Death March

by James Rouch

  No attempt was being made to check the flood of people coursing through the defensive positions. As Burke nosed the panel van forward there was a constant thumping on the sides as some implored a ride, and from others being squeezed to the edge of the road. At the open rear doors Andrea and Dooley kept weapons levelled at the crowds, pointing them menacingly at any who came too close, using the barrels to rap the knuckles of those who tried too board. There was a bang from beneath the rear of the vehicle, and then a second as another of the offside twin wheels deflated.

  “They’ve punctured our tyres, spiteful lot. We’re going no where further in this wagon”. Wrenching the wheel over, Burke parked the Volvo across a picket fence bordering a garden.

  Assembling the squad, Major Revell saw there was no progress to be made on the road and struck out through the rear of the properties towards the city centre. Behind them a mortar shell impacted on the roadblock and smoke rose over the buildings. Screams and wailing followed them as more bombs fell on the road. The sounds were swiftly smothered as a torrent of rounds impacted.

  “This is a mess.” Sergeant Hyde listened to salvoes of heavy calibre rockets flying overhead. The flame tails of the big missiles were briefly visible as they sped towards their targets in the suburbs, leaving white vapour trails. They came in successive waves.

  “We knew that when they sent us forward with no orders except to try and create that road block.” Revell set a fast pace, trying to anticipate a safe path between the areas being saturated by artillery fire. He was succeeding more by luck than judgement. The Russian gunners appeared more interested in expending the contents of their ammunition dumps rather than indulging in precision bombardment.

  Rounds of every description and calibre were impacting across the housing estates through which they passed. Blocks of apartments burst open as shells plunged through the rooftops and detonated on lower floors. Cascades of phosphorous seared parks and open areas, turning trees in to giant torches and children’s playgrounds in to bizarre flaming tableaux.

  Revell and his squad were jogging through hell.

  * * *

  General Zucharnin hammered on his desk, hard enough to make the lamp, some pencils and several drab coloured files jump off. A plump-faced junior officer scurried forward, bent double to retrieve them. The tight material covering her expansive rump drew sideways glances from several of the officers present.

  “They have created bottlenecks at every opportunity and consequently have slowed my supply columns to a trickle. A handful of NATO infantry even tricked our gunners in to over-turning a service centre across another of our replenishment routes, completely blocking an autobahn. On top of that NATO have used atomic demolitions to blast major road intersections and rail links on the approaches to the city. Army Command has only given me a handful of helicopters and I can’t switch them from attack missions to scurrying about airlifting ammunition. They can’t be in two places at once. Not that a handful could make any difference. Army Command gave me ammunition supplies of which every Warsaw Pact General has always dreamed. Granted they gave me the sweepings of the stockade to fire it off but the ammunition should have been sufficient to shoot us in to the city and clean through to the other side.”

  Again his fist pounded the desk and he scowled fiercely at the young woman when she had the temerity to lean forward and put her dimpled hand on a pile of papers to prevent them falling. “And now that advantage is being lost to me because you pitiful fools can’t keep my convoy routes open.”

  “Where possible General we are using the contents of over-run enemy ammunition dumps. And the fuel situation is being eased by utilising the contents of civilian gas stations. We are doing everything and anything possible to ease the supply problem Considerable numbers of enemy soft skin vehicles have been captured and we are also impressing civilian vehicles in huge numbers…”

  The colonel who spoke mopped his fat Slavic features with a heavy silk maroon handkerchief that came close to matching the mottled colour of his complexion.

  “It is ammunition I need. I don’t want those scum in the punishment battalions farting around taking driving lesson. Half of them would drive straight out of the Zone on the far side and surrender to the first NATO road sweeper they see.”

  His fist sore from the continual thundering on the wood, the General resorted to furiously shaking the bunch of fat hairy knuckles at his staff officers. “I want my convoys to get through. My assault formations are using their reserve stocks already.”

