Breakthrough (The Red Gambit Series)

by Gee, Colin

  “And did he circumcise an elephant at the circus?”

  Rosenberg’s face split from ear to ear.

  “Would I lie to you?”

  “Damn right you would, you yiddisher bastard! The whorehouse in Marseille?”

  “As God is my witness, you have a memory for things don’t you? Anyway, the place was schlock. Not good enough for a mentsh like you.”

  “That is not what I heard, Zack, as well you know. You’re lying.”

  “OK, OK, I am lying. It was a Rhino.”

  The men in Headquarters Company were used to the constant sparring of this unusual duo, a friendship between opposites sparked by the extremes of military life.

  As the two continued their bickering, Clayton Randolph, the unit’s junior soldier, handed out the last of the coffee and left the verbal warriors to their business. The two watched the last halftrack disappear on the Heroldhausen-Eichenau road.

  Rosenberg stood ‘five foot and a mosquito’s dick short’, or at least that was how the six foot two inch NCO put it.

  Combat had moulded them into a team, and set in place a friendship that only death could sunder.

  “Talk English. I don’t understand your Jewish speak.”

  Springing to attention the diminutive figure threw up a formal salute.

  “Jawohl, Herr Feldwebel.”

  Hässler went to cuff him playfully but the Corporal ducked away, picking up his pack and slinging it aboard ‘Liberty’, the half-track they had all called home since they had landed in Europe.

  Cigarettes lit, no sound came from the tired men as they waited for the clock to count down.

  Something didn’t feel right to the Master Sergeant, so he kept his men in position beyond the ten minutes, watching and ready for action.

  Looking at the watch, he decided fifteen was enough and that his senses had let him down for once.

  The troops loaded up quickly, and in less than two minutes, the last vehicles of 2nd Battalion were on the road to Diembot.

  M5A1 halftracks were not the quietest of vehicles, but the sound of explosions and gunfire rose over the top of the roar of 7.4 litre Red-B engines at high revs.

  Hässler signalled a halt, and the four vehicles smoothly slipped into cover, leaving the road empty.

  Randolph was behind the mounted .50cal, scanning the road ahead and the woods to the right. Beside him stood the American-German, both men’s senses straining to the limit. At the rear of the track, Rosenberg traversed his .30cal very deliberately, checking the undergrowth beyond his sights for the slightest sign of movement.

  Orienting themselves on the noise, the men in the small convoy quickly placed the shooting to their south-east.

  Rosenberg spat, not turning from his field of responsibility, and threw a question at the Master-Sergeant.

  “Pritchard?”

  “You can bet your kosher ass on it.”

  Thus far, the 179th Guards Rifle Regiment had advanced without contact. Since the blood-letting of Reichenburg, only a few minor skirmishes had occurred, claiming a life here, two there.

  Moving forward towards his allotted targets, the villages of Leibesdorf and Seibotenberg had fallen silently, so Colonel Artem’yev had split his force, sending his 1st and 3rd Battalions to Elpershofen and Hessenau respectively, with 3rd Battalion additionally tasked to push out to the south-east towards Diembot if circumstances permitted.

  Employing his headquarters alongside the savaged 2nd Battalion as a reserve, he moved behind them, and to the south-east. Artem’yev intended to remain out of trouble unless summoned, or 3rd Battalion was ready to attack Diembot.

  His men moved swiftly through the woods to the south-east of Seibotenberg, rapidly crossing one hundred metres of open ground before again secreting themselves in dense wood to the south of Heroldhausen.

  Scouts at the head of the unit gave warning and the guardsmen deployed instinctively, moving into cover along the edge of the north-south road that cut through the woods.

  Despite the hell it had endured in Rottenburg, the179th was still a crack unit and it showed, its calm veterans speedily dropping out of sight, ready to fire if called upon or to remain silent and, if necessary, let the threat pass.

  Artem’yev was not at the front of the column, so the decisions were left to an experienced Captain commanding the the advance guard.

