Carl smiled, put a couple of egg grenades into his jacket pocket and slipped over the top of the gully and into the brush. His splinter camouflage blended well into the bushes. He crawled slowly and easily, instinctively staying in the lowest ground possible. No dip was too small not to serve as he worked his way out, crawling until his knees and elbows felt as if they were working their way through the canvaslike fabric of his jacket and trousers. Going out about three hundred meters, he hunched in a shell hole with the remains of an unidentifiable corpse. Not even a shred of uniform was left to show if he was German or Russian. Taking out his notebook, he quickly drew a sketch of the German positions from this viewpoint, making special notes of the small dips in which Ivan could rush them from no more than fifty meters. That distance in the dark could be covered in seconds.
Crawling on, he heard a rustle in the high grass to his left. He froze. The sky was getting dark and shadows were long on the ground. Straining, he waited. Another rustling of bushes. Whoever it was, was near and coming his way. Slowly he took the bayonet out of his belt and held it near his face.
Squirming slightly to face the sounds, he tensed, gathering his legs under him, ready to leap or run if there were too many. A shadow showed itself lengthwise to him between some brush and a patch of high grass. Drawing a long slow breath, he held it in a moment and then lunged, belly low to the ground, his blade ready to strike into the body of the intruder.
The intruder turned just in time for Langer to see his face. He turned his blade away but still landed on the man with a thump.
Major Kruger heaved a sigh of relief. 'What the hell are you doing out here?'
'The same thing you are, I imagine.' He noted the small hand-drawn map in the major's hand.
Somewhat testily Kruger reprimanded Langer. 'Next time. Sergeant, if it wouldn't be too much trouble, would you kindly inform me of your plans before you cut my throat. And put that damned ugly blade away. It gives me the chills just thinking how close you came.'
The two conferred for a moment on what they had seen and made their way back separately to the ravine. Slithering on his belly, Langer slid down to the bottom as his crew gathered around.
Gus was still stuffing food into his mouth between swallows of vodka, making the most atrocious feeding sounds he had ever heard, gulping, choking, grunting and farting—all at the same time. Unbelievable.
'Where's those grenadiers the major said we could have?'
Teacher gave a low whistle and an
Langer nodded. 'Good enough. What do you have with you?'
Koch pointed to the shadows in niches of the gully. 'Seeing as how you're on the far end of this ditch, the major sent me with two MG-34s and ten riflemen. Where do you want us?'
Moving to the side of the tank. Teacher handed them a flashlight; covering the glow, they went over the small notebook map Carl had made.
'From out there, I could see two approaches they could take, one just to our left is low enough for infantry to get close enough without being seen; the other is a trench farther out. They could get to us from that and come down the ravine. We'll take care of the tank ourselves. I want you to place half your men and one MG on the ridge. Put the others and your remaining MG about forty meters down the gully from us. Place them on the far side. That way, if Ivan comes down, you let them get past you and we'll have them between your MG and the Panther's hull gun. I'll give you one minute after the first firing starts to get your men out of the way.
You come back to us on the far side of the ridge and join us here. At that time, we'll cut loose with the seventy-five to finish off whatever's left of the Ivans in the gully.'
Koch nodded agreement. 'Very good. I like it. They won't expect anyone to be on the far side of the gully. Should work out pretty good. Make sure you give me that minute before you cut loose with that cannon.'
Splitting his men up, he gave them their instructions and took the rest down the gully with him, disappearing into the shadows of the last light.
Crackling in the distance, a Russian light machine gun answered by the rapid chatter of a German MG-42. . . .
General Oberst Hoth received the day's after action reports with a sense of forboding. Reviewing the positions of his troops, uneasiness worried at the edge of his mind. Too slow. They had not reached their objectives. Ivan was ready for them. True, they had made five miles of penetration over all, but that did not mean that the Soviet lines were penetrated—not the way they had prepared their system of ring defenses. The day had started off badly enough when Lauchert's brigade of Panthers had stalled in an undetected mine field. It took hours for the pioneers to clear a lane. All the time, Russian artillery was having a field day on the immobilized tanks. The rains of the past days had served to turn the low ground near Beresvyy into a bog where one tank after another came to a standstill with mud up to the skirts and covering the treads. The only success was the capture of Cherkakoye, where the flame throwers mounted on the Mark Ills had used their flaming hoses to good effect in burning out the houses and bunkers. The hissing jets of fire had a range of almost eighty meters and turned the inside of the Soviet bunkers into flaming ovens designed for the cooking of human flesh.
Turning off the lamp he sat on the edge of his field cot in the dark, thinking about tomorrow. The Knight's Cross glistened in the reflected light of a distant Russian flare, lighting up the night sky and then fading into a cinder and becoming one with the darkness again.
Langer watched the flare wink out. It was over to his left, where the SS men were dug in. Teacher lit his pipe, shielding the bowl with his hand. Motioning for Teacher to take his place on the turret machine gun, he clambered down and went to where Koch's infantrymen were on the ridge. Moving alongside the machine gunner, he squinted into the dark.
'Anything happening?'
A negative shake of the head was answer enough. Taking his binoculars, he focused them and slowly searched the dark. They're out there, I know it. A short muffled cry and then silence came to him out of the dark to the front.
The gunner spoke quietly. 'The major said he'd take out that sniper. For my money, he should have left him alone. That Wind bastard couldn't hit anything. Now they might send up one who knows how to shoot. But the major's always had a hard-on for snipers, ever since one shot his left ball off outside Stalingrad.'