  “The General has been continuously advised of the potential replenishment problems. The original plan always held the risk of the advance slowing if we could not maintain the ammunition supply situation. Had we not been forced to resort to such lavish fire plans…”

  Zucharnin bellowed, shouting down the interruption. “The troops I have been given are the dregs. Third-rate infantry with no supporting armour worth mentioning. To replace fighting skills I am having to pour in torrents of artillery fire to support every infantry engagement. That’s when we can get the bastards to fight. I have already issued orders for several battalion commanders to be arrested and shot. The plan will work, I will make it work if I have to put every officer up against a wall, staff officers as well.” He glared. “The plan though will count for nothing if my ammunition convoys are held up at every blocked crossroad.”

  He snarled at an open file on his desk, knowing the figures without having to scan them again. The Army Command had allotted to him infantry who were of the lowest calibre. And what little armour he had been given was all drawn from reserve stocks, obsolete, worn out with crews to match. The lavish quantities of ammunition and several regiments of artillery from Corps reserve were the only real help he had been given.

  “I do not want to know about risks, I want to know about results. Elements of our advance troops are within a kilometre of the river. There are military police units virtually whipping them forward. Momentum, that is what is needed. I want my troops jumping that river without pause. I don’t care if they have to strip off and swim it. I want the whole of the city, not half of it. We have to keep moving forward, you understand? If we cannot keep shells raining down on the enemy then they will turn about and form a series of defensive positions that will slow us down, giving them time to blow the bridges. If they establish a solid river defence line it will take weeks or even months to crack He whirled around to confront an officer who held a rolled map. “You, show me where our convoys are right now.”

  “Here Comrade General, at Sulzbach and on the road between there and Nurnberg. Until they can move I have ordered most of them dispersed and concealed. I understand we have lost two of our allotted Ilyushin transports to enemy action but the air force is still managing to fly in sufficient ammunition to meet requirements, to an improvised air-strip.”

  “Yes, and from there the convoys crawl like snails through country lanes because motorway bridges are down, cuttings are filled with landslips and embankments have been collapsed.” He snapped at a Colonel of Engineers. “What about repairs, how soon can we get back on to the main routes?”

  “Another twenty-four hours Comrade General. We have had to use all the bridging sections and pontoons in the Divisional reserves. I shall have to request components from Army reserve. The men have been without sleep for two days already.”

  Even as he said it the Colonel knew he had made a mistake, shown a weakness by appearing to be more concerned for his troops than their task, but the anticipated blast did not come.

  Instead the General ground his forefinger into a map location on the edge of the city. “At least here is one potential bottleneck the fools at NATO Head-Quarters have not thought to do anything about. If they were to bring down this complex of flyovers and block their underpasses we will be faced with a mountain of giant rubble, then it will be back to threading our way through side roads. If I can see it I don’t understand why they have not. Is action being taken to prevent sabotage of the bridges?
As I ordered.”

  “We are pushing in to that sector as fast as we can, mounting guards along the route as we go.” Almost smug in his anticipation of praise, a Staff Captain made his first contribution to the one sided conference.

  “A couple of elderly reserve unit sentries every five hundred metres is no deterrent. It’s damned pathetic. I will give you two battalions of half reasonable infantry and some anti-tank units. Use them to cover every approach to the area. I don’t want to hear that NATO have launched a counter attack and retaken that junction. The road must stay open. Now get out, the lot of you.”

  Alone, the General carefully studied the map. The sites where the NATO forces had employed nuclear devices were ringed in red. He would not have worried about pushing his troops through contaminated territory but the devices had inflicted physical damage on the supply lines. A dusting of radioactive material was of no consequence, it was the destruction of autobahns and railway lines, where they passed through difficult country, that was of real consequence.

  He looked again at the location he had drawn attention to so harshly. Even when the other sites were repaired, this was still a danger point, lose it and his long lines of impressed civilian trucks would be slowed to a crawl once again.

