Casca 4: Panzer Soldier
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Authors: Barry Sadler
PANZER SOLDIER
This is a book of fiction. All the names, characters and events portrayed in this book are Fictional and any resemblance to real people and incidents are purely coincidental.
CASCA: Panzer Soldier
Copyright © 1980 Barry Sadler
Published by arrangement with the copyright holder
Casca
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Hitler moved with the shuffling steps of an old man, his right arm trembling, eyes vacuous, lips pale. He moved down the corridor followed by the last of the royal retainers, stopping before the entrance to his small rooms. Turning, he looked at the faces of those left out of the millions that had so recently worshipped at his altar of the greater German Reich.
Casca stood silently as the Führer shook the hands of the men and patted the cheeks of the women.
"This man," he said, touching Casca's sleeve, "does not exist. You have never seen him. He has never been here. He must be left to go his way without delay or hindrance. Do you understand?"
Berlin, an industrious modern city filled with busy laughing people, full of the good-natured German
Gemütlichkeit
. They worked hard, sang songs and were proud of their city and its place in the world. Modern new buildings rose at every corner, but underneath the new hills that rose from the piled up rubble of WW II lay the ruins of an entire way of life, built on hate and fear.
The Germans he'd met here this day had little resemblance to those that had slaughtered millions in the name of racial purity. But in the back of his mind, he wondered how much of the beast still lay in the hearts of these happy hard working people. He had been at Auschwitz and had seen the death machine that had sent millions of Jews and others considered to be subhuman, to their deaths. The feeling still walked with him. It was hard to shake.
He was in Berlin for a medical seminar at the University. He felt a sense of regret for coming. He had thought he was too modern to hold grudges against a whole people for what had happened when he was a child living in another country across the ocean. He walked by the wall separating east from west. Guard towers were easily spotted along the wall, manned by men with machine guns. On one of the walls he saw scribbled the words "Heil Hitler" in white paint. He felt an odd sense of satisfaction that there were still some Nazis around. Maybe it made the rest more believable. He sat at a table at a sidewalk restaurant and listened to the music from the stereo inside. He admired the well dressed women, with long legs and fair hair. Some of the most beautiful women in the world could be found here.
Still, it wasn't difficult to let his imagination run free and see the streets change to one filled with swastika flags, and ranks of marching jackbooted soldiers and SS passing in review, to the strains of the SS anthem, or Deutschland
Uber Alles. The hammering of boots slamming down as thousands of people, eyes raised, arms in a salute, millions of them crowding the sidewalks, held back by members of the Sturm Abteilung detachments. Again and again he could hear them in his mind, crying out in impassioned voices, crying in cadence as their messiah passed by in a Mercedes
Heil Hitler, Heil Hitler.
Goldman ran his hands over his face to wipe out the images. God, has it been such a short time since the madness? A waiter, smiling, interrupted his thoughts; had Goldman ordered a bottle of good German pilsner? Trying to collect himself back from a past he had never experienced, except through films and the words of others, was difficult. He was a Jew and here was the capital city of a nation that had once dedicated itself to the destruction of his race and religion. A deep voice spoke at his shoulder in good German, "
Guten Abend Herr Doktor; wie geht es ihnen?
" Goldman froze. Turning slowly, he looked at his visitor. A scarred face smiled down at him. "May I join you, Doctor?" Goldman merely nodded permission. His guest settled himself into the chair opposite and ordered a Steinhaer from the waiter. "Well, Doctor, it seems that destiny has once again made our paths cross; what brings you to Berlin?"
Goldman explained the conference. His guest smiled, understanding.
"Yes, of course there is always that, but from the look on your face, when I saw you sitting here, I would guess there is another reason. It's a strange city isn't it, so full of life now, and gaiety. Ahhh, but you should have been here in '34 or '35, it was even more fascinating and beautiful than now."
Goldman finally gained control. "Casca, what are you doing here, did you follow me?"
The scar-faced man laughed. "No, good doctor, our meeting was strictly coincidence, but I must admit, I have thought often of you since our last meeting at your lovely home in Boston. What was it? Two years ago? I lose track of time." He laughed at his own joke and repeated, more for himself than anyone else, "Lose track of time."
Goldman interrupted him and repeated his question, "Why are you here?"
