So....My Tank Corps in Prussia...

[Commissar D, the Evil]

This is indeed very sad news. Ironhorse always encouraged me to write and seemed to enjoy the humor of it all. He will be sorely missed.
But W.F. continues to snipe in this Tale, as long as he has a worthy target.
Bestens,
David

[IRONHORSE]

Thanks David
I'm currently on page 21 and catching up on whats happening and enjoying it tremendously, Please excuse my spelling and grammer for I hated english in school and now I pay for it. But you are doing a real bang up job keep up the great work.


SKEEZIX

[Commissar D, the Evil]

Just to be on the safe side, or perhaps out of curiosity, Gruber deviated from his carefully plotted path and, after dressing down the feldpolizei at the distillery with his usual blistering sarcasm, followed the track of the stray Jagdpanther North.

It became quickly apparent that the vehicle’s commander had taken his warning to heart and, even with a faster vehicle, Gruber was only able to catch a few glimpses of its tracks throwing up snow as he followed in its’ wake.

Still, it was not long before he arrived at Standartenfuhrer von Bellow’s headquarters, a bunker cut by explosives out of the frozen earth and covered with logs. Of course, Von Bellow wasn’t expecting him—he was still angrily pulling on his boots after a very hard night at the front when Gruber was ushered into his presence.

“A bit close to the front line aren’t you?” Von Bellow said sourly.

Gruber had, in his life as a staff officer, been insulted by Generals on a fairly regular basis, so the Standartenfuhrer’s comment didn’t seem worthy of a reply.

“I’m not here to spy on you Standartenfuhrer, just to gather information”, he said.

“Information. Information? You need information? Well, come with me then.” Von Bellow finished dressing quickly, as he didn’t require much, only the standard Waffen S.S. cold weather uniform and a cap. He didn’t even bother to wear his newly awarded Knight’s Cross, although he was tremendously proud of it.

Gruber felt he was being dragged in tow as the Standartenfuhrer swept past him, grabbed a pair of binoculars and headed towards an observation trench facing North. “There, look there.”

The observation trench ran perpendicular to the North road and wasn’t the forward German line. Still, the view was excellent. The North road ran through roughly a kilometer of forest before emerging in a broad curve into open country. From the observation trench, one could see both the forest and the open country after it.

But Von Bellow hadn’t brought him here for sightseeing. There was an intermittent firefight going on at the moment---continuously, in fact, according to the Standartenfuhrer.

A T-34 would suddenly emerge from the trees, fire a few shells, and then retreat into cover. A few platoons of Russian infantry would advance cautiously towards German lines, only to fall back or go to ground when fired upon. The Russians repeated these tactics several times a day. These antics kept the S.S. on their toes at all times, since a feint could become an offensive at any moment.

Then Von Bellow pointed him in another direction. A lone King Tiger, heavily camouflaged with branches, skulked in the woods behind their lines. Its engine was off. The only movement from it was a barely perceptible turn of the turret and an almost invisible leveling of its long gun. This was done so inconspicuously that the snow on the branches it used as camouflage and even the snow on its gun barrel wasn’t disturbed. Gruber quickly realized that he was watching a performance by experten.

The next T-34 that showed itself was obviously encouraged by the lack of return fire and lingered just a moment too long. The Tiger’s cannon cracked and the T-34s entire turret suddenly hurled into the air engulfed in a ball of fire.

Immediately, a storm of artillery struck the German lines, forcing everyone to duck for cover. But the Tiger was unaffected and still unseen by the Soviets.

Gruber leaned back against the trench. “Masterful!” he exalted. “Magnificent!”
“It’s only one Tiger, our only one at that!” Von Bellow shouted, bringing him back to earth amid the explosions of Russian shells.

Von Bellow’s point was obvious. The Germans had fired one round and killed one tank. Their reward was an uninterrupted half hour of indiscriminate area shelling. Gruber was stuck in the trench until this let up and he was finally able to make it back to his car. Von Bellow eventually returned to his own bunker after Gruber left and even didn’t bother to see him off. Still, as Von Bellow later observed wryly to his officers, Gruber had gotten his “information”.



