Peter Idone - Red Vengeance

“Target is now at six hundred and seventy five meters and closing,” Naumann said, as he lined the lead tank in the view field.

“Get ready,” Pieper said. The tanks had separated in an effort to flank the assault gun on either side. The KV1 fired another round. The glancing impact caused everyone’s nerves to heighten.

“Five hundred fifty meters…five hundred meters…target sighted, and gunner Ernst Naumann ready to fire!”

“Steady, Naumann, steady.”

Christ , Hofinger squealed to himself, give the order to fire, why don’t you? His legs shook involuntarily, and he did not know how much more he could take.

“Fire,” Pieper said, without a trace of emotion. The lead T-34 took the armor-piercing round at the seam where the hull and turret met. The tank started to skid out of control as the turret dislodged. While another shell was loaded, Kurowski traversed the vehicle. Naumann had the next tank in the sight brackets.

“Fire when ready,” Pieper said. Just as the gunner fired, the assault gun bucked wildly as a shell struck. The gun crew went sprawling; Pieper was dislodged off his seat, dropped from the cupola, and landed rump first on the deck. Hofinger recovered immediately and fed another round into the gun. A haze filled the fighting compartment as dust and smoke entered through the view ports. The fan mounted on the rear superstructure wall pinged as large particles struck the blades.

“It’s all right,” Kurowski shouted. “High-explosive round. Nothing penetrated.”

“Are you hurt?” Hofinger called out.

“Negative,” the driver croaked, although for a moment he thought he had taken a piece of flak to the groin. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. When the shell struck, he flinched and squeezed his legs together, which forced his testicles out of the scrotum. He raised himself partially out of the seat, which helped drop them back down to where they belonged. After checking on Pieper, who failed to get up, Naumann returned to the fire controls. The gun commander was stunned and in too much pain to continue in his role. The last shell Naumann had fired, just before the explosion, did strike the T-34. Smoke billowed from the engine plant, but it continued to advance slowly and fire. For the next few minutes, the vehicles dueled. The KV1 was out of armor-piercing shot and had to rely solely on the high-explosive rounds in its possession. There was a tremendous amount of fight left to the heavily armored tank, despite the abuse the Stug III poured on it. Carefully, Naumann took aim and fired and Hofinger, a shell always in hand, loaded immediately afterward. The Stug III traversed from one side to the other and fired, first at the T-34, then the KV1, and back again. Finally, the T-34 went up in flames and the KV1 was hammered with three more rounds before it became silent. Dark, oily plumes of smoke enveloped the hull. A hatch opened, and two crewmen leapt out. Hofinger was tempted to activate the machine gun but hesitated. Run back to your comrades , he thought, to your mothers for all I care, and tell them what sort of fools you are when you try to make trouble with us .

Naumann turned from the fire controls to check on the gun commander’s condition. Pieper smiled and pointed to the bulkhead of the fighting compartment. Naumann removed his headphones and listened. The drone of aircraft. He opened the loader’s hatch and looked into the harsh blue sky. Out of the west, he saw the familiar gull-winged silhouettes of nine JU87s. Stukas . Pieper, bruised and stiff from the fall, got up off the deck and struggled into the command cupola to have a look. “Not a moment too soon,” he muttered gratefully. Hofinger was on the radio instructing the signalman, Wilms, to have the balka raked with tracer fire from all available machine guns to indicate target direction. He then went to the stowage locker, grabbed a chemical smoke marker, and passed it along to Naumann, who broke it open and tossed it on the ground close to the vehicle. Orange smoke began to waft around the assault gun, so the onrushing dive-bombers could identify their position.

After circling the target area, pierced continually by red needles of tracer bullets from a half-dozen MG42s from the defensive line, the Stukas climbed up and banked around in a wide circle. The pilots aligned their aircraft above the ravine. One behind the other, at intervals, the planes descended at an incredibly steep angle, the air vent sirens on their undercarriages wailing. The first four each dropped a single SD1 aerial bomb. The fat, squat bomb canister, about the size of a bathtub, broke open at low altitude and released a squall of three hundred sixty 1-kg bomblets. What followed was an unending series of small explosions with terrific fragmentation. The remaining JU-87s followed up with incendiary bombs at key places within the ravine. The narrow sides helped to funnel white-hot flame that roiled down its length. The aircraft circled around again and strafed the area with cannon fire. After several passes, the dive- bombers turned back towards the west to refuel and rearm, then visit death upon some other seriously threatened sector of the front.

From their dugouts and rifle pits, the grenadiers gaped at the ravine that seethed with flame and black curtains of smoke. Secondary explosions occurred as the searing heat touched off the ordnance supply—mortar shells, grenades, the constant zip and ping of small arms ammunition. Geysers of flame shot into the sky as the last of the tanks cooked off.

Numb with exhaustion, Angst watched the aftermath of the airstrikes’ effectiveness with an overwhelming emptiness. No allusion to hell could suitably describe the scene. The ravine had indeed become a place on earth without hope, mercy, or reprieve. He could hear Schmidt, nearby, uttering the words from some psalm or other, over and over; the prayerful words spilled out of his mouth like drops of blood in water. It was over, Angst thought, with blunted elation; for a little while at least, it was over.

The men took advantage of the respite, lighting cigarettes and inhaling greedily as they tried to regain control over their shattered nerves. The flames within the ravine had diminished substantially, although the smoke was considerable, especially where the tanks had brewed up. Hiwis had arrived to help with the wounded and cart off the dead. The Russian casualties were prodigious, and many would stay where they had fallen. The prisoners were rounded up and placed under armed escort for transfer to the rear. They were only too eager to show their cooperation in the hope of being rewarded with a sip of water and something, anything to eat. The Soviet army marched, fought, and lived off the land. Supply companies for many units were unheard of. The Hiwis translated the same litany repeated by so many prisoners, the words might have been scripted—pressed into service and forced, at NKVD gunpoint, to fight. Yet, not all were willing to surrender. A high level of alert was still in effect throughout the company battle stations as some holdouts carried on the struggle to the bitter end. Small pockets of Red infantrymen had taken refuge in shell craters in and around the strong points and offered resistance. Snipers lay amid the scores of dead that littered the steppe. These were the most difficult to pinpoint and silence, as the corpses of their former comrades served the snipers well as excellent cover. Special fire teams of machine gunners and marksmen were organized among the grenadiers and given the task of dispatching these diehards in short order. Angst was grateful that neither he nor anyone from the squad had been snagged for this duty. He did see Schroeder and a few of the escort grenadiers within the platoon sector, mopping up. Their stamina was profound and awful to behold; it appeared to be fueled by rage. As soon as the whereabouts of a sniper or rifle team was located, Schroeder would unleash a firestorm of machine guns, grenades, and submachine guns. It was a brutal, dirty job, but necessary; Angst steered clear of them. He had his own task to accomplish, which was equally gruesome and depressing if he allowed himself to ponder over it. Minnesinger had him collect all the identity disc halves and pay books from the platoon’s casualties—Max Greiner, Paul Hermann, Karl-Heinz Lindenberger, and Lothar Steinmeier, one of the machine gunners from his own squad. He didn’t know Lothar at all and probably hadn’t uttered more than a dozen words to him in the entire month since he’d been with the company. But Angst liked him and didn’t know why, really. Strange. The same could be said for the second gunner, Knopfler. Angst could not even picture what he looked like. What he did know was Knopfler’s body had yet to be recovered, and the Hiwis had all but given up on digging through the ruined emplacement. Disappeared. Caught up and carried away by the storm of war.