His old crew were no more, and he had welded his new men into a tight and efficient unit in the time since his return to the company some four months previously.
Czernin knew that their level of efficiency was about to be tested in the hardest school of all.
The tank was approaching the first of their listed special points; a place that could not be fully interpreted from photos and required further examination… and above all caution.
Czernin gave the order and dismounted, quickly scrabbling up the side of a muddy ridge to understand the area ahead, something that had been impossible to work out from the aerial pictures.
A quick look revealed a nasty surprise.
The Soviets had set an anti-tank gun into an artificial mound, one that pointed sideways across the battlefield, sited to take vehicles using Route 132 in the side.
It was protected by a group of infantry that were trying very hard to look like anything but a group of infantry, staying low and unmoving under camouflage.
Czernin spoke quickly into his walkie-talkie and the commander of the Highland battalion’s mortar platoon acknowledged with the minimum of fuss.
Within a minute, mortars shells were dropping on the secret position, and the defending infantry lost interest in their charge and placed self-preservation at the head of their priorities.
The observing Polish NCO watched as two, then four ran back to another prepared position, one that offered more shelter and that was not under direct mortar strikes. There was red mixed with the brown mud and green grass in the positions they had just evacuated, testament to the accuracy of the mortar strike.
Czernin gave the ceasefire order and summoned forward one of the supporting halftracks, giving the Highland Battalion’s men a quick directional steer over the rolling ground and down upon the anti-tank gun which could not traverse given its defensive set-up.
He watched as the halftrack started up the slope and almost screamed into the WT.
“Niebieskie-Bizon-trzy-dwa! Biały-Huzar-Dwa-Dwa! Stop! Stop! On foot… I said on foot… get out of the vehicle… get out of the veh…”
The other obliquely mounted gun position, set some four hundred metres back, put a shell through the front of the M5 halftrack, a solid shot that destroyed the engine and sent deadly pieces of metal flying in all directions.
The men inside needed no order and bailed out on the side opposite their nemesis and headed straight down the slope towards the mortared position.
One man fell as they ran but was quickly up and limping as the Highland soldiers charged into the AT position, following up three grenades that took much of the fight out of the gunners.
Czernin counted nine men, meaning that the halftrack, struck a second time and now burning, still held three young men from Poland.
The mistake was not his fault, but he felt a bitter taste in his mouth at not double-checking that the Highland officer had understood his words.
He would have no chance to pursue the matter further as the man in question was roasting within the roaring flames.
Czernin took another look and saw a further group of infantry sprinting down the slope to avenge their comrades, almost running into more mortar fire.
Now that the AT position had been silenced, the next Chaffee in line swept past his tank and breasted the rise before quickly dropping down again and out of sight of any waiting Soviet killers.
Having handed responsibility over to the next tank, Bazyli Czernin moved back to his own vehicle and climbed aboard.
A mug of coffee was thrust into his hand as he ordered the repositioning of his tank.
“Thanks, Jan.”
His loader grunted and passed the thermos flask back into the front of the vehicle.
‘No Russian artillery? No mortars? Strange…’
Ahead came a crack of a high velocity weapon and he stuck his head out of the cupola for a better view, immediately deciding that he needed to be back behind the metal as a white-hot shell screamed overhead.
Whilst he understood that his Chaffee wasn’t the intended target, fast-moving metal has no friends and is wisely avoided.
Up front, the commander of the tank that had been the target shouted into his radio, providing contact information and a location.
Czernin’s forehead wrinkled, as the stated enemy gun position failed to correspond with any recorded on his map, known, or suspected.
The mortars were busy again and accurately so, from the radio reports that filled his ears.
Instinct… something that cannot be underestimated on the battlefield… made him shout into his microphone.
“Driver, full right turn… top speed… head for the ruined building!”
The Katyusha rockets started to arrive as he moved out of the zone into which a company of the deadly rocket vehicles had fired.
The Soviet fire plan was quite simple.
They had understood that the dips would become gathering places for the assaulting troops, and their tube weapons had merely waited to give the attackers time to gather.
The Light Tank Company’s commander was killed as two rockets bracketed his jeep and destroyed it, him, and his men.
The second in line Chaffee was flipped over, breaking seven of the ten limbs of the crewmen inside. As they struggled to escape, fire took hold and another five sons of Poland were soon gone.
Major Pomorski, the commander of ‘B’ Squadron, 1st PAR, was thrown from his Dingo scout car as an explosion tossed the light vehicle off the road, tumbling like a toy car, over and over, before coming to rest on its wheels but decidedly out of the fight.
Pomorski, incredibly, just wiped the mud off his face and hailed down the lead tank, scrambling onto the engine and ordering the attack forward.
After few dips on the uneven ground, the valiant officer understood that he had not come away scot-free as his sprained ribs announced themselves with every bump on the road and painful breath.
Czernin’s turn to lead came round quickly and the Chaffee leapt forward towards the small stream that marked his next point of reference,
The modest stream was swollen by rain and melt water, but only in width, not depth, which was just as well as the small culvert had long since succumbed to high explosive.
A bush spouted a smoky trail and Czernin’s driver, without orders, jinked to the left, allowing the hollow-charge projectile to sail past the turret.
Even as the crew struggled to reload the RPG-1, the Chaffee’s tracks ran over the bush that they had made their hiding place and snuffed out their lives.
Another projectile came their way and missed as the propellant gave out and the missile fell harmlessly to earth.
The hull machine-gunner helped the running men on their way with bursts from his .30cal weapon, without, as Czernin noted, managing even a single hit.
He ordered the gunner to rip up another bush that caught his eye but nothing emerged as a result so he felt safe to debus once more, having ordered the Chaffee to relocate, just in case the running Russians decided to stop long enough to tell someone where they were.
He slid up on wet mud and hid his head behind a pile of earth thrown up by a shell, barely exposing any part of himself, just in case the photos had been wrong.
They were absolutely correct, in that there were no enemy positions that he could see, although the incredibly detailed prints had failed to reveal his worst nightmare.
Mines.
Where shells had rent the soil, the tell-tale shapes of unexploded mines were everywhere, a mix of anti-personnel and the larger anti-tank mines being clearly on display.