In these days, Rosselsprung was not much appreciative of chatter. But Gruber arrived back at headquarters in such a state that the general felt it best to let him talk himself out of it. Gruber told him everything. His experiences poured out of him like the water from a can hit by a bullet. Once started, there was nothing to stop him and Gruber told him about everything from the street executions to the Tiger’s exploits.

Finally, he calmed somewhat. Only then did he notice that Rosselsprung had unbuttoned his tunic and was casually smoking a cigar in his undershirt and suspenders. Gruber suddenly felt foolish, but Rosselsprung said nothing to encourage that feeling.

“So what are your conclusions? That the Soviets are only probing our Northern perimeter?” The general asked this only when he felt Gruber was emerging from his state of over-excitement.

Gruber scratched his head, only then realizing that he had a severe headache. “No, that’s not it,” he said, clutching his forehead. Rosselsprung offered him a cup of ersatz coffee. Gruber got it down, but coughed a little.

“No,” Gruber placed the empty cup back on the table. His head had cleared a bit. “What worried me was the potential breakdown in internal morale—imagine, sir, German soldiers shooting down German citizens on the streets because there isn’t enough bread! My fundamental conclusion is that internal morale has been stretched to the breaking point.”

General Rosselsprung had the answer he expected. Even a good staff officer like Gruber couldn’t be expected to absorb everything. What mattered was that he absorbed the important things and those were, to Rosselsprung, the starving people and the deserters. The rest was simply…combat. No matter how overwhelming actual combat was—and Rosselsprung had seen his own fair share of it over the years—he reckoned that, in the end, the survival of Bad Frostberg depended just as much on the behavior of those who weren’t in combat as it did on the behavior of those who were.

General Rosselsporung suddenly got up and puffed on his cigar again. He placed a hand on Gruber’s shoulder. “I want you to get on the radio to Von Bellow. I need you to tell him to prepare a fall-back position about a kilometer behind his lines.”

“A fall-back position Sir?” Gruber didn’t understand. “But he seems to be doing perfectly well where he is.”

“Well enough,” Rosselsprung replied. “No doubt he’ll consider you un-nerved by your recent experience. He might even call you a damned fool, but these are my orders. Do you understand?”

Gruber, in fact, didn’t understand. A staff officer, in Rosselsprung’s thinking, never quite understood the meaning of “stalemate” or the pernicious effects that a stalemate has on the average landser.

“Just obey me without question. I think we may have found the way out of this particular mess.”

Obedience without question was a concept easily appealing to a soldier. Rosselsprung knew this and counted on the phrase. Gruber got up, saluted stiffly and headed off to the radio room.

This left General Rosselsprung alone in the room to think and probe into the depths of his own still-shaping plans.

[Jager1945]

I am very sorry to hear of Iron Horses' Passing (WF). Valhalla is the richer.

He will be sorely Missed.

Jaeger

[Jager1945]

David,

Keep up the Good work 3rd Division Troop!

At Ease.

Jaeger

[Commissar D, the Evil]

It took six hours for W.F. and Jahn to navigate the ruins of half a block to the tall house on the corner. Approaching form its rear and being allowed admittance took until dawn, because of a stubborn sentry and their inability to remember the number of gold medals Germany had won in the last Olympics.

They found the house to be a veritable fortress, under the control of a Leutnant Jaeger, who mustered three MG-42s in the upper stories and even an ultra-rare 75 mm PaK installed in the basement. It all struck W.F. as some sort of American Wild West pioneer fort, under siege by too many Indians. Jahn was simply happy to rejoin a German unit and was quickly put to work as a loader on one of the machine guns.

What the Russians intended for this place was quickly determined in the early morning, when a T-34 clanked down the other end of the street, followed closely by a platoon of Red infantry.

Leutnant Jaeger wasn’t a fool, W.F. granted, even though the position itself struck him as a whimsical dream from the beginning. But then, perhaps Leutnant Jaeger had a natural affinity for hopeless dreams. He was, himself, ghostly pale, the color of a sheet of white paper. The only color in him at all was a scarlet shrapnel scar on his right cheek and his unnaturally blue eyes. He was thin, nervous-looking and missing his right arm below the elbow--like the scar, another souvenir from an earlier encounter with Russian artillery. By all rights, he should have been invalided out of the Army a year ago, but he was the stubborn sort.