  Rushing to the southernmost end of his line, the Captain assessed the enemy force.

  ‘Ten, no, twelve vehicles.’

  He slapped one of his anti-tank gunners on the shoulder. The man looked at his commander, following the simple hand signals and whispered instructions.

  “Komarov, lead vehicle, stop him there.”

  The hands indicated where the officer wished the ambush to be sprung. A nod acknowledged the order and confirmed understanding. The man slipped to one side with his number two, readying the panzershreck he had proudly carried with him since liberating it at Freistadt in May that year.

  A simple nod to the other panzershreck pair was all that was needed. They knew enough to hold until the first vehicle was dead before selecting another down the line. There was no time to move northwards so someone at the end of the line would have to close the door.

  A veteran Starshy Serzhant was already setting in place an act to do just that.

  Pritchard was everything Hässler thought he was, but of all his faults, his incompetence was the major player that afternoon.

  No screening vehicle was moving ahead of the column and no distances ordered between vehicles. In fact, the whole group was moving in as unmilitary a fashion as it was possible to imagine. The sole exception was the manned .50cals on the half-tracks.

  Fox Company never had a chance.

  A flash caught the lead gunner’s eye, and his screamed warning coincided with the detonation of a warhead on the thin strip of metal to the right of the driver’s vision slit.

  The driver, the Corporal in the front passenger seat and the gunner, were instantly transformed into unrecognisable meat, the remainder of the crew suffering injuries ranging from flash burns to blast effects. Only one other fatality occurred in the leading half-track, the youngest man in the company horribly slain by a lump of ragged bone from the unfortunate driver. As he coughed his life out through the gaping wound in his neck, the remainder of the crew gathered their senses and tried to debus.

  Not a man touched the ground alive, as submachine guns and DPs flayed them one by one.

  As the lead vehicle was being professionally exterminated, the ambushing line erupted, the halftracks being destroyed by grenades, anti-tank rifles and the other panzerschreck.

  At the rear of the column, the Starshy Serzhant’s group had managed to get three out of six grenades into the body of the rearmost vehicle.

  It, and its crew, burned fiercely.

  Rifles played their part, neatly picking off the machine gunners as they tried to beat off the attack. Over half the gunners never fired a shot; the rest quickly followed their comrades into blackness without being effective.

  An experienced Pfc got his BAR working and laid low two guardsmen who were closing up with teller mines. Neither was killed outright, but neither would see the following morning.

  The Pfc heard the thump beside him but never felt the grenade fragments that ripped the life from him.

  In the third track, the sole casualty so far was the gunner, shot through the neck and hanging from the MG ring, dripping rivers of blood down the olive green flank of the halftrack.

  Pritchard knew he was going to die and his bladder and bowels evacuated as his young soldiers looked to him for leadership.

  A grenade dropped into the back of the vehicle and the American soldiers were divided into two groups by the fickle nature of high explosive. One group died, the other didn’t.

  Those who had remained in the vehicle lived, although all were wounded. The Russian who threw the grenade had used a German stick grenade, and was what saved them. The Steilhandgranate was
dependent on blast for its effectiveness although the mechanism and casing caused some shrapnel wounds in this instance.

  Those who bailed out died in the act of escaping the burst, all except Pritchard, who had shown amazing agility.

  His wounds were extreme, a burst of PPSH smashing across his legs as he dived over the side, almost severing both his legs at his ruined knees. A single bullet neatly amputated his left thumb and another struck his jaw, breaking the strong bone and lodging in the bottom of his left eye. The officer hit the ground hard and bounced onto his back, adding a broken left wrist to the litany of injuries.

  His bestial screams surmounted all the sounds of battle.

  In Track 2, a young sergeant got the back door open and evacuated the three survivors, using his physical strength and harsh words in equal measure.

  Sparing a quick and unsympathetic look at his commander, he organised his shocked men into action.

  The comparative safety of the woods seemed closer where he was, as the undergrowth had advanced more than elsewhere, and he could fall back into the trees to the east.