Casca answered slowly, "First, call me Carl; Carl Langer. It's the name I have become used to while in Germany. I used it for a long time in the war years."
Goldman hesitated before he spoke again. "You mean you fought for the Nazis?"
Langer smiled gently. "Don't get excited, Herr Doktor, it's not what you might think, and I'm here for the same reason you are, perhaps, though, in a slightly different way. I was here when it all ended; the Reich, I mean. It was a much different place than you see now. Would you like to hear the rest of the story of how I came to be in Berlin on April 30, 1945?"
Goldman looked at him questioningly and ran his fingers through his
graying hair. "That was the day Hitler committed suicide, wasn't it?"
Langer chuckled in a manner of his own. "Come, let's walk." Langer paid for the drinks and the two walked out on the streets. Langer kept up a running dialogue of the grace and beauty of the city before the war, the singing and the parties and a happy people full of life. A life that was soon to end in the greatest conflict the world had ever known.
As Goldman walked with Langer, he was caught up once again in whatever power this man had over him, to draw him back into the past, to actually be there, to feel what he felt and know the reality of another existence.
"You know, Doctor, the real war was fought on the Russian front. That's where the big battles were. Hitler always considered the Russians to be his greatest threat, and rightly so. You think you saw some horrible things when we were in Vietnam? What you experienced there was nothing to what took place on the eastern front.
The eastern front. He repeated the words over and over until he felt the sounds of trains rolling over the rails. "Clack! clack! clack!" the city faded from his eyes. All he heard was the rattling of train wheels rolling through the night.
The smooth-cheeked young Vikings of the Greater German Reich raised their voices, full of life and eagerness for the great adventure they were fortunate enough to be taking part in.
"
Die fahne hoch, die reihen fest geschlossen...
" The "Horst Wessel Leid," the song of the Nazi Storm Troops, resounded throughout the smoky interior of the train. The rattling of the wheels became the timekeeper for the group of novices going to join the 1st SS Panzer Regiment being re-outfitted outside of Kharkov. The train began to pick up speed after they transferred over to captured Russian engines and cars in order to use the narrower, Soviet-gauge tracks.
Kharkov was still two days away. The mixed bag of Luftwaffe, Wehrmacht and SS men were having a good time. It would be tough shit when they finally got face to face with Ivan, now that they were bringing the long-barrelled Mark V Panther tanks, Germany's answer to the Soviet T-34.
RECRUITS...
The older-looking
Feldwebel huddled in his camouflaged field jacket. The soft M-43 cap bore a Deathshead emblem, often causing novices to confuse the tankers with the SS, the only difference being the tanker's skull had no lower jawbone. He shifted the MP-40 submachine gun to a more handy position nearer the window and lit a Turkish cigarette, sucking the acrid yellow fumes back up into his nostrils, inhaling deeply and letting the biting smoke reach into his lungs.
Watching the young men, he thought how lucky for them it was dark so that they could not see the thousands of German graves standing in precise military rows like a small white forest of German crosses, reaching for
kilometers.
He had come this way twice, once on the way to Moscow and once when the Siberian divisions pushed them back with the T-34s, which had come into the battle unpainted, just off the assembly lines from Moscow factories. Butting his smoke on the sole of his boot, he was thankful he wasn't stuck with a pair of jack boots. Those damn hobnails caused as many casualties as the Russians did, by letting the cold run directly into the feet, causing frostbite.
"
SA marshiert, in ruhig festen shritt ...
" It's a good marching song, but they'll learn it takes more than that soon enough. The younger men, for their part, left the dour-looking Feldwebel alone. Piss on him if he was a wet blanket. None, however, had the nerve to tell him so. The scarred face along with the "IK I," Iron Cross first class would have been indicators enough, but a silver tanker's badge showed over fifty tank engagements.
The youngsters left
Die Alte
, the old one, alone. For them, anyone near or over thirty classified for that appellation. The man whose paybook and documents permitting travel said he was one Carl Langer merely watched the young ones, slightly amused at their antics and histrionics. The few other old soldiers sat silently or played cards among themselves. They knew what waited at the end of the line.
Back into the cauldron.
There death walked at every man's shoulder, quick sudden death if you were lucky, or a cartridge casing hammered into the back of the neck by the NKVD; Asiatic smiling faces that laughed beneath the green cross emblem that gave them even more power than the Gestapo, if you were unlucky.
