by Gee, Colin
Courage, above all things, is the first quality of a warrior.
Karl von Clauswitz
Chapter 20 – THE RUSSIAN
0655 hrs Monday, 23rd July 1945, Hotel Neese, B.O.Q. Building, Div HQ, ‘15th’ US Armored Division, Schlangen, US Occupied Germany.
He stood tall and looked in the mirror, and liked what he saw. By his own peoples standards he was handsome but that wasn’t it. Neither was it the muscle-bound frame, jet-black hair, and piercing green eyes. It was the uniform of Lieutenant Colonel in the Red Army tank troops and the medals upon it that gave him satisfaction, medals that reflected the years of hardship, blood, and loss that accompanied him from Poland in 1941 through to his final battle in the fatherland of his hated enemy. The rising sun played across his awards, twinkling off them with each breath he took.
His eyes fell upon the ‘Hero of the Soviet Union’ award that sat apart from and above the rest and, as always, his thoughts went to Alexei and his crew. On his neck above the medal was a scar of that encounter, showing how close the distance between life and death is really measured and, as was always the case, his hand rose to seek out the blemish.
The doctor had told him that, in this case, the distance between life and death was about three millimetres, for that was how far the small shard of metal had been from his jugular.
There were other scars and stories to go with them of course, but none brought back so many ghosts as that one.
He had been Captain Yarishlov at that time, and his position had been fallen upon by Hausser’s SS at Bilashi on the northern edge of Kharkov. Little had been said of it in the Motherland, for it was a stinging defeat at a time of repeated victories, but Arkady knew the human cost of the affair only too well.
He had been ordered by Major Petrenko, dear, cowardly, spiteful bastard Major Petrenko, to hold the ridge created by the raised railway line in order to give time for the rest of the 2nd Guards Tank Corps to prepare a defensive position around Hoptivka to the north. With a handful of infantry, anti-tank gunners, mortar men, and his own T/34’s Arkady had resisted the SS for hours, throwing back attacks from tanks, panzer-grenadiers, and assault guns.
During the course of the action, Yarishlov received a bullet nick to his calf, a small but heavily bleeding wound that made him hobble. He received his second wound when he ran at full tilt and threw himself into a trench to avoid incoming mortar rounds. The wound this time was a cracked rib from accidentally landing on a wooden ammo box, the corner of which penetrated the skin and hurt like hell.
The memento at his throat was picked up from a bursting 105mm high-explosive shell that destroyed the last Zis-3 anti-tank gun and put its brave crew beyond burial. It had stung for sure and bled like hell but had not incapacitated him. He ordered the last smoke shells laid down from his mortars to cover the withdrawal of his scratch force as the runner reported their Corps regrouped at Zhuravlevka.
The three surviving senior NCO’s moved out and relayed the order to fall back, which order was obeyed immediately of course,but not without casualties, as the shells continued to fall all around the position.
Senior Lieutenant Alexei Gurundov, commanding the last surviving tank, passed the orders to his crew, and the scarred T34 disappeared further into the wood in which it had been positioned.
Alexei had taken a final look back, which was fortunate for Yarishlov, as it coincided with the blood loss finally taking its toll and his collapse on the reverse slope of the small hillock on which his command post had been situated. A swift order to halt and Alexei was out of the tank, running for all he was worth towards the prone form of his commander. Both men had been together since the first bloody days of 11th Mechanised Corps and had been drawn closer by shared hardships and loss, as had many comrades of all nations in those difficult years. Fortunately, the lee of the hillock isolated Gurundov from observation but the shells were still a problem.
If it had been the other way round things might have been different, for Gurundov was a bear of a man and Yarishlov was slender. Swept up on the shoulder, Yarishlov was carried from the field like a roll of carpet, with the safety of the wood reached just before enemy infantry stormed the now abandoned command post. One sharp-eyed SS trooper put a few shots after the pair but nothing came really close and Yarishlov was hauled up on top of the tank by willing hands.
The T34 set off along the track once more.
Eventually the tank made it back to the next defensive position and the crew took a break, not before they placed their wounded comrade in the hands of the medical service.
Arkady was very weak from loss of blood but had regained consciousness during the escape, not enough to talk but enough to listen and certainly enough to drink thirstily from the proffered canteen. He had remained laid on the top of the turret being held in place by Gurundov as the tank had bounced along in its search for safety.
As Gurundov laid Arkady on the stretcher their eyes met, held and unspoken words went between them. Unspoken words of comradeship, love, thanks, fear, hope, and warning.
The only words that came were Alexei’s.
“Take care old friend,” as he touched Arkady’s shoulder and stepped back to let the medic’s do their work.
Within three hours, Alexei Gurundov and his crew were statistics, another tank crew immolated in the pursuit of victory. In their case, destroyed by the arrival of a large calibre artillery shell which landed in their laps as they sat at rest, away from the front line. Their tank was found flipped over, decorated with a grisly mulch of human remains, but was soon recovered and fought on later. The men were never found; four more sons of the Rodina forever lost.
The verbal report given by the departed Gurundov and corroboration by the Starshina of the Mortar Company and Kapitan of the anti-tank unit were enough to ensure Arkady received one of his country’s most meaningful bravery awards.
Gurundov’s death was not known to Yarishlov until the day Major Petrenko visited him in hospital to inform him of his award. Had it been done more sensitively then perhaps, just possibly, Yarishlov would have taken it better but Petrenko threw the titbit of information at Arkady as he started to leave, turning the pride at the recognition of his actions into the abyss of sadness associated with the loss of a close comrade. Petrenko was never one to endear himself to those around him and under him but he excelled himself that day, and would have paled had he read Arkady’s mind as he walked out of the hospital.
