I Often Wonder ...

Bundesarchiv

... who were those guys?

I've been doing this historical fiction thing for well over a year now, I've used a lot of pictures to help not only tell the story, but to set the mood for the story. That mood-setting thing is kind of for me, the writer, not necessarily for you, the reader. It helps me visualize the story (time, place, and weather - sometimes) and often sets the direction for a particular story thread.

Every now and then something in a photo will hit me, usually it's a person in that photo. I wonder, "Who was this person, what was he¹ like

I used that opening photo above just the other day for The Eve of Barbarossa, the photo is early in that conflict (you can tell by the uniforms and the equipment), so it helped set the scene for me. It was only later that the photo really hit me.

There are 29 men visible in that photo, one (partially obscured see next photo) is the commander of the tank, the other 28 men are on foot. Add in the other four crewmembers of that tank and there are 33 men within 100 feet of the camera. Five in the tank, 28 on foot. Not long after posting that, I began wondering about the men in that photo, especially in light of Rob's observation on the post "I wonder how many who started there came back?"

I zoomed in on the tank commander, chilling in his hatch. Guy looks pretty relaxed!
Ibid

I wondered that as well.

But first off, what are we seeing in that photo?

The first thing that struck my eye were the men in the foreground carrying the long tubes. At first I thought "spare machine gun barrel container," then I realized that it was too big. Second thought was "mortar tube." Bingo!

Ibid

The yellow arrows point to the mortar tubes, the orange arrows are the tripods for the mortars, and finally the green arrows point to the mortar baseplates.

So Sarge, what kind of mortar is that?

Glad you asked, it's the 8cm Granatwerfer 34, or GrW 34 for short. And of course, it's an 81 mm mortar, not 80. For whatever reason the Germans called it an 8cm mortar. (Probably the same reason we refer to their rifle ammunition as 8mm, when it's actually 7.92mm. Technically speaking it's 7.92x57mm, often referred to as 7.92x57mm Mauser.)

Where did these mortars fall in the Table of Organization & Equipment of the German infantry battalion?

Glad you asked ...

German infantry battalions in the early part of the war came in two types. Both types consisted of a Battalion Headquarters, three Rifle Companies, and a Machine Gun Company. The difference between the two battalion types was the composition of their Machine Gun Companies.

For both battalions the Machine Gun Company had three Platoons, each of four weapons (the ubiquitous MG 34, later the MG 42). In the type "a" battalion, the Platoons all fielded machine guns, in the type "b" battalion, one of the Platoons had six mortars rather than four machine guns. (Source, Page 7). That mortar being the GrW 34 which those guys in the photo are carrying.

According to the Kriegsstärkenachweisung² (KStN) the crew of a GrW 34 consists of six men. Three of the men are equipped with pistols as their personal weapon, they get to schlepp the mortar tube, the tripod, and the baseplate. The others schlepped ammunition for the tube. No doubt the guy in charge of the mortar team didn't "have to" schlepp ammo, but probably did if he was smart.

The ready ammunition for the tubes were stored in metal boxes like these -

Ammunition box for the GrW 34
(Source)

In the photo below you can see two of these cases (orange arrows), no doubt there are more that you can't see. More ammunition would be carried in the munitions wagons, see the image below the next one for the complete TO&E for the 3rd Platoon of the type "b" Machine Gun Company.

Ibid

Click to embiggen, but you get the idea, the German Army of WWII had a lot of horses.
(Source)

Now the three guys who had to haul around the heavy pieces of gear also got to load and fire that bad boy.

For lots of good info on this weapon and its use, chase the link.
(Source)

The guys schlepping the ammunition also carried rifles, once the mortar was set up and firing, they would provide security for their comrades firing the mortar. The guy in charge would do guy in charge type things: observe fall of shot, adjust fire, etc.

Back to the photo. It looks to me that there are two mortar teams in the picture, which makes sense, often the mortar platoon would be broken into three sections, one being assigned to each of the three Rifle Companies in the battalion. So here we have one section from the mortar platoon along with some other chaps that I'm betting are infantry. Might even be part of the company headquarters behind the tank.

Ibid

Those guys inside the yellow box in the photo, gotta be an infantry squad. There is an MG 34 in the bunch, not on a tripod so it's a squad-level asset. Also there's nine of them (the tenth guy is no doubt outside the camera's field of vision - or he could be a casualty). Inside the green box is what could be a command element, I say that because one of the men has something on his back which looks a lot like a German backpack radio . (See below.)

(Source)

Okay, that covers the men on foot, now the tank.

My guess is that's a Panzerkampfwagen III, I can't tell which Ausführung³ but fit has to be a III as they were much more common than the Panzerkampfwagen IV which looked very similar from astern.

Why just the one tank?

Glad you asked. German tank platoons typically had five tanks at this stage of the war, normally all of the same type for logistical reasons. Unlike Hollywood, these vehicles tended to keep a lot of space between each other, 50 yards or more when deployed. Of course in restricted terrain they'd be closer together for mutual support. As you can see in the photo, the terrain is pretty open.

So the other tanks, like the rest of the infantry company, are not within the camera's field of vision. Or it could indeed be a Panzerkampfwagen IV assigned to support the infantry surrounding it. The early versions of that vehicle carried a short-barreled 7.5cm gun meant for infantry support.

Panzerkampfwagen IV, Ausf. C
Bundesarchiv

Now that I've bored you with all the minutiae in the photo ...

The area looks like the steppes of southern Russia, you can see other vehicles in the distance climbing a slight rise in the open terrain. Is that smoke or a low-hanging rain cloud above that rise? I'm thinking it's a combination of both, to the left of the photo I can see what appears to be a smoke plume, from something burning in the far distance.

But imagine this (I did) those men are about to advance, across open fields. Sure they have tank support, but when the bullets start flying, unless you're directly behind the tank, there's really nowhere to hide in that terrain.

You can only see two men's faces in that group in the foreground.

The guy in the yellow circle looks like a sergeant, he has that sergeant look about him. He's got his eyes on his men, the look says "do your jobs, don't think of anything else."

The guy in the blue circle, carrying the mortar tube, looks rather apprehensive. The look of a man about to go into combat. He either knows what to expect, and it terrifies him, or he's not quite sure what to expect, and that terrifies him as well.

An interesting photo, it has set the stage for the chapters in the parts of our story set on the Eastern Front. It inspired me in many ways.

One thing I can't stop thinking about - How many of the men in that photo survived the war? Of those men, for how many of them was the last photo ever taken of them? Knowing the Hell that was the war in Russia, my bet is that not many of those men survived to old age. 

War sucks.

¹ Invariably it's a "he," in the days of which I write, very few women served in combat. Russia was definitely an exception so perhaps the ladies will be better represented in the days to come.

² The Kriegsstärkenachweisung (KstN) is a chart which shows the theoretical organization and composition of a certain unit in the German Army.

³ Make of model. For instance, Willi Hoffmeister commands a PzKw II Ausf H, the H model of that tank.