“Load HE next. Gunner, engage the infantry vehicles. Target left two.”
Schultz slid the AP round back in place and grabbed for high-explosives instead.
“On.”
The heavy cannon spat its shell and a universal carrier disappeared in a ball of flame; detritus, obviously mainly body parts, flew in all directions.
The small personnel carriers were not the swiftest of beasts and the five tanks of 1st Kompagnie, 5th Legion Régiment de Chars D’Assaut, picked them off with ease as they split, desperate to find some sort of cover.
Courageously, some drivers slowed their charges to permit the infantry to dismount and seek their own place of preservation or, in one or two instances, to charge forward with blind courage, holding an anti-tank weapon or mine, intent on distracting the Legion gunners.
Wintzinger’s machine-gun started to hammer out and Köster watched fascinated as a group of five Red Army soldiers was literally carved apart by streams of bullets.
“Target, left, two.”
The carrier they had sprung from came apart as Jarome put another round bang on target.
Soviet artillery started to land in and around the Tannenberg defensive positions and quickly started to yield casualties amongst the supporting Legionnaire infantry.
Köster heard the order immediately, the experienced company commander reacting as would be expected.
“Panzer marsch! Formation Anton!”
His own orders stuck in his throat as he inhaled a piece of paint flake, dislodged by a near explosion.
He coughed it clear and pressed the throat microphone.
“Driver advance… formation Anton… watch out for infantry close up.”
As the only Tiger in the company, ‘Lohengrin’ was the centre tank. Formation Anton required the Tiger to lead in the centre position, moving ahead of the flanking Panzer IV’s, who would move outwards, leaving roughly seventy metres between vehicles.
Behind the advancing tanks, the guns of the Legion infantry fell silent as the two platoons displaced.
Machine-gun bullets pattered off the Tiger’s armour, ineffective at anything except identifying the location of the firers, and Wintzinger took down each in turn.
The carriers, or what was left of them, were desperately trying to quit the field in the face of the advancing tanks. Again, brave men slowed their vehicles to permit knots of infantry to board their mobile illusion of safety.
“Target…right, three.”
The 88mm remained silent.
“You got him, Hans?”
A soft hum was the only reply, and it was a full five seconds before the main gun hammered backwards in its mount.
“Just letting them all get aboard, Oberscharfuhrer.”
The target vehicle was in flames, so much so that Köster was unable to see if any of the men that had been clambering aboard had survived.
And then something moved in the flames, a something that had once been a son or a father, but was now in pieces and dying in the most excruciating way.
The main gun was still on target, and Jarome gave a squirt from the co-axial to still the suffering form permanently.
A warning shout from the driver, Meier, cut off halfway through as something smashed into the glacis plate.
“Say again!”
“Anti-tank gun… three hundred and fifty metres…dead ahead, tank moving left.”
In truth, Meier had already swung the Tiger to the left, angling the armour for maximum effect, at the moment the 76.2mm Zis-3 fired. The simple act had saved them all as the Soviet weapon was capable enough at that range.
Wintzinger sprayed the location with MG rounds but the Soviet gunners held fast to their task, and the AT gun spoke again.
Another hit, and this time ‘Lohengrin’ was hurt.
The solid shot struck the front of the vehicle on the corner of the lower hull and angled off into the offside drive sprocket.
None of the crew needed to be told that the metallic sound that assailed them was the track separating and unravelling.
Jarome’s shot went high and wide as the Tiger stuttered and slewed before Meier caught the unexpected motion.
The hull MG plucked one member of the Soviet crew from his position as the man leant outwards to properly observe the damage to the enemy leviathan.
The gun commander, seeing the loader fall, stooped down to pick up the dropped shell, cursing the dead boy for his stupidity and the delay it would cause.
Jarome fired again, and again he missed the target, as a heavy artillery shell rocked the fifty-six tons of disabled tank.
The 88mm shell struck the Red Army gun commander in the lower throat, transforming the upper part of his body into flying mincemeat in a micro-second, but with insufficient contact to cause the shell to explode, or even interrupt its journey to somewhere many metres beyond.
The AT gun remained unloaded as the crew abandoned it, most of them carrying some piece of their gun commander on their skin or clothing as they ran screaming from the field.
Wintzinger and Jarome, firing short bursts, mopped them up in short order, the latter’s weapon falling silent as he reached for more ammunition.
“Infantry! Close in! Driver, slew left!”
Meier acted instantly, the tank surging on one track and slewing to the left side.
“Scheisse!”
Wintzinger swore as his machine-gun remained silent, the instant manoeuvre having sent the new ammo bag flying from his grasp.
Meier took one look across the tank and acted without a second thought, pushing up on his hatch with one hand as he went for his holster with the other.
Three Soviet soldiers were closing in on the Tiger, two of whom carried large circular mines of a type all too familiar to the Legion’s German tankers.
The Walther P-38 took down the leading figure, as two bullets smashed the wind from his lungs and sent him rolling in the snow.
The second figure, free from the encumbrance of a Teller mine, sent a burst at Meier, off-target, but close enough to cause the driver to flinch and miss his shots in turn.
Last in line, the other mine-equipped soldier leapt sideways and disappeared from sight.
“Missed two… and the bastards are close in, near side!”
“Commander out!”
Köster acted on instinct, snatching the MP-40 in the same series of movements that drove him out of the cupola and rolling onto the rear engine compartment.
Behind him, a hand emerged from the turret and drew the hatch closed.
An observer might have found the act harsh, but standing orders and self-preservation dictated that hatches would be clipped down if infantry swarmed near the tank.
Unable to see either of the two Russians, Köster dropped off the rear of ‘Lohengrin’, where he found one immediately, lying underneath the tank, cradling the teller mine in his arms.
The MP-40 rattled and Köster scrabbled under the Tiger to drag the mine clear.
In an instant his world transformed from the whiteness of snow to the whiteness of a close detonation, as something unforgiving struck the side of the angled tank.
The force of the explosion threw his head hard against the rearmost steel road wheel and he was momentarily stunned.
Above him, a fire had started in the Tiger’s engine compartment.
Inside ‘Lohengrin’, Meier took command, ordering the others to sit tight and fight the tank as best they could.
Pulling himself out of the driver’s hatch, he moved at record speed, helped by the searching pings of bullets as Soviet infantry took more than a healthy interest in his actions.