Bob Carruthers - Tiger Command!

He decided to use the man he had come to trust as his other eyes and ears◦– SS-Panzeroberschütze Karl Wendorff. Von Schroif considered him without a doubt the finest radio man in Army Group South. Wendorff functioned like a second brain for von Schroif, a brain which could identify the most important, and filter out the irrelevant, pieces of information from the storm of traffic that swirled around any operation.

“Any radio traffic, Wendorff?” demanded von Schroif.

“…Nothing, Hauptsturmführer.” Wendorff was hesitant. He was always hesitant. His modus operandi was silence, an almost interminable silence, punctuated only very occasionally with words, fine-tuned words, which concisely conveyed carefully selected information which he had decided his commander absolutely must be aware of.

Although they both occupied the seats on the right hand side of the tank, Wendorff was the exact opposite of the garrulous Wohl. Perhaps that was why they got on so well, but this time Wendorff was even more reserved than usual. He had heard something, something he had never heard before in any language or code, and he was still trying to compute what it meant. It had emanated from the German side. Amidst the babble of voice communication was this one keyed and apparently meaningless signal repeated over and over: PNKTI.EH.SFTVOCE… PNKTI.EH.SFTVOCE… PNKTI.EH.SFTVOCE.

Wendorff reflected on the strange message. There were the possible traces of words, like punkt, so could it be a friendly attack and a time? But voce? Italian for voice… there were Italians in this sector… Or was it possibly partisans operating behind the German lines and disguising their communications by using German? There was so much traffic that it was hard to provide an immediate answer, but he would try. For now though, there was no point in reporting to the commander, no point in passing confusion on. He would only do that when he had a definitive answer, or a working hypothesis. Karl Wendorff dealt in answers, not questions. Instead, he filtered out the signal for the time being and relayed the most important information.

Von Schroif sensed the slight hesitation in Wendorff’s voice. “You sure?” he barked over the intercom.

“Nothing to report, Hauptsturmführer,” the radio operator replied.

“Excellent,” said Otto Wohl, “now we can pack up and go home!”

This brought a smile to driver Bobby Junge’s face. From his position next to the main gun, Michael Knispel could not suppress a short laugh. What would they do without mad Otto!

“Silence, Wohl!” Hans von Schroif did not smile with them. He redoubled his gaze and picked up his binoculars. That old sixth sense had returned… nothing much up front though. Beyond the Acht-acht, there was no sign of life. There was not even the flup flup of friendly mortars firing in support of the hard-pressed grenadiers up ahead, just the smoke and thunder of Ivan’s massive artillery barrage. Suddenly, something caught his eye, movement in the forest. He hurried to focus… but it was just a frightened deer, rushing through the trees.

But what had flushed it from its hide? With a trained hunter’s eye, at the limits of his peripheral vision, he registered a slight movement off to the left of where the deer had sprung from, in the trees… but his train of thought was halted by an almighty bang and flash and he was thrown backwards and felt a searing pain across his temple and right arm.

Without even thinking, von Schroif knew what had happened. Despite the pain, he gave the hand signal to halt the column and yelled over the intercom. “Halt! Minen!”

Karl Wendorff immediately relayed the information by radio to the following panzers and the column skidded to a halt. Despite the pain, von Schroif immediately returned to scanning the landscape for movement. Scuttling out of the forest and scrambling over the brow of the hillock, he registered the shapes of two men taking up position. One staggered under the weight of what appeared to be a radio transmitter.

“Artillery spotters. Shit!” he muttered to himself.

No sooner had he recognised this new threat than, even with the ringing in his ears, he heard the unmistakable sound of tank engines starting up. They were obviously T-34s, but still some way off. He needed to make a decision, and quick. Load with armour-piercing and await the tanks? Or attempt to dislodge the spotters with some well-placed rounds of high-explosive? But first he needed to assess his own position.

“The right track, sir!” shouted the young grenadier who had been thrown from the front of the tank by the blast. Von Schroif noticed that the young man’s forearm was missing. Instinctively, von Schroif looked around for a source of first aid. His gaze fell upon a medical orderly too nervous to step into the mine field.

“Sani, over here!” shouted von Schroif above the noise of the engine.

Responding to the direct order, the medic at last crept towards the wounded man, but he did so very slowly, each step calculated and agonisingly deliberate.

“Hurry up, man, or he’ll bleed to death.” Then, using his left arm to support his own weight, von Schroif managed to clamber out of the tank and, scanning for the tell-tale signs of anti-personnel mines, he gingerly stepped down to inspect the damage.

“Damn!” he cursed on seeing the right-hand track hanging limply from the Magda’s front drive sprocket.

Fortunately, the cloying mud had absorbed much of the blast and the sprocket itself appeared undamaged, so they could still hope to continue. However, even with the ox-like strength of Michael Knispel to draw upon, fixing the track would probably take a few minutes which he was sure they didn’t have. Von Schroif surmised that the spotters controlled the Katyusha batteries which had destroyed the divisional artillery park. He knew that they would soon be under concentrated artillery fire from the fearsome power of Stalin’s Organs.

The obvious alternative was to evacuate the stricken panzer and clamber onto one of the other tanks in the unit and retreat, but this notion clashed resoundingly with every bone and fibre in von Schroif’s body. No, that was not an option; they would be driving into the zone which the Ivans had obviously earmarked for the target area. He desperately needed to buy time. While von Schroif continued to ponder his options, he was rudely interrupted by a rush of air and a loud zing as a bullet snapped past his head and ricocheted off the steel hull of the tank.

Despite his wound, the young grenadier was alive to the situation. He raised himself to his feet and, with his good arm, pointed towards the nearby hillock. “Over there, sir!”

They were the last words young Fritz Müller ever spoke. This time, there was no mistake. No sooner had he uttered the words when a second Russian bullet smashed into his temple and he sank lifeless to the muddy ground. For young Fritz Müller, there would be no reckoning with an over-enthusiastic Blockleiter back in Hamburg.

The Sani stopped in his tracks and gaped in shock at the stricken body. He realised a fraction too late that his immobile form made a perfect target. There was a distant crack and the medic sagged to the ground beside his erstwhile patient.

Seizing the opportunity, Hans von Schroif dived behind the tank and picked up his binoculars. Once more he felt an acute pain and he was forced to operate with his left hand as he homed in on the crest of the hillock. At first he could see nothing, but with his hunter’s eye he soon distinguished the long antennae of a radio set attempting to find the direction of the strongest signal.

“So, there must be an operator…” And, moving down… there they were… two men… “Looks like one has a sniper rifle…”

There was another danger too. He couldn’t see any trace of them, and he still couldn’t hear properly above the shrill whine from the explosion that reverberated in his eardrums, but the sound of T-34 engines revving up was unmistakable.