Last Citadel - [World War II 03] (61 page)

Luis and the gunner strode off from the rest of the tanks in the company. Again Luis had brought them through another day of hard fighting without losing a tank. In fact, when the trailing elements of
Leibstandarte
caught up to the rest of the division in the early morning, they brought with them six more Mark IVs, two had been assigned to Luis. Now, at the end of his fourth day commanding the company in combat, they numbered sixteen tanks.

Luis and Balthasar walked through the remains of Oktyabrski. A gray snow of ash filtered down from the smoldering timbers of barns and silos. A dead Russian lay face up with his hands and legs spread wide, blown there to the ground, a teenager, and he looked to Luis like a boy making a snow angel in the spilling ashes. This was a cold image, Luis did not like it. It reminded him of Leningrad, where he took his wound.

He opened his mouth to speak to Balthasar, then thought better of it. He would have to shout to be heard in this dirt lane, crowded with grenadiers flooding in to take positions in the rubble. Tanks and armored troop carriers careered around the debris piles, and medical wagons collected SS dead and wounded. All the Red corpses were hoisted onto trucks and dumped out on the steppe to be burned. The snow-angel boy was so stiff he was lifted and swung up to the truck like a hammock.

Luis walked Balthasar toward the western edge of the state farm. He smelled himself and the gunner. Their odors were identical, acidy from the backwash of day-long cannon fire, a sort of spoiled citrus tang of sweat and chemical stained their skin and uniforms. The smell of mechanized combat was on them. Luis wanted a postcard of this, to send to his father, and one to Hitler.

The two stood where it was quieter now. They gazed over the terrain they’d seized today.
Leibstandarte
had clawed another five kilometers closer to Prokhorovka, lunging at first light northeast out of Komsomolets state farm. The division attacked across a wide front, spanning all across the land corridor, from the edge of the Psel to south of the rail mound. The Russians fought hardest on this ground, defending the state farm in the middle. When his panzer company rolled up to attack, they came up short in front of the biggest anti-tank ditch he could imagine, the proportions were remarkable, the thing was as wide and deep as a river. This underscored Luis’s loathing for the Soviet peoples, revived his thinking of them as drones, to dig such a thing was primitive. His armored attack was thwarted for the morning. This angered him more for the hissing in his head, the sound of the
Führers
draining patience for this misadventure in Russia. The assault was redirected until bridging equipment could be brought up to cross the giant ditch. An hour later, after regrouping, Luis’s company came at Oktyabrski from the northwest, where the Reds were expecting them. A barrage of machine-gun fire sprang out of the farm buildings, catching the accompanying grenadiers by surprise; even behind tanks they couldn’t advance. Luis would not move ahead into the sting of the dug-in Red infantry without ground troops - this was how Thoma had lost so many tanks - and the attack stalled again. Luis grew grimmer in his commander’s seat, counting minutes, knowing that Hitler in Berlin counted minutes and the swelling number of Americans on the beaches in Sicily. Stukas were called in to cover the pioneers bridging the tank moat in front of the state farm. Finally, at 1400 hours, the ditch was spanned. Every tank of
Leibstandarte
attacked at once. Ground was gained a meter at a time. Armored transports hauled a full regiment of panzer-grenadiers to the leading edge of the battle, Luis’s tanks provided cover and firepower, and together they plowed into the defenders of Oktyabrski. The Reds sent out a paltry rank of T-34s to deflect the assault; a dozen were shot out of their number in the first ten minutes. Balthasar got three of them. The Tiger gunner showed an uncanny hand now with the speed and agility of the Soviet tanks, they didn’t dodge him so well anymore. The state farm fell twenty minutes ago, and with it the last high ground before Prokhorovka, Hill 252.2.
Leibstandarte
claimed twenty-one Soviet tanks destroyed.

The division was called to a final halt for the day. Again the flanking forces had lagged, leaving
Leibstandarte
exposed in the middle. The attack on Prokhorovka was forced to wait until morning, to allow
Das Reich
and
Totenkopf
to pull alongside. Luis looked backward, at the seven more kilometers they’d captured, up from Komsomolets state farm. The land was darkened and shredded by fighting. Rear elements of the division crept over the plain in the late-afternoon light, bringing food and ammunition and bandages to the warriors walking under the drifting ash of the state farm. It seemed a mighty thing to have done, to have taken this ground back from the Russians. Luis wanted Hitler to stand here with him and see it, he would present Hitler with this present of a swath of Russia, and promise him more.

But the Americans. How can Hitler ignore them? They’re an unknown quantity, an industrial behemoth let loose now in the war in Europe. What kind of fighters will the Americans be? Luis knew the Yanks were in the Pacific tangling with the Japanese, but nothing else. He stared over the churned patch of Russia he’d conquered that day. Japan, America, Italy - those nations were far away and without weight, they were not here in the smoke of killed tanks out on that plain and the burned state farm behind him. He could not conceive that what Grimm had told him would come true, that Hitler would lose his nerve and take this away from him. He did not believe that tomorrow the SS would fail to ram forward another seven kilometers and take Prokhorovka. What could the Reds throw at him tomorrow that they had not thrown today?

Luis raised a palm over the captured plain. His hand floated in the air above the crushed grasses and turned soil, some black smoke plumes. This hand, frail and pale as chalk, did this to the land.

‘It seems like a lot, doesn’t it?’ he asked Balthasar.

‘Yes, sir. It does.’

Luis lowered his hand.

‘It’s not enough.’

Balthasar made no answer. Luis was not curious for what the gunner’s silence said about the man’s reasons for fighting. Probably he’s like the rest, Luis thought. He’s here because he believes in Germany more than he believes in himself. Luis couldn’t be more different. He didn’t want to stop the advance because Germany might get a bloody nose. He’d cover Germany in blood if he could. Russia, too. And Italy and America. Luis alone would know when there had been enough.