Moving the steel helmet strapped in the regulation manner to the back of his pack, he reached in and took out a bottle of
prewar French Calvados. Taking a long pull, he found the sweet burning served to add an additional sense of dullness to his mind and made the waiting easier. A droning overhead stopped his breath for a moment. From the sound, it was moving east, probably Stukas going in support of the hedgehog past the Oka River near Mtsensk.
The droning lessened the enthusiasm of the young heroes, and for some the bitter coppery taste of fear came into their mouths with the realization they were not going to be strafed or bombed. The voices became even louder and the laughter more forced.
A grizzled veteran of the Crimean campaign, as shown by the brass Krim shield on his right arm, settled into the seat opposite Langer.
Casting a questioning glance at Langer's bottle, he licked his lips. Langer handed the bottle over with a shrug. The
Stabsgefreiter
took a pull – not too large – and handed the precious fluid back to its owner. He knew how rare such things would be in Russia. Looking at the tank patch ... "Panzerman?"
Langer nodded and put the bottle back into his pack. The corporal lit a smoke and leaned back, his hands showing severe burn scars. He looked at them forgetting whose hands they were.
"
Stabsgefreiter
Alfons Kunik at your service, and thanks for the drink."
Langer nodded again.
Kunik pointed at the youngsters with a wave of his hand. "It won't be like France, no short sweet summer campaign, then wine and women. Russia will teach them a new tune to sing. The young always go to war singing and are brought back the same way – with singing at their funerals, where their families can be proud that their sons have been so fortunate to die for the Fatherland and the Fuhrer." He spat on the floor. A quick fleeting trace of fear sparked in his eyes. He had forgotten this kind of talk could get a bullet through the neck if the man he was talking to was a party member or belonged to the SD,
Sicherheitsdienst
, security service.
Langer merely grunted and shifted his ass to a more comfortable position. He leaned his head against the glass window, enjoying the cool feel where it pressed against his skin.
Kunik shifted his KAR-98 rifle to between his legs and watched his companion go to sleep, rocking gently with the swaying of the train. He gave the man a good once over and nodded in approval ...
Tough-looking
bastard, and he was then making use of sleep, in short supply here. The youngsters settled down and dozed off shortly before midnight. Langer woke several times when a sound or strange movement of the train occurred. Taking a quick glance to see if all was well, he went back to sleep.
In the car ahead, which the officers had appropriated for themselves, a major with
oakleaves to the Knight's Cross was just getting the silk panties off a
Blitzmädel
, a rosy-cheeked nineteen year-old girl, going to Kharkov to serve as a radio operator for Field Marshal Manstein's Army Group South. The Knight's Cross had done it again. The major gloated over how much patriotic ass a piece of cheap metal could get.
Three times the train was switched to side tracks while the rails in front were repaired. Partisan activity was becoming more and more of a problem. Daylight brought the first signs of the destruction of the war; whole cities and villages gutted and the
odor of decay reaching them from the mass graves alongside the tracks.
The
Blitzmädel
was unassed, so to speak, at Kharkov along with most of the recruits, and the train moved on with its cargo of steel dinosaurs another 50 kilometers, where they were unloaded and the crews assembled to drive them to the staging areas where they would be assigned to the 9th Panzer Army for the attack to straighten out the huge inward bulge where seven Russian armies had pushed their way 100 kilometers deep and 150 kilometers wide. In this group was the Elite 6th Guards Army and the 1st Tank Army, almost completely outfitted with T-34s. Kluge's 9th Army would drive south to join with von Manstein's 4th Panzer Army in a pincer movement which they hoped would cut off the seven Russian armies from their logistical support. They would meet at Kursk. Other pincers would drive 50 kilometers behind them and link up between Shchigiry and Tim cutting the only two rail links that could supply the Soviets at two points and provide them with a buffer against counterattacks in force until they had eliminated the Russians in a trap.
Langer moved through the confusion and smoke of the railhead swinging his pack to his shoulders and settling the
mpi comfortably across his chest. He moved to the flatcar carrying his tank, reporting to a Hauptman of the 26th Panzer Regiment.
The captain, a tough-looking pro, stuck out his hand. "It's good to see you again, Langer, and knock the tin soldier shit off. We have work to do. Get the drivers in ranks for me and anyone else coming in as replacements in ranks behind
them. I want to get these vehicles off this train before a flight of Russian pigeons decides to shit all over them."
