Wolfsangel
Hubes Pocket March 1944
From the command wagon, a junior officer read the order from Das Reich’s SS-Standartenführer Otto Weidinger.
“Proceed at haste to support 2/Bake battalion and elements of 62nd Division. SS-Panzergrenadier Regiment 3 (Deutschland) will engage and hold the line at all costs.“
Three sharp horn blasts repeated twice, then the message spread rapidly, men rolled into vehicles, engines were warmed. The hard frozen ground making everything punishingly hard, slow and dangerous.
The bleak morning light, shimmered as Artillery and Soviet air blasted around their destination. Weak jokes were made. Resigned shrugs signaling ‘eh, what can you do?’.
These are hard men.
Determined.
Cruel. Many would say evil; veterans of the Yugoslav civilian massacre at Seliste, the murders of Jews in Minsk. The list was not short.
There were no angels to be found in this regiment.
Heavy black overcoats were buttoned, weapons checked, men grabbed extra ammo, more grenades, extra belts for the MG 42’s & 34’s.
They had fought the Soviets many times. But never like this. On the back foot, retreating. The Deutschland retreating. Unheard of. But they Russian would pay for every meter in blood.
Faces set. Grimacing through cold, aches, or just old wounds. A weariness that no sleep could cure, only death would set the men of the Wolfsangel free to rest in hell.
With the Soviet attack well under way, the men of Deutschland could see that the volume of fire, and number of tanks from 5th Guard was enormous. Dr Bake’s Tigers 88mm guns pounded the T-34/85’s at range, but on they came, heedless of losses. The 62nds shallow defenses were close to being overrun.
From the SdKz’s men watch the Tiger 1’s rock back on their chassis as round after round of AT hurtled away. Panthers always on the move, added their firepower at T34’s that were closer. The stark tigers head on the hulls of the German tanks, Bakes unit icon, could be seen through both mud and winter whitewash.
Rather than meet the threat head on, officers of the Deutschland drove at breakneck speed to flank the advance of the three Soviet formations in the lead, using gullies and depressions as mild cover. The 62nd was beginning to fight back, finding its spine, it was all touch and go. The 3rd Regiments Mortars were first to punch back. Quickly dialed into the advancing lorries, and the troops on foot using the lee of the T-34s for cover. The 8cm mortars savaged them from behind a small rise.
However it was the roar of the 5cm PaK AT guns hitting the brigade of tanks from the flank that put paid to the Soviet momentum. The attack slowed. ‘34s burned, brewed up and collapsed.
With a wave of an arm SdKfz 251’s of various types raced forward into the exposed infantry. The flat staccato howl of the MG 34 and 42’s carving away any pretense of Soviet heroics.
The assault broke up. Thirty smoking hulls of tanks lay strewn across the front line. Dead and dying in their hundreds, nearly half the Soviet tanks ruined.
The men of the Deutschland, paused to survey the carnage. There was no celebration. It was the third time in just a week they have been thrown into the breach.
Plugging the hole.
Massacring the enemy. They did not waste time or ammo finishing off the enemy.
The cold would do that for them.
Now. It was time to re arm and eat. Find fuel.
Rest and try not to dream of what they had just done. What they do daily. Who they have become.
Battle story