"Thanks."
Before September ended the crossings at Cherkassy, Kremenchug, Dnepropetrovsk and Kanev had been in use day and night. Manstein's forces poured through these fragile channels and deployed to right and left, taking up positions on what was now to be called "The Eastern Rampart."
The Russians ignored German propaganda claims that they would be destroyed at the banks of the Dnieper and continued to overrun German rear-guard units at will until on the twenty-first advance, elements of Vatutin's 3rd Guards Army reached the banks of the river and three days later had already established several small bridgeheads on the opposite banks where the German forces were spread too thin to effectively oppose them. During this phase the Germans had only one minor success. Vatutin ordered the 1st, 3rd and 5th Guards Parachute Brigades to be dropped on the German side of the Dnieper to reinforce the Soviet bridgeheads and to also block the advances of any German reinforcements. Their timing was a little off. The 1st and 3rd missed their DZ and the 10th Panzer Grenadier Division having moved in the night before was directly under them when the 5th Guards made their jump. The 5th Guards were promptly torn to pieces by the Grenadiers, many of them while still hanging in the sky from their parachutes. Less than two thousand of the nearly eight thousand men dropped survived the next few days to join up with partisan forces in the area. The rest were hunted down and killed or captured.
Langer returned from Heidemann's HQ with the word they were to load up and move out. They were to head north a few kilometers and lend support to a battalion of Jagers that faced a section of the river where it narrowed.
"All right, Teacher, get the others together and take this thing," referring to the Tiger, "over to the depot and load up with everything you can get your hands on. If there's any problem, let Gus do the negotiating. I'll meet you there a little later. I've got to figure out our route on this." He took a Russian road map out of his jacket. "I don't know how the Russians ever find us if they're using their own charts."
CHAPTER TEN
Teacher watched the broad back of his tank commander as he heaved one 88 mm shell after another up to Gus. Gus handed them to Yuri, who stuck them into the holding racks. Langer was as strong as anyone he had ever seen for his size. He never seemed to suffer from the almost chronic conditions of diarrhea which hounded most armies in the field. Bad water, bad food, bad schnapps, nothing seemed to upset him for long. What was there about him that picked at the edges of his mind? Why did Langer live when others died? There was the time when they had been overrun by Siberians and Carl had been hit in the gut. Teacher had seen enough wounds to know that the one Langer received should have been fatal. From the entry point of the bullet it should have torn his liver in two. They had left him for dead—no pulse, no sign of breath, no eye reflex. Langer was dead. But two days later he showed up again apparently none the worse for his wound, only complaining a little about minor stomach pains.
Langer's explanation was that the bullet had entered and exited cleanly, leaving only a puncture. Always sounded somewhat implausible to him, but they had been too busy staying in front of Ivan to worry much. They were glad enough to have him back no matter what the reason. Not until later did Teacher try to analyze it, and it never made sense. The wound Langer had was a killing one, at best even if it had entered and left cleanly, it would still have torn him up inside from the shock wave effect that a high-velocity bullet always has on human tissue.
Teacher considered himself to be well educated and versed in history, which he taught in the Gymnasium in Cologne. But Langer would come out every now and then with a fragment of information that only scholars of ancient history would have been familiar with. His ability to speak languages, even that of Yuri. He also knew the man's customs. Sometimes he spoke of the past as if it had just happened. Like the first winter of the retreat from Moscow. Teacher had told him he thought it must be as cold as when Napoleon had to retreat.
Langer had, offhandedly, said simply, "No, it was colder then."
A statement of fact, no more, no less, said with the conviction of one who knows for sure what he is talking about.
* * *
Gus shifted into neutral as Carl called down, "What the hell's going on? Where do you think you're going?"
"TANKS!" a youngster yelled back, panic at the edge of his voice. "The Russians are crossing the river! They've built a bridge just under the surface, and they're coming across, hundreds of them, Siberians!"
Langer forced the young corporal to climb on the tank with him, along with three other men, and guided them to the crossing. Manny tried to raise HQ on the radio, but all he got was static.
Teacher checked his 88, and Yuri took his position. He was ready to hand up, from the ammo racks, whichever shell might be needed, as they rumbled on toward the Russian penetration.
A short burst from the hull gun convinced the increasing numbers of fleeing soldiers that it would be wiser to return to their positions and face the oncoming Siberians than to be ground under the treads of their own tanks. From the expression on the tank commander's face, they had no doubt that that was exactly what he would do if they didn't obey his orders.
The massive steel leviathan escorting them helped to return some of their courage; they were soldiers again, not a fleeing mass of panic-stricken men.
A shadow loomed in the dark, and the Tiger's instant response blew the T-34 into a burning hulk, before Ivan had even spotted them.
The sight of the burning tank gave the German infantry new heart, and they moved forward under the protection of the Tiger's 88. Others from the dark woods began to join them, forming into groups, weapons at the ready. They were hunched figures flickering in the flames of the burning Russian tank.
Another T-34 came at them from the side, crashing out of the tree line, firing. Its 76 mm round hit the Tiger's turret at an angle; and even though they were no more than fifty meters apart, the shell ricocheted off to explode in the distance. Trees prevented the Tiger's crew from maneuvering or turning its gun to face the attacker.
The young corporal, who had been so terrified just moments before, leaped off the Tiger and ran to meet the advancing Russian. Halting by the body of one of the Pioneers that had been with him, he took the man's demolitions bag and opened it while running and twisting through the trees. When he tossed the bag away he held in his hands a geballte Ladung: a bundled charge of six grenade heads taped around the head of a complete stick grenade. Throwing himself to the earth in front of the T-34, he let the monster move over him as he had been taught at the training school at Kaiserslautern, and the steel bottom scraped his helmet as it passed. Immediately the youngster rose, pulled the igniter on the bundle charge, tossed it on the tank's rear deck, and threw himself to the side seeking shelter in the roots of trees.
The geballte blew with enough force to wreck the engine compartment, leaving the T-34 unable to move, but still dangerous. Its guns continued to fire and sweep over the Germans on the trail. The Russian crew fired and loaded faster than they had ever done in their lives.
A Stabsgefreiter from the Pioneers took advantage of the tank's blind spots and set a magnetic mine at the junction of hull and turret. Then he threw himself down beside the corporal, burying his face in the earth.