Chapter 174: The Battle of the Small Town

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Rein, still on the highway, quickly ducked down. He grabbed the binoculars hanging on his chest, pressed the throat microphone, and shouted, “No enemy sighted at ten o’clock! Nothing at nine o’clock either!”

He then adjusted the direction of his binoculars but could only see a cloud of black smoke. “Eleven o’clock is blocked by black smoke! Maintain watch in that direction!”

“Tank 124, cover our rear! We’re under attack! My God!” Marcus in tank 112, who had already driven up to the large crater, cried out. “I’m at the front! I don’t see the enemy!”

“This… hiss… 2… 5… This is… tank 125…” a weak voice came through the headset. It was the commander of tank 125. His voice sounded a bit panicked, but more than that, he was dazed. “I… we’ve… been hit…”

However, the thick smoke around tank 125 quickly dissipated. It didn’t seem to be from the tank itself burning, but rather dust and smoke from the explosion.

“No enemy sighted!” the voice of the commander of tank 115 came through the headset. “I’m f*cking outside! I don’t see an enemy!”

Rein also straightened up a bit and carefully searched for any possible direction the enemy might appear from, but he found that everything was surprisingly quiet. “The smoke has cleared! No enemy sighted!”

“This is tank 112. All clear to the front,” Marcus reported.

Rein jumped out of his tank and ran toward the damaged tank 125. He moved cautiously, looking a bit like a timid mouse, but he eventually reached tank 125. He then turned his head and shouted to the bold commander of tank 115 behind him, “It was a landmine! Not an attack!”

“Marcus, you’re responsible for security!” Carter commanded as he climbed out of his turret. “Leave the rear to tank 124.”

Everyone got out of their vehicles. After looking around, they all stood on the roadside embankment, looking at tank 125 in the mud. The landmine had broken its track and blown off a road wheel. Rein climbed onto the tank and was helping to pull the unlucky commander of tank 125 out of the hatch.

He put his hands under the commander’s armpits from behind and was dragging him out of the tank by his chest. Seeing someone about to come over to help, he immediately shouted, “Don’t come over! There might be more landmines! Stay put.”

A full forty minutes later, after the scare had passed, the men of the 1st Company were still in the same place. The driver of tank 125 had a head injury, the loader had a sprained ankle, and their tank, with its broken track and damaged road wheel, could not be repaired without the proper tools, so it could no longer continue the advance.

The situation now was very simple. Tank 125 had to be left here to wait for the troops behind them. But they couldn’t just leave a damaged tank here. If they encountered a routed Polish army unit, they would be in great danger. Although the probability was small, they still didn’t dare to do it.

“Alright, we have two options now,” Carter said after some thought. “The first option is we all stay here and wait for the troops behind us to catch up. The second option is we leave one tank behind to cover them, and the other tanks continue forward to carry out our original plan.”

“Let’s just stay,” Marcus said after a moment’s thought. “We only have one platoon’s worth of offensive power. Even if we can take that small town, if we encounter a counter-attack, we still won’t be able to hold it.”

Rein propped his chin with his hand and thought for a moment, then pointed to a mark on the map on the river behind the small town. “If we take the small town and then continue to advance and take this bridge, we can shrink our defensive perimeter.”

“This river isn’t small, but infantry can swim across. What about my flanks?” Second Lieutenant Polk asked, looking at Rein and pointing to the thin lines on either side.

Rein smiled and pointed to the small town by the river. “I used this method once at the academy. We ambush a tank in the small town behind. If the Poles cross the river with infantry, they will definitely lack heavy weapons. One tank will be enough to drive them back to the other side of the river.”

Polk looked at Rein and felt that the idea proposed by the young man with small freckles on his face was a good one. “Alright. I think we can do that.”

“Then let’s do that!” Carter nodded.

At eleven o’clock in the morning, they had a simple lunch. The five tanks of the 1st platoon left tanks 124 and 125 of the 2nd platoon behind and set off alone toward the small town in the distance. The unlucky 2nd Platoon of the 1st Company, 1st Battalion, 3rd Panzer Regiment, 3rd SS Panzer Division had now been completely withdrawn from the battle.

“Captain, Second Lieutenant Polk. Reconnaissance is complete,” Rein, carrying a submachine gun, said as he climbed over a low wall and jumped back into a collapsed courtyard. He ran over to Carter and the others and said quietly, “About 100 Polish infantry are resting on both sides of the street. There are four trucks, one at the head of the street, three at the end near us. The bad news is they have two Renault FT-17s. Their position is not good. We can take out one at most, at first.”