The empty uniform sleeve pinned to his shoulder didn't even momentarily disguise to his superiors the plain fact that he was a resourceful improviser and determined fighter, an Iron Cross 1st Class winner in those better young days before his twenty-fifth birthday.

To him, the four story brick house was not so much a lone finger of the very edge of German territory, but his own missing right thumb poked squarely in the red bear’s eye.

For some reason, the enemy didn’t quite get this at first. The tall house was only vaguely important to them as a convenient perch for their artillery spotters and they supposed it to be either empty or only lightly guarded. Accordingly, they would send the occasional patrol to check the streets beyond it or the odd spotter squad to actually occupy it. Leutnant Jaeger would let the patrols pass by unmolested, as long as they didn’t probe too closely or if, coming too close to the house, sniper fire didn’t deter their sweeps (which it normally did). As for the spotter parties, they simply disappeared noiselessly.


Leutnant Jaeger let the T-34 advance halfway down the street, knowing that the Soviets couldn't have figured out the firepower he commanded. A shouted command from him, passed down through three flights of stairs, and the 75mm PaK ate the Russian tank for a late breakfast. The following infantry scattered, but not in any time to save themselves.

W.F. passed on his chance to shoot at the fleeing Russian infantry, as there simply wasn't any point in wasting rifle ammunition when three MG-42s were in play.

The essence of Leutnant Jaeger’s strategy was to slaughter the Russkies far enough up the street to prevent them from singling out his house as the one from which the PaK fire came from.

To W.F. there was one slight flaw in that logic, based on what he knew of the Russian temperament. Even as Jahn eagerly fed belt after belt into the voracious MG-42s, W.F. figured that the Russians would soon tire of this game of chess as soon as they had aimed enough firepower to sweep the board clean.

Acting according to this theory, W.F. contented himself with staying in the basement and resting. It was only when he heard the first “thump” of heavy guns that he raced up the stairs, grabbed Jahn and brought him down into the basement as well.

The Russians then proceeded to flatten the entire block systematically—as opposed to the casual ruination their artillery had poured upon it in the past few days—house by house and virtually stone by stone.

It was a truly impressive, utterly frightening and totally apocalyptical performance on their part. The only fly in the ointment, from the Russian perspective, was that Leutnant Jaeger proved himself to be highly adaptable and as equally determined as their artillery. Moments after W.F. had pulled Jahn into the basement, Leutnant Jaeger sent his MG teams below and then joined them in the shelter. The house was four stories tall and well built. It’s lower level and basement were stone, its upper stories brick—it would take a great deal of destroying without collapsing and, unless it collapsed, the cellar would remain somewhat intact.

While they temporarily lost the use of the PaK due to falling debris obstructing its field of fire, the Soviet annihilation of this particular house only served to prove just how hard it was to pry determined infantry out of the wreckage of a city without using one’s own infantry.
By midday, the house’s three MG-42s were back on line and well-manned, if stationed at a much lower level than before. Runners were already returning with boxes of food and more ammunition.

Leutnant Jaeger busied himself darting from each MG to the next, inspecting it and his men. While he did so, W.F. found the time to hand Jahn a gift, a 98K he found in the rubble and had cleaned until it was usable.
“Here kid, I want to teach you something.”
Jahn took the rifle uneasily. “I’m not good enough to be a sniper.”
“Oh, how is your shooting?” W.F. asked, his features serious, yet curiously gentle.
“I can’t shoot—I mean, I don’t know how to shoot like you.” Jahn answered---honestly he thought.
“That’s not what I asked, how is your shooting?” W.F. insisted.
“I’m a decent shot” Jahn was forced to concede. "I'm just not a great shot."
“Well, that’s good enough then. I have an idea I’ve been working on for a while and I only need a decent shot to pull it off.”
Jahn relaxed for a moment and inspected his new weapon.
“Of course, it would work better with a crack shot”, W.F. added, as if as an afterthought, but really only to get a rise out of the kid.
Jahn went suitably wide-eyed at the remark.

