Last Citadel

calmly said into the intercom, ‘Away’

Luis braced. The gunner toed the firing pedal. The long gun woofed again, the tank shuddered, a smoking casing spat from the breech, and the loader was there kneeling beside the gun with another cradled shell. The gunner’s voice sparked in Luis’s helmet.

‘T-34 burning, sir.’

Luis shook a fist that the gunner did not see. The crouching loader caught his eye. The young soldier grinned. ‘Keep firing. At will, gunner.’

‘Yes, sir.’

In five minutes the Tiger racked up four more kills at ranges of two thousand to fifteen hundred meters. Luis kept his head down, his eyes fixed in his own vision block. The first three Red tanks had to be bracketed with shells before they were hit, the fourth was a single shot to a T-34 that had hit a mine and ground to a stop. Gunner Balthasar snapped the turret off the Soviet tank like breaking a French bread.

The Russian tanks charged through the spouts of flame and dirt flung up by the Tiger. They had to. At this distance, their 75 mm guns could barely dent the frontal armor of the German tanks aligned on the ridge.

Against the Tiger itself, their cannons were useless even at point-blank range unless fired from the side, where the Tiger, like all tanks, was vulnerable. So the Reds gunned forward, relying on numbers and speed to survive until they could get within one kilometer, their lethal range against the Mark IVs. Luis was in no hurry to help them close the gap. He held his tanks at bay on the ridge.

The frontal elements of the Russian attack slowed when they neared the grenadiers’ first defensive positions. The Red tanks had outpaced their infantry by at least a kilometer. The Leibstandarte grenadiers fired anti-tank guns and small-arms but there were too many T-34s for them to stop. The Russian tanks slammed explosive rounds and machine-gun fire into the scrambling infantrymen. The Tiger’s driver revved his engine, a subtle signal that he considered now to be the time to get going, fly down the hill, and take on the Red tanks. Still Luis waited, to let the ground troops absorb the first brunt of the tank attack. ‘Gunner, lead T-34’ was all he said. The gunner drew a slow and careful bead on a tank in the van of the Soviet assault. The long cannon whined, lowering to a level trajectory, pointing a damning finger at the Russian tank. Luis asked, ‘Range?’ The voice answered, ‘Fifteen hundred meters.’

‘Fire.’

The gunner muttered, ‘Away,’ and blasted the T-34 with a round that Luis heard strike like a blacksmith’s anvil. This was what Luis waited for.

The Russians were now in range of the Mark IVs.

‘Radio. Tell the platoons to open fire.’

With a single earsplitting cannonade the fourteen German panzers hammered at the Soviet charge. When the salvo was away, Luis stood in his turret to assess the blow. He had to wait several seconds for the dust and powder smoke to swirl away on the concussive wind. When he could see through the battle haze, he raised his binoculars to a field of black geysers. Smoke poured out of a fourth of the Russian tanks. The odds were better now, two to one.

Luis restrained his Tiger and the Mark IVs on the hill for another minute, to further sap the Soviet attack. In that time his company fired over fifty rounds, destroying another ten T-34s. The Leibstandarte grenadiers were out of their holes now, gaining the flanks on the Soviet tanks. The Russian infantry had not caught up yet, they still ran at least two kilometers behind. It seemed to Luis they were losing their verve for rushing into a battle that had swung against them even before they’d entered it.

The enemy was confused and hurt. There were no trumpets to announce it, but Luis knew the time had arrived to send the banderilleros away. The moment had come for the matador.

‘Driver. Forward.’

The Tiger was not swift but it did not have to be. Its frontal armor was impervious to anything the T-34s could hurl at it, and for the first five hundred meters of their advance down the hill so were the Mark IVs. His tank formation never exceeded ten kilometers an hour, but with every meter they closed, the Red tanks grew larger in his gunners’ optics. Luis buttoned his hatch and trained his eyes on the terrain and the conduct of his company. The Mark IVs lumbered on his sides and in front, moving in wedges the way he’d ordered. He shifted in his seat, glancing left and right through the vision blocks in his cupola, communicating over the radio with the platoon leaders to keep them in formation. At a range of one kilometer from the lead T-34, the fourteen Leibstandarte tanks were a formidable blazing force. The Tiger stood at the center braying the loudest and killing the surest.

Rumbling in his commander’s seat at the heart of the charge. Luis felt quietly exultant. The Tiger paused once a minute for the gunner to aim and fire, then lurched ahead with the pack. Luis had not dreamed of this kind of power at his control, he’d never imagined it from his hospital beds in his white-washed convalescence. How could he? Now, a year later, dust and smoke parted for him. small-arms fire hardly made pings against his rushing armor. Luis selected targets, the gunner blasted them, the radioman issued his orders, the loader fed the breech, the driver jolted the Tiger at his direction. In every angle of his vision, German tanks under his command fired and chased the Russians backward. He held on in the Tiger’s belly and pressed the counterattack.

The Russians were routed. The T-34s were quick, and when they scattered it was impressive. The Soviet tanks were nimble, running wide circles to gain flank angles to the German wedges, or to get away back to Sukho- Solotino to set up a final defense line there. Luis kept his attention on three T-34s coming at him in a zigzag. Three Mark IVs fired at this bold group and missed, or their rounds glanced off the T-34s’ sloped armor.

These Soviets had spotted the last Tiger tank and wanted it dead.

Luis gave the order to halt.

The Tiger dug in its claws and ground to a stop. The Russian tanks advanced, cutting left and right. Luis admired their agility. They moved faster than the gunner could traverse, the Tiger’s hydraulics whined but could not keep up. He watched them approach, inside seven hundred, then five hundred meters.

The first of the three T-34s came to a standstill. The Tiger’s gunner swung the turret at the tank, but Luis knew his cannon would not be fleet enough. Head-on, the T-34’s angled design made it a green triangle on treads. In the center of the figure, the enemy’s main gun smoked. Faster than Luis could flinch, the shell struck. He was kicked back from his vision block by the blast, everyone in the Tiger shivered. Paint chips snowed down on him; the shell had smacked the turret directly in front of his position and the thick armor held, another scar for the Tiger. His ears rang from the clout, but not so much that he could not hear the gunner holler,

‘Away!’