Die Nachzügler (The Stragglers), Russia 1942.
コメント
Album info
"die Nachzugler" (The Stragglers), Operation Barbarossa, July 1941.
They had driven on through the oppressive heat and choking dust of the night. Gerber had done what he could with the transmission but they could still only push on at a fraction of their top speed. Their Stug had been new three months ago, however two months of hard training and settling in, followed by a month pushing into the vastness of Russia had taken their toll. Sunrise found them at the base of one of those deceptive false flats that seemed to populate this endless steppe. Ahead in the distance, at the top of the rise they could see the block shape of an abandoned KV. At the start of the invasion these monsters had given Holbecker and his crew pause for thought, as their shells would bounce off their armour harmlessly, the massive vehicles apparently impervious to damage.
By this stage though the men in the crew knew they had no cause for concern. They had seen plenty of them on the road east, all invariably abandoned, broken down, forlorn. Mechanical difficulties seemed to plague the great tank, and in a fight, especially in open country like this, they were easily outmanoeuvred, their great turret too slow to track flanking attacks.
"We'll stop at the top," yelled Holbecker above the noise of their engine as it ground up the rise, "get our bearings and hopefully work out just where the hell we are."
*
Rifleman Gluck had also pushed on through the night. His canteen was long empty. His feet inside his boots occupied his mind entirely, a world of pain with every step. It had been the same in France. There, they had had to cut his socks off his macerated feet on the 9th day of the offensive, but at least then they had had the salve of imminent victory to ease the pain. Here, victory seemed to mean nothing. Just another endless vista opening up that he knew he would have to cross on foot.
He hated Russia. Not the people. To them he was strangely sympathetic. But the land itself he hated with a passion. The dust. The distance. The sun. It all seemed so infinite.
Walking cross country, off to his right in the morning light he saw the Stug grinding up the shallow rise. He tried yelling but could barely recognise the parched croak that emerged from his cracked lips. Ignoring the screaming pain of his feet he broke into a shambling trot, finally cutting the road that the vehicle was on half a kilometer behind it. As it approached the top of the rise and the monolith that waited silently there he began to despair. "Please stop. Please stop" his exhausted mind begged.
*
Holbecker ordered Gerber to pull up and switch off. In the sudden silence his ears rang. The rest of the crew dismounted. Rollo and Manny walked off a short distance, ablutions on their mind. Force of habit made them close the Stug down as they exited. Even though they were in the middle of nowhere, the thought of a grenade in the hatch from a straggler kept them cautious. The hinterland of the advance was the wild west as far as Holbecker was concerned, and more than once they had passed dull eyed groups of Russians, still armed. The fight might have gone out of them, but really, one never knew…
He climbed onto the roof of the Stug, and bringing his binoculars up to his eyes surveyed the way forward. "More of the same," he thought to himself. "Always, more of the same…"
*
Gerber casually inspected the KV they had drawn up alongside. The first one he had seen had sparked an intense professional interest. This one now though elicited no more than a casual glance, another casualty of war.
It had snapped a track pin by the look of it. The snake of the track lay unspooled in front of the tank, mute witness to a moment of deep despair that, as a driver himself, Gerber could only empathise with. The tank had probably been a straggler too. Too slow to keep up with the withdrawal to the east, cresting each horizon with gnawing unease as their comrades disappeared in the shimmering distance ahead of them. He imagined the moment the track went: The bang and rattle, the moment of confusion before the track started to appear ahead in the vision port, followed by the realization and the sink in the guts. Like now, he imagined the crew would have switched off and silently surveyed the damage, surveyed their surroundings, surveyed their odds of success and survival, and began walking east. Tow cables had been attached at the front for a saviour that had never materialized, and the huge gun in the blockhouse the tank carried swore mutely at the sky.
A noise made Gerber look up. A lone rifleman was shuffling towards them up the road they had just come along, and as he approached Gerber could see the man was almost at the end point of his suffering. Gerber leaned against the KV and watched silently as the man came to a halt behind their Stug. He swayed slightly in the morning light, the heat of the sun already proclaiming the coming day would be unpleasantly hot.
"Need a ride?", Gerber grunted.
Gluck could only nod.
Holbecker turned and surveyed the man on the road behind him. He too could see the man was done in.
"Climb on, Schütze. We stragglers need to stick together."
Gerber handed Gluck a canteen, and after he had gulped it's contents, he finally spoke. "How far are you going Sir?"
Holbecker smiled as he opened the hatch, as Rollo and Manny remounted, and as Gerber fired up the Maybach. "All the way to Moscow old son. All the way…"
Will do more photos of this one after the weekend, but I'm just about done with "Die Nachzugler" for now. I've really enjoyed resurrecting these two old shelf queens and putting them in a scene that I've had in my mind for years.
Sorry for the long story. I don't know if anyone else does an internal monologue of the story they are trying to tell with their models, but this is how I roll🙂.
Thoughts and comments are always welcome🙂.
Happy modelling!