The remaining Typhoons flung themselves upon the Guards’ tanks, and T-54s died, blown apart by the tank-busters, eager to avenge their comrade.
Yarishlov pushed up at cupola, clearing away the debris and received the fright of his life.
“Gunner, target tank, maximum elevation, 2° right. Twenty yards!”
He had no help in estimating the angle or elevation, just the imperative of the looming shape of an IS-II coming over the edge of the shell hole.
“SET!”
“F…”
The gunner fired on the intake of breath, not waiting for the spoken word.
The 100mm shell entered the floor armour of the IS-II, passing through the driver and smashing into the breech of the main gun, adding pieces of it to the whirling metal that harvested the crew.
The IS-II hung on the edge, seemingly undecided about what to do next. The engine stalled and the tank settled back, electing to stay above ground level.
Yarishlov, his heart almost bursting out of his chest, propelled himself out of the turret and checked the way ahead.
Dropping back in, he gave the order to advance, and the T-54 pulled itself out of the shell hole, passing the now smoking leviathan that had nearly surprised them.
The Poles seemed to be withdrawing or, at the least, had stopped advancing.
Yarishlov’s tanks were virtually on top of the enemy, making air attack risky. The British aircraft wisely held off, hoping for a target of opportunity amongst the T-54’s.
On two occasions they found such an opportunity, and each attack brought about success for them.
Yarishlov shouted into his radio, encouraging the unit commanders to keep their men in close.
Smoke shells started to burst on the field, accurately laid by Spanish mortar crews, obscuring the Polish and Spanish vehicles as they turned controlled withdrawal into urgent retreat.
Whilst the extra smoke helped obscure them from the circling vultures, so was generally welcomed by the Soviet tank crews, the presence of smoke brought other perils.
A rocket trailed smoke past the command tank’s turret side, close enough for Yarishlov to feel the heat of its passing.
Snatching at the DSHK, he chewed up the ground around the bazooka team, forcing them back into cover.
“Gunner, target stone wall, right 6°, fifty, fire when set. Ready on the co-ax for infantry.”
The 100m shell sent stone and body parts flying, negating the use for the SGMT co-axial machine gun.
“Drakon-tri to Drakon-lider. Drakon-tri to Drakon-lider, over.”
The third battalion commander sounded very excited.
“Drakon-Lider receiving, over.”
“Enemy tanks, at least forty, approaching from Damerow, range 2000, type unknown, over.”
“Drakon-Lider, received, standby.”
Yarishlov conjured up a mental picture of the landscape, whilst a small part worked out if he had fallen for some trap.
Again, he selected First Battalion.
“Drakon-Odin from Drakon-Lider, over.”
“Drakon-Odin-Two receiving, over.”
Yarishlov grimaced, understanding that a reply from the First Battalion’s 2IC could only mean that the veteran Major was out of the fight.
“Drakon-Odin-Two, move your formation to the west and engage the enemy force coming from Damerow. Identify and report soonest. Do not let them turn our flank, over.”
The orders were clear and quickly acknowledged.
“SET!”
The gun rocked back and sent another Polish crew to their fiery deaths.
Yarishlov hadn’t noticed the IS-II, so engrossed was he in the possibility that he was about to become the prey.
“Infantry left!”
He snatched at the machine-gun handles, too late to stop the world going yellow and red.
Kriks, as he always did, kept half an eye on his commander, and so had a grandstand view of the effects of a bazooka round successfully penetrating the lower hull armour of a T-54 battle tank.
He screamed as he pulled the machine-gun round, screamed as he cut the enemy anti-tank team in half, and screamed as he watched a heat haze grow above the cupola.
No-one had emerged.
“Driver, right, to the Polkovnik’s tank, quickly!”
Kriks was up and out of the turret swiftly. In a moment of madness, he took his life in his hands jumping across from his to Yarishlov’s tank.
The sounds he heard were of men in extremis.
The heat pushed his face away from the open cupola, but he returned to look inside.
Yarishlov was pulling at the loader, the wounded man squealing with pain as his right leg completed its detachment process, ripping the last vestiges of muscle and sinew as his Colonel got a good hold and pulled upwards.
Whilst the sight itself was appalling, what appalled Kriks the most was that both men were gently burning, their uniforms turning orange and red, their hair melting, their flesh blistering and splitting.
He leant in and grasped the loader’s collar, biting deep into his lip as the burning sensation threatened his consciousness.
The loader came out, lighter because he had no legs to speak of.
Kriks’ own gunner and loader had joined him and took the stricken man from the Praporschik’s painful grasp.
A dull moan focussed Kriks back on the tank, and he looked inside, only to be pushed out of the way by a very badly burned gunner.
A waft of flame followed the wounded man, as the internal fire grabbed a firm hold.
“Arkady! Give me your hand! Arkady! Arkady!”
Yarishlov looked up through blistered eyelids, the pain clearly overtaking him.
His hand felt for that of his NCO’s and he was dragged upwards by the force of a man lent extraordinary strength by extraordinary circumstances.
Using his hands to subdue the flames, Kriks shouted at his own crew.
“Get the tank out of here now!”
His driver needed no second invitation and the T-54 pulled off to one side.
Kriks laid the smoking officer on the fender and dropped to the ground, hardly noticing that he de-gloved most of his right hand as he steadied his descent, the cooked skin pulling off with relative ease.
He pulled the unconscious Yarishlov to him and laid him over a shoulder, pausing only to beat out a re-ignition in what was left of the Colonel’s uniform.
Urgency gave him more strength, and he ran with his burden, reaching his own tank and the helping hands that took Yarishlov from him and lifted him onto the rear deck.
The legless loader had already died, and the gunner had passed out, his blisters and burns expressing life-giving fluid like a leaking tap.
Yarishlov was badly burned, and Kriks, indeed all of them, had seen such burns before.
They understood that there was no way back from such injuries.
The liquid welled in Kriks’ eyes.
He punched the side of the tank, causing his burns to reannounce themselves in horrible fashion.
He screamed, partially in extreme pain, and partially because of a lack of hope.
And then providence took a hand.
An enemy half-track emerged from the smoke, clearly confused, advancing when it should have been retreating.
It braked to a sudden halt and a man in the front stood up, extending his hands in surrender, not realising that the 100mm gun pointed directly at him had no gunner, and that he could simply have driven away.
“Get us over to that enemy vehicle now!”
His gunner repeated the order into the open turret, and the T-54 moved alongside the Spanish ambulance half-track.
The enemy officer, his hands still raised, feared the worst as he was dragged forcibly from his vehicle, his orderlies also ordered out at pistol point.
However, he understood better when he was pushed up onto the tank and confronted with men carrying injuries of the severest nature.