by Gee, Colin
Koch himself had not returned from the effort and his fate was unclear, with some of his comrades believing him killed as he ran forward, whilst others thought they saw him gain the canvas and wood position.
Either way, an experienced officer had been lost.
Milke was now in command of the emergency unit, reduced to nineteen men, including those who had been retained by Derbo.
“You know what you have to do, Bernhard.”
It wasn’t a question. Ex-Hauptsturmfuhrer Milke was an old and trusted soldier.
“Remember, Kameraden. They are coming for us. You know it; you can hear them coming. Hold on... hold on just a little while longer... and I’ll buy everyone a drink, not just Willi!”
The first laugh was drowned by the arrival of Soviet mortar shells, falling all over the position, no more than 300 metres across at its widest point.
“Hals und Beinbruch, Kameraden!”
Dropping into a low crouch, or as low as such a mountain of a man can get, Rettlinger moved off quickly to his chosen point of defence; the part of his position nearest the enemy.
Heavy firing started behind him, quickly accompanied by the sounds of distress from men recently wounded.
He dropped into his position, struggling for breath, and rubbed his aching thigh, trying to prepare for what he knew came next.
Astafiev had decided to lead his men from the front, and the point he had chosen to attack was the obvious one. The shortest distance between his positions and that of the hated enemy.
He moved amongst his assault force, slapping a shoulder here, or shaking a hand there.
Some distance away, Toralov’s small force had started laying it on thickly as the mortars expended their last few rounds of smoke and HE before dedicating themselves to finding more ammunition to the rear.
Asatafiev risked a look over a broken brick wall, and was greeted with a gift from the gods.
The nearest building was now bathed in smoke from two mortar rounds, the adjacent structure adding more smoke to the situation as fire took hold.
Holding his Tokarev pistol firmly, he stood and yelled at the men of the 1st Battalion.”
“Comrades! To Victory! Urrah!”
The cry grew in three hundred and forty throats as his men rose up with him and plunged across the small but deadly piece of No man’s land, where fire from unsighted enemies plucked the life from man after man.
The momentum was unstoppable and, firing as they ran, the Siberian infantry smashed into the Mountain troopers positions.
At first, submachine guns, grenades and pistols ruled.
One Siberian soldier stumbled through a walkway in a snowdrift and found himself behind a group of three Legion troopers, who themselves were throwing grenades and firing into a struggling section of soldiers caught between some barbed wire and a larger snowdrift.
Even as the grenades exploded and claimed many lives and limbs, the single Siberian killed all three Legionnaires with a prolonged burst at close range, which turned the snow crimson, and decorated it with small pieces of their bodies, blasted away by the sustained fire from the PPSh.
It was kill or be killed.
It was also kill and be killed.
The PPSh gunner never felt the bullet that entered the back of his neck and added his own fatal contribution to the crimson montage in the snow.
Rettlinger stepped over the corpse and organised a small group of men to fill the latest hole in his line.
Through the snow gap came more Siberians, and Rettlinger charged, screaming and firing at the same time, the ST44 dropping each of the three men with none of them able to return a shot.
Drawing hard on the cold air. Derbo dropped to his knee at the entrance to the snowy walkway and fired off the rest of his magazine as two more Soviets sprung forward.
Two men of the initial rush were only wounded and their cries started to sound stronger and stronger, especially when Rettlinger stepped on one’s face.
One of Derbo’s men rushed up to assist his leader, pausing only to shoot both men in the head.
The Russian Front had taught harsh lessons and often harsh actions were the only answer, many a man had been lost when leaving a wounded enemy behind him, and the young Mountain trooper had no intention of allowing himself or his commander to be shot in the back.
Rettlinger changed out his magazine, conscious that it was his last one, and that it was already light by five rounds.
A grenade dropped perfectly in the entrance of the snowy walkway, causing both men to dive for cover.
The wait was awful.
‘Dud?’
Derbo posed the question to himself, even as he rolled away. He risked a look up at the entrance.
He yelled a warning, but the Siberian soldier there got off a shot with his rifle.
The Mosin bullet passed through the young Trooper’s pelvis, clipping the hip socket on its way through.
Howling with pain, he shot his opponent four times, the Gewehr 43 falling silent only because it was empty.
Gritting his teeth, the Mountain soldier rolled away and grabbed for another magazine.
He neither heard nor saw the grenade that killed him.
It had been poorly thrown, but its explosion propelled a deadly piece of metal through the left ear and into the German’s skull.
Rettlinger missed the death; he was quickly looking around, knowing he was losingthe fight, as more of his positions were becoming overrun with enemies.
He screamed and cursed as he watched the reduced reserve group rush forward, his eyes firmly fixed on Milke as the man’s body received multiple hits from an enemy DP weapon. His old comrade was thrown back into the advancing troopers, dead before he ever touched the ground.
“Bastards! Fucking bastards!”
Another grenade exploded in the snowy entrance, but only served to announce to Rettlinger that the enemy were coming again.
He shot the first man through, only wounding him, as the ST44 jammed.
Derbo struggled with the weapon until he was knocked aside by a heavy blow.
