“We will say no more of this blockage, Comrade Serzhant. Good luck.”
The Sergeant saluted and dropped into the turret, deciding to get his tank moving before the officer changed his mind.
The two riders dropped off the tank and watched as it sped away.
“Nice speech, Comrade Driver.”
“Thank you Sir. Sorry about…well… you know.”
“No problem, Stepanov. True words.”
They reached the IS-III and mounted.
“Mind you, Comrade Starshy Leytenant, I have heard a rumour that half of all medals are won by someone retreating in the wrong direction.”
The turret crew heard the laughter but missed the joke, both driver and commander settling in to their places with smiles on their faces.
Stelmakh’s smile disappeared as a thought overcame the humour of the moment.
‘Was it a joke?’
He put it from his mind to concentrate on the job ahead.
“Tank, forward.”
The battleground was narrow and flat, with next to no room to manoeuvre, so much of the surrounding ground sodden and impassable, or full of irrigation ditches.
Firepower would rule, unless some other intervention could turn the day
‘Polotsk’ caught up with the lead elements, or more accurately, found the lead elements gone to ground on the western edge of Jork.
Chelpanov ordered the T-34 to pull over, where an infantry officer was waving to get his attention.
The Sergeant dropped down from the turret and the Engineer Captain immediately took the tank commander to a gap between two houses.
No field glasses were needed to see that a sizeable enemy force was declaring itself on the road to their front, slowly pushing towards their current position.
“One of the bastard’s hit a mine some distance back and it’s slowed them up. You need to slow them up more, Comrade Serzhant. I will keep the infantry off you, but you have to stop the tanks.”
“I will do what I can, Comrade Kapitan.”
The Engineer officer coughed violently but heard and acknowledged the reply.
Quickly peering over the fence, Chelpanov immediately spotted what he was looking for.
“That’s my prime position, Comrade Kapitan. Get your men out of the way of it and I will fight from there at first.”
“It is done. Good luck Comrade.”
Captain Onipchenko moved off towards the position Chelpanov had selected, shouting and waving his arms at a group based around a Maxim heavy machine gun.
Returning to his tank, Chelpanov quickly briefed his men and the T-34 moved out from its position into a small hollow behind a pile of blackened bricks that was once the country retreat of a member of the local Gauleiter’s staff.
The move was seen by the lead M5 Stuart, which broadcast the contact report immediately.
However, Route 140 was a narrow road and the ground either side not suited to armoured vehicles, restricting movement and escape options, vital to the survival of light tanks.
The Soviet 85mm spoke first, the solid shell tearing virtually straight up the road and missing the US light tank by a coat of paint.
The Stuart could do nothing to harm the T-34, even if it had stopped to fire accurately, its armour piercing capability insignificant. Neither did it possess a smoke shell to create some sort of cover. What it did possess was engine power, and the twin Cadillac engines gave the Stuart an excellent top speed. In this case, all they did was drive the vehicle closer to its end.
‘Polotsk’s’ gunner did not miss a second time, although the shell killed neither the tank nor the inexperienced crew inside, smashing into the front offside, removing the drive sprocket as neatly as a surgeon with a scapel, and sending pieces of the track flying.
The crew debussed rapidly, before the T-34 could fire another shot.
The Maxim crew, still annoyed at being turfed out of their lovely firing position, vented their rage on the American tankers, 7.62mm bullets sending them to ground in search of whatever cover the bare soil could provide.
‘Polotsk’ sought and found a new target. It was dispatched with a single shell, a second Stuart tank burning readily along with most of its crew.
Other Stuarts were moving back, their commanders and gunners tossing smoke grenades out of their hatches, desperate to cover their withdrawal.
They were replaced by three Shermans from a troop of ‘A’ Squadron, one of which was a deadly Firefly.
Lieutenant-Colonel Krol was already raging, the slowness of his recon advance the first cause, losses in light tanks the second.
Ordering one squadron of his Shermans forward, he immediately switched his axis of advance southwards from the crossroads, intending to bypass Jork to the south, using route 38 through Westerladekop before rejoining the ‘26’ to drive down to Cuxhavener Straβe and into the rear of the Soviet defences.
Unfortunately for him, as he made his decision, forty-five tons of Soviet tank was already driving hard up Westerladekop, heading westwards.
Behind ‘Krasny Suka’, another IS-III, as promised by Evanin, drove hard to reinforce the Soviet effort, pushed along the road by the impending presence of two T-34 tank companies and a battalion of lorried engineers.
Unfortunately for the Soviet forces, two events then took over and delivered a disaster.
In the first instance, the IS-III was straining hard to avoid holding up the faster moving troops behind it, and the strain told as the engine noisily ripped itself apart, the smoking and crippled tank coming to rest in the middle of the road, with the column behind closing fast.
In the second instance, the tanks and lorries started to bunch up on a straight road, which coincided with the passing of aircraft from the two light carriers, HMS Argus and HMS Queen, steaming off the coast of northern Holland, sending their Naval aircraft out in support of ground operations.
The former had recently been recommissioned and sent to sea, carrying 822 and 853 Royal Naval Air Squadron’s, Fairey Firefly I’s and Vought Corsair Mk IV’s respectively.
The latter brought the experienced Seafire F/VX’s of 802 Squadron RN, along with 848 Squadron RN’s Mark III Grumman Avengers.
The Seafires of 802 were leading the mission, seeking out enemy fighter responses to the Fleet Air Arm excursion.
Intent on bombing the railway line north of Scharnebeck, the new target was bypassed by 802 and 848.
822 and 853 were to support the attack, but were permitted to attack targets of opportunity, and it was the considered opinion of Lieutenant-Commander Steele, officer commanding 822’s Fireflies, that fifteen enemy tanks and well over twenty-five trucks were suitable for their undivided attention.
A solitary ZSU-37, in the rear of the tank column, put up its shells in an effort to ward off the attacking aircraft, failing to even damage one before it became a victim.
Sending Yellow and White sections into the attack, Steele remained with the rest of his squadron, half watching the attack, half seeking out threats in the unfriendly air space.
Six Fireflies swept down and discharged their weapons, each aircraft capable of firing a salvo of sixteen RP-3 rockets, twice the normal payload of Allied ground attack aircraft.
Aiming at the stalled column of seventeen tanks was child’s play, and each attack was greeted with explosions and secondary explosions as the two Soviet tank companies were ripped to pieces, as well as massive casualties inflicted on the lead elements of the engineer battalion.
Behind them came Red section of 853, backed up by another two Corsairs from the reserve section.