On 25 March 1942, Mickl was appointed to command the 12th Rifle Brigade of "Generalmajor" Walter Wessel's 12th Panzer Division on the Eastern Front. The division was the main reserve formation of Army Group North, and when Mickl joined his brigade headquarters it was located on the coast near Narva west of Leningrad. The 12th Rifle Brigade consisted of the 5th and 25th Motorised Infantry Regiments. As a subordinate formation of "General der Kavallerie" Georg Lindemann's 18th Army, during the Red Army Winter Campaign of 1941–42 it had fought on the Volkhov Front, during which the Lyuban Offensive Operation had penetrated deep into its area of operations in an attempt to relieve Leningrad. When Mickl arrived to take command, elements of his command were fighting as part of a total of twenty 18th Army "kampfgruppen" 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 was still collecting and re-organising his brigade when he received news that his son Manfred had been seriously wounded in the leg during the Axis capture of Tobruk. Manfred was a "Leutnant" in the Pioneers, and had already been decorated with the Iron Cross 1st Class.