by Leo Kessler
The height to their right loomed ever larger in their worn, red-rimmed eyes. Soon they would reach it.
Suslov plodded determinedly through the deep snow at the top of the height. Everywhere his Eagles were digging in, forming large walls of snow, broken by firing slits, opening their flies to urinate with a hot hiss onto the walls so that when the surface of the suddenly melting snow refroze, it would form a solid sheet of ice to ward off any stray slug.
The skilled airborne men had formed a three-sided perimeter of some 200 metres in length, with its open, undefended end towards the sheer, naked rockwall – so sheer, indeed that even the blizzard which was abating had not lodged any snow on its surface. It was an excellent position, easily defensible even if the weather improved sufficiently for the Fritzes to call up an air strike. He was confident that he could withstand anything the Germans threw at him.
He paused at the twin mortars set up in the centre of the perimeter, next to the big snow-covered boulder which he had chosen as his own command post. The mortarmen were busy rubbing more winterized grease on the sights of the weapons and the levels they used to judge their firing angles. ‘Horoscho, my Eagles,’ he complimented them on their foresight. ‘You are thinking well.’
Sergei Kolchak looked up at his commander: ‘And what are we going to call this mountain, Comrade Commander?’ he demanded.
Suslov’s gaze fell on the Grey Eagles’ battalion flag, thrust into the snow by the boulder command post: a grey eagle against a bright red background, its claws extended, its cruel beak ready to tear its prey.
‘There you are, Kolchak, there’s your name for you.’
‘What, Comrade Commander?’
‘Why, Grey Eagle Mountain!’
Kolchak beamed, ‘Of course,’ he breathed.
‘Comrade Commander.’
Suslov swung round. It was Oleg, the battalion runner. ‘What is it?’ he snapped, the flag forgotten now, at the sight of the urgent look on Oleg’s face.
‘The Fritzes, Comrade Commander – they’re coming up the road!’ He doubled to the edge of the perimeter with Oleg. Together they flopped into the snow.
Down below the first evil snout of a halftrack had begun to nose its way round the bend in the road on the last stretch before it surmounted the pass. Suslov focused his binoculars hastily, taking care to shade the lenses with one hand to avoid giving away his position.
The men, crowded in what was obviously the command vehicle, sprang into his vision. He knew immediately from the camouflaged overalls they were the SS, the hated Fritz killers. His attention was captured by the man with the eye patch, hood flung back to reveal the cap with its death’s head badge. Suslov allowed his glasses to rest for a moment on the man’s haughty, emaciated face and knew instinctively that this was the commander. He would be the man they would kill first.
Swiftly he squirmed back through the deep snow and doubled back to the waiting mortarmen. ‘All right,’ he barked, ‘we’ve got Fritzes to kill at last!’
Habicht leaned forward over the top of the driving cab, urging the halftrack up those last hundred metres to the top of the pass, his mind racing with plans. Once he had the Regiment over the pass he would race through the night down the mountain, taking whatever roadblock the Reds might have set up for him on the exit to the valley by surprise. After that, it would be only a mere twenty kilometres to the Hungarian capital. He swallowed hard, hardly daring to believe it was possible that by this time on the following day he might be in Budapest.
‘More speed, driver!’ he commanded harshly.
‘I’m doing my best, sir,’ the driver answered, ‘but it’s –’
His words were silenced by a soft plop up ahead. Then another and another. An instant later the plops became an obscene, stomach-churning howl.
‘What the hell…!’ Habicht cried in alarm and stared upwards at the little puffs of white smoke on the high peak to their right and the small black objects hurtling towards them. Then he realized what they were. ‘MORTARS!’ he yelled.
Frantically the driver attempted to stop; but to no avail – the halftrack would not respond in the icy surface. The next instant, the first salvo of mortar bombs from the peak straddled them. One exploded directly in front of the halftrack, sending up a huge spurt of snow, coloured a brilliant scarlet. A second sailed harmlessly over the edge of the precipice, but the third bomb struck the road just under the skidding halftrack’s front axle. The ten-ton vehicle reared into the air like a bucking horse put to the saddle for the first time. Glass splintered. Metal shrieked. Habicht, the veteran, turned his head away from the hot blast, laden with gleaming razor-sharp fragments of steel just in time. His driver was not so quick.
