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his mine through the BT-6’s open hatch. Seconds later fire jets from its slits and it becomes a heap of junk.
    With the help of tow-wires the Legionnaire pulls us free of the wreck. Raging, our company officer, Oberleutnant Moser, chases us.
    A 37 mm PAK comes down on us. It is inside a house shooting through a window.
    ‘Aim four o’clock, enemy PAK 125 metres! Explosive shells! Fire!’ It’s too easy. I can hardly be bothered to take aim properly. The turret whirrs. The long barrel of the gun swings round. The PAK fires again. They might as well be using pea-shooters. Muzzle and impact explosions sound almost simultaneously. The house and the PAK disappear – nothing is left of them.
    ‘Any more for any more?’ questions Porta, moving slowly forward. With a lurch the tank tips into a deep shell-hole. Its nose bores into soft earth.
    Porta changes swiftly into back gear, but the tracks only whip around without taking hold. He tries to wobble us free but we are caught. Tiny has a long slash on his face from the corner of an ammunition locker. He has fallen forward together with his shells on top of Heide who is jammed between the wireless and the Funker-MG. He is yelling that his hand has been torn off. Later it turns out that he has broken a finger. Annoying when there
has
to be a casualty that it should only be a broken finger. Not enough to get you out of the wagon for a couple of days.
    The Old Man slides over the ammunition basket and gets his arm jammed under the oil-pressure gauge. I have fallen over Porta and get the gear-lever in the crutch. I’m going mad with the pain but it won’t get me a hospital ticket.
    It takes Barcelona’s wagon almost fifteen minutes to pull us out. Oberleutnant Moser’s language can be heard far and wide. He is certain we did it on purpose.
    ‘One more of those and you’re for a court-martial!’ he rages.
    ‘His mother must have been pissed when she got him,’ Porta mutters contemptuously. ‘He talks as if he’s nearly ready to spew his lights up!’
    We take up position close by the burnt-out hospital. Nobody really knows what is happening. The company’s twenty-two tanks are drawn up in one long open row. The guns point expectantly and threateningly forward. We can hear No. 8 Company taking up position on the other side of the river. The rest of the battalion is in readiness down by the sugar factory.
    Morning breaks, heavily veiled in fog. That’s the worst of being close to water. Morning and night you’re wrapped in an impenetrable witch’s broth of mist. The heavy weapons are silent. A couple of MGs on the other side of the water are all that can be heard. Nobody has any idea where the infantry is. We don’t even know if they’ve got through the enemy lines. We have a frightful feeling of being all alone in the hugeness of Russia. Slowly the fog lifts and darknessrecedes. Houses and trees take on a shadowy outline and form.
    The Panzer infantry moves up in single file, close to the houses, and groups by the tanks. Our guns and MGs break out in a thundering, flaming barrage. The earth shakes and shivers under the bellowing cannonade, long flames shoot from gun-muzzles. An umbrella of tracer covers the terrain.
    The regular infantry makes ground in short advances. We shoot just above their heads in a precisely calculated covering fire. It’s no fun moving with shells howling overhead. If they drop short the infantry gets it in the neck and it
can
happen that the soldier behind the gun is an incompetent fool. It doesn’t help the man on the receiving end of a shell to know the gunner behind him will be court-martialled for dropping short.
    A long way forward brown uniformed figures are running away from us. They disappear into the fog. Over a hundred tanks hammer shells into the enemy ranks. Disorganized and panic stricken the Russians withdraw to prepared positions.
    We are drawn up in ranks as if at firing-practice. Only here the targets are live. Carelessly