My group included Smellens and a young boy who had been specially trained in handling a Panzerfaust. Lindberg, two other fellows, and I covered them. This proved to be the only time I was ever in command — a unique and tragic time during which I was responsible for five other men.
In the second group, I knew Lensen at the Panzerfaust. In the third group, no one.
Each anti-tank group had three Panzerfausts — heavy, cumbersome weapons which allowed us a total of eighteen chances. With maximum luck, if we hit home every time, we could hope to stop eighteen of the sixty to eighty tanks we knew were coming toward us.
We stiffened with terror as we grasped the desperate reality of our situation. Lieutenant Wollers told us that the enemy was slowing down, and that when five or six of their tanks were in flames their demoralization would increase. He said that we would rejoin the company within twenty-four hours. But nothing could distract us from the horrible mathematics of the situation. We knew too well that the implacable thrust of the war could not be stopped. Today, on this day accursed of all others, our turn would probably come.
The rest of the company moved silently past us, as we listened to the final recommendations of our superior. The rumble of tanks continued unbroken. I saw Hals going by beside the veteran, and ran out to grasp his hand. Lieutenant Wollers stopped talking when he noticed me. I produced a few obscenities for Hals and Wiener, inappropriate to the gravity of the moment, and briefly considered giving Hals something to send to my family later. But I couldn’t find anything, and limited myself to a hoarse laugh. Hals couldn’t think of anything to say to me, and Wiener dragged him off.
Wollers left us next, and our groups separated. I remained alone with my command, and with my doubtful friend, Lindberg, who had turned white and numb with fear. I — much too young for the job myself had become a group leader, charged with dragging five other boys who had not yet attained their majorities into a horrible game of cops and robbers. I threw a quick glance at my subordinates. They were staring toward the south, where the noise was coming from. Lensen shouted, and waved toward a dip in the ground where there were four or five buildings — probably a farm. I and my group ran after Lensen. The third group looked for somewhere to hide along the road.
The wind was blowing in gusts, carrying the first half-formed flakes of the season. At that moment, the Russians began to pound the positions we had just left. The houses in the village about half a mile away were surrounded by geysers of black earth. Hastily, I sent my two jägers to a position among the large roots of some overturned trees. They began to dig frantically, trying to lower themselves a little deeper into the ground.
The rest of us looked for shelter nearby. I was with a young fellow whose name I forget but whose expression of determined tenacity remains ineffaceable. Lindberg and our sixth man ran into the house behind us. A hundred yards to our left, I could see Lensen and his assistant.
The Russians were pounding the village into the ground. It was lucky we had left it when we did.
As we listened once again to the noise of tanks rolling through smoking ruins, we relived the sensation of waiting through the unbearably long minutes just before action begins. We tried hard to think, but the diabolic round of our past unwound through our memories — good and bad moments in a rush too fast for any of the relief tenderness can bring. For me, there was a mixture of childhood, the war, and Paula and all the things I still had to do and should have done: the kind of debt which weighs on the heart, when time for settling has run out.
We were all torn between wanting to weep and run away, and to scream and run out to meet the danger.
“No Bolshevik will ever tread on German soil.” But they were there by thousands, crushing it with frenzy and jubilation — and there were eighteen of us to stop them: eighteen young men ready to cling to any miraculous superstition to go on hoping for a future as tormented as the present.
Then they appeared, ten of them at first, following the road guarded by our third group.
The third group watched them coming and did their duty. We helped them, inspired by almost unbearable emotion, played out by thousandths of a second.
The first tank was stopped some twenty yards from the two Panzerfausts in the third group. One of their projectiles burst on the tank’s front apron scattering a shower of rivets and killing the monster and its occupants.
The others were slowly maneuvering, heavily attacking the incline of the bank, to make their way around the burning tank.
I couldn’t stop myself from whispering, “They’re coming for us.” But the tanks — three to be exact — climbed back to face up to the threat. They hoped to frighten the anti-tank crew, counting heavily on their terrifying appearance — a calculation which almost always worked. However, a second monster burst into flame. The tank behind it brushed past, opening up a passage. It reached the German position, and broke its occupants’ nerve. We saw our comrades jump from their hole and run like madmen. They were trying to reach the woods, and began to climb the hill. The tank, which was following right behind them, drew so close it almost touched them, before knocking them to pieces with the machine guns on board. The rest of the defense suffered the same fate. In three or four minutes, the third group was knocked out. Ten or twelve tanks were roaring down the road the company had taken — on foot — an hour earlier. They were certainly too far for us to try to reach them with any prospect of success. Five more tanks appeared, following the dip of the valley, driving straight at the farm and at Lensen, who was just in front of it.
Lensen and his number-two man fired at the tanks, which were about twenty yards from them. They hit two, and the noise of the explosions flooded the valley with a wave of sound. A third tank passed the two wrecks and seemed to beheading directly for my group. Lensen’s group fired a third time, missing the tank and nearly killing us. A building some five yards from our hole burst into flame. The explosion half buried us, and made us totally deaf for nearly a minute. The three tanks continued, pouring fire into the farm buildings. They must have thought our defense was centered there. Two more T-34s which had just appeared on the road left it, driving at Lensen’s position. They were out of our range, but we fired at them anyway. Smellens fired at a tank some 150 yards away and just missed it. The shell touched the ground, bounced off it, and landed farther off without exploding. All we had done was to draw their attention to us. One of the tanks drove straight at us, using all its guns.
I could hear the shouts of my men. They were unable to fix their sights on the huge machine, which drove at the ruins of the house and skidded over them, probably in the belief that they were crushing us beneath their tracks. I could hear the grinding from my hole — a sound I shall never forget.
The monster stopped short and turned back toward its original route, along the road.
Lower down, the David and Goliath battle between Lensen’s group and four more tanks, all firing with all their guns, continued.