Free Casca 4: Panzer Soldier by Barry Sadler Page B

from their minds. They would stop at the Dnieper two hundred kilometers to the west. There they would stand and fight again on what was called the Wotan Line. Wotan, the ancient German god of war.
    Langer slept in his seat. The others curled up where they could. The outside of the tank was covered with infantrymen and the survivors of a Luftwaffe antiaircraft crew that had been overrun. Everyone was heading west, a line of men and machines one hundred kilometers long. The air force did its best to provide air cover and keep the Yaks, MIGs and Shtormoviks off them, but every day the burning hulks of tanks and trucks marked the way to the river. Several times they had to stop and fight a rear-guard action to keep Ivan from rolling them up. When at last they reached the crossing at Dniepropetrovsk and passed over the muddy waters, they collapsed and slept where they fell.

CHAPTER NINE
    In the wake of the retreating German forces came the others, civilians, cattle, goats and herds of sheep and horses; everything that could move under its own power walked. The industrial machinery of the region was loaded onto trains and hauled back, everything from threshing machines to damaged tractors and tanks, anything that could be put into service of the Reich later, and at the same time deny the Bolsheviks the use of them.
    As they withdrew, many divisions took Hitler's orders literally, "Scorched earth – leave nothing for the enemy!" The men evacuated were the technicians and those of gun-bearing age. For the Russians, that meant anyone from fourteen to sixty that could walk. Old men were especially useful in the first waves of assault for locating minefields...
    Escorting this menagerie of animals and humanity were many of the Freiwillegen (volunteer) units, Turkomen from Asian Russia and mounted detachments of Cossack cavalry from the Caucasus. Ukrainian police along with the members of the Red Cross from Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia were mixed into the fleeing masses all looking to one thing, the river. There they would find safety from the pursuing Russian horses trying to cut them off.
    First priority went to the hundred thousand wounded soldiers of the Reich. These were evacuated in the rail cars and trucks; none were left behind. After all, they would be needed later when they could fight again. The others would have to take their chances.
    The command was given by the Ober Kommand Des Wehrmacht that everything in front of the river for a distance of twelve to twenty-five miles was to be destroyed down to the last house and barn. Forests were to be burned, and bridges blown, as the last of the retreating forces withdrew across them.
    For the survival of those left behind, the German Force left one-fifth of the foodstuffs, though this did the civilians little good, as these stores were immediately confiscated for the use of the Red Army. Of the forty-three tanks of Heidemann's company, only seven survived the maelstrom of Kursk and Kharkov, only forty-two men and junior officers answered the roll call. The rest were dead or on their way to slave labor camps beyond the Urals. Heidemann was the senior officer and his remnants were assigned as an ad hoc reserve force as they no longer existed as a regiment or even a company.
    A smile broke through the dust caking Heidemann's face and dimmed eyes when he saw the scarred face of Langer sticking up from the hatch of his Tiger I. They had lost contact since the evacuation of Kharkov, and personally he was glad to see the last of the burning refuse pile they had left behind. Three times now he had fought his way in and out of the city and had lost too many good men in the process. Perhaps this would be the last of it, Kharkov was a curse for armor. Tanks belonged where they could use their mobility to lunge deep behind the enemy rear and strike, like the horse cavalry of old, in daring penetrations that could spread panic all out of proportion to the actual threat. Just the thought of