‘We can take Prokhorovka,’ he said. ‘Did you know I used to be a bullfighter?’

Balthasar showed nothing of the disdain the Nordic peoples held for the barbarism of bullfighting. The gunner was still a very young man, he’d likely never been far from his own town in Germany before the war swept him up, never known a Spaniard. Balthasar probably thought all Spaniards were bullfighters.

‘No, sir.’

‘I can read what a bull is thinking. I can tell which way he’s going to jump. My father taught me this. Having my life depend on it taught me, too. And I can tell you, Balthasar, about the Russians. I can read them. We can beat them. They know it. All their attacks are from the flanks. They’re afraid to come right at us. They nibble at our sides. Every one of their direct assaults has been weak. They’re defensive. We’ve bled them, Balthasar, we’ve bled them almost to where they’ll fall. We’ve got to go forward. We’ve got to push the blade in deeper.’

Luis and Balthasar looked west, at the depth the blade was already into the Russian heart. It was not enough.

‘Tomorrow,’ Luis promised.

This sun over the conquered western corridor went down in the time of Luis’s mind and came back up tomorrow, glowing red in the east, chasing stars, beginning the end. And there it was again, the partisan’s heart beating in his hand. And there were bulls’ hearts throbbing there, too. But the sensation was different, not only the pump of one man’s stolen heart and the ended lives of animals but the pulse of all Russia, right in Luis’s fist. He held his hand up, cupped as though holding a real heart, and looked into his curled palm.

‘Tomorrow,’ he said again, ‘we’ll take Prokhorovka.’

* * * *

CHAPTER 25

July 12

0410 hours

with the 32nd Tank Brigade

2 kilometers west of Prokhorovka

The commissars surfaced at first light. They came with bottles of vodka.

The cartons in their grips rang with knocking glass. The boxes sounded to Dimitri like the bells of fishermen on the Black Sea, when the boats came home from a day’s haul and called all to the docks who wanted to buy fresh catch. The commissars spread out among the tank brigade, ringing the men awake in the charcoal morning. They wore the same mustard uniforms as infantrymen, but with many medals and ribbons pinned to their tunics, and with only a sidearm slapped on their belts. The
politrooks
set the cardboard cartons down at their feet. They began their own calls, fishermen themselves, baiting with the vodka.

Dimitri had been awake for hours, watching lightning ripple over the steppe. He’d listened to the night workers out on the battlefield, to the thumps of explosives as engineers blew up disabled T-34s too damaged to be towed away and repaired. Sappers crawled to the front to lay mines where German tanks were certain to come today. From the other direction came the logistics corps bringing up food and ammo, lubricants and diesel. Dimitri eyed the laden commissars, he was the first to traipse to the nearest one. He leaned down to take a bottle by the neck out of the box. The bottle was corked by a bit of rag.

‘Courage!’ the commissar bellowed at Dimitri, as though the two were on opposite sides of a field. Dimitri held the bottle up by the neck like a chicken for dinner.

‘Courage,’ he echoed and walked off.

Sasha appeared from somewhere in the night - Dimitri stayed close only to his tank, casting his senses out to the battlefield, to the dark sunflower field on the valley floor - and slid down beside him. The boy was freckled and orange-cast and wrapped white, grinning bravely through his pain. Dimitri handed the warm glass over. The two sat listening to the keening commissar.

A crowd of the tankers gathered around the man, perhaps a hundred. They came for the bottles and stayed in the commissar’s net. None of these boys had been in the fight for Kursk yet, Dimitri could see it on them. They were frightened and needy of the commissar’s calls for bravado, they did not know yet what they would do today. Great things, the commissar told them, great things, and Dimitri knew this to be true, because living through today or dying in these flowers and grainfields would be remembered as great.

Dimitri and Sasha shared the bottle, neither speaking when the commissar called into the center of his gathered ring the young lieutenant from 3rd Mechanized Corps and the battle for the Oboyan road, the commander of the tank
General Platov
. The Germans were stopped on the road to Oboyan and they would not pass to Prokhorovka, the Lieutenant told them. He was cheered with
Urrabs
, clapping, and lifted bottles. Thick Pasha was one of the applauders, his coveralls dirtier than any of the others standing around him.

Valentin reached into his breast pocket for a folded sheet of paper. This was something official, a communiqué from headquarters. A new duty, Dimitri thought. Splendid. We don’t have enough to do today.

‘We will face a powerful German force today,’ Valya announced, rattling the page as if the paper meant something that could equal a man’s life. ‘We have orders not to budge away from the Prokhorovka road. There will be no retreat today. There will be only victory.’

The men cheered again. They don’t know, Dimitri thought, and turned to see the same high spirits on Sasha’s tired face. The cheers put a mad taste in his mouth and he sipped more vodka to wash it away. Valentin let the tankers roar their approval that they should die today. Dimitri paid little attention, hearing nothing new from the mouth of a Soviet.

Valya told them what was on the sheet, what they would be facing today: three highly trained and veteran SS divisions. These were men and weapons diverted from the assault on the Oboyan road where they could not break through. Now they would try the way through Prokhorovka. They will have with them fifty-seven assault guns and two hundred and thirty-six tanks. Ninety-one of the tanks will be Mark IVs, and fifteen will be Mark VI Tigers.

Where did the Red Army get these facts and figures, Dimitri marveled, how could they be this exact? He hoisted his bottle and tapped the lip of it to an invisible drinking partner, toasting whoever was responsible for this kind of precision. That’s why we’re here, he thought, the Soviets have lined up every tank and gun they could scrounge in front of the damn SS. That kind of information was worth its weight in gold. Not that it will save any lives, but it was damn impressive.