The fist-sized piece of red-hot steel hissed through the cab window and took the top of his head off as neatly as any surgeon performing a trepan. The boy screamed just once. Then with his brains tumbling out of his head, his lifeless body lurched limp against the wheel. The command halftrack smashed into the mountainside and came to an abrupt stop, fifty metres from the top of the pass.
The Battle of Grey Eagle Mountain had begun.
SECTION THREE:
THE BATTLE OF GREY EAGLE MOUNTAIN
ONE
On Friday morning, 4 January, 1945, Marshal Tolbuchin sacked Zacharov and took over the defence of the River Danube line himself.
Under the present circumstances his demoralized Guards could not conceivably stop the Royal Tigers of the two élite SS Panzer divisions which were leading the German thrust through the mountains. But the further the Fritzes penetrated into the Vértes Range, the longer and more exposed their flanks became. His first order to his Guards Cavalry, the most mobile and most flexible of his units in mountainous terrain, read simply: ‘Tickle the German’s ribs for him so he loses control of his head!’
Thus his cavalry regiments began a day-long series of bloody little hit-and-run raids along the Germans’ long, exposed flanks, forcing the 4th SS Panzer Corps to detach more and more emergency units to protect the flanks, and by doing so weakening the point.
Tolbuchin’s next order went to the commander of the troops attacking Budapest itself. If the city fell, he reasoned that the steam might go out of the German attack. A sizeable number of German troops within the capital would be Soviet prisoners, and the relief forces would realize that they were shedding their blood for an objective already in Russian hands.
The second order was as simple as the first, but far more brutal. It read: ‘Take Budapest soon or face the consequences.’ Every regular Soviet officer had long known what the ‘consequences’ were, ever since the Great Army Purge of 1938: the camps or the firing squad. The General would understand.
His third order took more time to carry out. It went to every artillery commander on the long Second Ukrainian Front Command. It read: ‘I want every spare artillery piece, mortar, anti-tank gun rushed to the Budapest front immediately.’
During that grey morning, Tolbuchin’s staff built up a great barrier of artillery in front of the advancing SS, ranging from the smallest mortar to the fearsome ‘Katuschka’ rocket batteries. By midday the artillery was ready to go into action, albeit without a co-ordinated fire plan. But a fire plan was not needed in the rugged mountain territory. All the local artillery commander needed was to wait for the first SS tank to appear around the bend to his front and then call down the whole weight of fire at his disposal upon it.
Slowly but surely, the burly Marshal’s measures began to pay off. SS Panzer Division Viking managed to capture Vétes-Tolna that morning, but found it difficult to get out of the village and push on eastwards. SS Panzer Division Death’s Head captured one of its key objectives that same morning – Tarjan, but when it tried to link up with Balck’s infantry, which had made a successful assault crossing of the Danube to its right, the Division found its advance barred by massed Soviet artillery. Now the SS was measuring its progress eastwards in metres, instead of the kilometres of the day before.
&n
bsp; There was only one area that worried Tolbuchin – had Suslov’s Grey Eagles managed to stop the Fritzes’ advance through the high peaks towards the road network?
A thousand kilometres away from the Hungarian front, Adolf Hitler, still conducting the last of the ill-fated Ardennes Offensive from his Western Battle Headquarters at the Castle of Ziegenberg, was concerned too about the progress of his Armed SS.
Facing Luftwaffe Colonel Rudel, whom he had just decorated with the highest German award for bravery, he asked the C.O. of the Immelmann Battle Wing: ‘Well, what do you think of the situation in Hungary, Rudel?’
The burly dive-bomber pilot, who was still flying missions although he had lost a leg and Hitler had expressly forbidden him to do so, did not pull his punches. Aware that the high-ranking staff officers, even the yellow-faced, trembling Führer himself, did not understand what the true situation on the Eastern Front was, he stared around their faces in the big echoing operations room and told the truth. ‘It is bloody awful, mein Führer!’
There was a shocked intake of breath from the servile Marshal Keitel, and Colonel-General Jodl, Hitler’s Chief-of-Staff, looked sharply at the angry-faced pilot.
