Unforeseen Obstacle

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Liesl walked quietly behind Krafft, he had neither spoken nor looked around since the march had begun. He put one foot in front of the other, his head down, the rain cascading off of his helmet as he slogged along. She was worried about him, more so than usual. Kurt Lang, marching next to Krafft, seemed to pay no attention to his old comrade's state.

She turned and looked to the rear, the civilians that had left Groß Briesen had fallen behind. Though the soldiers were exhausted and on half-rations, they were used to such things. Most of the civilians had walked no further than the market for most of their lives. The elderly among them had once been active farmers, man and wife both, but those years were long in the past. Those who might have kept up had found their graves from North Africa to the North Cape of Norway during this now hated war.

"Kurt, where are the people of Groß Briesen? I can't see them."

It wasn't Lang who answered, "They've stopped Liebling, they can no more keep up with us than they can survive the coming fury out of the East. Unless we are very, very careful, our corpses will fertilize this soil as so many have before us. This land has known its share of death and destruction. We're merely the latest victims."

Lang scoffed, "Victims Dieter? We are not the victims here, we are the cause of our own destruction. We believed the lies of the politicians, well, more accurately our parents believed those lies."

Liesl wondered what Lang was talking about. "What lies are you talking about, Kurt?"

Again, it was Krafft who answered, "The lie that the army didn't lose the 1914 war, the lie that the home front stabbed the army in the back. My grandfather, just before he died, told me that Hitler and his lot were a bunch of lying bastards. No different than any other  group of politicians but a lot more bloody-minded. He remembered the war until his dying day, he told me bluntly that they weren't really defeated, but they didn't win either. When I asked him why his unit was marching home when the Armistice was declared, he said 'we decided that we weren't going to die for the Kaiser or anyone else, so we quit.'"

"Which is precisely what we're doing, right Dieter?" Lang asked.

"Not really, we have decided to surrender to a people who we haven't terrorized for four years. If you'd seen what we saw in the East, Liesl, you'd understand."

She had no answer for that. She had heard rumors, one letter that her husband had written not long before he was killed, and brought home by a wounded friend of his who'd made it out of Stalingrad before the end, had told her of the thousands slaughtered in the East, military and civilian. She had burned the letter, afraid it might be discovered, when she had read the words of her husband's unit helping the Einsatzgruppen round up men, women, and children for execution. She had heard from others of this as well. The police had tried to suppress such information coming out of Russia, but it got out.

She wondered if the Germans deserved whatever the Soviets wished to mete out to them. Surely not all of us are guilty, she thought, surely not.

Shortly before daylight one of the Panthers broke down. Oster's battalion, the rear guard, came upon it, sitting beside the forest track, its crew trying to repair it. Apparently to no avail, because the tank commander accosted Captain Oster and asked for permission to join his battalion.

"By all means, Oberfeldwebel, we can't supply you with weapons but you're welcome to march with us." Oster had answered the man.

"We have weapons, MP 40s and pistols mostly. We also have the 42 mounted on top of the turret and plenty of ammunition for it."

"Ah then, talk to my heavy weapons platoon leader, Oberfeldwebel Weber, you can't miss him, big fellow. Red hair, he should be along shortly. Tell him you have Oster's blessing."

The tank commander looked puzzled, why was the captain talking about the blessings of Easter,¹ but he said nothing, just nodded.

Within minutes, as the crew retrieved their possessions from their vehicle, the tank commander saw the man the captain had mentioned. A sergeant, very big with flaming red hair, to include an impressive mustache, came down the track, an MG 42 across his shoulders.

The tanker stepped into the path, "You must be Weber, I'm Stoltz, your battalion commander said we should link up with your platoon. Our Panzer shit the bed and now we're infantry."

Weber looked the man up and down, "I see you have your own 42, excellent."

Looking at the bedraggled tankers standing sodden and forlorn next to their broken down Panther, Weber added, "You lads wouldn't have anything to eat would you? My stomach thinks my throat has been cut."

The tanker shook his head, "Sorry, but we ate the last of our ration bread last night. Is the whole battalion without rations?"

"Damned near." Weber gestured at the men, and now the tankers he had inherited, "Fall in,  let's move."

When the dawn broke, the civilians were well back from the column. Krafft thought for a moment about sending someone back to check on them, then decided that it wasn't worth the effort. Besides which, something was happening to their front which was concerning.

Apparently a Soviet reconnaissance force had been spotted between the patch of forest they were in, and the forest they wanted to get to today. Though the weather was miserable, meaning enemy aircraft wouldn't be overhead, that wouldn't stop the men on the ground, who were squarely in their path, from spotting them.

Oberst von Balck called Oster and his senior sergeants, which included Krafft, to the front of the column. Krafft went to the edge of the forest and got his field glasses out. What he saw concerned him, but not a lot. He crawled back to the temporary command post.

Oster looked at him, "What say you, Dieter?"

"Armored reconnaissance battalion, or more precisely, elements of one. I saw three T-34s, some American halftracks loaded with infantry, some motorcycle infantry, and a mortar platoon."

Von Balck nodded, "That's what I presumed. We haven't been in the East long enough to be familiar with Soviet orders of battle, you have. Recommendations?"

One of the Hermann Goering senior sergeants suggested, "Wait and see if they move on before we continue."

"If they don't?" Oster looked at the Luftwaffe tanker with a raised eyebrow.

"I don't know, Herr Hauptmann. We're not low on ammunition, but if we expend a lot here, not only will it attract attention, but we'll waste bullets we might need later. I say we wait. Those recce boys don't like to sit still for any length of time."

Krafft spoke up, "I say wait, recce units have radios, unlike a lot of lower level Red units."

Von Balck chimed in, "And radios can bring down hell on our little group, we don't need that. I'm leaning towards waiting."

Oster said, "Give me a minute," then he slipped away, he was gone for nearly fifteen minutes, when he returned he was shaking his head.

"Looks like they're setting up camp, odd seeing how it's nearly daylight. I'd expect them to move during the day and hole up at night, there is something I'm not understanding here."

One of the Panther commanders stepped forward, "I propose we wait a couple of hours, let the boys get some rest, if those Ivans are still there after that, we hit them, hard."

Von Balck shook his head, "Moving our Panzers up will take time and make noise. If we were in position when they arrived, I'd agree. But now? I'm afraid we have to wait the day and see what they do. We aren't concentrated enough to hit them and hope to get them all."

Oster nodded, "I concur, we wait."

It was going to be a long day.

¹ In addition to being a family name, "Oster" is also the German word for Easter.