Mamayev Kurgan squatted ahead, pocked, barren and lifeless. A waste, devoid of life but for its Slavic defenders. Herman could just see them, hats and helmets and snatches of uniforms flitting from cover to cover. Weak snowflakes fell, yet carried with them no remnant of yuletide cheer to the field before Herman, indeed they seemed to give in to the depression of the landscape they descended upon. The air itself was so gray and overcast it felt oppressive and weighty in its sullenness. The small and formless flakes took on a bland color between the dark clouds above and the crater churned earth below.
Herman’s hands were stiff with cold and they felt clumsy as he checked his rifle, pushing his thumb down hard on the cold metal of the casing of the top most round. Reassuring himself once more that he had five rounds loaded in his battle-worn rifle.
He lay on the frozen dirt behind a large pile of bricks. The battered and crumbling blocks were once the wall of a building and they now served as cover for him and a dozen other men. Remnants of the 16th Panzergrenadiers attached to the 4th Panzer Army, one small part of the attacking line. His Lieutenant's orders played in his head.
Knock out the machine guns.
Take the forward trenches.
Use grenades to clear the first line of bunkers.
The ground shook as the Russian artillery fired from the top of Mamayev Kurgan, the contested hill overlooking the river Volga and the ruined city of Stalingrad at large. Therein lay its strategic importance.
A whistle blew and Herman’s heart leapt as he forced himself to jump to his feet. Around him hundreds of his countrymen did the same, pushing their bodies and minds, striving to go fast and hard to make it to what cover could be found ahead of them and then to break the Russian lines and get in among the artillery men who had been laying waste to the 4th Panzer Army.
Instantly Russian machine guns opened up on the attacking Panzergrenadiers. Herman could hear a Russian machine gun far off to his left, and what sounded like two separate machine guns closer to his front. The distinct rattle of the battered old Russian guns punctuated the steady roll of rifle fire. Despite the warning these sounds brought, Herman did not falter and neither did the valiant, ruthless, and disciplined men around him. There were nothing but veterans left on the eastern front, the 16th Panzergrenadiers not least among them.
A cry went up from the advancing German lines, Herman joined in. Howling savage challenge to their brutal enemy. Growls to drown out their own fear. Yells to steel their hearts.
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The sound of a thousand men crying out in defiance swelled Herman with pride and mettle and the pursuit of battle. One of the machineguns shifted its fire and Herman could hear the wet crack-snaps of bullets racking the two men closest to his right. The head of the man directly in front of Him gave a quick unnatural jerk and he fell dead in a heap. Herman stumbled as he jumped the man’s body, trying to reach a crater a few yards ahead of him. A mortar struck off to his left and a body was flung into the air. Gravity and time seeming to slow for the lifeless assent of the soldier’s body as it spun in a centrifuge of horrifying death. In Herman’s periphery he caught a glimpse of another man that went down screaming. The cause of which Herman did not know. He reached the bomb crater and jumped in as men around him fired up at the Russian lines and bullets pinged, cracked and whined in front and beside and over him. Herman looked behind him at the very moment one of his fellow panzergrenadiers was struck by a rifle round or some other flying metal from which Herman could not know. His head was nearly split from the force of the slashing metal and his body tumbled into the crater, his rifle clattering in before him. Herman stifled a whimpering moan of fear and despair. The fight leaving him in this hellish hole in the ground. He huddled into the earthen wall of the crater, the fear he had been keeping at bay like some nightmarish creature at the tip of a spear now overtook him. He tried to breath while the air moved grudgingly, as if reluctant to fill his lungs. After a few deep breaths he turned and pushed himself up the frozen earthen wall of the crater. Peeking over the lip of the hole, fighting the fear that told him to huddle quiet and unmoving in the crater’s bottom.
As his eyeline breached the top of the crater Herman saw a grenade as it whipped through the air and then bounced as if time-slowed, before landing with a deathly rattle around the floor of the crater next to his own. Herman heard some of his Komrades scream and scramble up the frozen sides of their dirt and shrapnel filled crater. Then the sound and the feel of the grenade exploding, and the bodies tossed and ripped by the blast and the torn metal that clawed their bodies and the sides of the crater. Herman ducked as he felt the explosion. A few seconds after, with an effort, he took his hand from atop his helmet and pushed himself up again. Crawling higher out of the crumbling earthen hole, his hands shaking as he inched over the lip. He jumped in recoil as bullets cracked around him. Forcing himself not to shrink back with an effort and he pushed himself up further with the toes of his boots. In front of him in the distance he saw the dull-green helmet of a Russian standing higher than he should over a short wall of sandbags, his right arm cocked back. Herman sighted down his rifle and squeezed. Hours of rifle training flooded his muscles, taking over without conscious will. He saw the man jerk as if punched hard on the left of his chest. Herman slid back down into the crater, turning over onto his back again and working the bolt on his rifle quickly. He looked up as another wave of his Komrades ran toward him. Just able to see back behind him over the lip of the crater, he watched as a section of them were scythed down by a Russian machine gun behind him and to his left. The fire shifted, walking down the line of running men. Herman could not count how many went down but it was many. The dread in him building, he looked down and double checked his bayonet. It was secure.