19. Dezember 1943
19 Dec 43 (?). Another clear, cold winter day dawns. I am just at the battalion commander’s. Then it erupts![1] Tanks from the left! They appear at the top of the plateau and start rolling down the slope. 3 - 5 - 8 of them. They’re rattling right towards the village. If the tanks are already up there, then they must have already rolled over 9th company’s positions! Since von Arnim didn’t report anything, he was probably taken by surprise. Still more: 10 - 12 - 15. Another surprise success for the Soviets! There’s no end to them up there: 18 - 22 - 25! In whole packs they come rattling down the wide, flat slope. The first wave is still a kilometre away.
I had been watching this prelude through the window and turn my gaze to the battalion commander, prepared for any order. His hands are trembling, but he is not thinking of abandoning the village. He is indomitable and takes up the unequal fight. On the table is a small frame with a photograph of his wife and two children.
The tanks - all T-34s - roll down the slope in waves. Now the first ones open fire without stopping. They rattle in at full speed and shoot all they can out of their barrels. They fire blindly into the village and the houses. The leading tanks are still four hundred metres away when our defences kick in. The first impacts splash up between the steel boxes. Boom! The first tank is hit and lies smoking. A second one suddenly stops and stands still. Brrrookhkh - the third hit! With an ear-splitting explosion, a flame as high as a house shoots out of the tank and transforms in a fraction of a second into a white-hot mushroom cloud. The turret, which weighs tons, flings upwards in a mushroom cloud of smoke, whirls through the air and thuds dully to earth.
I can’t make out who is scoring the hits. I only know that there is a howitzer battery with three guns at the end of the village, that our three armoured vehicles have driven up somewhere between the houses, that there is a 3.7 Pak and four infantry guns in the gardens. And they are mercilessly pounding the Soviet tank packs. Already two more tanks are burning, and another explodes in a fiery mushroom cloud with resounding thunder. But there are too many. Now the closest tanks have reached the village. Two of them come rattling up side by side at full speed, rapidly firing. Then they both break through the ice of the snow-covered stream flowing close behind the gardens at the same time. Their gun barrels bore into the ground and they are hopelessly stuck. And twenty metres in front of them is one of our infantry guns. The hatches of the tanks fly open, the crews bail out in a flash and hurriedly run back. Suddenly I see a couple of German Landsers dash out of the garden and run after the Ivans. They are men from our IG platoon. They are truly running between the smashed, burning and attacking tanks, chasing after the fleeing Ivans! Now the leading Landser has reached the last tanker, grabs him by the scruff of the neck and yanks him around. The Russian stops. In the meantime the other comrades have run past them, catch up with a second Russian and hold him down. The other Ivans escape.
Numerous tanks have already been mortally wounded or destroyed. But new ones are still rolling in. Some reach the village, break through the gardens, rush between the houses and roll along the village street. There’s another monster rattling along, right towards our house. Tense seconds: Will it lob a shell into the house? No, it drones past. I stand behind the open front door while the steel colossus rattles past me at a distance of three metres. The commander is standing in the turret hatch, looking ahead tensely.
They curve around on the village street. There are not many of them now. They are looking for the firing positions of our guns, which are hidden under trees in the gardens. Then two of them suddenly turn off and drive out into the open plain on the other side of the village. I follow their direction of travel with my eyes. There, far out in the field, I see some of our soldiers running. They had lost their nerve, jumped out of the houses or their positions and are now running back across the open field, to the rear. They are doomed! The tank has spotted them and rattles after them. It is much faster than they are and has soon caught up with them. Now it chases them in front of it and picks them off like rabbits with its machine gun. Others it catches with a short side jerk with the track and crushes them in the snow. Not a single one escapes it. Then the colossus turns and comes back to the village. It seems to have a cunning and battle-hardened crew, for it zigzags constantly and avoids any exposure. Now it has reached the village again and is grumbling along the village street, looking for victims. But then it meets its fate. It comes across our Pak standing there in a garden. Before it has recognised them, they burn a fatal shot into its steel body from a distance of thirty metres. The tank stops in the middle of the road and catches fire before the crew can get out.
The tank attack has collapsed. The hillside is littered with burning and smoking tank wrecks. On the village road and between the farmhouses lie the destroyed and incapacitated steel colossi. And while the wrecks are burning out sizzlingly, the last two survivors totter back to the Russian front, smoking lightly, until they disappear up behind the crest of the slope.
