Sacrifice (The Red Gambit Series. Book 5)

by Colin Gee

  “Laz, you dozy bugger. Wake up before I put my size ten up your ass!”

  Patterson tapped Charles.

  “You’re not coming through on my headset, Sarnt Major.”

  Charles looked and immediately coloured in embarrassment.

  He had forgotten to connect himself back up.

  Correcting the error, he tried again.

  “Lazarus Wild, you northern monkey. Get this tank back on the road.”

  “Northern monkey, is it? Weren’t my fault that t’bloody NCO din set his comms up proper like, were it?”

  Charles was hoisted by his own petard, and the chuckles around him confirmed his crew knew it.

  “Weekend passes revoked, you bastards.”

  The Centurion moved back onto the Autobahn, everyone understanding that there would have been no weekend passes for the foreseeable future.

  1232 hrs, Wednesday 27th March, 1945, Headquarters, Prentiss Force, Hill 73, Germany.

  The remnants of Prentiss Force were concentrated in the area round Hill 73. Mostly concealed within the edges of the woods that surrounded both ends of the small ridge.

  The 1st Cheshires had suffered dreadfully, with four hundred and eight dead and wounded, over half of the men who had taken to the field.

  75th Anti-Tank’s Jackson M-36s had done extremely well, losing only three of their number, and claiming an extraordinary number of vehicle kills.

  The platoon of the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry’s 4th Battalion lost eight men dead and three wounded, only one of each to the errant French Whirlwind.

  15th/19th Hussars had taken heavy punishment, with seven of their armoured cars knocked out, offset by only two losses amongst the Comets.

  23rd Hussars had suffered more than any British cavalry regiment in modern times.

  Prentiss had commanded a modern armoured regiment of new battle tanks and experienced personnel, bringing them into harm’s way with confidence. Fifty-six Black Prince tanks, virtually the entire number sent to Europe for front line service. They were accompanied by eleven Stuart tanks, ten Crusader AA tanks, and a plethora of support vehicles and personnel.

  Of the 23rd’s personnel, only one-hundred and ninety-nine were living on the field. Some of the casualties were laid out, some covered, some uncovered, or were screaming amongst the two hundred or so to be found in aid stations set up around Fuhlendorf.

  Other Hussars remained within their armoured vehicles, waiting for their recovery by men with a stomach for such things.

  The Regiment gathered round, and an unsteady Prentiss climbed on top of his Dingo armoured car.

  So many familiar faces were missing.

  His eyes sought and failed to find men with whom he had served since Normandy.

  Algie Woods...

  Stu French...

  RSM Stacey...

  Old Wrigglesworth...

  Others were absent but still alive, their wounds being tended and soon to return. Others, such as Soames and Jemeson, would never return, and might not survive to see another day.

  The 23rd Hussars were a seasoned unit, with many hard fights under their belts, but the eyes that looked back at Prentiss had seen the vision of the doors of hell fully opened, inviting them in, pulling them closer and closer to the threshold, until the vision started fade, the doors closed, and silence fell on the battlefield.

  Somehow, their gaze seemed focussed on something miles behind him, as if each man was still, in his mind, somewhere else... somewhere awful...

  Prentiss jumped.

  ‘Wake up, man!’

  He had almost drifted off whilst stood upright.

  For some unknown reason, he suddenly felt very weak, not just tired and exhausted, but almost unable to stand.

  His mind focussed quickly, and he made a decision.

  “Sit down, gentlemen... please do sit down.”

  As his men sank to the floor, Prentiss sagged and managed to arrange himself on the rear deck without anyone noticing his weakness.

  “Lads... have you all had a brew?”

  “Is the Pope feckin Catholic, Sah?”

  The unforced laughter almost made him well up, so proud was he of the men he commanded.

  ‘Such spirit... brave lads...’

  “Well then... let me say that I am proud of each and every one of you... you’ve done magnificently today... truly you have.”

  A trooper made an enquiring gesture, and Prentiss nodded.

  “Yes, do smoke if you have them, gentlemen.”

