Panzer Soldier

time. It would be tough shit when they finally got face to face with Ivan, now that they were bringing the long- barrelled Mark V Panther tanks, Germany's answer to the Soviet T-34.

RECRUITS. . .

The older-looking Feldwebel huddled in his camouflaged field jacket. The soft M-43 cap bore a Deathshead emblem, often causing novices to confuse the tankers with the SS, the only difference being the tanker's skull had no lower jawbone. He shifted the MP-40 submachine gun to a more handy position nearer the window and lit a Turkish cigarette, sucking the acrid yellow fumes back up into his nostrils, inhaling deeply and letting the biting smoke reach into his lungs.

Watching the young men, he thought how lucky for them it was dark so that they could not see the thousands of German graves standing in precise military rows like a small white forest of German crosses, reaching for kilometers.

He had come this way twice, once on the way to Moscow and once when the Siberian divisions pushed them back with the T-34s, which had come into the battle unpainted, just off the assembly lines from Moscow factories. Butting his smoke on the sole of his boot, he was thankful he wasn't stuck with a pair of jack boots. Those damn hobnails caused as many casualties as the Russians did, by letting the cold run directly into the feet, causing frostbite.

'SA marshiert, in ruhig festen shritt. . .' It's a good marching song, but they'll learn it takes more than that soon enough. The younger men, for their part, left the dour-looking Feldwebel alone. Piss on him if he was a wet blanket. None, however, had the nerve to tell him so. The scarred face along with the 'IK I,' Iron Cross first class would have been indicators enough, but a silver tanker's badge showed over fifty tank engagements.

The youngsters left Die Alte, the old one, alone. For them, anyone near or over thirty classified for that appellation. The man whose paybook and documents permitting travel said he was one Carl Langer merely watched the young ones, slightly amused at their antics and histrionics. The few other old soldiers sat silently or played cards among themselves. They knew what waited at the end of the line.

Back into the cauldron. There death walked at every man's shoulder, quick sudden death if you were lucky, or a cartridge casing hammered into the back of the neck by the NKVD; Asiatic smiling faces that laughed beneath the green cross emblem that gave them even more power than the Gestapo, if you were unlucky.

Moving the steel helmet strapped in the regulation manner to the back of his pack, he reached in and took out a bottle of prewar French Calvados. Taking a long pull, he found the sweet burning served to add an additional sense of dullness to his mind and made the waiting easier. A droning overhead stopped his breath for a moment. From the sound, it was moving east, probably Stukas going in support of the hedgehog past the Oka River near Mtsensk.

The droning lessened the enthusiasm of the young heroes, and for some the bitter coppery taste of fear came into their mouths with the realization they were not going to be strafed or bombed. The voices became even louder and the laughter more forced.

A grizzled veteran of the Crimean campaign, as shown by the brass Krim shield on his right arm, settled into the seat opposite Langer.

Casting a questioning glance at Langer's bottle, he licked his lips. Langer handed the bottle over with a shrug. The Stabsgefreiter took a pull—not too large—and handed the precious fluid back to its owner. He knew how rare such things would be in Russia. Looking at the tank patch . . . 'Panzerman?'

Langer nodded and put the bottle back into his pack. The corporal lit a smoke and leaned back, his hands showing severe burn scars. He looked at them forgetting whose hands they were . . .

'Stabsgefreiter Alfons Kunik at your service, and thanks for the drink.'

Langer nodded again. Kunik pointed at the youngsters with a wave of his hand. 'It won't be like France, no short sweet summer campaign, then wine and women. Russia will teach them a new tune to sing. The young always go to war singing and are brought back the same way—with singing at their funerals, where their families can be proud that their sons have been so fortunate to die for the Fatherland and the Fuhrer.' He spat on the floor. A quick fleeting trace of fear sparked in his eyes. He had forgotten this kind of talk could get a bullet through the neck if the man he was talking to was a party member or belonged to the SD, Sicherheits dienst, security service.

Langer merely grunted and shifted his ass to a more comfortable position. He leaned his head against the glass window, enjoying the cool feel where it pressed against his skin.

Kunik shifted his Kar-98 rifle to between his legs and watched his companion go to sleep, rocking gently with the swaying of the train. He gave the man a good once over and nodded in approval . . . Tough-looking bastard, and he was then making use of sleep, in short supply here. The youngsters settled down and dozed off shortly before midnight. Langer woke several times when a sound or strange movement of the train occurred. Taking a quick glance to see if all was well, he went back to sleep.

In the car ahead, which the officers had appropriated for themselves, a major with oakleaves to the Knight's Cross was just getting the silk panties off a Blitzmadel, a rosy-cheeked nineteen-year-old girl, going to Kharkov to serve as a radio operator for Field Marshal Manstein's Army Group South. The Knight's Cross had done it again. The major gloated over how much patriotic ass a piece of cheap metal could get.

Three times the train was switched to side tracks while the rails in front were repaired. Partisan activity was becoming more and more of a problem. Daylight brought the first signs of the destruction of the war; whole cities and villages gutted and the odor of decay reaching them from the mass graves alongside the tracks.

The Blitzmadel was unassed, so to speak, at Kharkov along with most of the recruits, and the train moved on with its cargo of steel dinosaurs another 50 kilometers, where they were unloaded and the crews assembled to drive them to the staging areas where they would be assigned to the 9th Panzer Army for the attack to straighten out the huge inward bulge where seven Russian armies had pushed their way 100 kilometers deep and 150 kilometers wide. In this group was the Elite 6th Guards Army and the 1st Tank Army, almost completely outfitted with T-34s. Kluge's 9th Army would drive south to join with von Manstein's 4th Panzer Army in a pincer movement which they hoped would cut off the seven Russian armies from their logistical support. They would meet at Kursk. Other pincers would drive 50 kilometers behind them and link up between Shchigiry and Tim cutting the only two rail links that could supply the Soviets at two points and provide them with a buffer against counterattacks in force until they had eliminated the Russians in a trap.

Langer moved through the confusion and smoke of the railhead swinging his pack to his shoulders and settling the mpi comfortably across his chest. He moved to the flatcar carrying his tank, reporting to a Hauptman of the 26th Panzer Regiment.