“Over there, sir!” replied the Grenadier, pointing to the forest, up and beyond the opening where the single track emerged.
Despite the overwhelming numbers that the Ivans had been able to bring into the field, the Panzerwaffe still held the initiative in Russia. Superior organisation and communications saw to that. The Red Army was improving, but it was still something of a blunt instrument. Soviet battle plans were set and, of necessity, they had to be followed to the letter. On the Soviet side there was none of the flexibility built into the concept of the Aufstragstaktik, which allowed even junior German commanders to take decisions on the spot. The situation was changing rapidly, but many of the Russian tanks could not take advantage of their tactical superiority as they had no radio and communicated by means of flags.
“So what would Ivan plan to do? What would Ivan do?” von Schroif thought to himself frantically.
“Quick, the artillery spotters will soon be ready to report back! So, if I’m the Russian commander, what would I do?”
“Load with high-explosive, sir?” asked Otto Wohl.
“Not yet, Wohl, await my order.” Von Schroif continued to ponder the situation, lost in his own thoughts.
“I’d probably be trying to work out what the panzer commander would do… What would the panzer commander do? In this situation, the panzer commander, if he were to do it by the manual, would order all his tanks to slowly reverse back along their tracks to avoid any more mines… So, knowing that, what would Ivan do?”
It was this ability to think himself into the mind of his enemy that distinguished von Schroif from so many other panzer commanders on the Eastern Front, certainly in the Panzerwaffe. There were persistent rumours of an equally adept white-haired adversary on the Russian side, a KV-1 commander christened Der Weisse Teufel (the White Devil), but von Schroif dismissed such defeatist nonsense as mere campfire stories, forged in fevered imaginations after the heat of battle.
Von Schroif knew for certain that the Russians would be slavishly following a rigidly predestined battle plan… so now all he had to do was deduce what the Russian Commander would have ordered. Quickly resurveying the immediate environment, he observed, noticed, paused, thought and, with a sharp intake of cold Russian air flaring in his nostrils, arrived at his best guess.
“If I were the Russian commander, I would assume that the column is going to retrace its steps… and so I would lay down a barrage about 700 metres behind where the last tank is now… I would hold my T-34s out of sight in the forest and send them down the track, around the hamlet, and drive them into our left flank. Now, what is the best way to counter that?”
Von Schroif’s gaze returned to the fallen medic who had died on his way to attend the wounded grenadier. What a soldier! The young man had kept to his duty even after the loss of a limb. Sadly, there was no time to provide him with a soldier’s grave. Germany needed men like him, but their ranks were becoming thinner every day.
Oblivious to the dangers, Wendorff opened his hatch and shouted to his commander. “Shall I order them to back up, sir?”
“No!” replied von Schroif, a trifle too quickly. “Tell them to stay put and keep their main guns trained on the forest. We are expecting a few guests and maybe a present from the Popovs… Everybody else, get down here. Let’s get this fixed.”
As von Schroif considered his options, he was unaware that all the time he was being closely observed from the nearby hillock by Andrey Basilevsky of the reconnaissance unit of the Guards tank battalion. Andrey too loved to hunt, and in better times the two men would have enjoyed each other’s company, but today Andrey was hunting fascists and von Schroif was the prey. Having already claimed two victims, Basilevsky knew all he had to do was wait.
Within a few seconds he smiled as he saw the crippled tank’s crew emerge with tools and spare track links. One figure quickly scuttled under the tank, leaving the other three to start work on the track. Basilevsky did not fire immediately though, as Koniev was still struggling with the dials in a vain attempt to connect the radio to HQ. That momentary hesitation was to cost him his life.
At any minute Basilevsky expected to hear the roar of engines as a column of panzers revved up their engines from idle as they retraced their steps from whence they came, back along their tracks towards the muddy rollbahn. He began to plot the distance at which the barrage would fall. “700 metres should do it…”
Basilevsky calculated that there was no need for a tell-tale spotting round; Stalin’s Organ would obliterate the whole area. Arranged behind him was an entire brigade of lorry-borne Katyushas which had been brought to just behind the front by a superhuman effort, and those efforts were about to be rewarded by the death of the best German tank commander in the southern sector. The intelligence had been perfect. This was a cakewalk, all he had to do was wait for Koniev to connect the radio to HQ and Kampfgruppe von Schroif would be history.
In the meantime, there was sport to be had. As Sergei Koniev continued to struggle with the bulky radio set, Andrey Basilevsky once more took up his rifle, readjusted his position, and muttered quietly to himself. “Keep going, you fascist bastards. You offend Mother Russia with your presence, and she is about to make you pay!”
Those were the last words he would ever utter. Suddenly, as if from nowhere, the bullet from a Sauer hunting rifle sliced clean through his face and, speeding through the recesses of his brain, blew away the back of his skull.
His compatriot looked on in horror before instinctively going to the aid of his comrade. He should have taken cover, for he was the next target. A German bullet crashed into his skull through his left ear and exited through the right, taking most of the side of his head with it.
Noticing the tell-tale puff of smoke, Hauptsturm-führer von Schroif peered under the tank. As he suspected, lying prone under the crippled panzer was gunner Michael Knispel, who patted the telescopic sights of the Sauer and looked back at von Schroif and smiled.
“I thought we said no poaching?” said von Schroif.
“That wasn’t poaching, Hauptsturmführer… that was culling a few rats.”
“OK, but no non-standard weapons aboard my bus, understood?”
“Jawohl, Hauptsturmführer.”
There was no need for any more words. Von Schroif was damned if he could find the hiding place where Knispel managed to conceal his beloved hunting rifle in the cramped interior of Magda. It was against all regulations to carry a personal weapon, and von Schroif obeyed regulations scrupulously. He had deliberately searched the bus at night while the crew were in their billet and had come to the conclusion that Knispel probably slept with it.
He knew what that smile meant; once a poacher, always a poacher. Somehow, the Sauer would be smuggled aboard and, although he conscientiously did his duty to prevent it, secretly von Schroif was glad to know it would be there in future… just in case.
“Ok, we’ve bought ourselves some time. Now let’s get this track back on!” ordered von Schroif.
Working feverishly, the five men set to their tasks. Von Schroif was fully aware that, in the absence of contact from their spotters, the Russian gunners would do a quick calculation of how much ground the column should cover before letting loose. For now at least, the small formation of panzers was safe from that particular danger.
In the meantime the cold had not abated. If anything, it seemed to have intensified. Just one more reason to hate Russia, hate the shitty war, and curse everything that went with it. With stiff, blue and bloodied hands, the crew worked with a discipline born of familiarity to repair the damaged track, each man knowing that failure would mean death or, even worse, capture by the Red Army.