Loading the 'Tiger'.

Towards the end of January 1943 Hans is busy helping with the preparation and the loading of the Tiger and its ancillaries in Bordeaux railway station, onto one of 120 trains being used to transport the ‘Death’s Head’ division and its equipment across the Reich, to the main railhead in Kiev, which is used by the 1st SS Panzer Corps of Army Group South.
The Commander Unterscharführer Helmut Schmidt and the ‘Serpent’s Head’ Kurt Völker are supervising the operation and Gerhard Schultze is playing with his wireless set and looking for more signals. This leaves Hans and Fritz Meyer doing most of the work, and the Unterscharführer and his sidekick Völker are taking immense pleasure at Hans’s distress, and make sure that he’s detailed for the dirtiest and most difficult jobs they can find.
They have to remove the cross-country tracks from the tank, and replace them with narrow tracks, in order that they won’t extend over the side of the purpose built Ssyms six-axle flat bed ‘Tiger’ freight wagon, and make contact with an oncoming train.
The work has already cost Hans at least 8 kilos in body weight, and he’s sure he’ll be a skeleton before he leaves Bordeaux railway station, which he never wants to see again.
Hans believed that the sun always shone in Bordeaux, but it seems like this satanic bastard Völker has put a curse on him, and it’s now pouring rain.Fritz pilots the tank up the ramps and onto the wagon in double quick time, and they put the chocks into place to help secure 60 tonnes of armour.
The ‘Serpent’s Head’ details both of them to rope and sheet the Tiger so that nothing remains visible to inquisitive eyes. Fritz is an expert in dolly knots, and would put a sailor to shame with his skill. The roping and sheeting is aggravated by the rain mixing with the deposits of oil and grease, which will turn the surface of the huge tarpaulin into a skating rink.
Poor Hans’s hands are bruised and bleeding, as he wrestles with the massive ropes and chains, which will secure this beast to the flat bed, as otherwise the Tiger will escape, and jump off the train somewhere between Bordeaux and Kiev, which will guarantee him a minimum of at least one firing squad.
The 6-axle wagon is capable of taking an 80 tonne payload on its back, giving it a gross weight in excess of 100 tonnes, and four wagons have to be placed between every two Tigers in order to spread the weight over the axles, so that they won’t damage or demolish any bridges between here and Kiev.
Hans is standing on the greasy cover on top of the tank - about three and half metres above the ground - waiting to catch the rope from Fritz when he hears someone screaming: “Loader, loader!” and - as he moves towards the platform siding - he skids and slides uncontrollably towards the edge, and sees the Serpent’s face screaming at him, as he topples off the tank missing Kurt by inches, and lands on the platform almost losing his manhood, as he misses the barrel of Völker’s submachine gun by a knat’s whisker.
Hans feels like he’s just survived a bomb blast, as he looks up and sees this obscenity standing over him, with his twisted face and slimy eyes, staring through him. Völker’s ears are flapping in the wind, and Hans makes a vow that if he ever gets a chance he’ll stuff a hand grenade without the pin into his pocket, and send his bits in every direction.
/Leo Hellman, When the lights went out. pp.123-125/