The shell was fired straight at them. But then nothing happened, no shrapnel was triggered over the target. Arno wondered why. This was indeed strange. Then he realised that this must have been an armour-piercing round, not an explosive shell. The T-34 had fired the wrong shell. Luckily – for Arno’s team.
But it wasn’t over yet. The machine’s driver rammed it into gear, its engine revved and the tracks gripped the muddy road. The tank was aiming to run them over instead. And if they tried to run to avoid being ground and smashed to pulp, it would mow them down with its machine gun.
Arno shouted to the men to crawl away further in different directions.
How would the stretcher bearers cope? Arno didn’t know. He had given his orders. He himself crawled off and behind a tree. The T-34 advanced against them. And then, another unexpected salvation that reminded Arno that he wasn’t going to die in this war. A roar like he’d never heard before thundered overhead. A plane he’d never seen before flashed low over the trees. The plane spotted the tank, banked round and swept back in attack mode, dropping its two 250 kg bombs bang on target. Direct hit! The turret flew off with a bang and the chassis was set on fire. High flames licked up from the wreckage. The smell of cordite and burning flesh filled the air.
Arno was briefly mesmerised by the speed and the sound of the air attack. Then and his men pulled themselves together and resumed their journey. They praised the Luftwaffe, their comrades in the air; they praised the fighter-bomber. They worked out that it was a Messerschmitt 262, a real “Wonder Weapon” with its high speed jet engines. Yet again, Arno’s war had turned on a plane. On one a futuristic monster, a predator from an age to come. From biplanes to jet engines in the space of a war! What a shame, thought Arno, that these space-age killers hadn’t been rolled out two or three years earlier.
They soon reached their own lines. Huber, groaning through gritted teeth, was carried off to the Battalion Medical Station. Arno went to see Captain Wistinghausen to make his report. The front goes there and there Arno said, tracing the line on the map. One man wounded. When he was finished, the Company Commander said:
“Fine. Dismiss.”
26
Woxa Forest
Battalion Wolf’s legendary chief, Major Wolf, had been injured in a car accident in December 1944. He was replaced by a certain Major Mahler. But the unit was still called “Battalion Wolf” for simplicity.
Now they knew where the enemy’s main position was. On the basis of the reconnaissance information, Major Mahler could fine-tune the planning of Battalion Wolf’s attack. Battalion Wolf would lead the attack, followed by the other two battalions of Battle Group M, Battalions Rot and Weiss. They would first take a Forward Assembly Area, FAA for short. This “taking of FAA” took place in early March. They would seize and secure a 500 m x 2 km large area deemed right for the staging of the subsequent, all-out battle group attack. 8th Company got the task of taking this FAA.
The enemy had attacked almost continuously since July, even here in Hungary. But Ivan had overstretched himself. The current German plan was, as intimated, attacking towards Budapest with Panzer Battle Groups from the west. Battalion Wolf and Battle Group M – BGM – would support from the north and join the other column at Kerenyi.
First, however, Battalion Wolf had to take the staging area, with 8th Company receiving the task of going “an der Spitze”. 6th Company would protect the flanks. 7th Company would be in reserve and on alert, ready to support the venture.
On March 4, 8th Company gathered at a forked road in the forest and split up into two columns, with Arno’s platoon in the lead of the right-hand column. Captain Wistinghausen would advance with the left-hand column. The temperature was ten degrees below zero. The winter of ’44–’45 had been harsh, and was not quite over yet. Three assault guns accompanied them along two parallel forest roads. Arno was supported by one such self-propelled artillery piece, the other column had two. StuG IIIs. They were factory painted in grey, hastily given winter camouflage in the form of small white paint strokes.
They reached the starting line on their side of a clearing. Arno ordered his unit to deploy and wait. They heard hostile artillery fire from 7.62 cm-pieces and saw battle smoke rolling in from the right. Arno ordered gas masks on, even though at this point in the war few had their gas masks left. No one any longer expected a gas war.
As for Arno, he still had his gas mask. So he whipped it from its metal container, took a deep breath, took off his helmet and woollen cap-comforter, donned the mask and wore it until the smoke had drifted by. He lay alongside the StuG, looking absentmindedly at the caterpillar mechanism with its track wheels, track supports and track tension. While waiting for the prep fire one of the soldiers was affected by the smoke, he began to stagger around coughing and seemed to be about to suffocate. Then he dropped to the ground. It was Private Schnell. He was carried a little way off in order to get fresh air.
The sun was shining in the clear blue sky. On the wind there now was the smell of wood smoke and cordite, the latter from the Russian harassing fire shots before.
The orderly of the Company HQ, Untergefreiter Pfeiff, arrived from Wistinghausen. He was there to check that Arno had understood the concept of the attack, which – of course – he had. After prep fire from the Battle Group Artillery and the assault guns his platoon, the 3rd, would attack on the right wing. Guntz’ 2nd Platoon would attack on the left wing. Ongoing, successive support would be provided by the assault guns, which would roll along in the attack. 1st Platoon was in reserve. The goal was the woodland beyond the clearing, two kilometers away. It was rather wide and several kilometres in length.
The task looked quite daunting. When the Germans ventured out into the open ground in front of them, the enemy would have an open field of fire at the advancing force. However, Arno set to work despite the prospect of being mown down on the field. Once the German prep fire had softened the target dense smoke lay over the neighborhood. That was a plus. Now was the time to get going. Arno brought his men along in two files behind the StuG. On the left wing Guntz made the same move behind his two machines.
The snow in the field, as usual, had a thin layer. In the middle of the clearing the StuGs halted and fired explosive shells into the already bombed target. Arno’s and Guntz’ columns left the relative safety behind the machines and charged the wood, breaking into the tangled mess of barbed wire, logs and broken concrete that was the enemy position.
The enemy, for his part, wasn’t completely knocked out. In the ensuing battle, it became a matter of shielding off a stubbornly-held bunker with smoke, automatic bursts to their front, hand grenades into the unknown, shrapnel flying and blood flowing, hard explosions and white flames, gunfire rattling over the land and a field shovel with a short handle.
A lull in the firing. There were indifferent clouds in the sky, bomber noise and a rustle in the tree tops. Arno strode along in a trench, then under a barbed wire barrier and past a pile of broken rock. He deployed his men along an earth embankment. Then he saw enemy infantry approaching, using a pile of logs as cover. “Enemies, fire,” he shouted and they opened up, creating a virtual wall of lead. The Russians lobbed a smoke grenade but Arno wasn’t fooled, he continued to direct the fire into the smoke and around it. Result: hostile riposte eliminated.