  They had NATO forces on the run. He was almost surprised at the results himself, considering what a hopeless lot of over-age, unfit, ill-disciplined infantry he had been given to work with. And the punishment battalions were the worst of all, only fighting and going forward out of a greater fear of the military police behind them.

  His sledgehammer tactics were pushing the scanty NATO forces back relentlessly. They had never anticipated an assault in this sector. They had been allowed to correctly identify the inferior quality of the units facing the city. That knowledge had lulled them into complacency.

  Storming in to the city, blasting at everything without finesse, his men were preventing the NATO forces from building a coherent defence line, but the river was across their line of advance. If the NATO forces could hold there, if a shortage of ammunition meant his own men could not keep up the pressure…He could shout at, even terrify his officers but there were men above him who would be as ready to bellow at him. And there were other men, of his own rank, who would do the dirty on him, move heaven and earth to take his command from him. Like his second in command, that rat and political commissar General Lieutenant Gregori.

  It was his baleful influence that Zucharnin detected behind the scenes to engineer the reduction in the scales of armour and helicopter gun-ships allotted to him for the attack. He had the influence to do that, and he’d hope to profit by it, take over the sector when the assault failed.

  From his rank of General there was a long way to fall for Zucharnin. He still had some tricks left as yet though. As soon as the convoys were moving again he would reverse the flow of the refugees. So far he had employed the panicking masses to hamper the NATO preparations for defence. Soon he would find a new use for them.

  His thoughts reverted to those convoy vehicles now scattered under improvised and probably inadequate camouflage across the countryside, so as not to provide a big target for the NATO air force. He thought of the pitiful reserves of ammunition remaining for his leading assault groups. It was some consolation to know from intelligence reports that the NATO defence was composed almost entirely of scratch units. Cooks, clerks and dismounted armoured troops waiting for their vehicles to be repaired or replaced comprised much of the NATO opposition. All of them had been hastily assembled in to platoons and rushed forward. Just as swiftly they had been forced back by the weight of fire unleashed against them. Another twenty-four hours and the roads would be repaired; the huge craters on the motorways filled, bridged or by-passed and then his convoys would be racing in to the city.

  Just so long as that remaining bottleneck was not turned into a roadblock.

  * * *

  Flame, dust, smoke and screams filled the street. All were blotted out by a shrieking stream of liquid fire that soared across the road and with a sight-searing glare smacked in to the wall of the warehouse.

  Gobs of blazing fuel bounced off the already scorched brickwork and rivulets of the same made bright fingers down the wall. Another spurt, another ear-splitting wail and a third discharge from the flame-thrower found an open window.

  The massive structure seemed to swallow the screeching jet of fire and instantly converted it to roiling black fumes that belched from every opening, every shell hole and roof vent.

  “Where are you going?” Sergeant Hyde’s dirt ingrained hand smacked down on the Simmons’ shoulder and arrested the second pace of his charge for the doorway.

  “We can get in there while their heads are down.”

  “No need.”

  Even as he said it the NCO saw three blazing forms stagger out high on a buckled steel fire escape. Another toppled from the rooftop, cart-wheeling, a short- lived arc of white fire that thumping on to the debris littered road.

  A brief crackle from a machine gun lanced towards the structure and made sparks and scabs of smouldering paint fly from the escape ladder. It reduced to a crumpled and indistinguishable heap the Russians who had sought to out-pace the flame that chased after and enveloped them.

  From within the warehouse came more loud cries, a smattering of single shots and then longer erratic ripples of detonations as small arms ammunition exploded.

  “See, the job’s done for us, one way or the other.” A single shot snapped and a smouldering form slumped against a window ledge. A sub-machine gun fell out and down into the road. Sergeant Hyde, feeling the livid scar tissue of his face tighten, watched the weapon fall then turned away from the scene.

