 |
| How 81mm mortar observers work, is demonstrated by SSGT Glenn K. Keller, Fairfield IA., left, and PFC Virgil Williams, Pitcairn PA., using binoculars and phone, near Oberwampach, Luxembourg. Both Men are with the 90th Infantry Division. Co. D, 358th Inf. Regiment, 90th Infantry Division, Jan 25 1945. (Source) |
"Gun is f**ked, Chef," gunner Gefreiter Fritz Weber announced.
"That hit on the muzzle brake and the fact that it knocked the cover off the mantlet probably explains why the breech is out of alignment. You might be able to feed a shell into the gun, but when it went off, who knows if the gun would hold. I wouldn't want to be in the turret to find out!" Weber said, just to add the detail his tank commander would have asked for anyway.
"Doesn't matter," Oberpanzerschütze Horst Krebs said from his driver's seat, "we're out of fuel."
"I thought it was awfully quiet in here," young Schmidt commented from his bow gunner's seat.
It was only then that Panzer 413's commander Oberfeldwebel Willi Hoffmeister noticed that the loader, Hansel, was quietly patching himself up and that there was blood splashed against the turret wall next to his position.
"Are you alright, Georg?"
"Just a scratch Chef, most of the blood is from my face, a fragment laid my forehead open."
"Let me see." Hoffmeister demanded.
"Ja, it isn't too deep but head wounds bleed like crazy."
Hoffmeister reached into a first aid kit near his commander's seat and pulled out a bandage. "Hold still, Georg."
After wrapping his loader's head Hoffmeister said, "Alright, the gun is busted, we're out of fuel, I guess we start walking. Take everything we might need, let's bail."
Panzerschütze Peter Schmidt no longer felt like a Grünschnabel¹ after two weeks in combat. As the crew began to head east, he kept glancing skyward. Hopefully the Amis wouldn't bother to strafe five lone men trudging down a back road in the Ardennes. Then again, they had an awful lot of aircraft.
"Chef?"
Hoffmeister turned to look at his bow gunner, the kid seemed to be in good spirits. He'd proven himself in combat, he had a future, if he could stay alive long enough. "What is it, Junge?"
"Are you worried about the enemy's aircraft?"
"Of course I am. But it'll be dark soon and we're close enough to the front ..."
"Too damned close," Weber muttered.
"Ahem," Hoffmeister said as he cast a dirty look at his gunner, "close enough so that the Amis will be careful. The battle is fluid right now and units are mixed together near the front, so ..."
"Fluid, Chef?"
"He means we're running for our lives and the Amis are on our arses!" Weber groused.
"Up our arses more like it!" Krebs chimed in.
"Ja, what they said. The enemy in pursuit are close enough that the Jabos might shoot up their own guys, rather than us. So they'll hold off, they'll range ahead and hit the rear areas."
Schmidt asked again, "That's good for us, right? I mean, I do feel sorry for the guys in the rear ..."
"Not just that, Junge, but they'll be taking out bridges. It's too cold to swim the Our River, don't you think?"
"Which one is that, Chef?"
Hoffmeister sighed, "The one we crossed on Saturday the 16th. I know that was a long time ago, but ..."
"Ach, ja! I remember now, the mines!" Schmidt shivered as he said that, and it wasn't from the cold.
As night fell, the crew of Panzer 413 headed ever eastward, towards home and an uncertain future. The great offensive to seize Antwerp had failed. Germany was losing the war.
Author's Note: As I cast about for something to write about, it struck me that I never finished these guys' story at the Battle of the Bulge. So the next few posts will see them return to Germany, a new tank, a new unit, and a trip East. The Russian Front beckons!
¹ Green horn, rookie
Taken from the "Mines" linked post, " Reality was cold, drizzle, fog, bad food, and the distinct possibility of being killed or maimed in the days ahead." Or, in other dance venues, "Hot, dusty, gritty......"
