Hardegen grinned uncomfortably at his gunner.
“Well, Giuseppe, you could say that. The old man has his own problems… leastways, so it seems. Apart from a few bits of extra change, we’re on our own.”
‘Bismarck’, Hardegen’s M4A3E8 Sherman, accelerated smoothly as the force moved into the attack.
Soviet artillery was light and ineffective and, as was the case with Strassfeld, little or no resistance was offered on the run in.
All save whatever it was that fired at the lead Sherman, missing by, as Hardegen’s driver quaintly put it, ‘a gnat’s cock’, before burrowing into a snow drift and exploding against a tree trunk.
Hardegen, having ordered his tank to move towards cover, searched hard and found what he was looking for.
“Gunner, target at ten o’clock, four hundred and fifty. Load HVAP. C’mon DeMarco, move it.”
The turret swung past the position and Hardegen was about to override before the gunner corrected.
The words almost blended together.
“On!”
“Fire!”
Hardegen watched through his sight as the 76mm shell struck the ISU-152 on the right-hand side of the barrel, appreciating, almost in slow-motion, the impressive display of white hot sparks as the HVAP deflected and moved on into the housing, where it burrowed through the armor and struck the trunnion of the huge weapon as the 152mm was starting into recoil, its own shell flying harmlessly over the top of Hardegen’s vehicle.
The displaced gun wrought havoc inside the Soviet SP, taking it out of the fight.
In the absence of any orders from his commander, the ISU driver made a judgement call and quit the field at the highest possible speed.
“All Mohawk elements, Mohawk Six, orient left and manoeuvre towards that high ground.”
In so doing, he took a calculated risk by exposing his right flank to Strassfeld but, based on Moreno’s report, he felt it was a risk worth taking, especially as part of the other force was moving around to the east of Strassfeld.
“Dragonfly, Mohawk-six, over.”
“Mohawk-six, Dragonfly, over.”
“Dragonfly, put some arty on the height ahead, then advance north in stages,” he consulted his map as the Sherman started to rock from side to side as it pushed forward over uneven ground, “Up to five hundred yards. Make sure you steer clear of the junction on the K3… err… Vernicher Strasse, clear? Over.”
“Mohawk-six, Dragonfly, Clear, Out.”
The 191st Artillery again showed what it could do under the guidance of a competent observer and, within two minutes, the position around where the ISU had fired from was carpeted with HE rounds.
Hardegen drove his force forward, urging his commanders to push their drivers, the command cascading down, as the commanders ordered their drivers to get everything possible out of their tanks.
The lead Sherman disappeared in smoke, its right track paying out, eventually flopping uselessly off the rear bogies, the left track driving the tank in an arc before the vehicle came to a halt, facing precisely north-east.
Inside the Sherman, the driver was screaming in agony, the shock wave from the anti-tank mine having shattered both his ankles.
The hull gunner was unconscious, his wounds more severe, his right side damaged by the force of the explosion, his thigh already expanding as the internal blood loss mounted.
Hardegen went for his radio, ready to cater for any new threat, but chose to stay silent for the moment, leaving that situation to one of his officers whilst he took in the bigger picture, and listened to the frantic reports from his other force, east of Strassfeld.
Moreno had already had the hard experience of seeing his best friend die, and in a way outside that considered ‘acceptable’ to the combat soldier.
Now, hell was being visited upon him, and he wrenched the earphones off his head, refusing to listen to the screams of dying men any longer.
In any case, they had now stopped, them and the radio beyond repair as the flames consumed everything in the stricken tank.
He cast a baleful eye at the Sherman ahead and to the right, the fire rising in a straight line from the open hatches, wherein five men, one of them his senior NCO and rock since day one, were being incinerated in their knocked out tank.
Another Soviet shell crossed the no man’s land, seeking to inflict more death.
The sound of it striking metal was intense, and the deep clang rang across the snow covered ground.
The target, another Easy Eight, shrugged off the shell and it careened skywards, disappearing from sight somewhere behind Moreno’s field of vision.
Two halftracks darted right, keen to be out of the field of fire of whatever it was, heading for some hedgerows.
The lead vehicle hardly lost any speed as a solid shot punched through the rear compartment, easily penetrating the metal on both sides, and hardly noticing the two armored infantrymen that it dissected on its travel.
The driver lost control on an icy match of road and the M3 fishtailed before coming to rest, nose down in a ditch adjacent to the road.
Half the remaining crew had enough wits to throw themselves out of the vehicle.
Starshina Kon ensured that the next round was an HE round, and it was right on target, destroying the halftrack and its remaining contents.
The T-54 shifted position again, quickly dropping back and left into a wooden redoubt, complete with an earth and board roof.
The delay in moving brought Moreno’s tanks closer.
“There, that small mound dead ahead. Something just moved!”
There was no time to tear the hull gunner a new asshole for his procedure, but Moreno filed it for when they got out of the battle.
‘If we get outta the goddamned fucking battle!’
The gunner was clearly losing it, his voice reflecting his fright.”
“On-n.”
“Fire!”
The 76mm spat a shell at whatever it was in the small bunker, and was rewarded with the clues of a metal on metal strike.
“Lay it on the fucker again, Smitty!”
“Calm down! Calm… down! It didn’t penetrate! Find the tank that hit us.”
The ATPAU’s experimental T-54 had only just moved into the position when the shell had struck the front of the turret, sending sparks everywhere, and firing up into the earth and wood roof, sending the result of three hours work by some helpful infantrymen sky-high in less than a second.
“Target. On!”
“Fire!”
The T-54 bucked as it put a shell into the air. The movement hadn’t ceased before a squeal of delight rose from Kolesnikov’s mouth, the impressive end of another enemy tank marked by the turret, still tumbling through the air.
Moreno wilted as the tank immediately to his right was blotted out, the turret turning end over end as it flew through the air, before coming to rest on the edge of the small frozen lake. The hot metal melted much of the ice surrounding it and it sank slightly into the earth, coming to rest in an upright position, resembling a dug-in tank waiting in ambush.
The gunner had already put another shell into the position ahead, but without the same rewards offered by his last effort.
“Driver, jink, goddamnit it, the turret’s turning on us.”
He had only just realized what it was he was looking at, and now understood that their enemy was definitely a tank, and it had selected them for its undivided attention.
The Soviet 100mm shell struck the corner of his glacis and deflected away into the snow.
“Again, Smitty, again!”
“On!”
“Fire!”
The movement of the Sherman prevented a decent shot, and the shell went wildly wide.
The enemy tank also missed.