Officier Des Panzers De La Russie a La Normandie: Du Panzer III Au KoeNigster

Born in June 1922, in Baden, Richard Freiherr von Rosen was to become a true Panzer man. Coming from a noble family, although he wasn’t attracted by war, he nonetheless started an officer’s career. At 18, he was incorporated into the Panzer-Ersatz-Abteilung 35. A rigorous period, after which he spent a few months of occupation in South West France before getting his baptism of fire in a Panzer III during the attack against the USSR, at the end of June 1941. Wounded a few weeks later then recovered, at the beginning of 1942, he joined the famous Wunsdorf armour school out of which he graduated as a Leutnant. In January 1943, von Rosen joined the schwere Panzer-Abteilung 502, equipped with brand new Tiger tanks in which he served on the harsh Eastern Front, in the Kalmuks Plain, before being transferred to the powerful s.Pz-Abt.503 as Zugfuhrer. There, Baron von Rosen went through several bitter armoured confrontations to the south of Kursk, then long months of fighting across the Ukraine into Galicia in the spring of 1944, endlessly confronting the masses of Red Army T-34s. A few weeks after D-Day, the 503 was sent to Normandy where von Rosen and his Tigers were hit full blast by Operation Goodwood, to the east of Caen : fierce fighting against British tanks at Emieville and Manneville. Losses were heavy and the Anglo-American superiority was crushing… Von Rosen and his battalion were withdrawn from the Normandy front, got back in condition, and then issued with new monsters, the Koenigstigers .