‘What do you mean, Rudel?’ Hitler broke the shocked silence.
‘I mean, mein Führer, that we are doing several things wrong up there, which cannot help but make the offensive end in failure.’
‘What can we do about the state of the weather, our transport difficulties and so on?’ Keitel snapped angrily, his face suddenly flushing with anger.
Rudel turned on him. ‘It has nothing to do with weather, transport and such things,’ he retorted hotly. ‘I fly eight hours a day over the Eastern Front on missions and have been doing ever since 1941, Marshal. I know what’s going on. I –’
‘What is going on?’ Hitler interrupted the pilot’s angry outburst, his voice still gentle, almost monotonous.
Next to Hitler, Jodl tensed. He knew that voice of old. At any moment the Führer could explode with a fury of awesome power.
Rudel struck the map with his heavy hand. ‘The Vértes Range, mein Führer, out of which the Fourth S S Panzer Corps is trying to break east. Yet we all know that its advance is slowing down considerably. Why? Because we have lost the element of initial surprise. Now it stands to reason that the Russians will bring up more and more forces to block the exits out of the mountains. Soon our offensive will bog down altogether.’ He paused and let his words sink in.
Next to him, Hitler, peering at the map through his nickel-framed spectacles remained silent.
‘So what do we do?’ Rudel snorted. ‘We batter our heads at a closed door, only to get them beaten bloody. We keep attacking and attacking to no purpose whatsoever.’
‘Well, what do you suggest we do, Rudel?’ Jodl asked in the arrogant manner of a trained staff officer who had worn the purple leaves of a General Staff member, when this upstart from the Luftwaffe was still learning to fly his first glider.
‘Roll with the punch, as a boxer does,’ Rudel answered with out hesitation.
‘Explain?’ Hitler snapped, his voice normal now, tense and eager.
‘Pull the Fourth SS Corps out of the mountains, leaving the infantry behind to tie down the Russians, and put them into the battle for Budapest at another spot.’
‘Where?’
‘Here.’ Rudel stabbed the map south of Budapest. ‘Here, beyond the Lake1. Its first objective should be the Danube south of the capital, say, at Dunapentele. From there, your SS boys could fight due north right into Budapest, taking the Russians by surprise.’
The assembled staff officers listened to the airman’s performance with dismay. Yet they knew that his suggestions were influencing Hitler, who despised the General Staff officers and only listened to their advice when he was forced to by some defeat or impending defeat. More often than not he would make his decisions on the basis of his famous ‘intuition’ or the advice of some ‘frontline swine’ such as Rudel.
‘But how would we break off the action without the Bolsheviks becoming suspicious, Rudel?’ Hitler asked after a moment, his face thoughtful.
‘Mein Führer,’ the pilot answered. ‘I am just a simple soldier, who knows little of higher strategy as these gentlemen do,’ he waved his hand at the assembled staff. Jodl’s pale, wizened face grew even paler. One day, Rudel, he promised himself, I’ll make you pay for that.
‘In the days when we flew Stukas, the lead plane would come roaring down out of the sky, sirens howling, machine guns chattering, making the gunners below believe he was going to fall right on top of them, forcing them to concentrate all their fire on him. Meanwhile the rest of the squadron would sneak in at another level and bomb hell out of the real target. A simple feint like that is what you need in those hills, mein Führer. Some device to encourage the enemy to believe that you are still attacking with your armour, while in reality you are withdrawing it to launch a surprise attack on a completely different front, a good fifty kilometres away.’
For what seemed a very long time, Hitler did not respond to Rudel’s words. Instead he stared intently at the big table map, as if he could see things there that no one else could. ‘A feint,’ he said, breaking his long silence. ‘That is what you mean, Rudel?’
‘Yes.’
‘But how and where?’
Jodl intervened: ‘SS Regiment Europa, mein Führer, presently battling its way through the mountains, and apparently to no purpose,’ he sneered at Rudel, ‘if we are to accept Rudel’s suggestion.’
‘But not my SS!’ Hitler objected.
‘Why not, sir?’ Jodl answered easily. ‘They are beyond recall now and would play no significant role if we were to withdraw the Viking and the Death’s Head, save one. If they were allowed to believe they were spearheading the main drive for Budapest, they might well fool the Russians that we were still pressing ahead with the original plan.’