One of his men charged past him, firing an MG42 from the hip.
“Sorry Sturmbannfuhrer... but he was going to have you!”
Ackerman had deliberately knocked Derbo over to save him.
There was no time for further exchanges as Ackerman dropped to the snow and poured fire through the entrance and into Siberian soldiers still moving across No Man’s Land.
Rettlinger turned, guided by some sixth sense, his Walther in his hand.
The bullet struck the Soviet NCO in the chest, throwing him backwards, even as he drove the SVT40 bayonet into the side of the Legion officer.
Rettlinger roared like a wounded bull and shot the dead man again.
A Legion bullet came from nowhere and slammed into Rettlinger’s shoulder, passing millimetre perfect through the gaps in the bones.
A hazy shape appeared in the smoke nearby, the rifle and long bayonet betraying the shadow’s allegiance.
The Walther barked twice and Rettlinger was rewarded with screaming, then silence.
Rettlinger coughed and blood rose in his throat.
Ackerman dropped by his side.
“Sturmbannfuhrer, I’m out of ammo. There’s hundreds of the red bastards and I can’t stop them now. Too exposed here. C’mon.”
He quickly tossed a grenade at the entranceway and helped Rettlinger to his feet, the officer's uncomplicated flesh wound spilling huge quantities of blood down the greying-browny-white snowsuit.
The two staggered the thirty yards to the nearest friendly position, only to find one side of it alive with soldiers from both sides, rolling around in close combat.
Ackerman placed Rettlinger in a comfortable position, finding a Thompson and two clips for the weakening officer, before charging forward.
Blood-loss now started to tell, as the battle became less distinct and hazy to his eye. Rettlinger felt detached, almost a neutral observer of the events
that unfolded.
Whilst part of his mind was still a soldier and tried to command his hands to pick up the Thompson, it lacked the energy and power to overcome the lethargy that was overpowering him.
So he watched as Sanders was pinned to the ground and stabbed repeatedly with bayonets.
He could barely manage a twitch when the grenade landed nearby, although part of his brain was alert enough to know he was about to die and then understand that he had been saved by someone leaping on the charge.
The brave soldier was lifted by a flash and bang, gutted and disembowelled by the force of the charge.
He had saved a number of his Kameraden by his selfless act, but it served no purpose in the end.
Rettlinger focussed on the soldier.
‘Fleischmann?’
The piece of flesh left steaming in the snow and blood had indeed once been called Willi-Jon Fleischmann.
The soldier-part of Derbo’s brain rallied and overcame adversity, commanding the Thompson to rise in his hands, but the flesh was weak; it was too heavy.
His right hand found the Walther he had tucked in his belt and an extraordinary effort brought it out and up.
Through the mist, Rettlinger sought a target but was unable to identify friend or foe for certain, until a man, shouting in a language he first heard five years beforehand, stood separate from the rest.
He fired the last two rounds and, even though the act exhausted him, he noticed that the shape had gone.
Astafiev tried to stop his men, shouting at them, grabbing at those in reach as they started killing men who had been wounded or bludgeoned into unconsciousness.
None of the Mountain troopers surrendered, and few were captured, save those cowed by their injuries.
Some of the Siberian soldiers heeded Astafiev’s entreaties, but others paid no attention.
He jumped on a raised area and shouted at his men.
The first Walther bullet passed through his lower stomach, nicking a kidney on its way out of his back.
The second bullet demolished his right knee.
The sight of their commanding officer falling to the snow simply encouraged the Siberians to greater excesses.
Astafiev moaned in pain, his stomach on fire, his right knee presenting him with the most excruciating pain.
Some of his men searched the enemy dead for medical supplies, desperate to find pain relief for their Commander, but there was none to be had, so they listened to him suffer.
Some men cried, not just for Astafiev, but also for the many old comrades and friends that lay still in the snow or gathered in the makeshift hospital area.
Other cried because they were mentally shattered, the savagery, and awfulness of the fight way beyond their previous experiences.
Others acted, determined that the greater suffering would be visited upon the legionnaires, the Germanski, recalling the recent horror stories of the mechanised infantrymen who had fought these German-legionnaires before.
Second Battalion had swept up into the positions and immediately set to work restoring as much of the defences as possible, in case an enemy relief force arrived to stake its claim to this blood-soaked piece of Alsace.
Two platoons from Second Battalion entered the Castle. Upset that they had not had their opportunity for vengeance, they were delighted to be presented with a final opportunity.
The Legion wounded were massacred but not without Siberian losses, which only egged them on to further excess.
Grenades set the old structure’s contents alight and the few Legionnaires that were dragged from the old castle were summarily shot or bayoneted in short order.
Soviet soldiers smashed up the wooden garden furniture and creating a cleared area in front of a dilapidated bistro bar on the junction of the 9 and 135.
Others ripped the wooden shutters from the ground floor windows to declare their support for what was to come.
Another group of First Battalion survivors collected dead enemy soldiers, creating a mound in the small grassy area that had served as the bar's beer garden.
Nineteen Mountain troopers were still alive, most taken from the final Legion casualty station, which had been brutally liquidated with knives, up close and personal.
