He keyed his mike. “All Rover units, this is Rover One. Push for the town! No stopping!”
Tank cannon cracked in the distance. C Company’s Leopards were in action — pouring 105mm shells toward the enemy as the range wound down. Moments later, he heard a steady chattering roar. The scout cars had opened up with their 20mm rapid-fire cannon.
Smoke boiled up through the haze. His men were getting hits! One of the lead BRDMs vanished in a ball of flame. Another lay on its side, on fire. Riddled by 20mm rounds, a BMP ground to a halt with smoke pouring from its engine compartment. Burning men tumbled out the back and crumpled to the ground. A T-72 sat off to one side of the road with its turret blown off.
But most of the Poles were still charging toward Kawice, swerving around the wrecked and damaged vehicles in their path.
Lauer swore fiercely. Those bastards across the river were too brave.
Something flashed past the Leopard’s turret, trailing a shock wave of displaced air that slapped him in the face and tore at his black beret and headset. Startled, he ducked and then swore again. The Polish T-72s were firing back on the move. Luckily, their Soviet-made 125mm guns weren’t accurate beyond fifteen hundred meters!
He’d been so busy commanding his battalion that he’d almost forgotten he was also inside a fighting vehicle.
The German major dropped back into his seat and grabbed the gun override, traversing the massive turret to the right. He pressed his face against the sight extension, searching for the enemy tank that had fired at him. There! A low-slung, turreted shape came into view, bucketing up and down as it crossed a dirt lane and ditch separating one wheat field from another.
“Gunner! Tank at two o’clock!”
“Identified!” His gunner, seated below and in front of him, had the T-72 in sight. “Sabot!”
“Up!” The Leopard’s loader confirmed they had a tank-killing, discarding sabot round in the main gun, and that he was out of the way.
“Fire!”
The gun fired and recoiled, rocking the tank to the left. A tungsten-steel dart, surrounded by a metal shoe, or sabot, left the tank gun barrel. As it cleared the muzzle, the sabot fell away, transferring the punch of a large-bore round into a much smaller, superdense projectile.
A cloud of smoke and flame from the muzzle blast obscured their vision for a brief instant and then vanished — left behind by the Leopard’s forward motion.
The T-72 was still rolling. They’d missed!
Lauer grimaced. “Gunner! Reengage!”
Smoke and dust billowed up in front of the Polish tank as it fired again and missed a second time.
“Up!”
“Fire!”
Another flash and bang and another cloud of smoke and dust. But this time, Lauer’s sight revealed the enemy tank swerving off to one side, cloaked in flame as its ammunition and fuel detonated. He kicked the gunner’s shoulder lightly. “Good shooting, Sergeant. Engage other targets at will.”
The major popped his head and shoulders back through the open hatch. He’d lost the bigger picture while concentrating on the necessary task of killing that one T-72. Now he had to regain his grasp of the tactical situation, and fast.
His own Leopard had almost reached Kawice — racing toward the little cluster of wood-frame houses, walled vegetable gardens, and narrow, unpaved streets. His lead companies were already there. He could see German armored vehicles and scout cars bunching up as they formed in column for a final dash toward the bridge.
Lauer mentally urged them on. Speed was crucial. They had to get across the river and into the other half of the village before the Poles could deploy.
A flash and puff of white smoke from a house across the water caught his eye. He spun around and saw a bright flame arcing toward them — only a meter or so off the ground. “Missile! Evade!”
He stabbed frantically for the button that would fire his tank’s protective smoke grenade launchers and missed as the Leopard swerved abruptly to the right, throwing him forward hard against the hatch coaming. In the next second, the tank’s main gun fired, and this time the recoil threw him backward.
The enemy antitank missile screamed past and slammed into the ground just a few meters away. It left a length of control wire draped over the command tank’s deck as concrete evidence of an attack that had come entirely too close for comfort. Lauer knew that only the combination of the wild evasive maneuver and a shell howling close by had spooked the Polish ATGM gunner, throwing his aim off in that last crucial second.
Other German tanks had seen the missile launch and now they opened fire, pumping HE rounds into the one-story wood house. It disintegrated, torn apart by a series of bright orange and red explosions. Pieces of burning timber tumbled lazily through the air before splashing into the river.
Dirt fountained skyward next to a Leopard on Lauer’s flank. Then it blew up, hit broadside by a second 125mm round from a T-72 that had been lurking between another pair of buildings across the Cicha Woda. The Polish tank reversed out of sight before anyone could return fire.
The voice of C Company’s commander came through his headphones, barely intelligible over the echoing roar of machine-gun and tank cannon fire. “Rover One, this is Rover Charlie One. Crossing the bridge now! I’ll…”
The transmission ceased suddenly. To his horror, Lauer saw thick black smoke climbing above Kawice’s rooftops.
“Rover One, Charlie One is hit and burning! The bridge is blocked! Repeat, the bridge is blocked!”
The major cursed. Despite the trail of burning and broken vehicles they’d left behind, too many enemy tanks and APCs had made it inside Kawice for Lauer and his men to simply bull right through them. With their antitank teams and infantry dispersed among the houses and gardens, the Poles could turn their half of the little village into a hornet’s nest.
The 7th Panzer’s recon battalion had lost its race.
Lauer scowled and lifted his mike. “Rover Delta, this is Rover One. Deploy your infantry to cover the bridge approaches.” D Company’s foot soldiers stood a better chance out of their lightly armored troop carriers. “All other Rover units, withdraw fifteen hundred meters west.”
Acknowledgments crackled in while he angrily reviewed his options. They were limited. Digging the Poles out of Kawice now would take the combined efforts of infantry, tanks, and heavy artillery. His battalion didn’t have enough infantry. The division’s artillery was still somewhere on the road behind them. And taking on those T-72s at point-blank range with his Leopard 1s was a good way to wind up with a wrecked unit.
He shook his head. No, he would have to let the 19th Panzergrenadier pass through to take the town.
While Bremer and his men fought it out, Lauer planned to scout south along the river, looking for a spot shallow enough for his snorkel-equipped tanks to ford. If that failed, they would have to wait for the division’s engineers to lay another pontoon bridge across the Cicha Woda.
The 7th Panzer Division’s “lightning-fast” advance against the Polish flank had been slowed to a slogging crawl.
Von Seelow lay prone on the lip of a small fold in the ground watching artillery pummel the Polish-held woods. Thirty-six 155mm howitzers were in action, dousing the treeline with high explosives.
The brigade’s TOC and other command vehicles were parked in the shadowed hollow behind him. The sun was a huge red ball low on the western horizon.
Colonel Georg Bremer came stomping up from von Seelow’s M577 and dropped flat beside him. He’d been talking with both the division and corps headquarters over the TOC’s radio. “Madness! They’ve all gone crazy back there, Willi! Now that there’s no hope of pocketing the Poles here, they’ve changed their minds again. Now we’re supposed to push them out of Wroclaw by direct assault. The higher-ups claim that will end the war!”