Up on one elbow, he discarded the empty magazine and slipped in his only spare, the act of cocking the weapon proving difficult, as blood loss started to take its toll.
A Panzer III, its 50mm gun spitting defiance, manouevred to get position on the bridge, knowing that if the T-34’s crossed, its own existence would be short and spectacular.
Three direct hits were shrugged off, the superior armour of the Tridsat proving too much for the 50mm.
An 85mm shell ended the unequal fight, burrowing its way into the German’s fighting compartment and starting a fire.
The crew bailed out, leaving their vehicle to burn unchecked.
The lead T-34 crossed the bridge at speed, a grape of ten men from the 3rd Battalion clinging to its handholds, fearful of being thrown from the bucking vehicle.
Passing the prone Hannermann at speed, the Soviets failed to understand the threat until it was too late. Sub-machine gun bullets plucked them from their perches.
Two men remained in place, the rest lay in the wake of the vehicle, and only one of those showed any signs of life.
The young grenadiere swivelled to face the new threat, an approaching sound filling his senses.
The MP18 stuttered in defiance as a solid track supporting 32 tons of metal covered the distance from head to toe in under a second, squashing Hannermann into the Muhlen Straβe, transforming him into an indescribable bloody mess, held together only by his clothing.
Across the battlefield, the Centurion MkI of Lance-Sergeant Charles, having dealt with all the tanks supporting the Penal Unit, had turned its attention elsewhere, and saw the end of the unequal struggle.
Witnessing the horrible end of the German soldier through his sight, Lance-Corporal Patterson growled his target acquisition, determined to avenge the brave man.
The order came, and a projectile leapt from the 17pdr, crossing the battlefield in the blink of an eye before carving a hole in the waters beyond.
“You missed, you tosser!”
Actually he hadn’t, the APDS shell penetration was so extreme that it had gone straight through the second tank in line and out the other side.
The damaged vehicle slowed, its driver lacking clear instructions from the dead commander.
“I hit the bastard, Sarn’t, its smoking!”
“Then hit him again, Pats!”
The main gun boomed again, and this time the T-34 died, the shell wrecking the engine and starting a roaring fire.
The lead T-34 was running amok over the German positions, repeatedly crushing men, its tracks red with the blood of its victims.
A shell from the last surviving vehicle of the 160th’s Panzer unit dispatched the tank. The Marder III 139 mounted a captured Soviet 76.2mm weapon, more than capable of killing the Tridsat.
Another Soviet tank exploded, marking another kill for the Guards’ Centurion, and the remaining tanks seemed to hesitate as one.
Perhaps inspired by Hannermann, the remaining grenadieres rose up and charged, screaming at the top of their voices, encouraged by the withdrawing Soviet armour.
The German Kommando rushed forward, urged on by their elderly commanders, who remembered the SturmTruppen assaults of another era.
And then, within seconds of each other…
The 3rd Battalion broke.
The SMG Company broke.
The Guards Tanks broke.
The Soviet left flank caved in completely.
The German 3rd Kompagnie, supported by the rampant Kommando, drove the Siberian 2nd Battalion survivors from the high ground, mercilessly hacking down the running men, wide backs proving inviting targets.
Next to be rolled up were the survivors of the penal unit, the kilted Scots of the 6th Battalion, King’s Own Scottish Borderers, launching a swift attack around the Manhagenersee Bridge and testing frightened men who needed little encouragement to run, the more so as most of the NKVD security team lay dead upon the field.
The remainder of the Irish Guards and Royal Scots completed the rout, a screaming bayonet charge proving too much for the destroyed engineer unit.
Unfortunately, the Irish pushed too far and ran into the surviving tanks of the 1st Tank Group, whose machine-guns and high explosive killed many a son of Ireland in the moment of victory.
The two Cromwells, the only other surviving tanks from the Grenadier Guards, pushed up to the northernmost bridge, and helped the retreating Soviet troopers on their way.
The route between the two bodies of water, Brahmsee and Manhagenersee, had been an inviting route, seemingly a gap to be exploited, and the Soviets had hastily assaulted it in an effort to turn the Allied defences.
It was an unmitigated disaster for the Red Army, one that virtually destroyed every unit that the Red Army had committed, leaving many dead upon the field.
Not without cost to the Allies, the remnants of 58th’s 2nd and 3rd Kompagnies joined together to form one under-strength unit. Barely one platoon of the MG company was still able to function.
Night brought an end to the sporadic shooting that had kept the fighting around the Manhagenersee alive.
The Royal Scots amounted to seven unwounded men
The King’s Own mustered twenty fit for parade.
‘A’ Company, 3rd Battalion Irish Guards, consisted of forty-eight men under the command of a wounded Lance-Sergeant, with another thirty-nine wounded to varying degrees.
Perhaps the most remarkable result of the Brahmsee battle was the casualties inflicted upon the command structures, officers of all ranks seemingly culled across the range of formations on both sides.
The Soviet force withdrew in disarray, and, as was the habit, the higher authorities looked for scapegoats.
Only two Soviet officers survived the experience, both Junior Lieutenants, one from the Penal Company, the other from the Regimental staff.
To satisfy the baying of those desperate for scapegoats, the former was executed by the NKVD security troops before dawn rose, the stories of a monster enemy tank lost in the clamour for retribution.
On the Allied side, a late afternoon ground attack by a single Shturmovik robbed the Grenadier Guards of their surviving officer, his crew, and their Cromwell.
Apart from a wounded Lieutenant in the Independent Machine Gun Company, and a 2nd Lieutenant fresh from training and placed in charge of the 1st Anti-tank platoon, real authority within the British forces lay with two Lance-sergeants, one clad in a Centurion, the other a Bren gun toting Irish Guardsman.
Acting Oberleutnant Fischert found himself de facto commander command of very little, the small combined multi-national force exhausted by its efforts and its losses, but having achieved a great deal during the daylight hours of that awful Friday in September.
1214hrs, Saturday, 15th September 1945, Office of the Head of GRU Western Europe, the Mühlberg, Germany.
The new purpose-built facility was secreted in the woods that covered the Mühlberg, half a mile north-west of Niedersachswerfen.
Pekunin preferred to conduct the intelligence business close to, but not on top of, the main military headquarters, probably because headquarters attracted agents from their fellow agency and supposedly stalwart allies, the NKVD.
The facilities they had switched to inside the mountain were unsuitable, hence the priority given to quickly constructing the score of wooden huts that blended perfectly in with the trees and shadows of the German wood.
GRU personnel had finished transferring themselves and files from the underground facility, and the phone lines and radios necessary to conduct business were now fully functional.
Colonel General Pekunin was sampling the tea available in the new centre, and finding things much to his liking.