A mass of T-34 and Sherman tanks were moving forward in a loud roar. An artillery bombardment had preceded them, inflicting heavy damage on Boporoeivska, and provoking a mass evacuation by the civilian population, which had been waiting for the fighting in terrified apprehension. Our tanks — about fifteen Tigers, ten Panthers, and a dozen Mark-4s and -3s — had managed to start their engines, which had been heated continuously the day before. At the beginning of the offensive, two Mark-4s had been destroyed side by side in the Russian bombardment. The front was once again threatening to give way. We lay in our trenches, our eyes reduced to slits, waiting for the hordes of Red infantry which would surely be coming soon. For the moment our machine guns and Panzerfausts were quiet, leaving the way clear for our heavy artillery and our tanks.
Adroitly camouflaged, the Tigers lay waiting, with their engines idling. Almost every time a Russian tank came into range, a sharp, strident burst set it on fire. The Russians were moving toward us slowly, sure of themselves, firing at random. Their tactic of demoralization would have worked if there had not been so many plumes of black smoke rising against the pale February sky. Our 37s and Panzerfausts, designed to be used at almost point-blank range, were scarcely called on. The first wave of Soviet armor was consumed five hundred yards from our first positions, nailed down by the concentrated fire of our Tigers and Panthers and heavy anti-tank guns.
The Tiger was an astonishing fortress. Enemy fire seemed to have almost no effect on its shell, which, at the front was five and a half inches thick. Its only weakness was its relative immobility.
A second Russian wave followed closely after the first, more dense than the first, and accompanied by a swarm of infantry which posed a serious threat.
We waited, dry-mouthed, our guns jammed against our shoulders and our grenades in easy reach. Our hearts were pounding.
Suddenly, like a miracle, thirty of our planes flew over. As promised, the squadron from Vinnitsa was attacking. This particular job was easy for them, and every bomb hit home.
A cry of “Sieg Heil, der Luftwaffe,” rang so loudly from our trenches that the pilots might almost have heard it. We opened fire with everything we had, but the Russian offensive kept coming, despite over whelming losses. Our tanks drove at the stricken enemy with an ardor worthy of 1941.
The noise became unbearable. The air was thick with bitter fumes and smoke, and the smells of gunpowder and burned gasoline. Our shouts mingled with the shouts of the Russians, who were reeling under the unexpected resistance.
We were able to watch the magnificent progress of our Tigers, pulverizing the enemy tanks before they were able to complete a half turn. The Luftwaffe attacked again with rockets and 20-mm. cannons. The Russian rout was hidden by a thick curtain of luminous smoke.
The Russian artillery kept on firing at our lines, causing several deaths which we scarcely noticed. However, their guns were soon overrun by their own retreating troops, and fell silent.
A second wave of German planes, an undreamed — of extra luxury, completed the Russian debacle. We hugged each other in excitement, bursting with joy. For a year now, we had been retreating before an enemy whose numerical superiority was constantly increasing. Lensen was shouting like a man possessed by demons: “I told you we’d do it! I told you we’d do it!”
Our achievement was mentioned in special bulletins. The front on the Rumanian border had held. After months of sustained attack and terrible cold German and Rumanian troops had once again pushed back the Russian offensive and destroyed quantities of enemy materiel.
The mass of broken, twisted metal strewn with corpses which lay in front of us was visible proof of what we’d done. Along a front of two hundred miles, the Red Army had launched sixteen attacks inside of a month. Taking into account the three weeks of inactivity during which all operations were impossible, these sixteen attacks had all occurred inside the space of one week. Five points had borne the brunt of the Russian effort, and at only one had the Russians come close to success.
The front was broken to the south, but this thrust was cut off, and the Russian troops were either annihilated or taken prisoner.
In our sector all the lines had held, and we felt very proud. We had proved once again that with adequate materiel and a certain minimum preparation we could hold off an enemy of greatly superior size, whose frenzied efforts were never intelligently employed.
The veteran, Wiener, had often remarked on this Russian failing at difficult moments. At the sight of an enemy tank in flames, he would bare his teeth in a wide, wolfish grin.
“What a damned fool,” he would say, “to let himself get caught like that. It’s only their numbers that will get us someday.”
There were thirty Iron Crosses for the Gross Deutschland, and as many for the small tank regiment, which also earned the honor.
14. RETURN TO POLAND
The division had been routed several times, and had sustained serious losses. Units believed to be intact were often borrowed from us, and sent to bolster some faltering position. When they arrived they would be found short by about two-thirds of their strength. There was nothing to be done about it.
Our own group was enjoying a much-needed spell of relative calm. Our existence would have been almost idyllic except for the depressing and infuriating quality of barracks life. The exercises we were given, as if we were green troops in for basic training, brought us close to open revolt.
We had moved 250 miles, to a position in Poland, far from the front. Our camp was on the banks of the Dniester, some fifty miles from Lvov, in the foothills of the Carpathians. The river is quite narrow at this point, and its waters, when we arrived, were swift and tumultuous, running through a network of small islands loaded with snow and ice. On any wide stretch the river was frozen to a considerable depth, and the current ran beneath the ice, giving off a strange, muffled noise.
Our view was magnificent: a pale blue sky and a horizon marked by snow peaks, against which we could watch flights of eagles. For two months we enjoyed the agreeable change from the black and gray of a Ukrainian winter to the sportive landscape of eastern Galicia. Galician snows were also very heavy, and the cold was severe, but we slept in clean, heated barracks. Although an exaggerated sense of economy kept the heat at some fifty degrees or so, this at least enabled us to be fully alert when we were awake. Our camp was huge and organized with all the Prussian rigor of an army on the eve of battle. About 150 wooden buildings without floors had been built in blocks, carrying numbers and letters. Nearby, in the snow-covered woods, we could see a large stone building, which must have been part of the village beside the camp, and which housed our secretariat and principal officers. All our materiel had been repainted and overhauled. In these conditions of order and apparent abundance, none of us dreamed that Germany had reached the limit of its capacities. After the chaos of the front, the atmosphere of efficient organization, with its requirement that every move be registered in writing, made us feel like wild beasts suddenly caged.
The camp was built around a large central square for reviews and drills, in which young recruits were instructed in the art of manipulating arms, so useful in parades and so useless at the front.
The young recruits seemed to enjoy these exercises. Others, like Hals and me, were seeing ourselves as we had been a year and a half ago, back in Poland, where we had handled explosives for the first time. The memory of those days seemed at least ten years old — one ages quickly in wartime. Our world-weary attitude did not escape the attention of the young recruits, who responded by holding themselves even more stiffly, as if to show us that the war was now their affair.