total of twenty 18th Army battle groups engaged in encircling and destroying cut-off Soviet units. It was not until May that Mickl was able to start gather his brigade together. At the end of June, Mickl he received news that his son Manfred had been seriously wounded in the leg during the Axis capture of Tobruk. (In 1944, Manfred and his fiancée were both killed in an air raid in Vienna.) By 17 July, the 12th Panzer Division was finally concentrating near Mga, south-east of Leningrad, and Mickl's brigade was reclassified as a Panzergrenadier (mechanised infantry) brigade, mostly on paper. Between 25 August and 16 September, Mickl visited Manfred in hospital in Naples while on leave, but he returned to find that his brigade had again been parceled out in battle groups used as "fire brigades" along the Neva River. He and his staff were usually bypassed by the division commander and staff. By October, it had become apparent that Mickl's brigade headquarters was being not employed as originally intended, and along with the brigade staff of all Panzer divisions, it was disestablished. 25th Panzergrenadier Regiment Without a command, Mickl remained with the 12th Panzer Division, taking over the 25th Panzergrenadier Regiment, whose commander had fallen ill. In the new area, Mickl concentrated on training and getting to know his men, before conducting an anti-partisan operation named Affenkäfig (Monkey Cage) between 11 and 14 November 1942. Lacking experience in counter-insurgency, the regiment achieved little. Mickl then concentrated his troops' efforts on securing winter quarters and building shelters for the regiment's vehicles. On the frontlines, east of Nevel, Soviet forces were threatening to break through around the Rzhev salient and encircle the German 9th Army, and on 21 November the 12th Panzer Division received orders to march for the front. The march east, undertaken in freezing conditions and heavy snow, was very difficult. The men lit small stoves in the rear of the trucks to keep warm, and often had to clear the snow-clogged roads with shovels. Initially they were ordered to Roslavl, south-east of Smolensk, but this was soon changed to Yelnya, east of Smolensk. When they reached Smolensk, they marched on through Yartsevo to Safonovo before being ordered to turn north towards Bely to help stop a Soviet breakthrough south of Rzhev. At the head of the division, the 25th Panzergrenadier Regiment attacked off the route of march towards