Nemesis (28 page)

“Why
not?” Kirov had asked. “The Germans use a similar model. They have their
lighter tanks mixed with medium and heavy types.”

“They
are the Germans, and the cohesiveness of their mobile operations is unmatched.
We have seen our own mobile tactics fall considerably short. Yes, our light
tanks are as fast as the new T-34s on the roads, but their narrower tracks make
them poor off road performers. Most of the time we find ourselves operating in
the open country, and the T-34s do very well there, quickly leaving the lighter
tanks behind when they advance. As for the KV-1s they are too slow to keep up
under any conditions. And too heavy for many of the old bridges, which are
often so badly damaged after they cross that nothing else can use them!”

“Then
what do you suggest?”

“Group
all our T-34s together in one battalion. Put the light tanks with the KV-1 in a
separate battalion. And by all means, let the light tanks cross the bridges
first. Then follow the KV-1s with engineers to repair the damage. The new T-34s
are our armored fist. Let them maneuver cross country and strike the enemy
columns on the flank. Those tanks are superb in this role, if they are well led.
Then, use the T-60s and T-70s for rapid movement on the roads, backed up by
infantry and any KV-1 tanks assigned. The light tanks fight better in towns and
villages too, where they can maneuver easily in the urban setting, and provide
good fire support for infantry. This is how we must fight.”

Part
X

Typhoon

“The wise man in the storm
prays to God, not for safety from danger, but deliverance from fear.”

―
Ralph Waldo Emerson

It
was very good advice, and Sergei Kirov gave orders that,
as far as possible, this new brigade structure should be followed in the Armored
corps rebuilding program, and it should be hastened in every possible way. “On
that matter, how is the Mechanized Corps conversion going?”

“We are
making good progress,” said Berzin. “As Rotmistrov warned us, our original
structure for those corps was faulty. Most were destroyed, either because they
were so unwieldy they could not maneuver, or because their tanks were woefully
inadequate.”

“It was
both,” said Kirov. “That and the lack of radio communications throughout the
corps structure, but we have corrected that, have we not?”

“Yes,
all the new Corps formations will have a much better command and control
system,” said Berzin. “We have adopted the organization Rotmistrov recommended—lighter
tank brigades and motorize rifle units to replace the old mech and armored
divisions. Yet we haven’t enough new tanks to provide these corps with three
full brigades as in the material. So what we are doing is building up a
stronger Motor Rifle Division from the motorized regiment, and further
augmenting this with the addition of an Engineer Regiment, and a fast
motorcycle cavalry regiment. In time, as we get more of the new tanks, we can
add the missing third tank brigade.”

“How
soon will they be ready?”

“The
conversions are well underway. We should have new units ready in a matter of
weeks.”

“Excellent,”
said Kirov. “The Germans won’t be expecting us to adapt so quickly. You see,
Berzin, the material is still a valuable aid to our war planning. We learn from
it what eventually worked. Now it simply becomes a matter of building the
tanks. These new Corps must not be rushed in piecemeal. Remember how they were
used in new Tank Armies in the material.” He held out a finger to emphasize his
point.

“We
have three new Corps forming in the field at Lipetsk,” said Berzin, “well to
the east of Orel, the 17th, 20th and 21st Tank Corps. That is the new designation.
We will no longer call these formations Mechanized Corps. Those three will
comprise our first new Tank Army. The rest are in various stages of readiness,
and they will be added to STAVKA reserve. We can fold them into additional Tank
Armies as those headquarters become operational.”

“And
the icing on the cake will be the Siberians,” said Kirov.

Berzin
looked up from the map, surprised. “You are moving 1st Shock Army now?”

“As
soon as we can free up enough rolling stock. The Germans are going to make a drive
on Tula. We know that, and everything in the field points to Guderian making
the very same move he did in the material. They may get there, but the material
indicates they will not be in good shape by the time they arrive. I want to be
ready to counterattack.”

“Yet
the roads are still passable,” said Berzin. “Remember, this isn’t October as it
was in the material. The Germans are a full month ahead of schedule.”

“So we
must fight for time,” said Kirov. “We must delay them until the Raputista takes
hold, and dig in deep. Then, when the ground freezes, I’ll want those new Tank
Corps ready with the Siberians. Their movement now is just a precaution. They
are too far east, and I wish to get them closer to Moscow.”

“And
away from Karpov’s control,” said Berzin with a grin.

