‘Just thought you’d like some company, sir,’ the sergeant major said in an undertone. ‘What was the excitement over there?’

  They both peered around into the shadows as Eckhardt replied, and Leun suddenly fired a short burst which sent two anonymous figures tumbling out of sight barely ten yards away.

  ‘They’re trying to work their way in all along the Company’s front,’ Leun said, stifling a yawn. ‘The orders are that we hold on to what we’ve got until dawn.’

  Eckhardt nodded, his face set in harsh lines. The hours would be long, and there could be no rest and no sleep for any of them. He leaned back in the foxhole, keeping his gaze moving, and through the next hours they fired many times at small groups of Russians who were trying to come forward.

  At daybreak, enemy artillery showered them with shells of every calibre, and Eckhardt, wanting to get back to Company HQ, looked around to gauge his chances. Leun shook his head as Eckhardt made as if to climb out of cover.

  ‘Better wait, sir. It should ease off in a few minutes.’

  Eckhardt nodded as daylight strengthened. Thick smoke was already broiling across the battlefield, and when he looked around he saw German helmets sticking up out of the trenches and foxholes. Weary eyes were peering from beneath the steel brims and gaunt faces were set in harsh lines. Fatigue was evident, but the day was approaching and there was another stretch of intense action pending.

  The shelling eased and some food came up. Eckhardt, followed by Leun, made his way back to Company HQ, where Major Dantine was already studying maps and cursing their lack of detail.

  ‘The Company did well to hold on during the night,’ Dantine admitted grudgingly. We were spread too thinly, but that couldn’t be helped. Now we’re going forward in a final assault. The engineers have thrown two bridges across the Don at our backs and men and material are being massed. Our fighting up until last night cleared away a lot of the opposition and we don’t expect resistance to be so stubborn now. We are moving out in thirty minutes. The Panzers will lead us through the enemy’s first line of defence. Have supplies and food got through to our forward platoons?’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ Leun answered while Eckhardt went around the table to look at the maps. ‘We’ll be ready to move out on schedule.’

  Dantine nodded. He liked the word schedule. It formed the kingpin of his life. He looked as if he had been awake all night, and his unblinking eyes were glazed with tiredness.

  ‘We’d better eat while we have the opportunity,’ he said. We must keep pushing forward. There’s a timetable to be followed. But these Russians are beaten. All we have to do is make them accept the fact.’

  Eckhardt nodded. He checked that they had telephone communications, for shellfire continually disrupted the lines and repair parties were always working to maintain vital links. They ate while awaiting the appointed hour for the day’s attack, and already their own artillery was blasting away at Russian targets.

  ‘We’re attacking in regiment strength,’ Dantine said, eating black bread. He held on to his glass of schnapps as a near miss by a Russian shell shook the HQ and filled it with drifting dust. ‘When we hit the Russians I want us to keep moving no matter what happens. The Colonel has stressed that this will be the most important day of our offensive. If we can really make a breakthrough then the road to Stalingrad will be open to us, and once our Panzers start rolling nothing must stop us.’

  Eckhardt was filled with eagerness. The sooner they took Stalingrad the sooner they could swing north and cut off Moscow. Then the war would be over. The Russians could not hold out with their capital gone, and when their resistance crumbled they would be forced to sue for peace. That was the Führer’s interpretation of the Russian situation, and so far he had not been wrong. Everyone in the Regiment accepted the Führer’s words as gospel, for events had proved his perspicacity.

  Eckhardt’s thoughts roved as he ate breakfast. He knew a niggling impatience because he wanted to get on with the war! He agreed with the Führer’s strategy. Once Moscow was in German hands the Russians would be forced to capitulate. Then the attentions of the German army could be turned elsewhere. There was no limit to what could be accomplished. There was a thorn in the Führer’s side which might be removed: Great Britain! An invasion of those comparatively small islands would be a milestone in Germany’s conquest of the world.

  Leun came to his side, his face haggard. The sergeant major was beginning to look his age. Eckhardt glanced at the older man.

  ‘What’s wrong, Leun?’ he asked. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Fine, sir.’ Leun nodded, his craggy face taut. ‘I thought you’d like to know that I had a letter from your brother Kurt yesterday, but in the stress of the fighting I forgot to tell you.’

