Porsch.

This is coolbert:

Here is an excerpt from the book "War On The Eastern Front". By James Lucas. I have mentioned this book before and recommend it highly to all readers of military history. One of the best books written in the field. Period.

This particular excerpt deals with three topics I have blogged about before.

How very young persons sometimes excel at war. Excel in a manner unexpected for a person of such young age.

How men-a-foot [infantry] can fight and defeat tank forces, if properly equipped, trained, motivated and led.

How suicide can be and is used by soldiers who find themselves in an impossible and desperate situation.

According to Lucas:

[describing here the actions of a unit of German antitank infantry at the end of World War Two [WW2].

"To overcome the shortage of trained infantrymen and adequate weapons . . . more and more use was made of small groups of dedicated, hard, and skillful men . . . this assault company into a para-commando and then into an anti-tank company [DORA II] . . . a group of determined tank hunters, individual destroyers of enemy machines who went out with hollow charges [shaped charges] and other close combat weapons to launch themselves at the Soviet vehicles, to clamber onto the moving machines and to plant their explosive charge firmly . . . soldiers who . . . carried out this type of dangerous mission were men of long experience and years of combat on the Eastern Front . . . led by Untersturmfuhrer Porsch. Born in 1924, he had joined the Waffen SS in 1941 [age 17] and before he was nineteen years of age was a Company Commander [!!!] . . .visible emblems of his bravery . . . no fewer than four tank destruction badges . . . . A Red tank squadron charged . . . Porsch named his men, allotted to them the tank they were to destroy . . . On one side the human with his explosive charge or rocket launcher . . . on the other side, an opponent heavily armored and strongly armed . . . The company scored it's 100th kill and Porsch his twelfth and thirteenth victim . . . The company continued to score victories. The 125th victim was gained and Porsch destroyed his seventeenth . . . One SS man, his legs shattered by bomb blast, bade his comrades goodbye and blew his life away with a hand grenade . . . and, in another shell hole, two more badly wounded men ended their lives by committing suicide . . . A quick check among the SS men showed that only one round of ammunition remained. It's owner shook hands with the survivors of the little group for the last time, raised a pistol to his temple and fired . . . "

All these events occurring in 1945, this meant that the commander of the SS unit, Porsch, was twenty one years old, and had been a company commander for two years already at the time!! Porsch alone accounted for seventeen victories, destroying an enemy tank on each occasion. This is a super-human effort engendered by the most desperate of circumstances. And it proved to be all for nought also.

This company of Porsch's were men trained to use a variety of weapons, the panzerfaust [shaped charge anti-tank weapon], anti-tank mines, satchel charges and flame weapons to destroy enemy tanks.

Click here to see an excellent web site that deals with the German anti-tank weapons wielded by Germans troops.

All these weapons being used at very close range.

Those panzerfaust anti-tank weapons were probably not very accurate at a range in excess of fifty yards!! You had to wait until the tank was more less right upon you before firing and hoping for some degree of success.

With satchel charges, other forms of demolitions, and anti-tank mines you would have to approach the tank until your could more or less reach out and touch the beast. The tank could be destroyed, but only with the greatest danger to yourself, the anti-tank trooper.

As for suicide, rather than being captured or enduring pain and privation, mutilation and torture at the hands of the Red Army troops, it is clear that the SS men preferred a quick death at their own hands. For the SS men, suicide was an option. And used!!

coolbert.