  He paused whilst pockets disgorged the necessary and lungs were filled with the comforting smoke.

  “Right then, gentlemen.”

  He rubbed his left eye to stop the nagging pain, not, as some thought, to hide a tear.

  “We’ve lost some fine friends today... more than we’ve ever done before... but what we’ve achieved here today will be remembered long after we have left this land.”

  He acknowledged the unit’s padre shuffling.

  “A special church parade will be held at 1800. The padre will find a suitable place to set up. Of course, we must bury our dead, and Captain Montagu has found a lovely spot just down the road there.”

  Normally, the tankers lost a crew or two in a day’s combat, and the logistics of their death were little by way of a challenge. The Battle of the Streams was decidedly otherwise.

  “We... together... will carry our comrades from the field... and we... together... will bury them.”

  Prentiss pushed himself to stand.

  The gathered men sensed the change and stood as well, all coming to a position of attention.

  “I am so proud to have served with you all. Through from Normandy to this place, the 23rd have brought professionalism and skill to the battlefield. We have also brought comradeship... and in the spirit of that comradeship...” Prentiss snapped into a rigid pose and raised his right hand in the military fashion, “I salute you all.”

  One hundred and ninety-eight hands returned the salute.

  “Right then, gentlemen, let’s get busy. All officers, report to me for orders, Parade... dismiss.”

  The men turned smartly to their right in a standard dismiss, and failed to see Prentiss on the way down, the building pressure of the swelling in his brain overcoming his efforts to remain standing.

  He clattered onto the Dingo and rolled off, unconscious.

  That he was unconscious was a blessing, as he fell onto a vehicle jack blasted from a Staghound as it passed through the Soviet artillery barrage earlier in the day.

  Concealed in the grass, the pointed metal top plate penetrated his back, punching into his thoracic spine at Th8.

  Colonel Cedric Arthur Moreton Prentiss, the Viscount Kinloss, would never walk or soldier again, and became the final Hussar casualty of the Battle of the Streams.

  [Author’s note- The investigation that was initiated regarding CSM Charles’ destruction of the Hussar Black Prince exonerated Charles and Patterson, whilst, perhaps understandably, falling short of pointing blame at the Hussar tank commander.

  The actions of Prentiss and his force have been the stuff of debate by historians and military minds ever since, and will undoubtedly continue well into our future.

  Some have condemned his decision to ‘circle the wagons’, offering the alternative of withdrawal from the field, leaving the Air Force to pummel the Soviet forces. Others have said he over-extended himself in the first place.

  It is undoubtedly the case that the Air Force ground attack formations saved the day, otherwise Prentiss Force would have been wiped out.

  I am no expert, but I offer some observations.

  He was under direct orders to take and occupy Bimhölen, denying transit to the escaping 7th Guards Rifle Corps and its accompanying units.

  The force he took, whilst enhanced by the 75th AT Achilles SPs and the 15th/19th Hussars’ Comet tanks, was light one complete Squadron for most of the battle.

  His air controller was lost early in the batt
le, claimed by a Soviet air attack that simply should never have been permitted to get through in the first place.

  The location of the 9th Guards Mechanised Brigade was not known, and its arrival on the battlefield was a total surprise. I am unclear as to why a full missing mechanised brigade did not set off alarms with those who planned the attacks, particularly as 3rd Guards Mechanised Corps was identified as being in the area, and known to consist of the three mechanised brigades; 7th, 8th, and 9th, plus the 45th Tanks.

  Lastly, it is undoubtedly the case that Prentiss suffered his debilitating head injury during the farmhouse collapse, probably enhancing its effect during the subsequent tank battle. In my humble opinion, that makes his subsequent command performance all the more remarkable.

  The battle attracted the attention of the media, and as a result, those who fought there were feted and their names spoken of around dining tables from Wick to Redruth.

  The officers and men of 23rd Hussars received a shower of medals, Kreyer’s Cheshires featured heavily in the subsequent Gazette announcements too.