“Karpov?
He has only one thing on his mind now—getting that ship under his boots.”

“Was it
wise to give him such a weapon?” asked Berzin.

“Perhaps
not, but it bought us a good deal in return. And the added benefit is we don’t
have Karpov in our hair concerning these land operations. He whined on and on
about that offensive on the upper Volga. Now things have quieted down. So yes,
the Siberian 1st is to head west for Moscow.”

“In
case the Germans break through at Tula,” said Berzin, wary of the threat. “Yes,
we must not become complacent, or too overconfident. There is still a lot of
fight in the Germans. They remain very dangerous.”

*

The
rapid advance of the German 2nd Panzer Group now
threatened to overrun Orel and seize the valuable depot stores there. The line
had burst open further south, and the Germans were doing some broken field
running with their swift moving panzer divisions. There was no cohesive Soviet
defense, and the few units retreating up the road from the south passed quickly
through Orel in the late summer night, the frightened citizenry watching from
their windows.

The
night was then strangely quiet, the calm before the storm, but by morning the
fear lay upon the city like a funeral shroud. People were on the streets,
loading any vehicle that would run, any truck or cart that had not already been
commandeered by the retreating army to move its weary, wounded soldiers. As the
last rearguard rushed through the main streets in a bustle of clatter and dust,
women wept to see them go, for they knew any semblance of life as they once
knew it was retreating with them, hastening up the long thin road to Tula. By
noon the panic had set in, with the rolling sound of distant artillery fire
heralding the coming typhoon of steel.

An NKVD
section arrived in three trucks from the north, and a young, red cheeked
officer vainly tried to stop the flow of people and machines out of the city.
New to his job, he berated the retreat, brandishing his service pistol, though
he did not use it. And when the people saw he would not kill them, or force
them into militias as had happened in so many other cities, they hastened
north, carrying all they could hold.

The
Germans came soon after, a column of mechanized troops in the vanguard of the
4th Panzer Division. Soon they would get a lesson of their own. It was a heady
time, for it seemed the road to Tula was wide open, and that was the road to
Moscow, at least insofar as Heinz Guderian was concerned. Yet the Russians were
still not beaten, and a new defense was already being planned south of Tula.

Reading
the material on the war carefully, Sergei Kirov had deployed a hastily formed
blocking force on the road to Tula, the 1st Special Guards Rifle Corps, built
with the foreknowledge he possessed. It had been formed, as it was in the older
history, around the hard core of the 6th Guard Rifle Division. To these veteran
troops, two Airborne Brigades were taken from the fields near Moscow, the 10th
and 201st. The 4th and 11th Tank Brigades arrived by rail, and with them came
the 36th Motorcycle Regiment, the 132nd Border Guards Regiment, and the student
battalion from the Tula Artillery Military School. An older cavalry division,
the 41st had also been reforming near Tula, and it was added to this corps as a
light reaction force.

The
engagement that would soon follow would show the way forward. Possessed with a
foreknowledge of what the Germans might do, and even with information that
identified key players in that drama, Kirov also knew how they might be stopped.
“The 1st Special Rifle Corps,” he said to Berzin. “You read the material. Those
were the boys who delayed Guderian, and we will send the same force to do the
job again.”

“You
mean to say you have assembled the very same units?”

“More
or less, and in this case more means I have assigned new T-34s to those two
armored Brigades, the 4th and 11th. Some of our best tankers emerged from those
units, and now they get their trial by fire. I also have a Guards Rifle
Division to support them.”

“Are we
committing the new tank brigades too soon?”

“It
will do us no good to commit them after we lose the capital,” said Kirov with
an exasperated look.

*

Slowly
, in suffering one hard defeat after another, the Red Army
was being taken to a deadly school of tactics and strategy by the Germans, and
some of the men fighting for Sergei Kirov were going to become very good
students.

One
such man had come down the road from Tula, handpicked by Sergei Kirov himself,
who had seen his fate and fortune in the books he had secreted in the Red
Archives. His name was Mikhail Katukov, and he had the newly reconstituted 4th
Tank Brigade out in front on the road to Orel, with two battalions restructured
along the lines Rotmistrov had suggested, freshly fitted out with the new T-34 tanks
that would form the backbone of Soviet Armored operations for the remainder of
the war.

