Winter Storm (18 page)

Lavrinenko
was waiting in the shadows of the trees, the grey light
and rolling early morning mist his friend that day. Visibility had fallen to
about 700 meters, and the field was still strewn with damaged and destroyed
tanks, their fires burning and adding the dark char of black smoke to the
scene. He had planned on firing at longer range, but 700 meters suited him
fine. All accounts as he listened to the radio chatter with his radio operator,
Corporal Borzoi, were frantic exclamations about this new German tank. What was
out there? He would soon find out.

His
driver, Private Bedenny, was waiting for any order to move, knowing the
Lieutenant well enough to realize he would often fire, then move to a new
position he had already selected in his mind as he surveyed the ground. His loader
Private Fedotin, had a round chambered, and the second at the ready, though he
knew the Lieutenant seldom needed more than one shot to get what he was aiming
at. The wreckage of so many T-34s gave him a lot to think about that morning.
He had become accustomed to feeling relatively invulnerable in this tank, able
to withstand most AT guns the Germans had if they did not get in close. So for
him the fog was an ominous sign, and he kept looking at the Lieutenant, who had
his head up through the top hatch, eyes lost behind his field glasses.

Then he
was all business, down through the hatch and hanging the glasses on a hook, his
eyes quickly pressed to the optics of his main gun.

“Column
on the road, 500 meters. Be ready, Fedotin!” He was sighting, waiting, almost
holding his breath. Then he squeezed off the gun trigger, and the round leapt
out, hitting the enemy tank right where he wanted it, on that sloped frontal
armor to test its strength. If this was a Panzer III, he would blow clean
through at this range, and he would have kill number twelve.

But it
was not a Panzer III…

*

The
Germans could see that the enemy attack had been broken,
and now it was time to pursue. Kleber had a wounded leg, not his own, but that
of his new Pz-55 Lion. So Knispel put his tank in the number five position as
the platoon pulled out of Malakhovo, probing north along a narrow side road, into
the smoke and mist of the enemy retreat. The thin stands of trees crowded close
to the road as they exited the town, many no more than six to 8 feet high, and
with thin sapling width trunks a few inches wide. Yet they still made
visibility into the fields beyond difficult in places. The road also gained
elevation, ever so gently, but Knispel was watching the crest of his near
horizon very closely, not wanting to be surprised.

The
Sergeant was in the number two spot, and they passed a burning T-34 on the
right, seeing the body of a dead crewman hanging from the open turret. As much
as he would make his fame by killing tanks, he always hated to see one like
that, for they died in their own steely agony, and it was often a gruesome
site.

The
death of the tank, like the man, was a striking, visceral experience. It wasn’t
just the bruised and buckled armor where the tungsten tipped shell had blasted
through. The tank would burn inside, its innards ravaged by fire. Thick acrid
smoke from burned rubber would hang in the air for hours after, a choking aura
of death. Parts of the engine and other components would melt, leaking from
gashes and wounds in the metal, like bright silver mercury that was the blood
of this mechanical beast. It would run down the scarred exterior, drooling onto
the tracks, and pool in the dull grey mud like the blood of that soldier, a
hapless tank commander, running red from the deep gash in his upper chest. He
had been the last man to try and get out, but did not make it to safety.

Knispel
knew he went forward now by the grace of God, and the skill of his own quick
eye and hand, the strength of the steel in that forward armor on his panzer.
Yet one look at that tank spoke volumes within, for its commander had once
enjoyed a brief summer where he and his vehicle had every chance of meeting and
beating the enemy on the road ahead. This was the sad end of that illusion of invulnerability,
and he chided himself inwardly that he, too, would one day meet another tank,
another gun, that would be fully capable of destroying his own armored chariot.
He shook his mind alert, and peered ahead.

Hans
Jurgen was in the lead tank, his head also up through the top hatch, field
glasses raised. Then the first round came, like a hot comet of molten fire as
it hissed in to strike Jurgen’s tank right on the frontal armor. It failed to
penetrate, but the resulting explosion sent shrapnel up and back, taking Jurgen
in the neck with a bad wound. Knispel saw him hunch over and fall back through
the open hatch, and he cursed under his breath as he dove into his own tank and
slammed the hatch shut.

“All
crews! Hatches tight! Targets left center!”

They
had come to a gap in the trees crowding close to the narrow road, and off to
the left was a bare brown field, a perfect open field of fire, thought Knispel.
The dark, ragged edge of another tree line in the distance held his attention,
his heavy brows low on his forehead, hair wild as the mane of a lion as he
peered through his periscope, waiting for the second shot that he knew was
coming. Lavrinenko did not disappoint.

As Jurgen’s
tank careened left off the road, it entered a low gully, nose down at a sharp
angle for the barest moment, but that was when the second round came in, right
on top of the turret, penetrating the thinner armor there and putting an end to
Jurgen’s gasping struggle for breath where he was slumped inside, his bloodied
hand pressed tightly against his neck. The blow jolted the turret left, and
Knispel saw that it did not correct, knowing the worst, yet the tank’s momentum
carried it up the other side of the gully, which was acting as a perfect anti-tank
ditch in that one spot in the road where Jurgen had been unlucky enough to
turn. Knispel saw the place in the distant tree line where that second enemy
round came from, rotated his turret, coming right about five degrees.

“Gun
ready!”

He
fired, seeing the enemy fire their third shot at Jugen’s tank at almost the
exact same moment. It was only then that he knew he was going to be just a
little wide to the right with that shot, which had been a good guess from the
first. Now he knew where his enemy was, and he would not miss again.

