These angels looked nothing like the conscripts Petr had just seen fleeing for their lives. Instead of the green quilted uniforms, they wore white camouflage snowsuits complete with hoods pulled tight over their steel helmets. They were moving so swiftly that they blurred against the white trunks of the bare birch trees.
German rifle fire barked in the cold air, and here and there a Russian fell, tumbling over his skis. But the German rifles were bolt action and had to be cocked after every shot. Without their machine guns, the German soldiers couldn’t sustain a high enough rate of fire.
Meanwhile, the tanks dueled. There were fewer T-34s in a Russian tank platoon than Panzer IVs in a German one. At full strength the Germans would outnumber the Russian armor five to three. But Petr had already helped destroy two of the German panzers, and the lead T-34 had just disabled a third with a shot that struck the panzer’s side between turret ring and hull. Now it was three to two.
But these Wehrmacht tank crews were disciplined, hardened veterans of the German conquests of Poland and France. Already the remaining panzers were reversing off the bridge and turning to show the Russians their thicker frontal armor.
One Panzer IV landed a direct hit on a T-34, ringing the Russian tank like the loudest bell Petr ever heard. The crew inside had to have been deafened. But the explosion only blackened the T-34’s whitewash. The Russian crew returned fire, their shell striking a glancing blow on the apron of steel around the howitzer but not penetrating.
All five opposing tanks stopped now, engines idling, their drivers giving their gunners a stable platform. They fired back and forth, pausing between loud booms to reload. The Russian infantry kept advancing. They carried submachine guns—the lead soldiers knelt on their skis while still moving and let loose long bursts at the German machine gunners. Their comrades continued surging forward, firing from the hip, the submachine guns’ recoil slowing their descent while the guns’ inaccurate but rapid fire pinned down the German riflemen.
Petr forgot the pain in his legs as he watched, fascinated. Petr had loved American movies, especially cowboy films, when he was a young boy. His favorite was The Big Trail, starring John Wayne, which he saw when he was eight, the last cowboy movie he ever saw. Stalin had banned foreign films in 1932. Petr remembered that the hero and the villain always seemed to end up shooting at each other in the middle of a dusty street. The two enemies would stand straight and still, firing relentlessly with their six-shooters until one was shot dead. This tank duel was a lot like those movies. The huge, armored machines stood their ground and blasted away at each other, pausing only to reload.
Despite the Russian advantage in numbers, the battle seemed to be at a stalemate, with neither side able to penetrate the armor of the other.
“Come on, come on,” Petr heard himself growl, urging the T-34s to rush forward, surround the panzers, and fire away at their weaker side and rear armor. But the Russian tank crews seemed content to sit back on the top of the hill and shoot from there.
This was looking more like the battles he was used to, he thought bitterly. Russian cowardice was going to result in yet another Russian defeat.
Then Petr noticed that the infantry combat was over—the Russians had completely overwhelmed the elite German troops protecting the panzers. The Russian soldiers lay on their bellies now, half buried in snow, their skis abandoned as they crawled toward the German tanks.
The panzer crews couldn’t see the Russians because they were “buttoned up,” their hatches closed tight to protect them from incoming T-34 rounds. They were relying on periscopes to target the enemy tanks, and the periscopes had a very narrow field of vision.
Now Petr realized it wasn’t cowardice that kept the Russian tankers back; it was experience. The T-34’s armor was vulnerable up close, so they’d let their superior infantry destroy the German tanks for them.
Several Russian soldiers lit petrol bombs—so-called Molotov cocktails. Petr had been taught about them but doubted their efficacy. How could a glass bottle filled with gasoline hurt a German tank? Now he watched them toss the bottles onto a panzer’s engine deck. That made Petr a believer. The Molotov cocktail’s burning fuel coated the tank’s armor plating, but it also dripped through the cooling vents.
The erupting engine blaze sent the Germans popping up from their hatches with arms raised in surrender. The Russians gunned them down.
The last panzer backed away from the bridge, retreating into the woods. It reversed slowly, not daring to turn around and present its vulnerable rear to the guns of the T-34s.
The Russian infantry easily kept pace, jogging beside the tank and tossing RPG-40 antitank grenades onto its deck and turret. The image reminded Petr of dogs baiting a bear. The heavy grenades detonated on contact, pitting the panzer’s thick armor but not penetrating it. The bombs popped and banged all over the German tank, first a dozen, then two dozen.
With each explosion the tank seemed to jerk. Finally, it stopped. A tall Russian hoisted himself onto the deck, climbed up onto the turret, and began to pry open the hatch.
The hood of his snowsuit had blown back, revealing a deeply tanned face and a blond beard. Three of his comrades helped with the hatch while a forth stood with one leg propped on the howitzer priming an antipersonnel grenade, a short stick attached to a metal cylinder packed with explosives called a potato masher.
The men finally pulled open the hatch, and the soldier tossed in the potato masher. There was a flash, a boom, a puff of smoke.
The battle was over.
The soldier with the tan face and blond beard leaped with great agility off the panzer’s turret and crunched through the snow toward the bridge. He vaulted atop the crumpled heap of metal that had been a German tank before Petr destroyed it.
The blond soldier peered inside blackened hulk. Then Blondie turned his head toward Petr, tracing a line through the air from the destroyed vehicle to Petr’s hiding place. He smiled, slid down the tank to the bridge, and strode toward the stalled truck. His companions followed, exchanging brief words Petr couldn’t hear.
Blondie examined the three-axle truck. Its windshield was broken, its cab punctured with countless bullet holes, its tires flat. But there was no corpse. He bent down, his white smile flashing, and held out his hand. Petr took it and was yanked out into the open by the blond soldier’s strong grip.
Petr screamed in pain.
When Blondie saw Petr’s legs, his smile dropped. He reached into an ammunition pouch, pulled out a flask, unscrewed it, and took a quick pull himself before holding it under Petr’s nose. “Drink,” he said. “Drink.”
Petr drank. It wasn’t his first vodka. He and his uncle often celebrated a successful hunt with a round of stiff drinks. But this was finer than the spirits Petr knew, not the liquid fire that made his stomach churn. This was ice-cold and smooth. It coated his throat as he swallowed, and he was surprised by how quickly he emptied the flask.
He heard cloth tear and recognized that someone was doing something to his legs. He tried to lift his head, but Blondie shoved him back down. “Don’t worry,” he assured Petr, “you’ll be fine.”
“Where did you come from?” Petr asked.
“We came from Siberia.”
Petr’s head swam. He had the odd sensation of flying and realized he’d been lifted between two of Blondie’s comrades.
And Petr noticed that the sky had turned a perfect shade of blue, and he saw a cloud that he mistook for the same one Lieutenant Gromoslavsky had pointed out earlier. “A bear,” he muttered.