  DSOs and DCMs were the order of the day for most of the senior commanders and NCOs, and MCs and MMs were commonplace, a total of eighty-one awards placed for a single battle that lasted just over four hours.

  Perhaps there are two matters that are surprising, given the allocation of awards.

  Captain Lysander Chandos Montagu, the portly support officer who wasn’t ‘quite the ticket’ as far as his fellow officers were concerned, and to whom Prentiss had trusted the ad hoc command, for no other reason than he was all that was available, was a deserving recipient of the Victoria Cross for his personal bravery during the defence of Brahmstedt-land. His superb leadership and command throughout the difficult hours of the Battle of the Streams quickly became the stuff of legend.

  The last matter is more surprising.

  Colonel Prentiss, destined to spend the rest of his days in a wheelchair, received no recognition for his efforts, perhaps because of the debate over the soundness of his decisions.

  In my humble opinion, a travesty occasioned by the need of the military establishment to make ready a scapegoat for a battle that, for some, was seen as a defeat, or at minimum, an unnecessary bloodletting.

  23rd Hussars and 1st Cheshires were both withdrawn from the 11th Armoured Division.

  A decision was quickly reached, and the Cheshires were reinforced and returned to duty within four weeks.

  The 23rd Hussars passed into history, being officially disbanded on 8th April 1946.

  27th March to 14th April 1946, British Twenty-First Army Group’s advance into Northern Germany.

  Twenty-First Army Group pressed, and pressed hard, profiting from an air superiority that was rarely challenged and never overcome.

  Soviet units melted away in front of them or, as in the case of Hamburg and some others, stood their ground, permitting the Allied soldiery to flood around them.

  McCreery, bold as the young cavalryman he had once been, drove his divisions forward, moving south and to the east, opening up the route out of Denmark.

  Known for his planning and attention to detail, McCreery’s efforts were often hampered by surprisingly poor intelligence, often as a result of superb maskirovka and camouflage on the part of the Soviet forces.

  Despite the Allied mastery of the air, the 1st Baltic, the formation into which the British and Commonwealth troops punched, had clandestinely assembled large numbers of units that had escaped the attention of Allied intelligence.

  These units had been intended for the renewed Soviet offensive, but circumstances overtook the Red Army plan, providing Marshal Bagramyan with excellent reserves with which to disrupt the Allied offensive.

  Bagramyan was not called the Armenian Fox for the way he looked, but for the way he thought and then created orders to suit.

  Initially, Bagramyan was most concerned about hanging on to the neighbouring 1st Red Banner Front, who had their work cut out dealing with the US Corps of the British Army Group and the German Republicans, both of which forces were hurling themselves on top of Malinovsky’s men, who in turn had to worry about holding on to 1st Baltic and 2nd Red Banner, whilst carefully watching the mighty US Twelth Army Group battering away to the south.

  But out of the chaos, Bagramyan saw an opportunity, one that might, in another age, have earned him a bullet in the back of the neck.

  1st Baltic Front gave ground, not easily, rarely without pain and heartache but, none the less, each day, each hour, Soviet soldiers were a few steps nearer to Moscow.

  McCreery, pressured by his need to drive to the relief of Polish forces, and encouraged by some success, seeing nothing untoward, pressed his Army commanders hard. In turn, they cascaded the pressure down through Corps to Divisions.

  Eventually the pressure came to rest on the young subalterns of shire regiments, or NCO tank commanders in van of the armoured squadron.

  “Push hard… push hard and they will crumble!”

  “Press forward, keep the enemy in sight, and drive him back to the Volga!”

  “Charge on, men, charge on and relieve our valiant Polish allies!”

  Such words had their effect and the efforts redoubled, assisted by a magnificent logistics effort from both RASC and RAF commands.

  As matters like the unexpected appearance of the 9th Guards Mechanised Brigade become more numerous, 21st Army Group staff began to get twitchy, and McCreery could only agree.

  Photo recon flights were increased and some startling discoveries were made, but nothing that appeared that it could not be handled by a change in plans and the application of sufficient force.

  Photos were ‘appreciated’ more than once, cutting down on human error.