[Me-109 Jagdfleiger]

sounds like there is more instore for Jahn, i thought the Russian shelling would kill him... Keep up the great work ...Looking forward to the next Instalment
Cheer's,
Jonathan

[Commissar D, the Evil]

As you ask, so shall you receive:

The Soviets were lazy with their next move, either over-confidant in their artillery or, more likely, not willing to take more casualties over the same ground on the same day. Probably, Leutnant Jaeger supposed, they were waiting for nightfall.

“I had this idea, a while ago, but never had the time or opportunity to work on it." W.F. explained.
“So now is the time for an experiment?” Jahn laughed.
W.F. smiled indulgently. “I call the concept “The Second Shooter”. It only needs a passable shot to carry it off, not a marksman. It works under the theory that a sniper needs a rifleman to work with.”

“Work with?” For his youth, Jahn revealed a healthy underlying skepticism—a good trait by W.F.’s standards.

“Suppose I need a Russian to move his position. You lay fire down on it, he springs and I shoot. Its all about teamwork. We station ourselves a few meters apart, just far enough that we can communicate by signs. And we’re never out of sight of each other.”

The idea intrigued Jahn, who was disassembling his 98k and laying the parts out on a dirty cloth draped over a crate.

“Suppose I make a shot and another Russian shoots at my position—you take him out or force him to go to ground.” W.F. made it sound simple because to him it was simple.
Jahn listened with growing interest.

“Suppose I take out a Russian officer and another appears as I change position?” He looked to Jahn for the answer to he rhetorical question.
“Then I kill the second officer and take cover until you’ve set up again.”
W.F. laughed, “Now you’re even starting to learn the language".
“Well, they talked about it in training to the really good shots.” Jahn replied.

W.F grinned. He opened up a tin of cold American/Russian corned beef and cut it into slices, offering an equal portion to Jahn on a cracked plate he had fished out of the ruins.
Jahn ignored the food for the moment and quickly reassembled the 98k. He finally pulled the bolt back, handling it respectfully and with care.

A strictly cynical question occurred at that moment to Jahn. “And suppose you need bait?” Jahn mused.

“Ah, now you’re getting it…” W.F. pushed the plate closer to Jahn. “In that case, you leave your rifle on a windowsill, If I need bait--and quickly back away from it—but I like that as an idea.”
Feeling hungry, Jahn put the rifle aside and began to slowly eat the greasy meat with his fingers.
“Does this mean we’re not staying here?” He asked as he ate.
From his position, W.F. could see Leutnant Jaeger in the next room drawing a map of the street and its positions in the dirt on the floor in front of two intensely interested landsers.

“No,” he finally answered, “it just means that the coming fight for this place will be more complicated for us than loading a belt or two into an MG.”

“Look,” W.F. suddenly grabbed Jahn’s hand, forcing the slice of corned beef he held to fall back down on the plate. “In this game, I’m the rifle and you’re the bayonet attached to the rifle. What I don’t kill, you will. Fair enough?”

Jahn pushed the plate aside with his free hand and faced him--eye to eye--answering him quickly and firmly. “That sounds like a deal, yes?”
The two soldiers shook hands, just as the Russians decided to send another salvo of artillery shells their way.

Leutnant Jaeger heard the roar of the artillery and instinctively ducked, just as everyone else did. Night was fast approaching and the renewed bombardment confirmed his fears of a night assault. He was determined to hold on, however, although this was not out of any false pride and not even because of any blind obedience to orders.

For three years he had fought on the Ostfront, before being wounded, and his take on most tactical infantry situations was sound. From his own observations, the German line, beyond his little “Fort Apache”, were fragile beyond hopelessness, so duty itself required him and his men to hold on. What else duty might require in the future was not in his thoughts during the shelling, only the constant worry that one their precious-beyond-gold MG-42s might take a stray hit.

