The column passed battery after battery of guns and howitzers, their tubes raised as if in salute from the midst of broken orchards or under hurriedly erected camouflage nets in open fields. Closer to the direct-fire battle, readily identifiable artillery reconnaissance groups marked off and surveyed still more firing positions. The road passed a medical clearing station where wounded soldiers lay in rows upon the ground. Communications vans filled a sports field at the edge of a shot-up village, and uncollected corpses littered the village streets. A lost-looking young soldier stood beside a broken-down truck, watching Bezarin’s tanks race by.
Suddenly, the artillery preparation began. The volume of fire from the massed artillery created a disturbance in the air that was so palpable Bezarin could feel it in his stomach. The effort felt solidly reassuring. It was difficult to believe that anything could survive such a barrage. The country had opened out into dry, rolling terrain, and the impact of the artillery was partially visible along a sweeping ridge running north and south several kilometers in the distance, astride Bezarin’s line of advance. Smoke began to rise, as though storm clouds had settled on the earth.
Bezarin knew that the lead battalion was already in its start position, waiting for him to come up on the left. The roadway traced over a small bridge. Bezarin checked his map, then looked off to the right. A shattered motorized rifle company appeared to be regrouping, and Bezarin went cold. But a moment later, he saw the company columns of his sister battalion drawn up in a grassy valley beyond the tattered subunit. Everything appeared intact and ready. The lone motorized rifle company was probably getting ready to displace after being relieved of local responsibility.
Bezarin hurriedly unrolled his signal flags and stood erect in the turret. He stretched out his arms, directing prebattle formation, company columns abreast. Then he ordered his driver to slow down so that the trail companies could come up after crossing the bridge. In the middle distance, the wall of smoke looked dense enough to gather in your arms. Bezarin led the center company off the road, watching Dagliev hurry to catch up on the left. Dagliev’s company briefly disappeared in a depression, then reappeared exactly where it was meant to be. Bezarin looked right.
Roshchin was on the right, on his own now. But Bezarin felt it was the best position for the boy. He would have an entire battalion on his right flank, and the bulk of his own battalion on his left. All that Roshchin had to do was execute his company drill and keep up. At least for now, Roshchin appeared to be in control. Minor obstructions staggered the progress of his company slightly, but the frontage would be approximately correct. And beyond Roshchin’s line of armor, Bezarin could see First Battalion breaking out of a line of trees and hedges from a parallel route.
Bezarin tried to gauge the distance to the wall of smoke, then he rose again and signaled platoon columns. He ordered his driver to slow, allowing the tanks of Voronich’s company to overtake them. On the right flank, First Battalion surged visibly ahead, almost ready to assault the line of smoke. Bezarin signaled an increase in speed, hoping the company commanders were paying attention.
The local roughness of the terrain tossed Bezarin against the rim of the hatch, and he steadied himself as best he could. The smoke and artillery fire were still a kilometer out but already felt too close. Bezarin dropped the signal flags into the belly of the tank. The next command would be given over the radio.
As his tank crested the low ridge Bezarin saw that First Battalion had begun to pull hard to the right. He started cursing at the developing split in the assault formation, but then he saw the cause of the problem. A wind gap was opening in the smokescreen, exposing the center of the line of attack. The artillery had stopped firing smoke rounds too early. Bezarin looked to the rear, struggling for elevation, searching for any sign of an artillery observation post. The attrition within the division’s artillery establishment had been so great that Bezarin had not even received an artillery officer to direct fires in support of the battalion, but Tarashvili had promised that regiment would handle the requirement. Now the only vehicles Bezarin could see to his rear were the meandering trucks of the battalion’s rear services, hunting for a place to tuck in for the duration of the attack. Visibility to the rear was splendid. But there was nothing to see.
The textbook response called for Bezarin to guide his battalion to the right, to maintain contact with First Battalion at all costs. He nuzzled the microphone closer to his lips. But he could not order Roshchin into the gap. Whoever drove up between the parting curtains of smoke would be sacrificed. And, as his company commanders began to bring their tanks on line, Bezarin could not see the ultimate sense of throwing away a company, perhaps more, to briefly maintain contact that would inevitably be lost in the smokescreen. He felt his battalion surging with a life of its own, a long wave of steel moving at combat speed toward the towering gray wall of smoke. He waited for the first report of the guns.
Bezarin glanced left to check on Dagliev. And he noticed an aspect of the terrain that his hasty map reconnaissance had not fully brought home to him. The ridgelines on which the smoke had settled threw a long spur out to the southeast. It was obvious now, on the scene, that the finger of high ground would shield any attempted British counterattack until it reached the rear of the attacking Soviet units. All the British would need to do would be to allow the Soviets to move past the spur into the trap. On the other hand, it offered Bezarin an opportunity to take the British in the rear, if they had failed to cover their extreme flank.
Bezarin decided to take a chance.
As he spoke his first words into the microphone British artillery fire began to crash down just behind his formation.
The British knew.
“Volga One, Two, Three, this is Lodoga Five. Amendment to combat instructions. Three, move left six hundred meters. Get on the reverse slope of that spur. Use the smoke. Follow it in behind the British positions.” Bezarin paused. The artillery had not yet adjusted to hit them, and Bezarin realized that the smoke was of some value after all. The British were guessing, executing preplanned fires. Then he found he could not remember the call sign for the motorized rifle troops. Exasperated, he called, “Lasky… Lasky, you follow Three. Stay close to him. Three, you get on their damned flank and roll them up. Call me if you have trouble. Acknowledge.”
“Ladoga, this is Three. We’re losing contact with First Battalion.”
“Damn it, I know that. Just get up on that ridge and kill everything you see. Meet me on the far slope.
“This is Three. Executing now.”
“Volga One, Two… let’s get them. Into the smoke. Independent fires on contact.”
“One, acknowledged.”
“Two, acknowledged.” That was Roshchin. Bezarin could hear the nervousness in the boy’s voice.
“Ladoga, your hatch is flapping.”
Bezarin reached out, trying to snag his hatch cover. The jouncing of the vehicle as it moved cross-country made it difficult. A hatch could crush your hand or break an arm. Finally, he caught the big steel disk and smashed it down, fastening it.
Bezarin felt as though he had suddenly gone underwater in the sealed belly of the tank. He always felt cut off from the real world when the vehicle was fully sealed. He leaned his forehead against the cowl of his optics. But the smoke began to shroud his vision.
The tank jolted hard. It seemed to lift to the side. Then it stopped. The shock smashed Bezarin’s brow hard against his periscope. He began to curse his driver, just as the tank resumed movement.
The smoke grew patchier. Bezarin’s ears rang, and he did not know why.
More speed, Bezarin thought. Every nerve in his body seemed to want to move faster. Yet he knew that he could not afford to pull the line apart any worse than the movement to contact in the smoke would do by itself. He resisted the temptation to order an all-out charge. He feared that, in the smoke, they would soon begin killing one another if they became disordered.
“Target, right, one thousand,” the gunner called.
Bezarin looked right. A tank in profile, firing toward First Battalion, clearly visible in a corridor between waves of smoke. Bezarin had missed it.
“Load sabot.”
The automatic loader whirled into action.
“Sabot up.”
“Fire,” Bezarin ordered.
The tank rocked back. The breech jettisoned its casing, and the reek of high explosives filled the crew compartment.