Hitler looked at his cunning-eyed Chief of Staff. ‘But that is a monstrous suggestion, Jodl!’ he gasped. ‘It. would mean sacrificing many hundreds of brave young men purposelessly.’
‘Not purposelessly, sir. If they succeeded in fooling the Russians they would not have died in vain. Besides,’ he added as a sudden, malicious afterthought, ‘we could give them Rudel’s Immelmann Battle Wing as air support.’ He smiled maliciously in the direction of the most decorated man in the German Forces.
‘But we can’t fly at those heights –’ Rudel began, angrily.
Hitler held up a soft, flabby hand for silence. ‘One moment Rudel, while I think about this matter.’
Utter silence descended upon the big room, as Hitler limped to the window and stared out at the bleak, snow-bound landscape. The men of the Armed SS were his Imperial Guard, who had fought and died for him in their hundreds, their thousands, their hundred-thousands on every battlefront. There was no loyalty left in the Army anymore as the Wehrmacht’s assassination attempt had proved. But the SS – his SS – were they not ‘loyal to the death’, as their proud motto proclaimed? Could he willingly sacrifice some two thousand bold young men, who believed in him implicitly, for the sake of a tactical manoeuvre?
Even as he turned to face his waiting staff and Rudel again, he already knew that he must.
‘Gentlemen,’ he announced deliberately, trying to prevent his lips from trembling as they were wont to do since the bomb explosion in his East Prussian HQ that July, ‘I have made my decision. I have decided to break off the offensive of the Fourth SS Panzer Corps! It will attack again from the south-west, once it has successfully regrouped near Lake Balaton.’ Hitler hesitated and directed his yellow, rheumy old eyes at the floor, as if suddenly ashamed. ‘SS Regiment Europa will continue its attack in the direction of Budapest.’
Europa’s fate had been sealed.
Note
1. Lake Balaton.
TWO
The Frenchmen, volunteers all, burst from their cover, heads bent behind the white rain of tracer, doubling towards the dark,
unseen peak.
The Russians had not been sleeping after all. Violet light crackled all along their perimeter. Red and green enemy tracer began to cut the air. Behind the French the Cheeseheads intensified their fire, pouring the glowing 20mm shells at a rate of eight hundred a minute at the top of the mountain.
Encouraged by the elan of the French volunteers, Habicht played his next card. Under the covering fire of the flak wagon, another halftrack nosed its snout into the wrecked halftrack which blocked the road and thrust it to one side. Next moment it was rattling towards the peak, its deck crowded with crouching grenadiers.
The Grey Eagles heard rather than saw the danger.
‘Flares, in God’s name, flares!’ Suslov yelled urgently.
An instant later two flares burst over the snowfield below, bathing the dark figures struggling valiantly across it in their eerie icy light. Immediately Suslov took in the halftrack rumbling on towards their rear, rattling over the dead, crushing their bodies to bloody pulp.
‘Kolchak!’ Suslov ordered. ‘Stop that vehicle!’
The mortarman rapped out a series of swift orders. The mortar crews worked frantically, ignoring the white hail of death hissing over their heads. ‘Ready!’ the first mortar corporal yelled. ‘Ready!’ the second followed him a moment later. Kolchak did not hesitate. ‘FIRE!’ he cried.
The two corporals turned their firing wheels, swinging their heads to one side as the mortars spoke. The first bombs hissed clumsily into the sky.
Suslov’s gaze did not leave the dark black shape of the half track, illuminated in the dying flares like some predatory, primeval monster, seeking its prey. The mortars were his only heavy weapon; if they couldn’t stop the halftrack its cargo of infantrymen could be delivered right in front of his positions.
But Kolchak was as accurate as ever. The second and third bombs landed right on the open deck of the halftrack. There was a blinding flash of bright white light. Dark shapes whirling and turning in the air against its glare were flung in all directions. Next moment the vehicle’s punctured fuel tank exploded, sending a stream of burning red across the snow. Here and there a survivor, already a blazing torch, threw himself vainly into the snow, trying to extinguish the flames which were consuming him alive.