Out of the Prairie and into the Woods – Delivering TALLINN DAWN

we had imagined. It looked rather too soft to be a border of one of the larger super-powers and geopolitical opponents of our age. But yet again, nations plan to defend this corner of Europe – and what better way to start than to examine someone else’s homework.

To do this exercise, BADGER SCHOLAR aimed to learn from the successes and failures of the two opposing forces, focusing down at the tactical level and providing individual crews with the hard-won lessons of using tanks in close, swampy terrain and of the realities of a brutal total war. To do this we called on the accounts of German Tank ace Otto Carius from his memoirs Tigers in the Mud and walked the scenes of many of his actions. One of his key lessons was already imprinted on us early in the tour by the bond-villainesque Estonian 1st Brigade Chief of Staff, the stocky giant, Major Teppo was “he who controls the road junctions controls Estonia”. Indeed, Carius corroborates this further in Tigers in the Mud during Op Strachwitz II, the fight for the swamps south of the Tannenburg line. In an effort to destroy the Russian forces preparing to cut off the Rollbahn, and with it all supply lines to the front at Narva, Graf Strachwitz massed his own bespoke force of armour and armoured infantry to push into the ‘East Sack’ concentration of Soviets.

In his opening brief, Carius recounts of Strachwitz, that he identified his vital ground early, declaring that the Carius’s Tiger Tanks festooned with infantry must “drive like the devil to the fork in the road… this fork must be reached as quickly as possible and kept open, that way, the four Panzer IVs and the APCs can advance and occupy the plain.” Strachwitz, Carius and Major Teppo had learnt that the Estonian terrain bars access to heavy equipment in its marshy soil, so the ability to move heavy equipment is vital for whoever wants to control the country in any meaningful sense. In this case the Tigers and Armoured Infantry managed a shock attack under a heavy weight of fire to capture the key junction, push the enemy back and secure the right flank of the Narva Front. As such, soldiers were implored to see the strategic value of these incongruous tracks and junctions with their tanks being the perfect tool for controlling these.

The primary takeaway from Ex BADGER SCHOLAR was how well the Estonian terrain lends itself to defence. By virtue of channelling forces into key movement corridors, much of the work was already done for the defending force, not requiring the significant shaping actions and resources needed in typical manoeuvre terrain. In addition to this was the skill and competence of experienced panzer crews, a fact which was not lost on the Squadron. The discipline and control needed to fight in conjunction with light infantry is significant. The margins between effective fire support and fratricidal fire in the fighting for trenches on the banks of the River Narva was close. In repulsing the intermingled Soviets that had gained a foothold in the German trenches, the German Tiger crews had to simply innovate control measures with the simple means they had: “We had to support the infantrymen in rolling up the occupied portions of the trenches. That required a great deal of precision while shooting so our own people didn’t fall victim to our fire. We had to approach to within about fifty meters of the trenches, which ran in the normal zigzag pattern. From there, we observed the advance of our own people. Whenever they took a section, the first man waved. We then shot-up the next ten to twenty-meter section with our 88-mm cannons until it was ready for the assault. As soon as our soldiers’ helmets appeared over the edge of the trench, we stopped our fire and men took the trench. Our teamwork functioned magnificently.” Such rudimentary means of working with infantry were already familiar to BADGER crews, having worked closely in support of the Estonian conscripts on the wooded tracks of the Central Training Area. Despite 77 years of developments in communications and doctrine, identification of friend or foe largely came down to marking the FLOT with improvised flags on a stick. The requirement for junior commanders to develop simple solutions to how to communicate without direct radio contact is a perennial problem.

Focusing down again on the important lessons for individual crew members, the accounts of Otto Carius have some strong advice for commanders which runs contrary to the best practices taught on Salisbury Plain. Carius advocated keeping hatches open and the commanders head up at all times, especially in the attack. His fervent belief being that the close terrain presented a need for enhanced situational awareness, and whilst this presented a greater personal risk to the commander, it would ultimately ensure the safety of the entire crew. His disdain for the Russian tank crews reluctance to open up is a common theme, as ‘tank commanders who slam their hatches shut at the beginning of an attack and don’t open them again until their objectives have been reached are useless, or at least second rate.’

This was brought out south of the dominating Sinimae Hills, the final defensive line held by the Germans until August 1944. Here the Squadron were considering how a tank