The Big Cat

Source

They were in the forest just north of the village of Kemnitz on the western edge of the Nuthe-Urstromtal municipality. One of Oster's men was from the area and proudly boasted that it was "the largest rural municipality in all of Germany."

Lang had mocked the man, "He's proud of being a hick, that's what it is."

Liesl had shushed him almost immediately, "Nothing to be ashamed of Kurt, being a farmer or a woodsman is far better than being a, what were now, oh yes, a taxi driver in Köln."

"I never claimed to be a ..."

Krafft ended the conversation with a harsh, "Quiet!"

The two looked at him, he wasn't normally this abrupt, then Lang heard it too.

"Panzer engines, more than one. Not far from here."

"Liesl, stay here. You too, Kurt." he admonished the man as he began to follow Krafft, "Keep the boys under cover, I think we may have stumbled across more Ivans."

Nearly as soon as he had spoken, they heard the sharp bark of a tank cannon not very far away. That was followed by a sharp sound of metal on metal.

Krafft made his way to the edge of the forest where he found Hauptmann Oster watching the drama play out in the nearby fields. From what he could make out, three Soviet T-34s were maneuvering while a fourth sat next to the track exiting the forest, burning fiercely.

"Dieter, there's one of ours out there. To the southwest I think, it wasn't an 88 that fired, sounded more like a 75, but definitely a German gun."

"That and the T-34 being hit might be another clue."

Oster turned to Krafft with a frown, "Yes, perhaps. Are you always such an Arschloch?"

"Only with my friends, Sir. What are we going to do about this little fight which lies exactly across our path?"

"Sun's up, so we shouldn't be out in the open anyway, even if there wasn't an armored battle taking place out there. Then again, I feel guilty not doing something."

"How many Panzerfausts do we have left?" Krafft asked, after all that's all they had to deal with enemy tanks.

"Not nearly enough."

Krafft had a thought, "We still have our mortars, ja?"

"Yes, we have three Granatwerfer 42s.¹ Ammunition might be a problem if you're thinking of dropping them on those 34s out there. Nowhere near enough to hurt them."

"But we could distract them. Panzers to their front, mortars hitting them from behind ..."

"Good point, I'd pull back if it was me, figure out what's what."

"Perhaps we could link up with those Panzersoldaten.²"

"That might make it easier to make the Elbe, might draw unwanted attention to our little band as well."

"Tough choice, Herr Hauptmann."

"I suppose that's why they pay me so much."

When a second T-34 was hit and destroyed by the unseen German tank, Oster changed his mind about engaging the Russians with his mortars.

"Our goal is to get to the Elbe, not engage Russians." His look brooked no room for dissent.

Hauptfeldwebel Jasinski shook his head, "We are German soldiers, the Russians are overrunning our homeland, so you're saying we just let them?"

"The war is over, we lost. Do we continue to shed blood to no purpose?" Krafft argued.

"To no purpose? We can drive the Soviets back ..." Jasinski sputtered out, even he realized the futility of it all.

Kurt Lang interrupted the discussion in progress when he walked up to the captain.

"Russians have drawn off, seems they want no part of the big cat that's out there."

Oster looked at him, "Tiger?"

"No Sir, a Panther, from one of the many Waffen SS organizations that sprang forth from Himmler's fever dreams."

"Waffen SS?" Oster didn't like the sounds of that.

"One of the foreign divisions, they have infantry as well, still mounted in halftracks if you can believe it." Lang continued.

"I say we avoid them, like the plague." Krafft chimed in.

"Agreed. We move back into the forest for now. Dieter, send out scouts to watch them. We'll move off in the evening if possible."

"Foreign SS units? I've never heard of such a thing." Liesl was amazed when Krafft had told her of the day's events. She had heard the tank duel from inside the forest, even though she hadn't known it was a tank duel, she knew enough to keep her head down.

"Frenchies, Croats, Ukrainians, Finns, Norwegians, Swedes, Belgians, Dutchmen, I hear there are even a couple of random Englishmen in the ranks. Mostly propaganda reasons for that last group. But the others are fighters. The best are in the Wiking division, mostly Nordic countries with a heavy leavening of Volksdeutsch.³ At least from what I've been told."

"What do those people see in Hitler?"

"It's not Hitler they're enamored of, mostly they believe they are fighting a crusade against Communism and the Bolsheviks."

"How are the Nazis any better?" Liesl asked, amazed at people's ignorance of what Hitler and his crowd stood for.

"I suppose they're not, their saving grace, I suppose, is that at least they're German."

"Hitler is an Austrian!" She protested.

"Which became part of Germany in 1938." Krafft pointed out.

She shook her head, "There is very little hope for Europe, is there?"

"For Europe? I don't know, for Germany? Probably very little."

She rolled herself up in her blanket, "I hate this war."

"Only the insane and the impossibly stupid have any great love for war." Krafft pointed out.

But she was already asleep.

¹ German 81 mm mortar.

² Tank soldiers.

³ Volksdeutsch = ethnic Germans living in other countries, particularly in eastern Europe. The 5th Waffen SS Panzerdivision Wiking (Viking) was the best of the division-sized "foreign" units, though it had a large amount of Germans in it as well. The Waffen SS relied on volunteers and couldn't enlist men subject to conscription once the war really heated up. So they looked for volunteers elsewhere.