  ‘Kurt?’ Eckhardt frowned. ‘I haven’t heard from him in months.’

  ‘You attended his wedding,’ Leun said. ‘He sends news that his wife Anna is expecting a baby, and Aunt Gretel wishes to be remembered to you.’

  ‘Why didn’t he write to me directly?’

  ‘I wrote to him, explaining where we are, and Kurt seems to think that you would prefer to forget family ties while the war is on.’ Leun shrugged when his words brought no natural reaction from his superior.

  ‘What gave him that idea?’ Eckhardt felt uncomfortable even as he asked the question. He fancied that he had made a mistake when he renewed contact with his brother and aunt, and had purposely stayed away from them since Kurt’s wedding. Now he did not know if he had acted wisely or not. But it did not matter. National issues were at stake, and they overrode personal matters.

  ‘Is Kurt well?’ he demanded.

  ‘So far, but they’re in the thick of the fighting.’

  ‘When you write, give him my regards.’ Eckhardt picked up his helmet. ‘Now it’s time to get back to duty. We’ll be moving out very soon.’

  ‘I’ll be writing to Kurt when we get a breather,’ Leun said, grinning.

  Eckhardt checked his Bergmann and left the command post. He mentally stiffened himself to face the coming battles of the day. There could be no let-up now. The fighting would rage ceaselessly until the Russians were beaten.

  Chapter Two

  Sergeant Kurt Eckhardt was with General Hermann Hoth’s tank corps, which had been diverted from the initial thrust at Stalingrad to help in the attack in the Caucasus. Now they were swinging up from the southwest to rejoin the Sixth Army’s attack against Stalingrad. But there was stiffening resistance because the Russians had recovered from their early defeats and were preparing to defend Stalin’s namesake against the invaders.

  Kurt was sweating when they received orders to halt and wait for the supply trucks. Somewhere up the road before them lay Stalingrad, and he sighed with relief as he stepped out of the turret of his Mark IV and moved away from the vehicle for a few paces in order to take some deep breaths of good fresh air. There was a slight rise some yards ahead and he sat down to rest his weary body.

  The months since the German invasion of Russia had taken their toll of Kurt’s nerves. In the last days of the battle for France his Mark IV had been hit by a British twenty-five pound shell. He had been badly concussed and broken a leg. Before he had recovered from his wounds the war on the western front had ended, and it was not until Barbarossa, the German invasion of Russia, that he again saw action. Then had come the greatest shock of the war.

  Neither the Germans nor the Russians had realized, before Barbarossa, how clearly ahead the Russians were in basic tank design. It was at the end of July 1941 when the first Russian T-34 appeared at the front, and the Germans received a terrific jolt. A comparison of the T-34 with the German Panzer showed that the scales were tipped in favour of the Russian tank. The T-34 had better armour, longer range, and a more powerful gun and higher speed.

  The Russians enjoyed superiority with their T-34, but the German tank crew were far better trained, although both sides had fine human material — men who would fight until they dropped and could stand up to the cruel rigours of modern war. Yet the shock given to the Panzer crews when they first encountered the T-34 was profound.

  Kurt’s Mark IV had been edging forward through corn the potato fields in front of the Dnieper river. The battlefield scene was inevitably familiar, with columns of oily black smoke rising steadily to mark the latest stand of the light Russian T-26s or German Panzers. They had outrun their supplies and were short of ammunition. The tired gunners were crouched in their hot, fume-laden turrets, having received orders to cut down the amount of gunfire, when a single Russian tank of unfamiliar silhouette emerged from the standing corn. Several Panzers engaged it immediately, and could not believe their eyes when the shots ricocheted off its massive turret. The Russian tank had swung along a farm track, where a German 37-mm anti-tank gun waited, and the German crew vainly poured shells at the oncoming vehicle until it reached their position to pivot on its wide tracks and crush the gun into the ground. It lumbered on into the German rear for more than nine miles until it was destroyed from behind by a shot from a 100-mm gun. That had been on 8 July, 1941, and now, more than a year later, Kurt was almost at the end of his nervous strength.

