January 15, 1931
Gerhardt motioned to the squad following him and they charged across the street to behind the armored car.
An early-model Sd Kfz 231 armored car, similar to the prototypes used in Guderian's experimental regiment.
“We have to reach the city hall! The last of the rebels are surrounded there.”
The Reds who had the building surrounded seemed to be shocked to find armored cars and infantry swarming into the town square. Guderian had ordered the armored cars to disperse and enter the town from different directions. If a car was disabled in a narrow street, he reasoned, the others wouldn’t be caught behind it. Nonetheless, the colonel admitted that fighting in the streets wasn’t his specialty.
It was, however, what Fedor and Gerhardt were used to, as they aimed their rifles at the scattering Reds. Under fire from all sides from the rebels in the town hall and the German volunteers, the Reds had broken the ring around the building and fled into nearby houses. A sound tactic, but it proved to come to no avail, as the volunteers were able to lay down withering covering fire while the rebels stormed the buildings and threw Molotov cocktails in the windows.
“Fix bayonets!” shouted Gerhardt to his group. The volunteers attached the weapons to their rifles and peered towards the buildings.
“Now, this is where the real excitement begins,” Fedor’s voice boomed. Gerhardt looked over to his friend and nodded, and the volunteers surged forward. Gerhardt could hear the bullets of the armored cars ricochet off the buildings, and knew none of the Reds would be stupid enough to fire from the windows. They reached door of the first building, and Gerhardt’s squad readied a number of grenades.
Fedor aimed a kick right at the center of the door: it did the job. The wooden door exploded into splinters as Fedor leapt out of the way and the grenades sailed in. The explosions coming from inside reassured the men, and Gerhardt ordered the squad to charge in.
The volunteers were amazed at the difficulty of fighting indoors. Gerhardt ran headlong into a Red carrying a shotgun; the two men were at first too stunned to do anything. As the Communist tried to jump backwards to fire, Gerhardt jumped forwards and ran his bayonet through the man’s throat. Gurgling and hissing, the man fell to the ground and Gerhardt tossed a grenade into the next room.
Fedor, for his part, seemed to thrive in the brawl-like atmosphere of the fight. A Red with a bayonet managed to wrench his rifle away from him, but Gerhardt watched in amazement as Fedor grabbed the enemy’s rifle, closed to no more than a few feet, and knocked the man out cold with a punch to the face. In a matter of minutes, the furious fighting in the block of houses was over. Most of the Reds had surrendered, screaming for the volunteers not to throw any more grenades.
As Fedor and Gerhardt’s group led the men out of the houses, they heard a strange grinding, humming sound. “Look out!” they heard one of the men scream from an armored car. At once, machine guns opened up on them, forcing them to again dive behind the armored cars for cover. Looking out from behind them, they could see a tank rolling down the streets towards them.
“Damn, where the hell did that thing come from?” Fedor fired a full clip at it and swore furiously.
“We don’t have anything to take it down. Looks like it only has machine guns on it, but still, our armored cars don’t have the same power. It can bulldoze them if it gets close.”
“You’re saying we should withdraw? God damn! I can’t believe it.”
“You two, I need your help!”
Fedor and Gerhadt turned to see a young man crouching next to them. He had an undeniably Czech accent, so both of the Germans were suspicious of him.
“Help? With what? We’re a little busy, if you hadn’t noticed!”
“Trust me. If you want to get rid of that thing, you have to trust me.”
Gerhardt and Fedor looked at each other, and Gerhardt nodded quickly to the man.
“Good, come with me.”
The three sprinted across the town square into a house. Running through it, they emerged into an alleyway where there was a small cannon waiting.
“What the hell is
that?” asked Fedor.
“Skoda 3.7 cm anti-tank gun,” the man said quickly. “Here, help me get it into position. We’ll have a few seconds to hit this thing, and that’s it.”
The three men grunted and aimed the gun down the alley, and the young man loaded a round into it. Crouching behind the protective plate, he looked down the alley and waited for his target to pass.
In a matter of seconds, the tank appeared. The next few seconds seemed like an eternity to Gerhardt; the deafening blast of the gun, watching the anti-tank round shriek towards the tank, and watching the tank heave as the round connected with the side of its hull. Smoke began to pour from the vehicle, and the hatch opened. Fedor fired on the escaping men with his rifle, and brought them all down.
“They were burning anyway. I look at it as doing them a favor, which is more than those damn Reds deserve.”
The battle was furious, but short. The volunteers had been able to hit the Reds from all sides, forcing them to scatter and lose all cohesion and effectiveness. As the last Reds were rounded up and forced to sit on the ground in a group, the rebels and volunteers stood shoulder to shoulder as the Czechoslovakian Communist flag was taken down from the town square and replaced by the flag of Bohemia and Moravia.
A group of German volunteers rest as they advance into Communist territory