“There is good news, of course. They are in disarray and have not posted sentries,” he said, drawing a simple map of the small town’s streets on the ground. “And they don’t plan to set up defenses in the town, so most of the buildings are safe. I was afraid they would discover me, so I didn’t dare to get too close.”

“That’s very detailed. Good work, Sergeant Rein,” Carter said, patting Rein’s shoulder. He then began to assign tasks. “Rein has the only record of hitting a tank in this unit, so his tank will lead and take out one FT-17 in the first instance. That will reduce our threat by half.”

He then looked at Marcus. “I will follow him and cover his left. You follow me and cover the right for both of us. We’ll fight our way in, cut them apart, and use our machine guns to drive them out of the town and toward that railway bridge.”

He then looked at the commander of tank 114. “Your tank will load high-explosive. If there are counter-attacking infantry, you are responsible for dispersing them. Second Lieutenant Polk, your tank will bring up the rear. Any questions?”

“How many tanks lost before we are permitted to retreat?” Rein asked, standing up.

Carter was taken aback for a moment, then nodded and said solemnly, “If we lose three tanks, the rest can retreat. Move out!”

“Andre, aim for the FT-17 at the mouth of the street. You must destroy it at the first opportunity. It’s the only big guy that can threaten us. Don’t miss this time,” Rein said to his gunner, Andre, as soon as he got back on his tank.

“But I missed last time,” Andre said with a frown.

“Then don’t miss this time! Or I’ll call you Cross-eyed Andre,” Rein grumbled to Andre as he put on his throat microphone. He then touched the microphone and commanded loudly, “Bruce! Load armor-piercing! Check the ammunition! Baumann! Start the engine and charge straight in! Top speed!”

Crossing the low courtyard wall and onto the highway leading to the small town, Rein’s tank climbed a small slope, then sped down a long downhill stretch. The Polish defenders in the town finally spotted the approaching German tank.

“Rein, you fool! You’re charging too fast!” Carter’s voice came over the headset. “You’ve given us away.”

“Advance, Baumann! We’ve been spotted! Accelerate!” Rein commanded loudly, watching the narrow view through his periscope. “Andre! Aim! Their tankers are climbing into the tank!”

“Stop, Baumann!” Rein shouted. “Stop!” The tank shook and came to a halt at the entrance to the small town. The scene suddenly fell silent. The panicked Polish defenders looked at the German tank, which had kicked up a cloud of dust, and for a moment, didn’t know what to do.

“Fire!” A bloodthirsty smile appeared on Rein’s face, his small canine teeth slightly exposed, like a ferocious demon.

“Boom!” Tank 113 opened fire. The shell flew with a roar over the short distance and directly into the hull of the FT-17 opposite, kicking up dust around it. The powerful force made the French-made light tank’s body shudder.

The flames of the explosion had not yet burst through the tank’s steel plates, but the tank had already ruptured. The turret was thrown several meters into the air by the explosion, and all the Polish soldiers around it were swept to the ground by the shockwave. Only then did the brutal, deafening sound of the explosion arrive.

“Hit! Andre! Good job!… Baumann! Drive! Advance! Quick!” Rein cheered loudly, then immediately gave the next command. The Panther tank, number 113, roared to life again, spewing a cloud of black smoke as it continued to charge forward.

The voice of the radio operator, Clark, came through the headset. “My God! There are Poles everywhere! I’m opening fire!” Then the front hull machine gun spat fire, mowing down a swath of Polish soldiers in front. “My God! I… I… I got ten of them! No, at least twenty!”

“Andre! Watch the two o’clock direction! There’s another FT-17 over there! Be careful! Infantry on the side! Baumann! Don’t slow down! They’re trying to get close!” Rein pressed his face to the periscope, observing back and forth. Through the narrow slit, he could see that his tank was surrounded by Polish soldiers, a dense crowd everywhere.

For a moment, Rein’s face turned pale. His breathing became rapid, the scenery before his eyes began to distort, and fragmented, terrifying images began to flash through his mind.

He raised his pistol and fired at a line of people with their hands tied behind their backs, one after another, until the magazine was empty. He stumbled out of a dark doorway, holding the empty pistol. An officer with a record book read out a passage that made him vomit uncontrollably. And at that moment, all he could hear was a buzzing sound, as if everything in the world had faded away…

“Rein!” Suddenly, a voice exploded in his ear.