The attack is completely crushed. Of the 25 attacking tanks, we have knocked out 23 within an hour! This success is all the more remarkable because we were able to counter the twenty-five tank guns with only nine guns of equivalent calibre. It is hard to believe that these tanks were not able to conquer our little village. The Soviet infantry was absent, but even they could not make a decisive breakthrough in our positions on the ridge. So, in the end, this grandiose defensive success is once again due to the admirable resilience of our soldiers.
Only one 3.7 Pak was involved in repelling this attack. Our anti-tank defence has lagged far behind the Russian tank development. Today we are still fighting largely with the 3.7-Pak (or 5 cm), which was only sufficient at the beginning of the war, while the Russians already have their new powerful T-34 in series production. That is almost impossible to crack with the 3.7 and is a real nightmare for our infantry.
Our own losses in the village are low. Only the ones who ran away are dead. They were five men. While we are still exchanging our impressions and experiences about the attack at the battalion command post, I see a group of figures appear on the heights. They are wearing German camouflage clothing. They stand watching for a moment and then slowly come down the slope. Through the binoculars I recognise Leutnant von Arnim with eight of his men. It was his company sector that the tank storm had roared over. His men had lost their nerves in the initial shock. Most of them had abandoned their positions and fled backwards. This is the most wrong thing to do, for now the soldiers had left the protective holes and were running across the open, coverless area, while the tanks drove leisurely behind, mowing down those who fled. Only some of the company had remained in the holes, and they survived the storm. There were still 25 men.
The 11. Kompanie had done it more correctly a few days ago. They had stayed in their holes, allowed themselves to be overrun by the tanks and had only a few wounded in the ensuing skirmish with the Soviet infantry.
When tanks appear in such numbers, their mission is to break deep into the enemy rear. Then they cannot fight with the infantrymen, but overrun the front line and push into the depth of the enemy front. In such a case, the infantryman in front needs only two things: a good, deep foxhole and the nerve to let the tank roll over or past him. This is certainly easier said than done, but it is the only right thing to do. The infantryman’s job is to fight the enemy infantry following the tanks. The fight against the tanks is carried out by the heavy weapons, which are (supposed to be!) further back.
Of course, there are also many exceptional situations. Sometimes the tanks pushed over a cover hole and turned in circles until the soldiers below were crushed. It also happened that tanks with Soviet infantry drove along our position line and dragged the Landsers out of the holes. (This way Fritz Schulz ended up in captivity. The poor guy was supposed to do a short stint at the front and then be sent on an officer candidates course. And of all things, fate overtook him in these few weeks). But they could only afford such capers if they didn’t have to fear armour-piercing weapons.
After the smashed tank attack, the captured tankers are interrogated at the battalion command post. The first is a tall, lean fellow with white eyeballs shining out of his brown, oil-smeared face. I can’t attend the interrogation because I had a job to do. But later I learned that he confirmed what we actually already knew or suspected: The tank packs had overrun our front line and attacked our village. At the same time, following Soviet infantry stormed against the position front of our 9th and 10th rifle companies on the heights. The aim of the operation was the destruction of our battalion front and a deep breakthrough into the rear. This plan had failed.
Nevertheless, the heavy attack did shake the spirits of our soldiers somewhat, for when the two assault guns left the village this morning, they became unsettled. But the guns only want to load ammunition at the regiment in Kitaigorodka.
|
Editorial 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 Epilog Anhang |
|
January February March April May June July August September October November December Eine Art Bilanz Gedankensplitter und Betrachtungen Personen Orte Abkürzungen Stichwort-Index Organigramme Literatur Galerie:Fotos,Karten,Dokumente |
|
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. Erfahrungen i.d.Gefangenschaft Bemerkungen z.russ.Mentalität Träume i.d.Gefangenschaft Personen-Index Namen,Anschriften Personal I.R.477 1940–44 Übersichtskarte (Orte,Wege) Orts-Index Vormarsch-Weg Codenamen der Operationen im Sommer 1942 Mil.Rangordnung 257.Inf.Div. MG-Komp.eines Inf.Batl. Kgf.-Lagerorganisation Kriegstagebücher Allgemeines Zu einzelnen Zeitabschnitten Linkliste Rotkreuzkarte Originalmanuskript Briefe von Kompanie-Angehörigen |
- ↑ Large-scale attack on the front of the XXX. A.K. leads to localised break-in at Mendelejewka (KTB PzAOK 1, NARA T-313 Roll 62 Frame 7297715, ist wie im KTB OKW der Vortag gemeint?). Close combat days on 19 and 21: Soldbuch Vordruck II (pay book form II), cf. Benary p. 151 f.