  Behind him, barely visible in the gloom of the unlit wholesale warehouse the rest of the squad were already sliding down against the high stacked piles of boxes to sit exhausted on the floor. Water bottles appeared and heads tipped back to guzzle the last of the chlorine-tainted liquid.

  “This place will go up just the same, the whole district will.” Major Revell looked out past Hyde, still stood at the edge of the doorway.

  The building across the way appeared to be in the grip of a growing conflagration, fire gouted from every opening. Glass was exploding in unbroken windows and rolling molten from the heaped crystal fragments on windowsills. “I wonder what’s in that one, it’s certainly going up fast.”

  Taking a half pace back into the interior, Sergeant Hyde took off his helmet and wiped the blotched scar tissue of his forehead with a scrap of filthy rag he pulled from his belt. He used the dampened material to casually wipe his assault rifle and its under-slung grenade launcher.

  “I saw tyres and drums of electric cable before they forced our evacuation. The quantity of automatic fire they sent at us I still don’t know how the hell we got out. They were dozens of them, hosing the stuff like maniacs.” Even across the width of the road and sidewalks Hyde could feel pulsing waves of furnace heat. “By the time that finishes burning even the steel and brick would have melted. There won’t be anything left in a day or two.”

  “Same goes for the whole of Nurnberg. The Russians are pursuing a scorched earth policy even while they’re in the middle of it.” Revell ducked and took a shower of tile and glass fragments across the front of his flak jacket as a NATO six-wheel Saracen ambulance dashed past, its chunky treaded tyres throwing up fans of jagged debris as it was chased from sight by streams of tracer from Russians holding a building further down the road.

  A loud hollow clanging sound announced Thorne’s arrival and as he made it to the bottom stair he let the fuel and gas cylinders of the flame-projector fall with an echoing crash. He didn’t bother to pick them up, pushing them from his path with the steel shod toe of his boot. Where the leather had been scorched away by dribbles of fire the soot stained metal was exposed.

  “That’s it, out of fuel.” Joining the officer near the door Thorne looked out at the result of his handiwork. Much of the façade of the building
was hidden by columns of flame spurting from individual doorways and windows. A fire was flaring about a small heap in the road and was enveloping a bigger one high on the fire escape.

  “I’ll hang on to the projector group, the harness and valves. We might be able to pick up something adaptable as an alternative to the real stuff, even a few gallons of diesel would do.”

  Revell tapped the single grenade on his webbing. “As likely as getting fresh ammo supplies. We’re being forced to use a hell of a lot of it. I can’t see the Reds keeping up their frantic expenditure of ammunition for long, but while they do, we have problems.”

  “Hey, we still have half a city to fall back through.” Ripper had allowed some beads of water to dribble down his chin and now he scrubbed his hand across it, turning the irregular lines in the dirt into a bizarre pattern of mud. “Maybe we’re getting short of ammunition, but.” He waved his arms at the racks of plastic wrapped women’s clothing. “But I suppose we can always dress to kill.”

  Wrenching around to reach a pouch, Ripper extracted a nougat bar and began using his teeth to remove the embedded foil wrapper.

  “Very good, whimsical.” Taking a flower print maternity dress from a hanger, Dooley held it against himself and made a clumsy half pirouette. “At last they do things in my size.”

  “If you’re expecting triplets.” Spitting out shreds of bright wrapping, Ripper began to chew on the candy.

  Clarence, cradling his heavy sniper rifle, looked at the empty cylinders. Somewhere upstairs the waves of heat were beginning to shatter windows. “Where to next Major? It will be rather a touch too warm in here soon.”

  “We’ll work along to the end of the street and take up a position over-looking the square. Then we’ll have to wait for re-supply. Tell Burke to slap a charge against the west wall; we’ll mole our way through a couple of buildings. We haven’t got the firepower to slug it out with any Ruskies angry at our frying their friends, not the way they’re blasting off ammo’.”