“I’ll take it from here,” he said, as he got up. “Return to your post.”
As they switched places, Naumann was tempted to ask the gun commander if he would rather sit this one out. Yet, he knew Pieper’s stubborn nature would not allow it, despite his wounds. Back in the cupola, Pieper watched as the KV1 reappeared through clouds of smoke, five hundred meters away. A single 37 mm antitank gun fired from a fortified strong point on the tank’s left flank. Other than leaving a small weal on the KV1’s surface, the shells had no effect. Small antitank grenades fired from rifle cup launchers pelted the tank, but to no avail. The grenadiers in the trenches should not have wasted their ammunition or their time. This was the equivalent of little mice trying to punch it out with an old tomcat. Pieper hated doing battle with the Klimenti Voroshilov. The vehicle certainly had its defects, including a tendency to break down. The engine burned too hot as it tried to haul all that weight over the ground. It was the thick skin that kept the fat pig of a tank in the fight for so long. The KV’s frontal armor and turret sides were nearly eighty millimeters thick. Five or six well-placed armor piercing rounds would have to be used up before the tank was finally out of action. Happens every time, Pieper thought.
“Move up two hundred meters, Kurowski, and then stop,” he told the driver.
“What if we take fire before the mark?” Hofinger asked.
“Then we will have to put up with it,” Pieper said coldly.
Hofinger uttered a complaint, but the gun commander could not quite hear what his loader had said. He felt too miserable to reproach his subordinate, even if he had heard. The pressure around his nose had become unbearable. His face had become swollen, as though he’d gone a few rounds with a prizefighter. He could taste the blood as it dripped down the back of his throat.
The assault gun had advanced only one hundred meters when the KV1 spotted it and fired. They listened as the shell screeched past. Something was definitely wrong with the KV1, as it made no attempt to maneuver or try to outflank the assault gun. Hofinger relayed a message. A signal operator from the first company informed him that engines could be heard revving loudly from inside the ravine. Kurowski eased the vehicle inside a crater.
“Fire when ready,” Pieper ordered.
Naumann made incremental adjustments to the gun’s traverse and fired. The shell went low and shattered the cog assembly on the KV’s left front end. Track links broke apart. Pieper refrained from uttering something derisive. His gunner was the best shot out of the entire Sturmgeschutz brigade and probably felt foolish enough for causing ineffective damage on the tank’s already compromised mobility. But they had other worries now. Two T-34s bounded from the ravine’s shallow graded defile and raced at full speed toward the first company sector. The vehicles covered a hundred meters or more and then opened fire. The first round screamed overhead and fell long. When the second tank fired, the gun layering was so poor, Pieper had no idea where the shell could have landed. The KV1 was a different matter. A shell had smacked into the ground only meters away. Fortunately the assault gun was low—perhaps a little too low, making Naumann’s aim more difficult. The heavy KV1 was having difficulty drawing a bead. Naumann fired again, this time dead on. He would need another two or three rounds to finish off the KV1 for good, but Pieper ordered him to turn his sights on the T-34s that had approached killing range.
“Target is now at six hundred and seventy five meters and closing,” Naumann said, as he lined the lead tank in the view field.
“Get ready,” Pieper said. The tanks had separated in an effort to flank the assault gun on either side. The KV1 fired another round. The glancing impact caused everyone’s nerves to heighten.
“Five hundred fifty meters…five hundred meters…target sighted, and gunner Ernst Naumann ready to fire!”
“Steady, Naumann, steady.”
Christ, Hofinger squealed to himself, give the order to fire, why don’t you? His legs shook involuntarily, and he did not know how much more he could take.
“Fire,” Pieper said, without a trace of emotion. The lead T-34 took the armor-piercing round at the seam where the hull and turret met. The tank started to skid out of control as the turret dislodged. While another shell was loaded, Kurowski traversed the vehicle. Naumann had the next tank in the sight brackets.
“Fire when ready,” Pieper said. Just as the gunner fired, the assault gun bucked wildly as a shell struck. The gun crew went sprawling; Pieper was dislodged off his seat, dropped from the cupola, and landed rump first on the deck. Hofinger recovered immediately and fed another round into the gun. A haze filled the fighting compartment as dust and smoke entered through the view ports. The fan mounted on the rear superstructure wall pinged as large particles struck the blades.
“It’s all right,” Kurowski shouted. “High-explosive round. Nothing penetrated.”
“Are you hurt?” Hofinger called out.
“Negative,” the driver croaked, although for a moment he thought he had taken a piece of flak to the groin. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. When the shell struck, he flinched and squeezed his legs together, which forced his testicles out of the scrotum. He raised himself partially out of the seat, which helped drop them back down to where they belonged. After checking on Pieper, who failed to get up, Naumann returned to the fire controls. The gun commander was stunned and in too much pain to continue in his role. The last shell Naumann had fired, just before the explosion, did strike the T-34. Smoke billowed from the engine plant, but it continued to advance slowly and fire. For the next few minutes, the vehicles dueled. The KV1 was out of armor-piercing shot and had to rely solely on the high-explosive rounds in its possession. There was a tremendous amount of fight left to the heavily armored tank, despite the abuse the Stug III poured on it. Carefully, Naumann took aim and fired and Hofinger, a shell always in hand, loaded immediately afterward. The Stug III traversed from one side to the other and fired, first at the T-34, then the KV1, and back again. Finally, the T-34 went up in flames and the KV1 was hammered with three more rounds before it became silent. Dark, oily plumes of smoke enveloped the hull. A hatch opened, and two crewmen leapt out. Hofinger was tempted to activate the machine gun but hesitated. Run back to your comrades, he thought, to your mothers for all I care, and tell them what sort of fools you are when you try to make trouble with us.
Naumann turned from the fire controls to check on the gun commander’s condition. Pieper smiled and pointed to the bulkhead of the fighting compartment. Naumann removed his headphones and listened. The drone of aircraft. He opened the loader’s hatch and looked into the harsh blue sky. Out of the west, he saw the familiar gull-winged silhouettes of nine JU87s. Stukas. Pieper, bruised and stiff from the fall, got up off the deck and struggled into the command cupola to have a look. “Not a moment too soon,” he muttered gratefully. Hofinger was on the radio instructing the signalman, Wilms, to have the balka raked with tracer fire from all available machine guns to indicate target direction. He then went to the stowage locker, grabbed a chemical smoke marker, and passed it along to Naumann, who broke it open and tossed it on the ground close to the vehicle. Orange smoke began to waft around the assault gun, so the onrushing dive-bombers could identify their position.