Character: Hauptmann Moritz Greiter
Location: South West of Choroszcz
With: @DiZL ReloadeD@Kurai Assassin@MrMinerGuy142@Zetsuko
Moritz flinched as the AT round slammed into the turret of his panzer. It was a good hit, one that should have tore through the metal and eaten away at everything below his chest. As luck would have it however, the AT round merely ricocheted off the sloped metal, and exploded harmlessly in a nearby field.
"And that was the first time I died," he murmured to himself quietly.
Over the roar of tank engines, sporadic machinegun fire, and the distant thump of Russian anti-air guns, Moritz had been unable to gauge the direction of his attacker. Though as he fiddled for his binoculars, another AT round streaked across the open space between his panzer platoon and the houses that formed the southern extremities of Choroszcz. The projectile went wide, and exploded somewhere far behind the idle panzers.
He scanned the houses with his binoculars, until they swept over an isolated farm building to the north. Smoke was rapidly dissipating from the front of a barn, and a vague outline of bodies fussed over an even vaguer outline of a gun. Moritz quickly deducted the weapon to be a 45mm light anti-tank gun - it could make his life, and the lives of his fellow tankers, Hell if it managed to hit them in the sides. The barn gave the Russians a complete firing arc over the fields that stood ahead of the line of houses - it would need to be neutralised before the company could continue to advance.
Ducking back into the copula, Moritz reached for the radio. "This is Hauptmann Greiter. We have an enemy gun in the farm buildings in the north of our AO. The panzer platoon and Oberleutnant Adalhard will provide covering fire; panzergrenadier platoon A will move in and secure anything we miss. Leutnant Jager, use your mortars to douse the farm in smoke - I need cover like it was yesterday!"
The five Panzer IIIs slowly manoeuvred their mass into position facing the farm buildings - a thousand or so yards away - and fired a volley of HE rounds. The shells hit the structures haphazardly, missing the barn but sending Russians scattering for cover.
The 45mm AT gun fired back at them, knocking the tracks off of Leutnant Heisenberg's panzer. The vehicle lurched forwards slightly, but ground to a halt in the mud of the field. Unfortunately, it ended up with its left side facing the direction of the barn.
"Heisenberg, get your men out of there and get to the rear," Mortiz's voice grated over the radio. Then he tuned the frequency to the 9th Army's forward logistics base in his sector."This is Hauptmann Greiter of Panzergrenadierkompanie B, requesting track repair for a Panzer III. Coordinates 0432-521."
The four operational panzers shook as they fired another salvo, which had less effect than the first.