ReplyDeleteAnother Tare Victor George, sir. You have a talent for putting us right there. Also for painting the average dogface as human, a guy you could have a good time with over some pivo, rotkole , kielbasa, salo, golubtsi, and kartoffelsalat. Showing the common humanity of 99 44/100 of the population. With the occasional one that all humanity would be better off without.
I seem to be able to get along with many different sorts of people, cultural differences, background, all that stuff makes life interesting. I've always had an affinity for Germany and its people, lived and worked with them for seven years. They're not that different from us.
DeleteThanks, Joe.
The farthest I've been outside the US is the San Diego suburb of Ensenada, Baja California. But the parish we go to has (or had) Russians from both the first and second diaspora - a few from the first came through Western Europe, but most came from the Russian expats in Harbin. - and the second after the fall of the Evil Empire. Also Arabs of various stripes, Romanians, Greeks, Serbs, Eritreans, Poles, Ukies, the odd Dane, Macedonians, and a couple of others, plus a bunch of us American converts. We all got along. Usually.
DeleteThe wife and I can go to just about any "ethnic" parish and fit in. Helps that I wear a cassock for church, or so I think. Most standoffish I encountered was a Romanian parish we visited. "Why you not go to other parish? Our service is in Romanian." Well, after the Liturgy, they were still standoffish, until we knocked back the homemade Slivovitz and home made wine, then SHAZAM! we were family.
Basically, be friendly and open and people don't have problems accepting you. Heck...one time after an overnight drive from Santa ROsa to Reseda to deal with my wife's grandmother who had had a stroke, we were there about 0730, dog tired. My MIL was locking all the car doors as we drove through town. At a stoplight I rolled down my window (I was driving) and motioned for the car next to me to roll down their window-low rider full of what I presume were gangbangers to judge from their clothing - and asked where was a good place to get some breakfast. They directed us to a place that was very good. MIL, after the exchange, said, "He'll talk to ANYBODY!" in a rather shocked voice.
Coming home from a reenactment, wearing Confederate Gray, and towing a cannon on a trailer that had "Confederate Reenactor" and "Heritage, Not Hate Stickers" I had a biker, black as coal, slowly pull alongside, looking at the gun, got next to me, gave me a thumbs up. Later, stopping in Oakland CA to fuel round about midnight, went into the store to get the pump turned on and ended up talking with a half dozen guys out front about the gun and what they were capable of. None seemed to have any problem with the bumper stickers or my uniform.
People are people once you get past the activists.
It's the activists who much up everything. Always has been.
DeleteSaw a video of a Civ War gun crew putting a big friggin hole in the side of an M113, and then the front of said APC, with their silly muzzle-loaded field gun. Same video showed how quickly they could limber up and boogie out using just horses. It was... pretty amazing. And thought provoking.
DeleteSmoothbore gun, rifled? That makes a difference, but shooting at an M113 is almost unfair.
DeleteSmoothbore muzzle-loader. Guy on the video said a breech-loaded rifle could go through longwise.
DeleteBasically any armoured vehicle short of an actual tank, maybe an uparmored Bradley, is still vulnerable to black powdered cannons given the right ammo. Of course the equivalent black powder could be used for other things...
A good crew could run up into position , unlimber, get off two rounds, and limber up to move out in under 3 minutes. Rifled guns, which are no slower to load than smoothbores, can put a round through the window of a house at 1500 yards. Smoothbores can hit the side of the house at 1000 yards.
DeleteBeans - It's mostly about muzzle velocity and range. In the movie Fury, the scene where the tank had to get behind the Tiger to kill it was kinda flaky. At such short range the Sherman could (and did) penetrate the frontal armor of a Tiger I.
DeleteSmoothbore cannon has only one choice of ammo to penetrate steel, that's solid shot.
Joe - Yup.
DeleteI'll have to dig it up again, but theres a video of at some competition a modern US Army crew went against a muzzle loaser at 1000 yards and lost.
DeleteI'd like to see that video!
DeleteA nice surprise to revisit this crew but the Eastern Front.......
