathy for them. Two hours ago, a deadly barrage had fallen with pinpoint accuracy on the main resistance line and, just when it seemed that things could get no worse, there had come the sound of the infamous Katyusha◦– Stalin’s Organ.

Screaming down like banshees from hell, they produced a nightmarish enclosed box of exploding fire. The avalanche of high-explosive iron rained down on a designated target area, destroying virtually everything inside the hellish cauldron marked by the barrage. Inside the barrage area, the continuous concussion of multiple detonations was enough to transform the strongest and most dedicated warrior into a shivering nervous wreck.

He noticed that many of the retreating fugitives had thrown away their weapons, which incensed him. His sympathy evaporated and he thought briefly about stopping to round up these haunted men, but immediately thought better of it. For now, these disoriented refugees were beyond salvation as a fighting force, but a few kilometres back, he had no doubt, lay old man Voss and a welcoming committee of military police. They would catch up the residue and turn them into a fighting force once more.

Slipping down inside the tank and carefully closing the hatch behind him, von Schroif began to take an ever closer interest in the terrain outside the tank. They were approaching a bend in the track◦– exactly the place where Ivan might lie in wait.

Driver Bobby Junge had become an expert in handling the involuntary mudslide which accompanied every attempt to turn a corner in this godforsaken country, but it was still a difficult task. As the narrow tracks of the Mark IV slipped and slid, attempting to gain some kind of purchase, up ahead came the unmistakable and most welcome sound of the 88 mm Flugabwehrkanone, known to the troops as the Acht-acht Flak gun. Somewhere up ahead the familiar bark of the Acht-acht told him there was still some resistance and, as long as a few strong points continued to hold, there was still a chance.

“Where’s the flak gun position, Junge?” barked von Schroif to his driver.

“No movement, same place as last week,” replied Bobby Junge, straining to make himself understood over the intercom as he wrestled with the controls of the sliding tank.

“OK, leave it to the others… Turn off here… Take up a position 400 metres at 3 o’clock to direction of fire,” ordered von Schroif.

Junge responded immediately and Magda began to jump and jolt as the tracks sought some form of purchase and the tank somehow ploughed its way through the mud. Now and again the odd wounded fugitive made his way back to where he hoped safety lay. Somewhere up ahead, inside that wall of smoke, there was still resistance and, as long as a few strong points continued to hold, there remained the possibility that the line could be held… but why a fire support mission?

“Voss… Damn Voss! Has he learned nothing?” von Schroif thought to himself.

Old man Voss was his long-standing, and highly trusted, superior officer. Von Schroif grudgingly admitted to himself that Voss was a wise old fox. He would not endanger his men or their precious machines recklessly. Even in his tired and angry state, von Schroif acknowledged this, but the man was just so obdurate! It was absolutely infuriating!

They had first met at the KAMA facility in 1927 and both had been there watching the first Great Exercise near Munster in 1936, attended by the Führer himself. It was plain for all to see from way back then; the key was mobility, mobility, mobility! Why in God’s name would anyone still ask for the few remaining Panzer IVs to provide fire support? That was now the job of the divisional artillery or the Sturmgeschütz abteilung! The lazy bastards… but no sooner had the thought entered his brain than von Schroif knew to let the anger pass.

In his mind, he surmised what Voss knew for certain. He pictured the tangled remains of the divisional artillery and the Sturmgeschütz battalion after the bombardment by a brigade of Stalin’s Organs. He let his feelings subside as the reality of the situation dawned. This was no place for too much anger, as too much anger got you killed. The intractable mud had forced the big guns to stay locked in the same place for too long and Ivan had done his homework. The early morning whirlwind bombardment had come with pinpoint accuracy. Obviously, Voss knew that there was no divisional artillery left and, as a result, his seven tanks had to do the job they were originally designed for.

Now completely resigned to his mission, Hans von Schroif fell into the familiar survival pattern of observe, notice and remember. Panje huts 200 metres to the east, forest 300 metres beyond that, open ground to the west, a river, a lone beech tree, a single track coming out of the trees and a small hillock beside it with heavy foliage, these were all mental markers that had to be remembered if they had to veer from the mission. And when did they not have to veer from the mission? Yes, maps had their place, comfortably behind the lines or spread out in old man Voss’ Gefechtsstandfahrzeug. He pictured Voss in his converted SPW at a safe distance and swore again! But now von Schroif was getting angry… “Concentrate! Concentrate!”