Each of the eighteen men were bound to the corpse of a legionnaire and placed around the base of the mound.
The nineteenth legionnaire, ‘the bastard that shot Astafiev’, was given special treatment, and placed, like a fairy on a Christmas tree, atop the mound.
It took but a moment for the petrol to be shaken over the living and the dead alike, immediately drawing screams of fear from those who were mentally alert enough to know their approaching fate.
Men vied for the privilege of initiating the revenge, and a fight broke out until a Senior Sergeant stepped in, suggesting that those who wanted to participate could do so together and ‘if the three of you fucking idiots don’t stop fighting each other, I’ll have your fucking balls off!’
Matches were struck and, on a signal, dropped onto the fuel soaked men.
Astafiev later claimed that the sound of screaming broke through into his unconsciousness state and that, lying on what counted for stretcher in the shattered Petite Pierre, the minutes that he endured the awful screams and squeals of those being immolated were the worst of his life.
In the centre of the village, the lust for revenge rapidly drained from the Siberians, as they watched their prisoners writhe in agony as they were burned alive.
Atop the pile was Rettlinger, his mind and vision greatly cleared by what was about to come.
He rose as best he could, debilitated by injury and blood loss, encumbered by wrists tied behind his back. Standing upright, he debated throwing himself forward in the hope that someone would shoot and grant him a quick death.
His leg gave way, and the possibility was gone before the decision had been made.
Rettlinger looked at as many of the enemy as he could, despite being petrified, his eyes showing his hatred for all present, and also carrying his determination to die as well as he could.
Flames licked around him and the pain doubled and redoubled.
He stayed silent, a silence that was now only broken by the roaring of flames as all others had now succumbed to the ordeal.
And then, he broke.
The sound.
Unreal.
Awful.
‘Holy Mother!’
Some looked away in disgust at, both at themselves and those who helped create the abomination. Others remained fixed on the writhing man, almost as if to look away would dishonour him.
‘Let him die quickly!’
Some looked at each other, seeking guidance, needing only a nod or a shrug to shoot the enemy officer to relieve his agony.
But no one fired, so Bruno Rettlinger died the most horrible of deaths, exactly seventeen miles from where he was born.
1226 hrs, Saturday, 7th December 1945, La Petite Pierre, Alsace.
The assault of Neuwiller had arrived unexpectedly, at least for the Soviet Major in charge of the remains of 1326th Rifle Regiment.
Based on his intelligence reports, he had concentrated the larger force to oppose the attempted relief effort from the southern Allied force heading up from Dossenheim, and successfuly so, as the allied push ran out of steam..
His earlier reports had not included news from the defence forces allocated to the southeast and Route 233, and so the arrival of Task Force Barkmann was both a surprise and a disaster for the Siberian soldiers.
The few Soviet tanks left in support were rapidly overwhelmed by a combination of 76mm shells from Shermans and M18 Hellcats of the 633rd, leaving the American tanks free to harvest the infantry left after the air and artillery strikes.
An incursion by two Shturmoviks claimed one of the M18 tank destroyers, but the two aircraft were driven away from the battlefield as three Mustangs arrived, bringing their own modest ordnance to the party and planting it perfectly on the battalion command
post in between a cluster of buildings two hundred metres south-east of the main village.
In truth, the aircraft had been aiming at a grand house nearby, not a nondescript clump of trees.
Not that it made any difference to the command structure of the 1326th Regiment. Most of them were assembled for an orders group, and all of them died in the explosions, the first of the one thousand pound bombs alone would have been enough as it penetrated the roof of the hastily constructed bunker, wiping through the second in command before detonating at the feet of the harassed Major.
The Rangers and Engineers swept forward and through the first line of defence with relative ease, destroying pockets of resistance with well-directed tank fire, followed by close infantry assault.
Neuwiller was overrun quickly, and the Ranger combined force, leaving 254 US Combat Engineer Battalion in place with a little armor stiffening, rolled up Route 134, heading for La Petite Pierre.
They pushed on hard and were lucky. No organised resistance was encountered until nearly on the southern edge of La Petite Pierre.
In fact, the advance had moved forward so quickly that both Gesualdo and Barkmann, encumbered by leg injuries, had trouble keeping up the pace.
Gesualdo was, in some ways, more fortunate, as his lead unit ran into a group of Siberians who were determined to stay put, giving him a chance to join up with his men.
Quickly organising some close support, Gesualdo led his Rangers into the smoking ruins of the house that the tenacious enemy had occupied, now converted to a pile of bricks by the ministrations of two Shermans.
As he picked his way over the rubble, his leg gave way and he fell.
Instinctively, his arm shot out, finding the perfect hole down which to slide, before his not inconsiderable frame hit the bricks and the weight of his body in motion strained the bone past its point of tolerance.
Through the diminishing sounds of battle, the snap of his left arm was heard for many yards in all directions, causing more than one soldier to duck in self-preservation.
Gesualdo passed out with the pain, and it fell to his radioman to scream out for a medic, his eyes focussed in horror on the arm, bent at right angles with bones protruding from broken skin.