[Me-109 Jagdfleiger]

Two instalments in one night its not christmass is it.. LOL... Keep up the Amazing work...
Jonathan

[Commissar D, the Evil]

Thank you Jahn! There is one more installment coming along, but the next one after that is named "Hell's-Night". Not to give anything away, but that is one episode that all of you Forum Heroes should be wary off, even the oldest ones.....!

This Tale started over two years ago and it is time that it came to an end. "Hell's Night" is not the end, but it is definitely the prelude to the end. So, please stay tuned my Brothers in Arms.

Bestens,
David

[Klaus_Arzt]

We're looking forward to it David. Sounds like Gotterdamerung, epilogue is always more interesting than the prologue. Keep it up.

[Commissar D, the Evil]

Rosselsprung’s HQ

The ever faithful Gruber handed General Rosselsprung the latest coded messages from Division and went over to the chalkboard to fill in the details.
As he half-expected, the General stopped in the middle of one report and re-read it. He seemed to fixate on it, as Gruber filled in the blanks on the hand-drawn chalk map of their positions.
“The West?” Rosselsprung said quietly, then folded the paper up and placed it on the table.
“Yes sir, the West.” Gruber replied.
“How reliable is this?” The General demanded.
Duty required Gruber to answer somewhat circumspectly. “Well, it’s only the observations of two scout cars.”
“And?” Rosselsprung said tiredly, knowing that he was holding back.
“Well, these two commanders and their cars have been with us from the beginning of the Russian attacks. I don’t know how they’ve managed to survive this far—that’s some sort of miracle itself--but no one can accuse them of being unreliable.”
General Rosselsprung guessed that the reports were reliable, but accuracy was another matter. Too great a matter, in fact, to base any sort of hope on.
“And how has Division reacted to this? I don’t read anything of any great offensive being planned from the West—all I get are the same old exhortations to hold out for the sake of the Front!!”
Gruber scratched his face. By now he was beginning to grow a beard, as offensive to him as the thought was, but grooming supplies were in great shortage. “We’ve had two airdrops today, all ammunition and foodstuffs. Tonnage was disappointing though, enough to get us through a couple more days.”
Rosselsprung hated it when Gruber changed subjects on him. He spun about in his chair and fixed him in his sights as though he were still commanding a Tiger tank.
“And you said that to say what?”
“Only that our supply situation is perilous.”
The implications of his words sunk in slowly. No, there wasn’t an offensive being planned to rescue them and no, they couldn’t hold out for much longer. The days had slipped by and merged, one into the other, without the General noticing. If anyone had asked him how long it had been between the first Russian attack and today, he wouldn’t have been able to answer, as he was living a day by day existence, much the same as the residents and defenders of Bad Frostberg. That thought alone was enough to give him pause. And, there was the constant communiqués from Berlin and Division, all saying the same thing and all reading as if they had been written on the same day, regardless of the changing circumstances, not just in the city but in all of Prussia.

Rosselsprung suddenly got up and marched out of the room. He made his way up, out of the unsealed crypt that was his headquarters and its shelter. Ordering a car, he decided to see things for himself—even though he trusted Gruber beyond anyone else in the world at the moment.

Unlike his frugal IA, he found himself in a big, luxuriant, open-top Mercedes with two motorcycle guards.

The stark openness of the city made an immediate impression. It seemed so large, yet so barren and broken—a shattered thing, with roofs gone or blown askew, the wind swirling bits of burnt paper and coal-ash through the streets and random doors blown off, revealing the burnt out and often looted shells of what had been homes and businesses. It was a city without roofs, doors or windows. On some streets, packs of wild dogs roamed, although not for long, as they had for days been hunted themselves for food by the freezing burghers of his “fortress”.

From what seemed to be every standing lamppost, the fruit of the firing squads swayed, frozen white flesh with nooses around their necks and signs pinned to them proclaiming their criminality.
There were very few civilians to be seen in the light of day, when soviet snipers were most active. The soldiers he saw were either the few well-fed and faceless feldpolitzei in their gleaming gorgets or the dirty and freezing landsers clinging to their holes or some other ruined shelter.

