"All right. You heard the man. Hop to it. Section dismissed."
Forty steel leviathans started their engines with the rumbling that only armor has and in the allotted time were in columns. They left the railhead and headed northeast to their division HQ, going for a distance down the tracks of the rail before turning off. The youngsters were silent, looking at the rows of partisans hung from the telegraph poles like obscene fruit. Old-timers hardly noticed. This was Russia.
Two hours' march on the dirt roads left all covered with yellow dust clogging the nostrils and caking everything. A distant rumble reached them from the northeast and columns of black smoke rose thousands of feet into the clear sky. Heidemann, who had chosen to ride with Langer, commented, "Looks like Ivan is giving Orel a pasting today." The smoke was visible all the way to Kromy, but not the sounds of the dying of the hundreds of men disappearing as bomb blasts atomized them, or when fuel tanks blew and turned those near them into cinders, leaving only black charred cadavers with pieces of bone sticking out to show that here had once been men. Long live the Fatherland.
Langer's forty-five-ton tank ran over the already flattened corpses of a horse and rider that had been there since the last of the month. Heidemann tapped Langer on the shoulder with his foot from his perch in the turret. Two taps meant stop. The tanks died, letting the engines idle. They were only six kilometers from Kromy.
Taking his binoculars, the captain scanned the countryside. A tap from his foot on the right shoulder and Langer headed to the right down into a small valley where the rest of the division was encamped, waiting to paint and outfit the tanks.
Rumbling in, the drivers automatically spaced the Panzers out in a staggered line to present less of a target to strafing aircraft and leaped out of the hatches to await further orders. The recruits stood in a lump as all recruits do until an Oberfeldwebel rushed to them screaming and getting them into some semblance of order, then quickly marched them off for processing.
"Langer, you and the others stay with your tanks. Your crews will join you shortly. As I said, I'm glad to have you back. There are not so many of us as when you left. I'm glad you were sent to the training regiment. We will talk later." Turning, he left the drivers to their own devices, which meant lighting up or chewing on black bread and washing it down with tepid water from their canteens, until their crews showed up and identified themselves.
All had the look of tough men who had seen Ivan's ass on the run too many times to be frightened when they saw him coming at them. They were the victors of Operation Barbarossa, which had driven to the gates of Moscow and left three million Russians dead or in the bag.
Gerfreiter Stefan Carrel, driver, came over smiling, his face thinner than when last they met, but the twinkle of basic good humor never far behind. Tagging along was Gus Beidemann, who resembled a Panzer more than he did a man; a rumbling, square-jawed, square-bodied devil who could gulp Russian vodka faster than a distillery could produce it and still load and fire twice as fast as any man in the regiment. He slapped a gentle paw against Langer's back, nearly knocking him down.
"Well, you dumb son of a bitch, what the hell are you doing back here? Didn't you have enough sense to run off to Sweden while you were in school? Christ, I thought we taught you better than that. But no matter, you're back and we love you, you delicate little flower."
Pohlman was next, the ever-present square-bowed pipe stuck firmly between his teeth. Pleased, Langer hugged him. "Hello, Teacher. Have you taken care of these devils properly?"
Pohlman smiled gently and spoke in the manner of a school teacher, which was precisely what he had been in Cologne. The gentleness of his attitude had nothing to do with the effectiveness he had shown in combat, whether with tanks or the wood-handled, short-bladed close-combat knife stuck in his boot top.
Taking his pipe out, he spat a loose piece of tobacco on the ground and tapped the bowl of the pipe against the sole of his boot.
"No, Carl, I am afraid there is no hope for these cretinous fecal encephalos."
"What the hell's a fecal wachmacallit, you over-educated molester of schoolchildren?"
"A fecal encephalo means shit brain, shit brain."
Beidemann grinned. "That's okay then. For a second, I thought he was insulting us."
Carl looked at the youngster standing behind Pohlman, a nice young man like one of those posters for the Hitler Jugend, blond-haired, blue-eyed, with a face that would make angels weep for envy. If he lived, he would give the girls their fair share of heartbreaks; if he lived or went home in one piece, neither of which was very likely.
"Who's this. Teacher?"
"Our new pup. He's our new hull gunner and radio operator. Felix bought it."
Another gone. Nothing else could be said—or was. "Ich hat eine Kamaraden."
Langer shook his head in the negative. "No, Teacher. I want Stefan on the radio. He'll work as the loader until he's broken in. Looks like he has good hands on him and at his age, he's probably quick and that's important."
"Come here, boy. Your name?"
"Manfried Ertl, Herr Feldwebel." He did everything but click heels.
"All right, Manny. You're one of us now and how much you pay attention and how quick you learn will determine how long you live. While you're with us, you will be one of us and this piece of tin will be your home. Take care of it. The Feldwebel crap you can forget. Just do as you are told and do it quickly."
Simultaneously, a thousand heads cocked themselves to the east listening. "Jabos! Hit the dirt!"
Like magic, men sought every piece of low ground and cover they could find. Carl grabbed the boy's arm and jerked him away from the tank, screaming, "Get away from the tank. It's the first thing they go for." Throwing the boy behind some brush, he buried his face in the dry dust.
Gorges of earth erupted, followed by brain-rupturing explosions. Soviet fighter bombers had spotted the tanks below and were determined not to let them get into action. One after another, they burst in oily blasts of flame as fuel tanks were hit. Counterfire came from a Luftwaffe Ack-ack unit using quad-mounted MG-42 light machine guns that could fire 2,400 rounds a minute each, pouring a stream of death into the dodging and darting Ilyuhsins with the red stars and smiling pilots who sensed an easy kill on the tanks below. The sitting Panthers were defenseless against the attack. A leg in a camouflaged trouser landed next to Langer's face, the foot still moving from side to side at the ankle. It didn't know it was dead yet.
Screams mingled with the staccato machine-gun fire and roaring thumps of blasting bombs, accented by the heavier Pom Pom of 20 mm5s getting into action. Gus ran dodging and twisting, throwing himself to the side of Langer, his steel pot giving him the look of an oversized Russian beetle. "Welcome home. I hope you appreciate how much trouble we went to, to have this display of fireworks for you." Spitting out a mouthful of red dust, he absently eyed the detached leg. "Wonder what size boot that is. I got a hole big enough to stuff a field marshal through in mine." Taking the foot, he looked at the boot, puckered his mouth and then tossed it and the leg farther away. "Wrong foot."