Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir Quotes

“I went down to 10 kph, so the rolling terrain would have less effect on the accuracy of the gun.”
― Wolfgang Faust, Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir

“But damn you to hell, Faust. I thought you were smart, but you’re a fool after all. If you’d guarded that prisoner properly, at least some good would have come out of this wretched situation. You saved her from the fire in the panzer, and you protected her, and it was all for no result at all.’ Helmann reached for his hip flask. ‘All for no verdamm result at all.’ He wiped his mouth and handed me the cognac. ‘But it’s done. Now let’s find ourselves a car, and get moving. Panzer Marsch!”
― Wolfgang Faust, Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir

“You see?’ our pilot shouted from the turret. ‘You see what the Stuka can do? See the Reds break up.”
― Wolfgang Faust, Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir

“Death for that crew must have been by roasting, as the fires intensified and burned, and the blazing, sticking liquid dripped down into the hull through any vent or crack.”
― Wolfgang Faust, Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir

“We fired the first shots, I am pleased to say.”
― Wolfgang Faust, Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir

“I believe that of the 20 million men who served under German arms from 1939 to 1945, 17 million served exclusively on the Russian front.”
― Wolfgang Faust, Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir

“Our two Tigers checked ammunition and fuel: we had thirty rounds between us, and enough fuel for ten minutes driving, and then to reverse across the bridge. Our four surviving Panthers had similar reserves, we learned over the radio, and the PAK officers ran down from the bunkers for a brief consultation beside our hull. They still had substantial reserves of armour-piercing, and the mortar battery behind the bunker line had not yet fired a shot. The Flak guns had reasonable reserves, but the infantry in their slit trenches were low on everything – ammunition, spirit and strength.”
― Wolfgang Faust, Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir

“Look up there, in the trees on the left,’ he yelled. I squinted up through the hatch. ‘Scheisse,’ Kurt said. ‘Is that someone’s head?’ Lodged in the fork of two branches above the track was a severed human head, pale and staring, looking straight down at us. ‘I thought it was another sniper,’ Helmann laughed. ‘But it’s just a partisan who was caught in the Flak cannon. See how high his head flew off? That must be ten metres at least. Move on, Faust.”
― Wolfgang Faust, Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir

“saw the crew of a Tiger burning up with their vehicle – each man slumped in his hatch, presumably killed by a high-explosive burst as they tried to escape. The flames rose around them, fed by their gasoline reserves, a column of orange as high as an oak tree against the sunset. I saw the crew of a Stalin, disembarked from their bogged-down vehicle in a crater, being set upon by Panzergrenadiers from a Hanomag. Our troops were venting their anger and frustration, and yet conserving their precious ammunition, by bayoneting the Russian crews and clubbing them down with entrenching spades.”
― Wolfgang Faust, Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir

“Then I realised that our Tiger too had cut out, and I tried to restart our motor frantically with the hand switch. I could hear that groaning voice from our turret still, and muttered dialogue between Wilf and Helmann, something about the gun. Then I saw our 88mm barrel swing around and depress in elevation, coming down over my head and pointing straight into the Stalin’s upper deck. I could actually see into the JS driver’s position through his vision slit – his lights were still on inside, and men were moving around in there, maybe struggling to restart their engine. In the next moment, we fired. I clearly saw our armour-piercing round burst through their upper armour, and enter inside the compartment. Through the Russian’s vision slit, I saw our warhead ricochet again and again inside there, flying chaotically around the confined space and bouncing off the steel walls, glowing bright red. Finally, the explosive charge in the rear of the shell detonated, in a plume of sparks.”
― Wolfgang Faust, Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir

“Only those who experienced our war in the East can truly picture its scale and ferocity. There are many of us who were there; I believe that of the 20 million men who served under German arms from 1939 to 1945, 17 million served exclusively on the Russian front. Yet, the survivors are less than that number, and our experience is not readily discussed in public today. For this reason, I have written this book, which for me encapsulates the spirit of that war, with its slaughter, chaos, universal destruction and its strange bravery on all sides. I have drawn on what I experienced as a Tiger panzer crew man; nothing that I have set down here is exaggerated or confected. Some press critics have already said that this book is ‘needlessly controversial,’ ‘too provocative’ or even ‘too violent,’ comments which seem incredible when applied to a book about the East.”
― Wolfgang Faust, Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir

“We left our panzer dead in their vehicles, burning like Vikings, and we withdrew from that evil place with its dunes and smashed bodies.”
― Wolfgang Faust, Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir

“I’m blind, sir,’ I said. ‘You, or the panzer?”
― Wolfgang Faust, Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir

“Between the mud and the snow, Russia gave us ice. And in the ice, my God, that Tiger was a heavy lump of iron to drive.”
― Wolfgang Faust, Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir

“Maybe they’re late?’ I offered. ‘Late?’ he said. ‘Well, some things can be late. Trams can be late, Faust – you know that. Easter is late some years. I had a pretty girlfriend once, who said she was two months late, when she wanted a ring on her finger. But a whole Kamfgruppe? Late?”
― Wolfgang Faust, Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir

“A good man? Was she right about that? The same month that my family were killed in the bombing, I shot a British prisoner in Sicily. At Kharkov, I watched while my unit burned the peasants’ houses and drove them away with rifle butts, leaving the dead scattered in the fields. At Kursk, I saw our shells land on a Russian ambulance convoy, and smash it to nothing.”
― Wolfgang Faust, Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir

“Then the memory came of the apartment block flattened by the bombing, a great pyramid of rubble, full of multi-coloured blocks from the wallpaper and the paint inside the many rooms. My family were under there, somewhere.”
― Wolfgang Faust, Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir

“I had seen some of these ditches that had been dug by German prisoners, with the bodies of our men still strewn in the pit, dead where they laboured and dug; and, of course, our own anti-tank ditches were full of dead Soviet prisoners who were worked to death likewise. This was Russia.”
― Wolfgang Faust, Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir

“I remembered the blank, almond eyes of the other driver, and I knew these were Russians from the interior of the Soviet Union, men with no fear, no nerves, and no hesitation. They didn’t care if they lived one minute and died the next, unlike us with our prayers and our politics. These were the men we were sent into Russia to fight, to keep them away from our culture and our architecture and our racial purity.”
― Wolfgang Faust, Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir

“Only those who experienced our war in the East can truly picture its scale and ferocity. There are many of us who were there; I believe that of the 20 million men who served under German arms from 1939 to 1945, 17 million served exclusively on the Russian front. Yet, the survivors are less than that number, and our experience is not readily discussed in public today.”
― Wolfgang Faust, Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir