He let his crew lift their hatches. Four of the five positions in the Tiger had their own escape doors, except for the gunner, who had to follow the commander out. A Tiger was expected to be evacuated in under twenty seconds. He slipped a tin of crackers from his pocket and chewed. He could not imagine himself giving that order to evacuate.
The sergeant-major returned with the other platoon leaders, all sergeants. Luis gave them instructions without coming down from his turret.
He was not Thoma, he was not going to pat shoulders and cajole. The men returned to their tanks with orders, not encouragement or rationale. Luis watched them walk off. His eye snagged again on the underside of the Tiger’s hatch door, on the brown spatter there. At the first opportunity he’d have Thoma’s blood scraped off. He didn’t like the dead man keeping such a close eye on him anymore. It was not Thoma’s turn any longer. It was his now.
The Russian attack started at 1000 hours. Puffs and flashes rose from the plain in front of Sukho-Solotino. The Red infantry moved up beside their tanks. Luis slipped his headgear back on and snapped his throat microphone in place. He ducked into the hatch.
‘Driver,’ he shouted down, ‘start engine.’
The Tiger’s great Maybach motor roused with a vigor that sent a thrill up his legs. Everything came alive with such power, the hydraulics yowled, the exhaust pipes spit black as though the Tiger were clearing its throat, every metal muscle flexed; standing motionless the thing exuded more strength than any tank Luis had ever seen running at full bore.
‘Radio.’
The answering voice crackled in his headset. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Tell the platoons to hold fire until my command.’
All the Tiger’s hatches were lowered and secured, except where Luis stood in the turret. He raised his binoculars. Eight kilometers away, the Russian assault began to flow across the fields, met only by the popping of mortar fire and mobile artillery. The sky was clear of fighters and bombers, this morning was to be a pure ground battle. The two
He counted forty T-34s streaming out of Sukho-Solotino, outnumbering his four tank platoons three to one. The Red tanks barreled over the open ground away from the Oboyan road, outdistancing their own infantry. At that rate they’d be on top of the grenadiers in ten minutes, firing flat trajectories into the trenches, softening the German resistance for the sweep of their following horde. This was the moment when Erich Thoma would have charged down the incline into the melee, for the dramatic rescue, superior enemy numbers be damned, there was style to be considered. Luis shook Thoma off. He waited, gathering in the panorama, the Soviet rush, the line of tanks under his command, the Tiger pulsing beneath his feet, smoke and flame on the plain. He would let the dug-in grenadiers absorb the first blows of the T-34s, have them slow the Soviet charge with anti-tank fire, perhaps some of the more intrepid soldiers might hop out of their foxholes and board a few Red tanks with magnetic mines and grenades. He liked the power of his denial, of holding back and watching the Soviet tanks close in on the grenadiers, he relished the uneven clash of raw men below against the charging machines and knew the entire panzer company strained for his command to enter the fight.
Thoma would have let them go by now, but Thoma was dead, and so were a few grenadiers to make Luis’s point. He licked all this power out of the morning for his hunger, swallowed it like morsels, and tasted the last of his bitter wounded year, it had come to an end. A new time was begun, a new and stronger hunger took over.
‘Gunner.’
‘Sir.’
‘Range.’
The turret whirred and swung a few degrees to the right while Balthasar acquired a target.
‘Twenty-eight hundred meters and closing.’
The big gun elevated.
‘Loader.’
The response was immediate. ‘AP round loaded and locked, Captain.’
With the binoculars pressed to his sockets, Luis paused ninety seconds to let the T-34s close in to the killing range of the Tiger.
Balthasar said, ‘Captain.’
‘Yes, gunner, one moment. Distance.’
‘Twenty-one hundred meters.’
‘Patience, Balthasar.’
Luis lowered his binoculars. He liked the dust clouds under the Russian tanks. He smelled the morning, to remember it.
‘Range.’
‘Sixteen hundred meters, Captain.’
‘Fire at lead tank.’
Luis ducked inside the turret just before the cannon erupted. The tank jolted backward. The noise, even through his helmet, was pulverizing. The breech rammed back and ejected a hot casing into the turret basket. The loader moved like lightning, stuffing another shell into the breech almost before the tank could settle, then he shoved the spent casing into an empty bin and hefted another large shell into his arms for the next shot, all this in seconds. Luis did not speak or stand to look into his binoculars to peer through the whipped dust to see if the target was hit. He kept in his seat and watched his crew work.
The gunner twirled the elevation handwheel half a turn, paused with his brow pressed to his optics, then