  “OK boys, pull your smokes and put them down”

  Each man he touched and pointed, indicating where he wished the smoke to go.

  “On three, ok? One, two, three!”

  Four grenades sailed as directed.

  Three plumes of grey smoke slowly erupted, the fourth bringing forth whitish-yellow smoke and high-pitched screams.

  The man had thrown a phosphorous grenade instead of smoke. It had hit the road and bounced, and was at face level when it went off. The hideously injured and still burning Komarov added his animal cries to those of Pritchard.

  Here and there, hands started to rise as shocked and stunned GI’s gave up the unequal fight, all except the survivors of Track 2, who made their burst for freedom. They all fell short of the tree line. albeit by only a few feet, riddled with bullets.

  Individual Russians started shooting at the surrendering soldiers, and the fighting picked up in intensity again.

  One enterprising DP gunner dropped flat on the road at the rear of the column, and pumped bullet after bullet into the exposed soldiers.

  Soon, only the mournful cries of the hideously wounded rent the air, and unsympathetic guardsmen moved amongst them dispatching each with a bullet or the thrust of a bayonet.

  It was only Pritchard’s higher piercing screams that kept the killer’s at bay, so awful were they.

  Colonel Artem’yev arrived, panting after sprinting forward to command his men.

  Gesturing to one of his young soldiers, he sent mercy to the wounded American.

  Two bayonet thrusts and the screams ceased, although Pritchard remained conscious for some time after, he felt no pain and slipped quietly away to answer to a higher authority for his incompetence.

  That left only Komarov’s cries filling the senses.

  Three medical orderlies were trying to do what they could to a man with no face, and whose chest and arms had been burnt down to the bone.

  A barked order and simple gesture moved them away from their charge.

  Two shots rang out and one more kill was made. The screaming stopped.

  The executioner lowered his head, in reverent salute to the comrade he had just granted the mercy of death.

  Artem’yev calmly re-holstered his pistol and moved off to leave Komarov’s comrades to do what they could to honour their friend’s remains.

  Every American lay dead upon the road or in the vehicles, either slain in combat or dispatched when wounded or surrendered, testament to the brutal efficiency of his warrior’s.

  The pride he felt at his men’s conduct and skill in the ambush did not remove the awful image of Komarov, and the tough Colonel unashamedly spilt his lunch upon the ground, retching until nothing came but air.

  The firing stopped, and the Master Sergeant was veteran enough to understand that the sounds of only Russian weapons closing the action meant just one thing; Pritchard had been defeated and was probably running to the river.

  “No time for subtlety, let’s roll!”

  Performing hand signals for the benefit of the other vehicles, Hässler was thrown about as ‘Liberty’ leapt forward and picked up speed, the others falling in behind.

  Near Diembot, all was confusion.

  An ad hoc aid unit, formed of personnel from the 363rd Medical Battalion, was loading up wounded GI’s and German civilians, the sounds of nearby battle lending speed to their efforts.

  Security was provided by a handful of green replacements that had been destined for the 263rd Engineers, but were now officially attached to the medical group as protective infantry.

  Covering one route was Private Homer Laidlaw, who manned a .50cal M2 machine-gun and imagined himself holding back the whole Soviet army for weeks, mentally seeing the red hordes buckle under his fire. He was eighteen years old, nineteen on Thursday, as he had proudly informed the nurses in the aid post.

  John Evans, his number two, was an equally beardless youth, who only smoked to make his voice lower. His eyes were sharper, and his hearing more acute, and it was he who shouted a warning, readying the belt of APIT rounds the pair had loaded into their fearsome weapon.

  Coming from the direction of Werdeck, an armoured vehicle burst from the woods, driving hard and fast with no other purpose apparent than to ride down the two youths.

  Laidlaw’s great-grand pappy had been honoured in the Union cause at Chickamauga, and the family never stopped talking about it.

  Now was his chance.

