"I think it's all right. I know something of the people, and the little scene you witnessed where he put my foot on his head made me his master. He's not a true Russian, he's from the steppes to the east. Just a poor bastard who's been caught up in this thing like the rest of us, but once a Tatar acknowledges someone as his master, he's faithful to the death."
Teacher still had a puzzled look on his face, but the tone which Langer used said he knew what he was talking about.
Taking Yuri by the arm, Carl guided him back to their tank, where the rest of the crew chipped in pieces of clothing to make him a semblance of a uniform. Before Teacher would let him change, he made him take a bath, a thing which seemed to wound the Tatar's dignity worse than being captured, but he complied after Gus took out his pliers. Murmuring 'Khrpikj djavol" he kept a wary eye on Gus and his pliers while he washed.
Langer and the others received their orders for the day's mission and returned to their vehicles; getting them positioned, they waited for the order to move out. Yuri fairly sparkled at being able to ride on the tank in the new uniform. When the tanks rumbled and clanged their way forward, he cried happily so all could hear, "Stalino kaputt. Urra Germanski."
CHAPTER SIX
The next eleven days were a nightmare of fire and death. Tanks stood at point-blank range firing into each other. The fastest crews survived. Antitank guns from both sides took a deadly toll. The German Nebelwerfers were answered by the rushing roar of the Stalin organ, the Katyushin multiple rocket launchers. The infantry fought with guns and grenades locked in the greatest struggle of history. By the thousands and tens of thousands they died. On the sector of the Gross Deutschland Division alone, three hundred German tanks were locked in a death grip with seven hundred Russian tanks like pit bulldogs; neither side would let go until dead. At night tanks would ram each other in the dark. There was no respite. Each knew the battle would foretell the future. Everything was staked on this card.
Yuri had become one with the crew, learning to leap inside the turret escape hatch with amazing speed when the shit started. His sharp eyes had more than once spotted an enemy tank and given them the advantage of the first shot. Eleven days and they had only advanced five kilometers past Verkhopenye. The first battle for the prize of Kursk was ready. Both sides licked their wounds and prepared for the morning of the twelfth.
From Stavka the Russian high command had come, one of those Hitler-type commands that all soldiers fear. General Vatutin showed the order to his military council member, Nikita Khrushchev. The Germans must not break through to Oboyan. This order, like that Hitler had given to Paulus of the 6th Army at Stalingrad, meant stand or die. So be it.
On a hill overlooking Prokhorovka, General Romistrov gave the order for Soviet counterattack. Eight hundred and fifty armored beasts revved their engines and moved out, mostly T-34s, with a sprinkling of self-propelled guns. They advanced, their crews confident. They rumbled across the flats leading to the Prokhorovka just in time to meet the new assault of Hausser's SS Panzer Corps, six hundred Panther Mark IVs and nearly a hundred of the massive Tigers with their high-velocity 88s. They met in the orchard and fields. Soon each tank was on its own, whirling and firing. The sound of exploding armor merged into the continuous roar of cannon fire. Overhead the two air forces met, each trying to give their side the advantage. Shtormoviks raced low over the groves spewing death from their machine guns and rockets while the Stukas of Captain Rudel dived screaming to smash at the vulnerable rears of the T-34s. Rudel's tank killers, armed with the new 3.7-cm antitank cannons, blew tank after tank to pieces, turrets bursting from their housings to land yards away. Crashing fighters and bombers added their rubble to the fields below as they whirled and dived, twisting in a danse macabre. The sky darkened from the smoke of burning tanks and the smoke hung low over the fields, masking whole sections of the front until the only way to tell who your opponent was, was to smash into him close enough to see the faces of the commanders in their turrets frantically trying to kill you.
Crews able to escape their burning vehicles hid in the ditches and trenches trying to bury themselves in the earth. Most became part of it when the treads of an assaulting or retreating tank mashed them into jellied pulp. As often as not the tank was one of their own.
Langer's battalion was assaulting from the western flank and penetrated the Soviets from the side. The Panthers did deadly work as they raced into the confused mass of milling steel monsters until they too were lost in the maelstrom and each fought separate and alone. Burning Tigers littered the ground. The range at which they fought was so short that even the lesser guns of the T-34s ripped them apart.
Yuri, standing at the side of the Panther, hurled grenades at Russian crews hiding in shell holes while the rapid high-speed chatter of the machine guns swept everything in front of them.
Langer's Panther slid out of control down a gully, only to be stopped by smashing into a T-34 with a broken tread. Neither one could turn its cannon to fire on the other. Yuri screamed like a banshee and leapt on the turret of the Russian, beating at the closed hatch with egg grenades, uselessly. Gus frantically worked the controls trying to back away far enough for Teacher to put a round into Ivan but just dug them in deeper. Langer yelled for Manny to hand him up a shell and taking it, jumped from his turret to that of the Russians. He placed the round under the overhang at the rear of the turret and taking a grenade from Yuri, he set it by the shell and pulled the pin, throwing himself and Yuri off to land behind the Russian. The grenade set off the 75 mm and blew the turret clear from the T-34. Amazingly only the commander was killed in the explosion. The rest of the crew sat at their positions stunned, blood pouring from nostrils and ears. Yuri screamed with joy and threw himself into the interior slashing throats with the long-bladed butcher knife Langer had given him the previous day. He killed them all and rose from the hull dripping blood and smiling.
Holding a Russian's severed head in each hand by the hair and showing them proudly to Langer, he said, "Yuri good Germanski, nyet?"
Langer rose, still somewhat stunned from the explosion, and told Yuri to throw them back. They didn't have time for souvenirs. Disappointed, Yuri spat in each of the faces and tossed the heads back into the hull with the bodies they had come from. The Russian medics could match them up later.
Gus finally got enough distance from the T-34 to be able to pull back and get enough of a run to break out of the ditch his own treads had created. Lurching, the Panther clambered out of the gully as linger and Yuri leaped back on and climbed inside in time to see a MIG smash into the earth and explode not seventy meters in front of them.
Overhead the killer—a Gustav ME-109— wheeled off after a twin-engine bomber. Time lost all meaning. Minutes became hours. Hours seemed like eternity. Everything was exaggerated—the sounds, colors, tastes. The smell of cordite and burning fuel oil clogged their nostrils. The battle was winding down. In an area of less than ten square miles, each side had lost over three hundred tanks. Romistrov ordered his survivors to withdraw, racing to the rear, the turrets still facing the Germans and firing. The survivors ran, leaving the field of slaughter to the Germans. As Langer followed in pursuit, his tank seemed to rise up into the air and then fall back. The crashing of his tank was covered by the explosion of the Russian shell that had blown the treads off. Smoke was coming from the engine. These damned Panthers had a tendency to burn all too easily. Gus swore like a madman as he bailed out of his escape hatch. The others joined to take cover in a shell hole, taking their personal weapons with them. They huddled together as the KV-I heavy tank sent another round into the Panther, the ammunition inside going off like fireworks. Tracers raced over the sky as the Panther burst open, burning. The Germans had won the day, but were now so bled out they could do little else than hold their positions. There were no replacements for the armor and men that had been lost. Captain Heidemann found them walking to the rear. They climbed aboard his tank to ride to their battalion HQ, what was left of it. With the dark, Langer put his crew into an abandoned bunker with orders to get some sleep. He would see what was going to happen next.