Either way, no one made much of a fuss about his Mercedes and the outriders. Only the Russians greeted him as they drove towards the Southern sector and that was with a small barrage of mortar shells that chased the big black car back down the street. Up ahead, the Soviets were shelling the hell out of some unfortunate block, but that was nothing so important to General Rosselsprung as the mortar shells falling around him—although Lt. Jaeger, W.F., Jahn and their kameraden would have argued otherwise at the time.

Now heading due North, those in the motorcade heard, several kilometers before reaching the lines, a terrible exchange of high-velocity fire followed by an equally awesome artillery barrage. It was impressive even at that distance to turn them around before they reached their goal. So they returned to the city center and drove west.

Once there, the unholy stench of the hospital repelled them and herded the party towards the other still-standing railway warehouses.
As they approached one of them, Leutnant zur See Ribbentrop ran out of the building and waived them to a halt.
“Sir, I didn’t know you were coming!” I’m sorry, we’re repairing the boiler on Erika and re-supplying the guns—we’re quite unprepared for an inspection Sir,” Ribbentrop said rapidly and humbly.
Rosselsprung sniffed, keeping his chin in the air and his eyes forward as if ignoring the Leutnant zur See. To hear such a thing said to him was both insulting and enlightening enough. To be treated as an intruder whose only purpose was to see a sparkling drill was quite painful enough. To be told it to his face was unforgivable. He ordered the driver to motor on, leaving Ribbentrop standing ankle-deep in a cloud of exhaust fumes.
Finding nothing amiss on the Western approach to the city, he finally ordered the car turned around and back to his headquarters.

It hadn’t been an inspection, in the sense that Gruber’s carefully planned excursions were. Rather it had been the General’s first embrace of the reality of the moment. Having lived for so many uncountable days in a pit with only paper and words to form his reality, the drive had done him some good if only to enforce or deny what he had read and what he had been told.

His next encounter with Gruber that day took on an entirely different course.

I saw Konigstrasse’s Panthers today, they seemed immobile, General Rosselsprung declared. Gruber was bent over lighting the feldstove that heated the room.
“Sir?”
“And the armored train—it was being repaired and re-supplied.”
“We’ve kept it in reserve Sir, firing only in desperate situations and from different locations.”
“I see.” Rosselsprung wasn’t finished. The Russians in the Southern sector actually fired mortars at my car—I was surprised, I thought they might send a tank platoon after it!”
Gruber laughed. “After one car, Sir?”
“Why not, we were the only thing moving” The General commented bitterly. “Gruber, I want you to get off your arse and get me a real report on the status of our armor, their fuel, their positions and ammunition state after the last supply drop. I want the maps updated with real-time information on the infantry formations and I want a report on the armored train—capabilities, speed, passenger capacity—everything one could know about it—and I want a report on the status of any other transport the garrison has. I need this by tomorrow morning! Do you understand?”
“Yes Sir,” Gruiber replied meekly and hurried off.

Not so far to the South, the Commissar peered over his own maps with Colonel Valery Sonofavich. Word of the Mercedes staff car had reached him and he decided that it was time to squeeze Bad Frostburg ever so gently, but ever so more. It was during this laconic briefing that Valery suddenly understood the Commissar’s purpose and plot. Genghis Khan, Valery realized, couldn’t have played this game out more patiently. It was a humbling thought, so large in its implications as to be startling for Valery--a full Colonel in the Red Army of Workers and Peasants--to finally realize that, like Genghis Khan, Commissar Davidov had absolutely no use whatsoever for a populated city….

NEXT: HELL'S NIGHT

[Commissar D, the Evil]

Say folks, I've been going over the list of characters in this Tale. Could you do the aging Commissar one very small favor?

Please post if you are still reading this and haven't posted lately. Just a simply "Hallo!" will do.

I just would like to know who is till out there out there in Cyber-space after the last two plus years since the thread started.

Bestens,
David

[Me-109 Jagdfleiger]

Just finished reading you last instalment!
Jonathan aka "Jahn"

[Luftman129]

Geez, what's taking my men so long to fix "Erika" and finding ammo for the guns?!! Landsers, pick up the slack or face my wrath!!!

Thanks,
Chris aka:Lt. z. S. Joachim von Ribbentrop