  He had not been alone in his fear of the Russian ‘wonder weapon’. German tank crews had built up their morale on the confident assumption of German technical superiority, and meeting the T-34 had been a traumatic experience.

  Kurt looked around, his thoughts with Anna. He was wondering if she had had the baby yet. Letters took a long time to reach the front, and he was aching to know the latest news. He watched his crew — men who had started the war in Poland with him — Walter Schultze, the tank driver, a scavenging Berliner; Erich Vogel, the radio operator, a studious type from Hamburg; Hans Weilen, their gunner, from Hanover, and Willi Hauler, the loader, also from Hanover, and an inveterate grumbler. They had been together a long time, and were luckier than most crews, although Vogel had been wounded twice and Weilen still had a piece of shrapnel in his leg.

  Weilen and Hohner were tossing out empty shell cases as Kurt looked around for signs of their supply trucks. They had pushed on as hard and fast as they could, and all around them smoke rose in the air to mark the results of their tremendous attack. Enemy tanks had retired, and Kurt shook his head slowly as he considered the situation. There could be no end to this war. His bemused mind seemed to lack concentration, and he felt limp and mentally fatigued. The hellish noises of the battle still rang in his head, and his body was cramped from the confinement of the turret. He sighed heavily and stood up, aware that he should pitch in and help, but for the past few days he had been feeling the pace of their activities, and the constant dread of being hit lived eternally in his thoughts. It was a fear with which he had never really come to terms, and it haunted him all the more because his crew seemed to accept it with fatalistic resignation.

  He saw Leutnant Reinhalt’s tank over to their left, and the same feverish activity was going on around it as there was around his own vehicle. Then he saw the tall figure of Captain Zimmermann walking across to Reinhalt’s position and his face softened momentarily as he thought of home and all it contained. Zimmermann had married Kurt’s Aunt Gretel, and the Company Commander was a good man. He had been one of the first to volunteer for military training.

  ‘What’s the matter, Sergeant?’ Schultze demanded. The Berliner was chirpy, like a sparrow, and never seemed to be other than in a cheerful mood. Even when he was driving the tank into the worst hell imaginable he managed to crack a joke. He was irrepressible.

  ‘I’ve got a headache,’ Kurt replied, lifting shaky fingers to touch his right temple, where a pulse beat raggedly. His skin was hot to the touch, and he wiped sweat from his forehead. His black tankman’s uniform was stuck to his body.

  ‘Sergeant!’ Vogel, the wireless operator, stuck his head out of a hatch. ‘The Leutnant wants you to go over to his tank. New orders.’

  Kurt nodded and turned instantly. A salvo of heavy shells suddenly exploded in quick succession only one hundred yards away, and he felt the blast from some of them. Dirt and bits of shrapnel whirled through the air, but he continued walking. One could get used to just about anything except the reality of sitting in a tank turret waiting for the armour-piercing shell of a T-34 or a shell from the T-34’s heavier companion, the KV-I, to come smashing through to mangle up their bodies.

  When he reached Reinhalt’s tank the Leutnant was peering at a map over Zimmermann’s shoulder, and the Company Commander turned with a smile, his keen gaze taking in Kurt’s condition.

  ‘Still suffering from headaches, Kurt?’ Zimmermann asked.

  ‘It’s not too bad, sir,’ Kurt replied. ‘But one cannot expect anything else, the way we spend our days.’

  ‘That’s true.’ Zimmermann seemed reassured by Kurt’s reply, and returned his attention to the map. ‘I was just explaining to Leutnant Reinhalt that we seem to have left our supply echelon behind, and the motorised infantry haven’t caught up with us. The Russians have closed in behind us, cutting us off from the rest of the corps. But we have enough fuel to get back, if that’s what we’re ordered to do. We’ll share out the ammunition if necessary.’

  ‘Yes sir!’ Kurt’s voice did not betray the sudden fear which cut through him. He knew he should never have become a soldier, especially a tankman. One needed a special kind of courage to sit in a steel monster every day. ‘I hope we don’t have to turn back. It was hard enough taking this ground in the first place, without having to go over it a second time.’

