Armored Winter combat w. Soviet bestiality at Tula, Operation Typhoon - Soldiers of Barbarossa Pt 6

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Episode 171

2.12.41: Dr Hermann Türk (3 Panzer Division, 2 Panzer Group, Army Group Centre)

Wind storms and snow. We can scarcely imagine that a reasonable [military] operation is still feasible. Things are very bad. How are we supposed to advance? And yet: we take Romanova. I move my vehicles forward. Motorcycle driver Ebel drives in front of us to show us the way. When we reach the high ground at Romanova there is suddenly a bang, a shock with a powerful blast wave. The motocycle is blown into a thousand pieces. The individual pieces fall slowly from the sky. Miraculously Ebel is lying on the ground. I approach cautiously. There is not much more to do. I would like to give him morphine, but it’s impossible. It doesn’t work. I carry the morphine in my pants pocket to keep it warm, but just as I am about to inject it, the morphine freezes in the cannula. In cold like this there is virtually nothing I can do. It is terrible for us. Our fingers are freezing.

We take a closer look around [for the cause of the explosion]. I front of our car there is a large mine barrier. There are two mines just 1.5 meters away, directly in front of my front wheels. Again I have been saved by a miracle. A few seconds later and we would have had it. While we are busy recovering the wounded and turning our vehicles, we come under heavy mortar fire from a nearby wood. A round lands 20 meters to the right, the next 20 meters to the left. Time to get out of here. At that moment an explosion where my vehicle had been seconds earlier. Fragments whiz about our ears. Now I try to get [to Romanova] by another route. Outside Romanova there is a ravine with a river. It was dammed. The Russians have now opened the dam and the ice sags. There is only one place to cross and it is under continuous, accurate artillery fire. Several vehicles try to get across. One direct hit after another. Fourteen vehicles knocked out in short order. There are many killed and wounded. I have to leave the ambulance behind. The wounded are carried across the ice. The entire area is under mortar fire. Division ambulances also come. One is hit. II Battalion’s ambulance is also destroyed by a direct hit. There is pure chaos. One’s nerves are not what they were in the beginning. The regiment has 47 casualties.

5.12.41: Dr Hermann Türk (3 Panzer Division, 2 Panzer Group, Army Group Centre)

It is minus 39 degrees. It is unbelieveable what the troops have to do. This can’t go on for long. . . the 17 Pz. Div. has been beaten back. It is already again twenty kilometres south of Kashira. We are supposed to go to its aid, but almost none of our vehicles are functional because of the frightful cold. In the tanks of the first company [6 Pz. Rgt.] boiling water is poured in above, by the time it reaches the radiator it is already ice. The oil is solid too. The transmission no longer turn. In almost all the tanks even the strering is frozen. The road to Moscow has also been abandoned again.

The 4 Pz. Div. has had to face the most powerful attacks by fresh Siberian troops with tanks. Cavalry too. As they can’t get their vehicles going, many of them have had to be blown up. The men don’t understand what is happening. The Siberians are terrible. Now they have nailed a German officer to a board and thrown him into a hole in the river. One can’t describe this bestiality. It seems our operations here are through for the winter. The battalion is to be sent into action again tonight at 0200. . . suddenly someone pounding on the door of our shack. It is an officer, who came through the village on a motorcycle and saw my vehicle. The Russians are already at the edge of the village. It’s high time for us to go. . . But we are about to get away before the leading troops can catch us. Then we drive cross-country, navigating by compass alone.