*

“Back!”
Lavrinenko shouted at his driver. “Then come left and sprint to that lower
ground at three o’clock!” It was a low depression in the field, almost crater
like, and ringed by trees. That was his number two firing spot, and his route
would be screened by a clump of thin trees as he went. There would be mud, but
he trusted to the good wide tracks of his T-34, and hoped it would not be too
deep.

He
moved just in time, his eyes widening when he saw a hot round burn right
through the spot where his tank had been just moments before. Someone out there
was very good, he thought. Yet this only stiffened his resolve. As the T-34
raced ahead, tracks grinding through the wet field grass and dark brown earth, Lavrinenko
was watching closely, elated that his third shot had hit the underside of the lead
German tank as it climbed out of the gully. This time he had a clean
penetration, and he got that twelfth kill, though he knew well enough he had
been very lucky. The other four tanks had much better ground off that road, and
there they were, all in a line abreast, and one was already tracking his
movement as the T-34 raced on behind that thin screen of sapling trees.

“Ready
Samohin?” he said through his radio set, one of the units privileged to have
radios in every tank in his four unit platoon. The Russians had laid a very
careful trap. Lavrinenko opened the engagement, but none of the other tanks in
the platoon fired. He got his hits, then backed off and was sprinting to the
depression he had spotted earlier, and he knew the Germans could not see it
from that road. To them it would look as though he were making for a little
stand of trees for cover, and his idea was that he would draw the enemy’s
attention long enough for his other three T-34s to get a good bead on the
advancing tanks.

The
plan worked exactly as he hoped, but with only seconds to spare. The Germans
were tracking on him, and the number two tank fired, just as his T-34 jolted
into that depression, the round streaking right above the tank, which would
have been skewered had it not descended below the rim of that depression. Then
Samohin, and the other two tanks in the platoon that had been waiting silently
in the tree line opened fire, each one sighting on a separate tank. The sharp
crack of the 76s cut through the chill morning air, and an instant later there
were three hard thumps, one after another, for all three rounds hit home.

But all
three struck that heavy frontal armor on the Lions, and bounced clean off, and
at just under 500 meters!

*

Knispel
saw what the Russians had done, momentarily stunned to hear the hard thunk on
the armor of his own tank, but knowing it had held against the violence of that
attack. Now his blood was up. This was personal. Someone had hurt Jurgen;
probably killed him and possibly his loader as well, and put his hands on his
own tank at the same time! These were not the Russian tankers he had been
killing so easily before. If he and his men had been in Panzer IIIs, they would
all be dead now, statistics in the deadly game of counting those confirmed
kills. He was determined to even the score.

He saw
where the enemy was on that tree line, realizing what that first tank had done
in opening the action and bating the German fire. It was a very carefully laid
ambush, the same sort he had heard about when the operation opened and 4th
Panzer Division had trouble at Mtsensk. The Russians had set up on good,
concealed positions, with that lovely open field of fire to the road, and then
the lead tank lured the Germans in.

“Oh,
you’re a sly one,” he said under his breath, bringing the turret around to
engage, “a clever little fox. But you sound like a mouse.” He could clearly
hear what he thought was a bad wheel on that tank, squeaking whenever it moved.
“I’ll deal with you in a moment. First to get your other friends in the nest.”

He
fired at the middle position on the tree line where he knew the enemy must be
waiting, his eagle eye remembering exactly where they had been seconds before.
The Russian tank had started to back away, just as Lavrinenko had done, but it
was not quick enough. There came a loud explosion, and he saw the entire turret
blown up to the height of the tree tops, and knew he would not take any more
fire from that rascal. He heard that telltale squeak, then he pivoted his gun
around to cover that depression again, knowing his enemy had to move or be
killed soon as his panzers closed the range.

There
he was! The bold little mouse was already running from his hole, but it would
be a difficult shot. Both tanks were jolting along, the trees on the rim of
that depression were in the way, and he knew, instinctively, that he would not
get the hit he wanted while moving. So instead he looked to see where that tank
might be going.

“All
stop!” he shouted, hearing the reassuring noise of the main gun loading. By
stabilizing his tank, he had just doubled his chances of getting a hit—and he
fired.

*

Lavrinenko
was shocked when he realized what had just happened. His comrades got three
clean hits, and yet not one of the enemy tanks was bothered a whit! That first
test shot he had taken had also bounced, and now he knew the worst of all he
had heard in those frantic radio calls from the men in Antonov’s battalion. The
76mm gun would not penetrate this new monster, not here at 500 meters, and
certainly not at the longer ranges where he had so much success hunting the
older German tanks. His platoon had done everything right, but they had counted
on meeting Panzer IIIs. This was something else, something new, as tough as a
KV-2, yet leaner, faster, and with a very good gun that could blow right
through the frontal armor on his T-34.

A chill
ran up his spine for now he knew the only way to get this new enemy tank would
be to either find some thinner armor on the sides or rear, or to simply swarm
it with superior numbers. Neither was going to happen today.

“Move
right!” he shouted, “Fast! Fast! Run for the neck of that tree line!”

That
was going to be his moment of greatest danger, but he hoped the sudden turn
would throw off any enemy that was sighting on him. All he needed was a few
seconds—but he was wrong.

Knispel
saw the one place he would go himself in that segment of the tree line, a small
notch in the woods where a fallen tree lay prone by a stack of cut timber. If
this Russian tank commander was good, that was where he would also go. From
there the enemy would have had an excellent hull down position, and so when
Lavrinenko suddenly turned, he only smiled, adjusted his range, and fired.

The
round hissed in to strike the T-34 square on the back, blasting through to the
engine and exploding. The resulting shrapnel took Lavrinenko’s loader, Private
Fedotin, in the stomach, and he would not survive, but his body had shielded
Lavrinenko.