  ‘We’ll hang on here if it is at all possible.’ There was a heavy note in Zimmermann’s voice. He had been a schoolmaster before the war, but now he was the epitome of the perfect tank commander. His experience had welded him into a fine fighting soldier.

  Kurt glanced ahead, aware that nothing but death and destruction lay in that direction. Yet there was no joy in looking back, because of the nightmare that emanated from the fighting. More shells exploded, destroying the faint sense of peace which had settled upon their position, and Reinhalt glanced around, shaking his head.

  ‘The Ivans know we’re here and they won’t let us rest,’ he commented.

  ‘I’ll call Battalion HQ and get a situation report,’ Zimmermann promised. ‘But if we do get the word to fall back then this is our next rendezvous.’ His long forefinger stabbed down at the map, and Kurt craned forward. He saw that they would have to withdraw at least a dozen miles before they could expect fresh supplies.

  He went back to his tank, a symbol of the stark reality facing him, and looked at it dispassionately. It was his home. He and the others spent more time in it than out of it, and the only time they stopped was when they had to take on fuel and ammunition. He gave the others the news, and Hohner started grumbling.

  ‘It’s a waste of time and energy, pushing on like we do without a proper back-up,’ he complained. ‘If we pull back we’ll only have to come forward tomorrow. Why can’t the infantry keep up with us? We smash the heaviest resistance for them.’

  ‘Their transport can’t career all over the countryside like Panzers,’ Vogel said, his head showing out of the hatch. He had his headphones on, and Kurt could hear faint music in the background. ‘They have to follow up as best they can, and sometimes they run into trouble that we’ve missed.’

  ‘Whose side are you on?’ Hohner demanded. ‘There’s no organisation, that’s the trouble. The man who does all the organising should be out here in the front with us instead of miles behind the line.’

  ‘Why don’t you send him situation reports?’ Weilen demanded with a grin. He was tall and dark, very thin, and his brown eyes gleamed as he looked at his sturdier comrade. An eternal optimist, he was the exact antithesis of Hohner.

  Kurt glanced at the sky. It was very late afternoon and he began to feel a pang of worry. Darkness always scared him. A tank was a sitting target at night, and he did not doubt that unseen hostile eyes were watching them right now, just waiting for the moment the sun went down. He had heard terrible stories of what happened to tank crews stranded behind the enemy lines during the night.

  ‘I’ve got something coming through,’ Vogel said suddenly, and the sound of music ceased. His head and shoulders vanished momentarily, then reappeared. ‘Orders, Sergeant,’ he rapped. ‘We have to return to the rendezvous you have been given, and the Troop must deploy immediately. No shooting unless it is imperative to do so.’

  ‘Let’s get inside,’ Kurt said, springing upon the tank, and the others moved as quickly. Hatches were slammed, and heat began to press in around them.

  Schultze started the engine and they whirled around, one track moving forwards, the other travelling in the opposite direction. Leutnant Reinhalt’s vehicle was already moving, careful not to take the same route it had used in advancing, and Kurt snapped a few instructions to Schultze. They could not be too careful. The light was failing, and there would be groups of Russian soldiers skulking in all likely positions of ambush.

  The tank travelled fast, for the countryside was flat. When they approached a large wood Kurt gave the order to skirt it, but one of the Troop’s Panzers went crashing into its cover, snapping branches and trees, until a terrific explosion rent the air and a column of oily black smoke drifted into the fading light. Machine gun ammunition began to explode, and Kurt tightened his lips. He could see the Troop Commander’s tank to his left, and saw that Reinhalt was taking no chances.

  He kept alert, his keen gaze narrowed to pierce the growing twilight. His nerves seemed to jump when he spotted the ominous shape of a tank at the far corner of the wood. It was stationary, and he could see figures standing around it. He called Reinhalt and reported it, and his superior warned that it could be Russian. Kurt ordered Hohner to load the 75-mm with armour-piercing.

  Schultze slowed their pace and they seemed to crawl forward towards the stranger. Kurt held his breath before calling out the range in a stilted tone. Weilen was aiming the gun, and suddenly shouted in high excitement.