David Robbins - Last Citadel

Sasha burrowed up from his escape hatch between the treads. Behind, Pasha tumbled in the commander’s hatch, cursing the planes. Valentin, his other child, did not follow. He’s probably getting one last round of inspiration from the commissars, Dimitri decided. He ogled another line of streaking black Messerschmidts and was glad to be a throwback warrior, even riding a steel horse. This was his place; it was enough to know that these things in the sky and sea and one day the stars belonged to others. He was a Cossack plainsman and had lived all his days true to that.

The countermove arrived inside of a minute. Soviet Yak-9s and Lavochkin-5s swept in lower than the German fighters, not afraid of ground fire over their own troops, and climbed up into the Messerschmidts’ bellies. Like twists of smoke from two different fires they twined and rose off the ground, twirling around each other in a cyclone of wings, chattering machine-guns, and yawping cannons. Dimitri watched them rise, taking their swiping engine noises with them into a backdrop of din and plummeting pieces of themselves he figured would last all day. He scraped another film of sweat off his brow.

For the next hour he told Sasha what he saw in the sky. The boy sat with his chin to his thin chest. Pasha stood in Valentin’s commander’s hatch and watched the action high above for himself, unplugged from the intracom. Pasha did everything now with a stupid and sober eagerness, he’d become a hunting dog. Dimitri talked to Sasha because it kept the two of them from growing frightened. This morning they hadn’t refilled their resolve from the well of the commissar’s entreaties for courage. They’d filled themselves with vodka instead and were left now with only what they’d started their day with, each other and the remnants of the drink.

Stukas blared their banshee sirens in dives over the villages, copses, and orchards where much of the Soviet armor was lagered. Dimitri didn’t have to count the planes to know there were more than a hundred. This was a major commitment of air power to Prokhorovka, a bad, bad sign of how badly the Germans wanted it today.

‘The Stukas look like buzzards. Big slow buzzards. The trees are burning around Storozhevoe. And some of the wheat fields along the river are on fire.’

Sasha nodded once in a while, or his head lolled, Dimitri could not be certain. Either way, Dimitri kept up his narrative for the both of them. Behind his head, Pasha’s boots stamped whenever a German or Red plane plummeted out of the air battle. Waves of German bombers swept out of the western horizon, matched soon by a greater number of Soviet bombers from the east. Dimitri told this to Sasha. The boy rubbed his closed eyes.

The twin flying armadas rained explosions and shards of themselves across the Prokhorovka corridor on both land armies. The planes scored the morning sky with fireballs that looked small from so far below but must have been fearsome and sudden at their altitude. On the ground, flames and haze from their bombardments began to obscure the sunlight that was already dimming to encroaching clouds. Dimitri looked down from the fury overhead to the sunflower field, two kilometers from where he sat. The giant yellow swath scared him. He did not know what he would find this day in those tall, searching flowers. He did not know his place in there.

At 0815 hours, Soviet artillery opened up. For fifteen minutes thousands of field guns pounded pre-selected positions where enemy armor was believed to be gathered. Dimitri knew the preparation barrage would have only a limited effect on the Germans; likewise the fleet of planes high above, bombarding selected areas. This battle in the Prokhorovka corridor was not a set piece, not a chessboard collision, it had become a living, flexing clash between mobile forces. These were cavalries on the move against each other. They would not be fought and defeated from the air, only by foes on the same level, tank to tank. Dimitri started his engine. The General cranked quickly and sounded eager this morning, a tad jealous to have been left to sleep through so much clamor of guns and bombs until now. He checked his gauges, everything ran a little elevated. Sasha lifted his head to the revving motor. The look on his face held the same momentum as the General’s excited humming, Let’s go.

The artillery fusillade lasted fifteen minutes. The last voice was not the deep boom of cannons but screeching Katyusha rockets, sheets of them flashing overhead and screaming, scythes of fire ripping the air. In seconds they were gone. The last of the explosions rumbled out of the haze that obscured the western fields and began to dim the sunflowers.

Dimitri turned to see Valentin’s legs drop through the hatch. The boy arrived cat-nimble and coiled, looking ready to spring right back out the hole over his head. There was no fear in him, no hesitation, he was as impatient as the General to light out into the fight and the unblemished sunflower field. He nodded to his father. He clearly meant the gaze to mean so much; Be strong, Papa. Believe, Papa. Be your best today, Papa.

Outside Dimitri’s open hatch, the 32nd Tank Brigade surged forward. Engines roared, fumes spat, treads spun, but this was different, Dimitri knew in a flash. This wasn’t a move to counter the Germans coming for Prokhorovka, this was not another reaction in defense of the road or the rail or the corridor.

This was a Russian attack.

He shifted the General into gear to join the speeding sweep of machinery into the fields. The tank rattled in his hands. Over the intracom, Valya’s voice rose. The lieutenant shouted to his crew the signal phrase he and the other tank commanders must have been given from their leaders, to set loose their armor and the day’s fate.

‘ Stal ,’ the boy shouted, with one boot tapping the syllable into Dimitri’s neck.

‘Stal! Stal!’

Steel! Steel! Steel!

Sixty-seven tanks of the panzer regiment crept forward, smashing aside skinny scrub trees, branding their treads into the grassy plain. From his cupola, Luis eyed the sixteen tanks of his company, moving in the heart of the assault. He intended to keep his tanks tightly formed, not only to concentrate his firepower but to display his command. Today, everything would be watched and recalled. The four platoons of his company held their wedges well, they did not fray even dodging the smoking craters from the Soviet bombardment. The tank drivers didn’t mind plowing over every Russian thing in their way.

All the tanks of Leibstandarte were massed and surging toward Prokhorovka in an armored thrust three kilometers wide. Totenkopf and Das Reich , in their sectors north and south, were doing the same right now, all of them plunging at Prokhorovka in one concerted, lethal strike. The metallic clatter of so much rolling armor thrilled Luis. He stared down the long barrel of his cannon, watching the steppe slip toward him, then beneath and behind him. The tanks on all sides were devouring land without resistance, knocking down grain stalks, gaining momentum and daring. Luis felt none of his usual hunger right now, his gut seemed satisfied by the powerful SS pack on every side of him. He took a moment to believe in the healing power of conquest, that he might never be hungry again if he could just gobble enough of Russia today. He might sit in Spain this year and chew on these days, wash them down with wine under a warm mist from the fountains.

He thought of the Americans in Sicily this morning. Were they moving faster than he was? He saw Italian fountains, with Americans toasting themselves in the warm spray.