  The .50cal burst into life, tracers betraying his wayward fire. Showing a calm well in excess of his year, he walked the bursts into the vehicle, using the star as an aiming point and was rewarded with hits.

  APITs, or Armour-Piercing Incendiary Tracer rounds, were designed for soft skinned and lightly armoured vehicles, and at the five hundred metre range at which they first engaged the vehicle, their penetration exceeded the armour thickness of the target.

  The half-track slowed and wobbled, before ramming and riding up upon a tree stump, stopping abruptly, and sending one man flying forward to bounce on the unforgiving road.

  The damaged form tried to rise, but Evans picked up his Garand. The beardless youth had spent much of his youth potting squirrels, so he found that putting a bullet into a large man was easy enough.

  The two patted themselves on the shoulders until they saw three other vehicles rounding the bend.

  They heard screams and believed they were coming from those left alive in the smoking vehicle. That was before Evans was propelled forwards into the earth by a body blow, as a US medical Lieutenant barrelled into him.

  “What have you done? You stupid bastards! Oh fuck, you stupid bastards.”

  Both boys looked at the red-faced officer, and at the target,

  Where once there was an enemy vehicle, now stood an American half-track.

  Where once there was a red star as a point of aim, now clearly visible was a muddy white star.

  As both Laidlaw and Evans started to realise what they had done, the paint started to blister as the fuel ignited by the incendiaries spread through and under the vehicle, so they failed to see the name ‘Liberty’ slip like molten metal off her side.

  The other halftracks caught up and started to deploy to attack the enemy force, before realising that a tragedy had occurred.

  No further shots were exchanged, and men sprinted to get other men out of a rapidly spreading fire.

  Evans remained head down on the ground, sobbing uselessly, never to take up a weapon again in his life.

  Laidlaw took off with all the vigour and commitment of his years, and plunged into the burning halftrack.

  He laid hands on one olive drab clad figure and pulled him clear, the medical Lieutenant taking the dead man and dropping him to one side. Both pushed back in to the flames and smoke, each returning with a bundle of torn and burnt flesh. The flames grew even higher and the Lieutenant went no more, kneeling to te
nd to the unconscious and bloody Rosenberg.

  Laidlaw took a deep breath and threw himself into the vehicle, his flesh searing and blistering as his hands sought one more soul to save.

  He grabbed at something and pulled. It remained stuck. He took a better hold and pulled backwards with all his strength, freeing the man, sliding at speed to the back of the halftrack until he fell out the rear door, bringing Randolph out on top of him.

  It was fortunate that the young private was unconscious, otherwise the pain of being wrenched free of his crushed and burnt legs would have been too much to bear. His arms were deeply burned where they had lain in burning fuel but his torso and face showed only mild signs of the heat that had claimed everyone else in the vehicle.

  More medical staff arrived and, although some recoiled from the horror before them, they worked the miracle and kept the grievously wounded man alive.

  No one saw Laidlaw throw himself back into the halftrack, determined to save one more.

  Perhaps, unfortunately, rather than going on his gut instinct, the medical Lieutenant, Acting Captain Thomas Goulding, discussed the matter with his Commanding officer at the first opportunity, and received clear guidance not to make any recommendations on the matter, as the boy’s conduct, brave as it clearly had been, was obviously done out of grief and atonement rather than raw courage.

  “And that’s an order, Goulding”

  The medical unit departed the area before the halftrack had burned out, and it was left to a Soviet artillery unit to pause long enough to remove the human detritus from the wreck and slip it all into a shallow grave.

  Only three men were saved from ‘Liberty’.

  Randolph would never have survived his terrible injuries without the instant medical intervention of Goulding and his medics. The hideously injured young man was removed to a waiting ambulance where another team set to work.

  Evans had shot sure and the bullet had struck Hässler in the shoulder as he started to rise, snapping his collar bone and adding to the multiple fractures sustained when his body bounced on the road. His journey from the spot where he lay on the road to the ambulance that arrived to spirit him away, was eased by numerous splints and more morphine.