Langer nodded and moved to follow orders.
Heidemann was a good officer. He bellowed, "Twenty-sixth Panzer here. Replacements in the rear rank stand to."
Magically, out of the confusion of hundreds of men, those who belonged found their way and stood rigidly until
Heidemann gave them at ease. Looking them over, he saw several faces he knew well. Most were young confused faces that would grow old before the month was out.
"Those of
you who are driving, board your tanks and start engines. Any which do not start will be left behind and you will bring them up later. Those joining the infantry support sections will hitch rides with drivers. You have fifteen minutes to get your tanks off the flatcars and in formation." Then, turning to Langer, "You may dismiss them, Sergeant."
"All right.
You heard the man. Hop to it. Section dismissed."
Forty steel leviathans started their engines with the rumbling that only
armor has and in the allotted time were in columns. They left the railhead and headed northeast to their division HQ, going for a distance down the tracks of the rail before turning off. The youngsters were silent, looking at the rows of partisans hung from the telegraph poles like obscene fruit. Old-timers hardly noticed. This was Russia.
Two hours' march on the dirt roads left all covered with yellow dust clogging the nostrils and caking everything. A distant rumble reached them from the northeast and columns of black smoke rose
thousands of feet into the clear sky. Heidemann, who had chosen to ride with Langer, commented, "Looks like Ivan is giving Orel a pasting today." The smoke was visible all the way to Kromy, but not the sounds of the dying of the hundreds of men disappearing as bomb blasts atomized them, or when fuel tanks blew and turned those near them into cinders, leaving only black charred cadavers with pieces of bone sticking out to show that here had once been men. Long live the Fatherland.
Langer's forty five ton tank ran over the already flattened corpses of a horse and rider that had been there since the last of the month.
Heidemann tapped Langer on the shoulder with his foot from his perch in the turret. Two taps meant stop. The tanks died, letting the engines idle. They were only six kilometers from Kromy.
Taking his binoculars, the captain scanned the countryside. A tap from his foot on the right shoulder and Langer headed to the right down into a small valley where the rest of the division was encamped, waiting to paint and outfit the tanks.
Rumbling in, the drivers automatically spaced the Panzers out in a staggered line to present less of a target to strafing aircraft and leaped out of the hatches to await further orders. The recruits stood in a lump as all recruits do until an
Oberfeldwebel
rushed to them screaming and getting them into some semblance of order, then quickly marched them off for processing.
"Langer, you and the others stay with your tanks. Your crews will join you shortly. As I said, I'm glad to have you back. There are not
so many of us as when you left. I'm glad you were sent to the training regiment. We will talk later." Turning, he left the drivers to their own devices, which meant lighting up or chewing on black bread and washing it down with tepid water from their canteens, until their crews showed up and identified themselves.
All had the look of tough men who had seen Ivan's ass on the run too many times to be frightened when they saw him coming at them. They were the victors of Operation Barbarossa, which had driven to the gates of Moscow and left three million Russians dead or in the bag.
Gefreiter
Stefan Carrel, driver, came over smiling, his face thinner than when last they met, but the twinkle of basic good humor never far behind. Tagging along was Gus Beidemann, who resembled a Panzer more than he did a man; a rumbling, square-jawed, square-bodied devil who could gulp Russian vodka faster than a distillery could produce it and still load and fire twice as fast as any man in the regiment. He slapped a gentle paw against Langer's back, nearly knocking him down.
"Well, you dumb son of a bitch, what the hell are you doing back here? Didn't you have enough sense to run off to Sweden while you were in school? Christ, I thought we taught you better than that. But no matter, you're back and we love you, you delicate little flower."
Pohlman was next, the ever-present square-bowed pipe stuck firmly between his teeth. Pleased, Langer hugged him. "Hello, Teacher. Have you taken care of these devils properly?"
Pohlman
smiled gently and spoke in the manner of a school teacher, which was precisely what he had been in Cologne. The gentleness of his attitude had nothing to do with the effectiveness he had shown in combat, whether with tanks or the wood-handled, short-bladed close-combat knife stuck in his boot top.
Taking his pipe out, he spat a loose piece of tobacco on the ground and tapped the bowl of the pipe against the sole of his boot.