Idol Observations

[Jason Petho]

At 0445 hours Sergeant Wierschin advance into the Bug with diving tank No.1. The infantrymen watched him in amazement. The water closed over the tank. ”Playing at U-boats!” Only the slim steel tube which supplied fresh air to the crews and engine showed above the surface, indicating Wierschin’s progress under water. There were also the exhaust bubbles, but these were quickly obliterated by the current.
Tank after tank – the whole of 1st Battalion, 18th Panzer Regiment, under the battalion commander, Manfred Graf Strachwitz – dived into the river.

And now the first ones were crawling up the far bank like mysterious amphibians. A soft plop and the rubber caps were blown off the gun muzzles. The gun-loaders let the air our of the bicycle inner tubes round the turrets. Turret hatches were flung open and the skippers wriggled out. An arm thrust into the air three times: the signal “Tanks forward.”

Eighty tanks had crossed the frontier river under water. Eighty tanks were moving into action.

Jason Petho