ReplyDeleteI know!
DeleteIf it's December 44, the Ostfront isn't in Russia anymore, is it? Keeping the Soviets delayed will help those who can escape to the west.
DeleteOf course, if you saw the current Interior Minister's statement you'd wonder why we gave these people their country back.
Boat Guy
Early 1945 wasn't the eastern front getting a lot closer to Germany?
DeleteBG - You're right, the last sliver of German-held USSR soil was lost in Dec 44 - Jan 45. The Soviets were in East Prussia and much of the Baltics had been lost, I think Courland was the last holdout. 6th Panzer Army was withdrawn from the Bulge and sent to Hungary for the Lake Balaton offensive.
DeleteRob - Some of it was IN Germany (a sliver of East Prussia).
DeleteStill the Russian Front though, because, you know, Russians...
DeleteYup.
DeleteExcellent as ever. How your Muse flips from horse calvary to Panzer crews a foot is interesting. The people are the important factor.
ReplyDeleteI like to think that the soldiers holding the pass at Thermopylae weren't much different from those defending the Alamo. They both experienced the pain and suffering that is war. People might think we're evolving, but war is as brutal and nasty as it ever was.
DeleteThanks, Michael.
Another step along the path, and which? Victory or defeat, survival or death or ... well, we all think we're Players; in reality, we're all pawns in this Great Game, playing our parts.
ReplyDeleteExcellent, again.
Pawns, yes, indeed.
DeleteSarge, excellent writing as always.
ReplyDeleteIt does make me wonder about the mindset of any soldier when they go from riding high on victories to the knowledge that they are being defeated, but have to fight anyway. I know just in my own life with unimportant turns of fate, it is hard. To know that you are going down into defeat - especially when once you seemed on top of the world - must be bleak indeed. That said, I do not know they recorded such things back in the day (like we do now, where everyone would be social media-ing the events to death).
They (the German crew) have to have some idea of what's to come as the losers of that war... the Germans didn't make friends when they were winning.
DeleteOur homeland has not really been at risk since that war and we don't have the memory (genetic memory even) for what happens when a foreign army comes in. (No point to this beyond random thoughts of what could have been ...)
TB - The German soldier had to be very careful in his letters home. A hint of defeatism could get him sent to a penal battalion, or worse. Even in these modern times those recording defeat in a totalitarian state seldom live to tell the tale.
DeleteHaving been on a football team which was foretold to do great things, having won our first two games, we were riding high. That was followed by a defeat every Saturday until the end of the season. There were those who expected to be beaten, there were those who screamed and raved at the defeatist attitudes, but we lost anyway. One continued to play because, well, what else was there?
In the movie Fury an officer asks Brad Pitt's character, "Why don't they just quit?" His character's response, "Would you?"
They fought because there was nothing else they could do.
Rob - For many defeat is too hard to contemplate, what comes after is nearly incomprehensible.
DeleteOnce again, the image and words together tell a great story, capable of standing alone, or as a link in a longer chain. Well done.
ReplyDeleteJB
Thanks, JB.
DeleteI saw the picture and my mind said something was wrong. A hit bad enough to knock the mantel out of position must have been a severe 'ouchy' moment.
ReplyDeleteAs to the crew, what bad luck all of a sudden. Gun got hit twice? Out of fuel. In the cold. And headed back to another tank and another front. Too bad they can't be left guarding a bank vault full of gold somewhere...
Very nice movie reference!
DeleteThey didn't have the right vibes....
Deletelol
Delete..."Somebody was making with them negative waves"...
DeleteMoriarty no doubt.
Delete"Awfully quiet in here" made me recall an account of a British four prop airliner halfway across the Atlantic. The flight engineer turned the wrong valve and starved all four engines of fuel. With all the calm understatement that only a Brit can muster, the pilot turned to his copilot "Dangerously quiet, wouldn't you say?"
ReplyDeleteThat would definitely get your attention!
Delete