After the Battle of Pyrrhus on September 12, the Germans could boast that they had destroyed thousands of tanks in the Soviet Red Army, but ....... Russians could still send thousands of tanks. The Germans had nothing left - now they could move less than a fraction of the tanks of the Russians, and the Soviet Red Army, although it lost many brave soldiers and hundreds of tanks after the battle on the 12th, but in terms of the comparison of forces, it left the Germans far behind in the continuous replenishment of troops. Now - it is time for the Soviet Red Army to prepare for the offensive.............

The German commander-in-chief conceded defeat and began to order the armoured units to begin to retreat, and the divisions to begin to hold on to their positions - this was the order of the Führer.........

Fafnier's No. 223 belonged to the category that was barely able to move after the emergency repairs, so he received an order to retreat to the assembly point twenty kilometers away on the night of the 12th, and on the way he met Dick Carr's tiger. Karl's Tiger was in good shape, he had been reinforced earlier in the day, and the fighting time was relatively short, so the crews and tanks were in good condition, so he was ordered to defend on the front line to buy time to withdraw the troops fighting on the front line, and at the same time provide cover for the German battlefield relief force to tow the wounded and recovered tanks. Fafnir said hello to Carl, and then he saw the big man Yang appear in the broken army, and Fafnier said hello to Jan, who he hadn't seen for a long time, and then had to leave.

The Russian offensive began at midnight. Heavy artillery plowed the German positions into a sea of fire, and the roar of the engines of the Russian tanks could not even hide the sound of shell explosions......... Thousands of tanks of the Soviet Red Army launched a simultaneous offensive on the Bulge front!

As soon as Faviniel's tank reached the rear assembly point, it was towed, and he and his crew temporarily transferred to a well-balanced No. 4 tank, and while they were in a hurry, the Ferdinand destroyers on the front line finally crawled back to the rear. Dirk's Ferdinand benefited from the captain's lascivious and unscrupulous movement and timid concealment and coquettish black gun, mainly due to the 200mm-thick frontage - he returned to the staging area unscathed, but the walking gear was still almost finished. Ferdinand, who went to the battlefield, was far more abandoned by his own people because of mechanical problems than he was destroyed by the Soviet Red Army.

Karl was fighting ahead, using the cover of darkness to maneuver non-stop, constantly using the 88 gun to roll call the Soviet tanks in the distance under the guidance of the grenadiers who came out of the defense. The situation deteriorated by the hour, the Soviet Red Army broke through the German lines on almost all fronts, and when it was dusk, Karl was also given the order to begin to retreat, and Junkers' Panthers, who were fighting in the other direction, took advantage of the speed to "turn in" early. Yang and his company of grenadiers were ordered to stay in place to delay the advance of the Soviet troops for at least 4 hours............

The steel torrent of the Soviet Red Army rolled in, and Young's troops fought desperately. Soldiers of the Soviet Red Army jumped into the trenches of the Germans in droves and engaged in fierce hand-to-hand combat with the German soldiers. Yang fought hard, he leaned on the bunker and first used machine guns to strafe the incoming Soviet infantry, after the machine gun position was destroyed by the Red Army tanks, Yang used grenades and submachine guns to kill the crowds of Soviet infantry in the criss-crossing trenches, until he picked up the sapper shovel and fought the Red Army soldiers hand-to-hand, hacking to death dozens of Soviet soldiers, the Soviet soldiers stabbed several bayonets into Yang's body under the cover of rifle fire in the back...... Jung Heinrich Young collapsed, ending his life at the age of 23, the day before he had just been awarded the Silver Melee Medal and hung proudly.......... he collapsed into a pile of cans he had collected.

Under the desperate resistance of fighters like Young, the German army finally stopped the initial rout and began to resist and retreat in an organized and orderly manner. But at this moment, a thunderbolt of news came from the sky -- the Americans and the British had landed in Sicily, Italy! The armored units that had been reorganized and ready for battle were withdrawn, and the troops that had been the backbone of the force were also drawn out and sent to the Italian front. The entire Battle of Kursk can be said to have been a complete failure, and the Germans began to retreat en masse, while burning everything in their path.

Fafnier's 503rd Separate Heavy Tank Battalion was also in the evacuation sequence, but Field Marshal Manstein withstood the Führer's pressure and kept the 503 for a few more days, launching a limited flank counterattack against the isolated and prominent tank units of the Soviet Red Army............ Fafnir entered the battle in a half-crippled Tiger - his tally of now more than 120 were now confirmed, and his troops managed to destroy one of the Soviet Reds' Guards tank corps in this counterattack, but were still unable to hold back more Soviet Red Army tanks - not even Manstein.

By October 23, the Soviet Red Army stopped its offensive after retaking Kharkov, and the entire Battle of Kursk came to an end. The Germans completely lost the strategic initiative, especially the armored forces can be said to have broken the backbone - the Tiger and Panther and other cutting-edge tanks suffered heavy losses, more than 200 Tigers and Panthers were destroyed, 90 Ferdinand lost half, and the other No. 4 tanks and various assault guns lost more than 700 units.

Fafnir was now going to Italy, where he had long wanted to go, "Latin beauties are beautiful and passionate, and they are unrestrained! What a dragoon can compare!" Fafnier said happily to a group of friends. "And the Yankees and the British are meat heads compared to the Russians, 10,000 steps back, at least we are far away from the damn Russian battlefield, away from the damn mud and the endless Russian tanks!"

Fafnier and Karl arrived in Italy in November, where they quickly melted into the local warbler circle.........

Throughout 1943 and until the end of the year, Fafnier had no combat missions, and they were stationed in northern Italy - to keep an eye on the weak Italians. At the beginning of 44, Fafnier, who was drunk and dreaming of death in northern Italy, received another order to go to France. By this time, the strategic air raids by the United States and Britain against Germany had begun, and along the way Fafnier had seen the wreckage of the bombing left behind by the American bombers at night several times, and he also learned that a former pilot friend, Richter von Habel, was now a member of the Night Fighter Group, and he complained in his letter about the damn duty, but was also complacent about his night record - he shot down 3 big guys.

Once in France, before Fafnier could go out in search of flowers and willows, another order dragged them to the German mainland, and everyone complained along the way, until they saw what was in the barracks..........