His two
battalion commanders, Gusev and Burda, were both well experienced men, and Lt. Dimitry
Lavrinenko’s platoon was soon tasked with holding the road at Voin, about 20
kilometers from Orel on the road to Tula. After a grueling battle to envelop Bryansk,
the Germans had sent their 4th Panzer Division up that road, intending to sweep
through Orel and continue a wide envelopment up to Tula, which would threaten
Moscow from the south and east. But they were about to meet a most enterprising
young man, with other ideas about how their campaign should go.

In May
of 1938, as a young man of 24 years, Dimitry Lavrinenko graduated with honors from
the Ukyanovsk Tank Academy. Born a Kuban Cossack in a small village near
Krasnodar, he had been a numbers man before the war, a teacher, statistician
and cashier. Soon he found himself in the deadly calculus of war, far from home
in the north where he fought in the long retreat from the border, until his
unit was pulled off the line to be refitted with the new T-34 tank.

The
Lieutenant had always been a stalwart defender, adopting a habit of holding his
positions to the last possible moment, and personally assuring that all other tanks
in his unit safely withdrew before he ever pulled out. Bravery came naturally
to him. Even his home town when translated meant ‘fearless,’ and when he
fought, it was with a single minded skill that could not admit fear to the
equation of battle if he were to succeed. It was his platoon of four tanks that
reached the village first, and Lavrinenko quickly sized up the situation,
spying a farm near a wooded area just east of the town. He was lucky to have
some paratroopers along, men who had landed at a small airfield just a few
hours earlier. The orders had been cut, the alarm sounded, and they had leapt
onto planes to fly south and land as close to Orel as possible. Arriving just as
the 4th Tank Brigade was moving to take up their defensive positions, many
leapt atop the T-34s riding down the road to Voin.

“Get
your men into those woods, and set up a skirmish line,” said Lavrinenko. “I’ll
hold my tanks at the farm, and we’ll lie in ambush. The rest of the battalion
is on that low ridge.” He wanted to lay a trap for the German panzers as they
moved through those woods, baited by the paratroopers, who were ordered to
delay and then fall back to the village.

Lavrinenko’s
tank platoon of four T-34s was holding at that insignificant farm astride the road,
just as it emerged from the woods, where the early harvest still lay in great
piles of hay. It would provide him the perfect cover for his tanks, he thought,
and maneuvered between the high mounds of hay, jumping out of his tank to shovel
more onto to his tank for camouflage. The trap was set, and now they waited for
the mice to come, only these mice were cold steel rats with very sharp teeth.

He was
about to get a real test of what his T-34s could do, for coming down that road,
sweeping through the woodland after the scattering paratroopers, was a column
from the 4th Panzer Division, Guderian’s spearhead as the Germans drove up from
Orel.

“Let
them come, boys,” he said in a hushed voice. “They’ll run right past our line
of fire. Mark your targets and fire on my command.”

The
other tanks in his platoon knew that was always protocol with Lavrinenko.
Nobody took a shot until his tank opened the engagement, and a breathless
minute later he did exactly that.

He did
not know it at that moment, oblivious of the hours and days that might lie
ahead for his men, but the unit he had joined was going to have a storied
future. Off to his right, another platoon was hidden in the woods under Captain
Konstantin Mihaylovich Samohin. Behind that, a third platoon, the only other armor
that had arrived, was waiting with 1st Sergeant Ivan Timfeyevich. They were
soon to face the wrath of 36 German tanks rolling with the I/35th Panzer
Regiment, and the fate of the nation, at least on that road to Moscow, was
presently in their hands.

*

The
battle at Mtsensk was sharp and deadly. The units of the 201st
Airborne Brigade that had been assigned to support the 1st Special Rifle Corps
had dispersed along a narrow front of light woods screening the town from the
south and west. Into those same woods went the lead elements of the 35th Panzer
Regiment of 4th Panzer Division, its lead battalion still fielding mostly
Panzer III tanks with the 50mm gun. It had been more than enough to deal with
the older Soviet tanks they had faced earlier, the T-37, T-38, and T-40 all
becoming easy prey.

The
Germans had been accustomed to encountering these vehicles, and were able to
open up on them at ranges approaching 1000 meters, usually making short work of
them. Being light amphibious scout tanks, the Russian armor had nothing that
could harm the Panzer IIIs, with little more than 12.7mm machine guns for main
armament. The newer T-60 fared a little better with a 20mm cannon and armor
approaching 26mm, but it was still a light tank in every respect, and posed no
real threat to the Panzer IIIs, which had more than twice the firepower with
its 50mm gun, and armor up to 70mm.