‘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!
* * * *
CHAPTER 26
July 12
0840 hours
one kilometer northwest of Oktyabrski
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.
‘Radio. Stay tight. Keep alert.’
‘ Ja.’ Luis listened in while the radioman repeated his command to the company.
‘Balthasar.’
‘ Fertig.’ Ready.
Two hundred meters ahead, the grainfields wrinkled into a lip, disguising a gradual downward slant. Luis stood in his Tiger’s cupola and surveyed the coming terrain. An hour ago a regiment of fifteen hundred grenadiers had begun their assault over this rise and into the valley below.
Right away, they’d encountered strong Soviet infantry defending the ridgeline. After thirty minutes of fierce exchange, the Reds were shoved back. Luis’s panzer regiment was called in to support the grenadiers’
advance through the basin. If this valley could be taken, it would open a western attack lane directly to Prokhorovka, only two kilometers away.
Leibstandarte threw all its tanks into this thrust.
The sounds of small-arms fire sprouted from the hidden valley. Luis and the panzer regiment came carefully up to the ridgeline, sixty-seven cannons pointing and trigger ready. The strength of the Russian defenders beyond the slope was unknown. Every tank slowed, every driver stole up to the rim to peer into the bowl.
The first Mark IVs reached the ridge, climbed, then slipped over the edge. Luis watched them cleave paths into shrubs and twisty branches, then sink slowly away down the slope. The first tanks of his own platoon passed the ledge, rose as though coasting over the swell of a wave, then tilted downward. His Tiger was next. The whine of his cannon elevating caught his attention, he watched the long barrel lift. Balthasar was clever; the gunner was not going to head down a slope with his weapon depressed. He wanted the gun up where he could defend the rest of the ridgeline above their heads.