  Such a process revealed something interesting occurring in and around Waren, Northern Germany.

  ‘Some sort of fixed fortification’ was the best guess, and recon flights were stepped up. Similar works were seen to the north and south.

  Where the Allies made a clear error, and history has already pointed the finger of blame, was in the area around Wolinow and Ludwigslust, where units waiting for the new offensive had assembled, and were now sat waiting for the right moment to turn the advance of 21st Army Group from a victory into a complete disaster.

  Acting under orders, the northern group of Bagramyan’s armies fell back slightly faster than the rest, bringing the Allied forces forward quicker there, slowly but surely creating a bulge into the Soviet lines.

  The manoeuvre did not go without problems, and Gusev’s 21st Army was pressed into the area surrounding the Hemmelsdorfer See, where it was pummelled from land, air, and sea. The Red Army soldiery had not been on the receiving end of 16” naval shells before, and HMS Rodney and her consorts crushed Soviet morale and will to fight more and more with the delivery of each huge shell.

  Only a handful of Gusev’s men escaped across the water to the Priwall Peninsular, to the illusion of safety in the Soviet positions in Mecklenburg-Pommern.

  Escapees and defenders alike swiftly realised that more distance was needed to escape the Rodney’s big guns, and the backwards move came close to a rout, before NKVD troops moved up and selected a few ringleaders as examples.

  The traditional disposal stopped the rot and Marshal Bagramyan’s plan was back on track.

  Further west, Canadian First and British Eleventh Armies toiled heavily against stiff opposition, occasionally being held up, sometimes bypassing strongholds.

  Whilst the press reported success after success, a shambolic attack at Wunstorf, where the 117th Royal Marine Infantry Brigade was all but destroyed in a Soviet pincer attack, went hardly recorded.

  Only the timely intervention of British 8th Armoured Brigade saved the day, although not enough men were salvaged from the debacle to put the 117th back into line. It was subsequently disbanded and its survivors posted to the 116th, bringing it back up to strength as well as adding additional manpower.

  The two VCs awarded to Royal M
arine NCOs made front page news, as did the ‘heroics’ of 8th Armoured.

  The true and unedited facts of the disaster did not.

  It was ever thus.

  As his armies got more and more out of position, relative to each other, McCreery ordered the Canadians to redouble their efforts, in order to make more gain on the right flank of British Second Army.

  The valiant Canadians pushed even harder, and made more ground, but not enough, and many men were lost in the effort.

  New units, held back for fear of revealing Allied plans, started to arrive in Denmark and Holland, although not disembarking in Hamburg, which continued to defy the attempts of British and Canadian troops.

  So, whilst the commandoes died in their droves, the Canadians fell in their scores, and the civilians of Hamburg suffered further indignities, Second Army drove the Red Army slowly backwards.

  And as they drove the Red Army deeper into Germany, the Fox watched.

  The Fox watched, and the Fox waited.

  1209 hrs, Sunday, 15th April 1946, 1st Baltic Front Headquarters, Heiligengrabe Abbey, Germany.

  Bagramyan sat drinking water and munching on some delicious pork sausage and bread, grudgingly provided by the nuns who were the original occupants of his new headquarters.

  His staff worked as he sat contemplating the situation map, his keen eyes taking in the little changes that were recorded as more reports came in from his commanders.

  Giving nothing away, he kept his fascination to himself, but nothing could stop his eyes being drawn to Schwerin.

  ‘Nothing... still nothing?’

  He selected another sausage and patiently resumed his vigil.

  More contacts reports were posted.

  ‘Neubukow...’

  He sucked on the spicy sausage, slowly and pensively, almost smoking it like a cigar.

  ‘Jurgenshagen...’

  ‘Dabel...’

  Placing the half-consumed sausage on the plate, Bagramyan stepped smartly forward.

  Chief of Staff, Vladimir Vasilevich Kurasov, stiffened automatically, and others who knew their boss, tensed themselves, their senses tuned to Bagramyan’s every move and word, whilst retaining the outer skin of busy employment.