Petr knew the man wouldn’t see much to give him concern. The Red Army had already fled, leaving nothing behind but empty rocket cases and abandoned rifles or machine guns. The truck in which Petr hid was the only vehicle left. And a single shot from the tank’s three-inch howitzer would make short work of that.
The tank commander’s binoculars halted on Petr’s stalled truck, trained directly at the windshield, directly at Petr. Petr froze. He was staring right at the tank commander, and the commander was staring right back. But he couldn’t see Petr. The sun was bright in the white sky, brighter still as it glistened off the blinding snow blanketing the river’s ice; and the area in which Petr was hiding, under the missile launch rack, was shadowed by the Katyusha rockets.
The truck’s bright exterior and dark interior turned the windshield into a one-way mirror. The tank commander surely couldn’t see through it, couldn’t see anything but his own reflection looking back at him. And yet the commander held his gaze, as if reassuring himself there was nothing on that side of the river to fear, that the Katyusha truck really was abandoned, really was the fat prize it seemed to be.
Petr held his breath. And then, finally, the tank commander lowered his binoculars and yelled something in German. A young soldier, probably an infantry sergeant, trudged up to the tank commander. The tank commander yelled again, sweeping the riverbank with a pointing finger. The infantry sergeant turned to bark at the troops, relaying the tank commander’s orders.
Three machine gunners and their assistants hustled up to the riverbank and plopped down into the snow. The machine gunners slung their weapons off their shoulders and propped the barrels onto folding bipods while their assistants cracked open metal boxes and slapped belts of ammunition into the guns’ chambers. When they were ready, the infantry sergeant barked again.
The bullets tore into the snow, gravel, and mud on Petr’s side of the river. But they didn’t hit the stalled truck. The machine gunners carefully traced their fire around the vehicle—clearly, the orders were not to damage the prized Katyushas.
Once the ammunition belts were spent, riflemen ran forward with more ammo boxes, and the assistants loaded new bullets into the guns. But this time the machine gunners didn’t fire. They just stared across the river, fingers likely resting gently on their triggers.
The tank commander yelled something and banged on the turret. A gearbox ground as the unseen driver shifted the panzer into low gear. And the heavy tank disappeared from Petr’s view, hidden by the tall, humped bridge as it inched onto the stone and began to climb across.
Petr couldn’t see the panzer, but he made out its black exhaust puffing into the sky. Soon the tank would be on his side of the river. Then the infantry would follow, and they’d capture the Katyusha launcher, and they’d capture or kill Petr.
The tank commander’s head appeared over the crest of the bridge, then his chest and arms. He looked back and forth, squinting at the bright light reflecting off the snow, wary of any potential ambush. Then Petr saw the turret and the snub-nosed howitzer, then the hull and machine gun, so close that he could see the whites of the driver’s eyes behind the view slit.
Petr saw the tracks, and finally the bottom of the tank—the under hull. It rose up over the hump of the bridge. This was the tank’s weakest point—the unarmored underbelly between its tracks. An instant later the tank would clear the hump and descend to the other side, showing only its steel-plated armored front of more than two inches, impervious to all but the biggest Russian guns.
Nobody fired at a tank from nearly beneath it. But Petr could. In a single motion he squeezed the trigger and dove from the truck. Before he hit the ground, he felt a searing pain in his legs as the rocket exhaust burned through his telogreika trousers.
He was only dimly aware of explosions. The snow enveloped him. For a moment he could think of nothing but the excruciating pain in his legs. He heard a supersonic zip—bullets passing right over his head. The machine gunners had seen him jump from the truck and were zeroing in. He rolled to his right. This drenched his smoking legs in more wet snow, a moment’s relief from the pain, but more important, it sent him directly under the truck, its three axles shielding him from the German machine guns for now.
Their slugs ripped into Soviet steel, into the truck’s bed, cab, and tires, deafening Petr with their impact and rocking the truck back and forth above him. He pulled himself forward on his elbows and peered out between the truck’s front wheels.
Petr had hit that panzer with over a dozen Katyusha rockets, each packed with eleven pounds of high explosives. At least two rockets must have struck the tank’s soft underbelly. The explosions multiplied as the panzer’s ammo ignited, leaving a charred and smoking twist of steel. The vehicle was no longer a tank, it was a roadblock. Until its wreckage could be cleared, no German panzers would be crossing the bridge.
Another tank tried to cross the river directly. It rumbled out onto the snow-covered ice, rolling fifteen feet across before the ice broke with a terrific crack. The tank plunged like a boulder into the shallow depth, the icy water surging through gun slits and view ports. Hatches popped open everywhere at once, and the five-man crew struggled to wade through the frigid current to the safety of the German-held shore. Petr suspected they would die of hypothermia.
The Panzer IV unit had three more tanks, and these began taking control of the chaos. Two had driven up to the bridge, where they slowly tried to push the destroyed hulk of their comrade panzer off the bridge and into the river.
The third maneuvered to the river’s edge, dug itself in with a twist of its treads, and directed its turret at Petr’s truck.
As Petr watched the gun turret swivel around, the pain in his legs returned with a vengeance. But he knew he wouldn’t have to endure that pain for long. The machine guns might not have been able to reach him, but the panzer’s howitzer could launch the truck into the air like a toy with its highly explosive shell, pulverizing Petr with the force of its shock wave.
When the turret stopped, Petr was left staring right down the howitzer’s barrel into the black breech of the gun. He gritted his teeth, but he didn’t close his eyes. He didn’t care what he would see. He just wanted to die with his eyes open.
Then the Panzer IV burst apart.
An instant later Petr heard the shrieking impact and crunching metal of the tank’s destruction. A moment after that came the sharp report of the gun that fired the armor-piercing round, as the shell had moved much faster than the speed of sound.
Petr pivoted to the right and could hardly believe what he saw: T-34s charging the German flank, threatening to seize the opposite shore of the river. Round of body, almost organic in their contours, Russia’s T-34 tanks were all angles and curves. Whitewashed to blend in with the snow, their diesel exhaust colorless and therefore invisible, the T-34s had taken the Germans completely by surprise.
And although their forward-slung turrets gave them the appearance of dim-witted slack jaws, Petr thought the Russian tanks even more beautiful than the German ones. To him they looked like white stallions, drawing long chariots of avenging angels into battle, for ropes were strung behind the tanks, pulling soldiers on skis.
Petr watched as the soldiers began to let go of the ropes, pushing hard with their ski poles and picking up speed as they descended through the forest toward the German flank.
In only moments they were skiing past the churning tanks that had pulled them there, but they didn’t wait for the T-34s to catch up. They kept pushing with their poles and skis, like ice-skaters, picking up downhill speed until they stopped poling and crouched to reduce wind resistance.