Buda Combat Training 15 December 1944

Extract from book “Boy Soldier” Page pg 58.

“Friday 1st snow, Bohn Factory one night in a battalion dormitory.   A motorcyclist drives me Irving to the Bohn factory in Obuda. I report to 1st Lieutenant Kovacs and he refers me to sergeant Lovass. The sergeant takes the trouble to instruct me in the Vannay tactics of urban combat outlined below:

• two men form a pair but the smallest tactical unit is a squad of four men this is based on the bácsi system. This means that three young volunteers are assigned to an older veteran or uncle who is personally responsible for their training and subsequent survival.
• in an attack or Defense, the squad moves in the diamond pattern. the point man is a lightweight youngster armed only with pistol and grenades. he is followed by the left wing and right wing rifleman and with machine pistols and by the “uncle” as rear guard carrying a sniper gun or a Panzerfaust RPG
• the point man is first to enter a tunnel or a cave or room or to climb up on a lightning rod or gutter to the roof then pulls up the other team members and their gear
• retreating, the uncle as the rear guard unless he is hit, if wounded, the  youngsters are needed to drag him back then with the point man acting as the rear guard
• with the exception for reconnaissance missions, the raids are carried out by a half-platoon of 16 men in quadruple diamond formation. The last squad of the half platoon carries an mg42 machine gun or a 50 millimeter motar. in a mortar platoon each men has to carry two bombs in addition to the other weapons. the machine gun platoon’s must carry belt full boxes of ammunition each box-wise 13.5 kilograms!
• attacking a multi-storey building the first squad secures the roof, the second penetrates the basement Squad 3 the first floor Squad 4 the second floor. In the case of a tall or heavily defended building, further half platoons are deployed in successive waves up to 64 to 80 men which is the average combat strength of a company
• the combat course is about 200 meters long the length of a city block. the first task is to scale one of the long sheds of the brick factory and to advance riding on the ridge then rapple down. The next section is a large concrete pipe, have flooded which has to be crossed by Seal wiggling
• emerging from the pipe the team is confronted with a t34 carcass tank and must lob a grenade toward it from a distance of 30 meters then jog alongside the tank. Next the uncle fires a small Panzer faust towards a brick wall from 15 metres. The Rifleman fire at cardboard targets moved by small pulleys like stage sets in a theatre returning, the point man must jump up on the tank, run over the turret, jump down and take up the position of rear guard while the uncle assumed to be wounded, is dragged through the tunnel and along the brick drying sheds back to the starting position.