Roskovsky crawled to a trio of teens he had deployed there, who lay hidden in the brush. From their position, detonation cords snaked out to three homemade EFPs concealed amid tall weeds and bushes just forty meters away. As the first half-track passed an EFP, Roskovsky tapped one of the boys on the head and signaled him to shoot.
The boy pressed the detonator as the track rumbled by. Nothing happened. He looked at Roskovsky, panic on his face as the big armored vehicle continued to advance. Roskovsky tapped the next boy and made a motion for the boy to hit it. This one worked, but halftrack had almost passed when the second EFP detonated. It blew a hole through the back of the vehicle but didn’t destroy it. Still, the blast killed a few of the SS engineers in the back and wounded several dismounted men nearby—a man in flames leapt from the vehicle. The halftrack’s driver steered the vehicle off the road in his own panic, then regained the path and drove it straight ahead toward the Jewish positions.
Roskovsky ignored the damaged halftrack as it drove away. He moved to the third boy who was targeting the following halftrack with the third homemade unit. As the track moved past the hidden device the boy set it off. This EF P struck dead on—a molten bolt of dense copper shot straight into the vehicle cabin, killing the crew instantly and setting the vehicle A few engineers managed to flee the stricken vehicle, leaving their comrades to roast inside.
Their bombs expended, Roskovsky motioned teens to come with him, before the Germans spotted and killed them. The little band crawled across the wood were the second team lay beside the Lubin road. Roskovsky was preparing to attack the German armor on that road when he heard artillery falling behind him and the shouting of German infantry coming at them through the woods.
On the ridgeline Yatom saw Roskovsky’s EFPs destroy one halftrack and damage another. The damaged vehicle sped madly towards his positions. Two or three machineguns peppered the halftrack as it crashed its way forward, its rear compartment aflame. From the fortified forester’s buildings on Yatom’s right Mofaz fired a 40mm grenade. The projectile arched through the sky and struck the burning halftrack, exploding against its front armor. The stricken halftrack ground to a halt forty meters from the nearest Jewish bunker. The machinegun team in the bunker gunned down the surviving Germans as they attempted to escape the burning armored truck. So far, so good, thought Yatom. Then the artillery started.
Stadler had been happy with his column’s progress when he saw the two engineer halftracks suddenly get hit by some kind of huge roadside mines. One half-track blew up and the second sped off toward the enemy, though on fire. Stadler’s command track was next in column, followed by two more half-tracks loaded with infantry. He immediately ordered his driver to halt.
The German battalion commander raised his binoculars and followed the progress of the damaged engineer halftrack as it continued to advance toward a small settlement, despite the fact that it was still burning. It almost reached the suspected enemy position when it was hit by a grenade that seemed to come out of nowhere. The front of the vehicle exploded, and the wrecked machine came to a halt between the settlement and the enemy held ridgeline.
Stadler, quite unexpectedly, now faced a crisis. His engineer platoon was mostly destroyed, he was out of communication with Kumm—the radioman improbably claimed that their communications were being jammed—and his dismounted infantrymen were not yet up. So Stadler did what he had been trained to do—he attacked. He ordered the two armored infantry squads in the half-tracks behind him to go forward. Behind the halftracks were two Stug III assault guns. Stadler ordered them forward too. With his radio out he dispatched runners to find the infantry companies on his left and right and have them charge ahead. Then he kicked his driver and sent his halftrack out of the woods and into the narrow valley that led to a clutch of old buildings that was the forester’s settlement.
Action sometimes brings its own reward and so it was for Captain Stadler. Just as his track breached the woodline a smoke barrage fell in front of him, blinding his enemies, and mortar bombs started hitting the ridgeline. He loved Colonel Kumm!
“Aufmarsch!” yelled Stadler in his headset, heedless of whether the other vehicle commanders could hear him. Then realizing that they probably could not, he pulled out his signaling flags and waved them on. As his half-track lurched forward, Stadler grabbed the nearby machinegun and opened up on the foresters’ settlement.
Back on the Lubin road Kumm pounded his radio in frustration. His signal officer officer apologized—there was no question that the German radios were being jammed. Kumm only had communication by phone to the artillery, or by runner anywhere else. He could hear the explosions along Stadler’s line of advance but did not know his subordinate’s situation. But he trusted Stadler and in the German doctrine of Auftragstaktik—to stick with the mission no matter what.
Kumm felt better as he watched the smoke barrage fall, and saw the first 81mm shells impact the enemy ridgeline ahead. His own infantry halftracks and Stug IIIs started forward. He had to hand it to Globocnik and his staff officers—they were right about things. These were no ordinary partisans he was facing. This was a straight up battle against a determined, dug in enemy, and he was attacking into the teeth of their defenses. He looked over at the police sergeant Mueller, who sat alone and unhappy several meters away. It seemed as if the police sergeant knew that things would be tough, and wanted no further part in it. Mueller disgusted Kumm—war was war—whether in Poland or Russia, whether against regulars or partisans. It was always hard.
In the woods several hundred yards from Kumm, Roskovsky watched the elaborately painted German armored vehicles advance toward his hidden EFPs on the Lubin road. He also noted German infantry creeping through the woods straight for his positions. Roskovsky turned his attention back to the mobile column, which was throwing up clouds of dust as the heavy vehicles crushed the damaged paving stones beneath their tracks. Smoke from the German barrage wafted back over his position adding to the murk. In the midst of the dust and smoke the Israeli engineer couldn’t tell if his EFPs were on target or not, he just knew that he had to fire them all immediately, before he and his men were annihilated by the SS troopers coming right at them. Roskovsky crawled over to a second trio of teenaged engineers hiding by the main road and signaled them to fire their three jury-rigged charges. Again, only two detonated successfully. Roskovsky then fired his two radio controlled EFPs also nestled along the Lubin road. In the smog that had enveloped his position he could not see whether any of the EFPs were on target, he just hoped that the mass firing hit something.
Beyond the smoke and dust, out of Roskovsky’s sight, three of the five EFPs tore successfully into the Germans. On the Lubin road one of Roskovsky’s modern EFPs detonated as a Stug III passed. The assault gun, though well armored by the standards of 1942, was helpless against a device designed to penetrate a modern main battle tank. The copper slug passed clean through the Stug III, igniting its ready ammunition, blowing it into a hulk of shattered, twisted metal, and extinguishing its crew. On the same road a homemade charge went off close enough to one of Kumm’s infantry half-tracks to damage the front cab, wounding the driver and putting the squad of panicked SS troopers riding in the back to flight. The two other charges that detonated on the main road missed completely. With the German infantry almost on him, Roskovsky’s set off his last EF P, a radio charge that was still on the forester’s road, as he heard yet another Stug III rumble forward. The powerful device just managed to knock a track off the assault gun as it roared past. The vehicle slewed to a halt, otherwise intact, its gun pointed forward toward the Jewish positions.