Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir by Wolfgang Faust

Author:Wolfgang Faust
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Publisher: Bayern Classic Publications
Published: 2015-03-04T08:00:00+00:00

We pumped fuel from the big Deutz lorries with hand cranks, working frantically as the snow thickened and built up on the steppe around us. Their fuel tanks were well filled. The truck drivers, all SS men, watched us viciously, with the mangled body of their officer, still in his fur coat, lying steaming on the snowy ground. We were driven by urgency. The snow might protect us from air attacks, but the main Red army could not be far away. Indeed, gangs of retreating men came running past us as we worked, shouting that the Reds were five kilometres distant, or three. A Kettenrad half-track came clattering past, a set of tracks with a motorbike wheel at the front, made for one man and now carrying four who clung on desperately.

I checked the fuel gauge, and saw that we had enough now for maybe thirty kilometres – enough to get to the river. The other two Tigers had the same, and we syphoned the fuel from the Hanomag and put it in the Flak wagon, which carried our dismounted crew men too. We replenished our small arms ammunition from the bodies in the roadway, and fired up the Tiger engines, ready to leave.

The road was strewn with dead Germans, dead Russians, pieces of debris from the smashed Deutz trucks, red wine and thousands of cigarettes, all sinking into the mud and being covered in snow. The last Deutz truck in the line was untouched, though, and as we were leaving, I couldn’t resist seeing what was inside the thing. More black market goods, or was it something more useful? I nudged the truck’s body with the front of our tracks as we went past, ripping a long hole in the flimsy metal sides, and tearing the truck open from end to end.

I stopped the panzer and stared inside.

The interior of the vehicle was fitted out like some kind of bar, or night club. It had velvet drapes on the walls, couches, a chandelier swaying in the ceiling, and a very large bed covered in furs and quilts. Seated on the couches, and sprawled on the beds, were several women – maybe half a dozen – in stylish underwear and night dresses, staring back at me with shadowed, bleary eyes. Most of the girls had bruises and cuts, and they all looked drunk. Drunk, drugged and apparently unaware of what was happening around them.

‘I’ve heard about this, but I’ve never seen it,’ Kurt said. ‘It’s an officers’ mobile brothel. That would keep you warm on a cold night, eh?’

‘Move on, Faust,’ Helmann ordered me through the intercom. ‘Follow the other panzers.’

We left the exposed brothel, its complement of drugged whores and the wreckage of the battle as we moved off and followed the outline of the road visible as a darker ribbon through the snow on either side.

‘An officers’ brothel. That’s where she’ll end up,’ Kurt said, gesturing behind him to the hull and the Russian woman still chained to the turret ring.

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