One week later to the hour, Captain Yarishlov was presented with his award by no lesser person than the Bryansk Front Commander, General Maks Andreevich Reiter. He was one of a number of soldiers honoured at the ceremony, some front line swine like himself, others rear-echelon personnel who got their piece of metal for who they knew, not what they had achieved. That was and is the same in armies all over the world and will never change.
Of Arkady’s rearguard force, only four men were left alive. Himself and the Starshina of mortars who would never fight again, leastways not until the Rodina needed one legged-soldiers desperately. The gunner’s Kapitan and one seventeen year old anti-tank soldier were also on the line of recipients.
The Latvian Starshina, Artur Gaudins, got his in hospital just outside Belgorod and he felt it was a fair exchange all said and done. His leg for a shiny award and the promise of continued life with his family away from the horrors of the front.
Anti-tank gunner Kapitan Yuri Lapanski proudly received his award from his Corps Commander and posed for Pravda photographs looking every bit the Soviet Model soldier the day before he coughed his life out, struck in both lungs by fragments from a short round fired by friendly artillery.
The younger man, one Boris Orlov, revelled in his award and the celebrity status which accompanied it, for few anti-tank gunners survived after killing a German tank or two, and certainly a gunner who had been the sole server of his weapon and still managed to slay seven armoured vehicles was unheard of. He rode his luck for most of the war, strangely failing to destr
oy another enemy vehicle despite being in numerous actions, and died impaled on the bayonet of a teenage paratrooper during a vigorous German counter attack in East Prussia in ‘45.
Arkady mused; all those thoughts inspired by the simplest gaze at a piece of treasured metal.
So, many dead comrades later, Arkady and his troops now rested on the quiet outskirts of sleepy Springe in Lower Saxony, directly opposite their erstwhile American allies, enjoying their occupation duties in the homeland of those that had done so much harm on their own native soil.
And so now he stood ready for his meeting with those same Americans. He was to be shown the manoeuvrings of a US armored division and, as his American hosts would hope, be impressed with the projection of power it represented, and, as his commanders would hope, gather useful information on unit strengths, personnel capabilities and tactical weaknesses.
Perversely, Arkady had first-hand knowledge of the Americans tanks from lend-lease. Britain, Canada and the United States had provided his country with tanks and vehicles in order to carry the fight to the Germans whilst the Western Allies did little by way of direct action. He had had a Sherman knocked out from underneath him by a panzerfaust, so he was painfully aware of their weaknesses, not as painfully as the members of his crew who would bear the scars and torture of their burns until their final day. Generally, American tanks burned very well.
Before more memories flooded over him, Arkady left his room and walked to the waiting staff car for the drive to Paderborn.
Regard your soldiers as your children,
And they will follow you into the deepest valleys.
Look on them as your own beloved sons,
And they will stand by you even unto death!
Sun Tzu
Chapter 21 – THE HERO
0655 hrs Monday, 23rd July 1945, Former SS Panzer Training Centre, Paderborn, US Occupied Germany.
He was the genuine article.
Major John Ramsey VC, DSO and 2 bars, MC and bar was a real gold-plated military hero, much loved by his country and his men. His country loved him from the first moment he had come to their attention.
Leading his Scottish infantry in the Western Desert in a desperate yet successful defence of a forward position at El Alamein against counter-attacking Italians, he earned his first Military Cross for leadership and personal bravery a hundred times over. It was followed swiftly by his first Distinguished Service Order, awarded for the successful repulsing of German infantry assaults at Wadi Akarit. His men loved him because he was a superb leader, genuinely concerned for each and every soldier under his command and keen to bring every one back home in one piece, whilst knowing that he would never do so. He asked his boys to do nothing he wouldn’t do himself and more than one of his jocks owed their life to him, whether they were dragged back wounded from exposed positions or preserved by a timely intervention in the heat of combat.
A bar to his MC arrived in the mountains of Sicily, the second award of a DSO during the night attack at the Gerbini railway station* in Sicily and his third award of DSO for actions under fire during the action at Hives during the Battle of the Bulge.
There was a school of thought amongst his peers that Ramsey should have been the first triple holder of the VC, but that award fell to him only once, earned superbly at the cost of a quartet of minor wounds in the gutter fighting that was the Reichswald assault. He destroyed two MG42 positions with grenades and killed the three surviving gunners with nothing more than a commando knife as his Sten gun had been smashed by a round when he charged forward. He would have gladly traded that award and all the others for the lives of the nine young men of his command that those machine-guns had claimed that February afternoon at Hekkens.
His solid and athletic twenty-five year old frame had sustained a score of wounds on battlefields from Europe to Africa, through the Mediterranean and back to Europe, both before and after the French occupation.
When the dark cloud of war fell over Europe in 1939 he was a young officer newly arrived with his unit, and it was not long before he took them off to fight in France. Since then, and the miracle escape from that conquered land, Ramsey had been constantly in action in theatres across the spectrum of combat and had received more wounds and injuries than most could cope with and he cared to remember, but he always healed fast so he was soon back in the thick of it all.
His final knock was at the hands of a fourteen year old Bund Deutsche Madel sniper on the road to Bremerhaven, whose efforts rewarded Ramsey with a wound that bled like a hosepipe along with a cracked collarbone, and brought the fanatical German girl an instant and violent Valhalla in the shape of vengeful Scottish bayonets.
Since that last action in Nordenham, Ramsey had been on the mend and his unit withdrawn from serious action, facing only minor skirmishes with remnants of hardcore Germans. Skirmishes still deadly enough to put two of his good friends in early graves for no great purpose.
Now he was to return to his unit in sufficient time to be reacquainted with his boys, prior to their returning home to Blighty for garrison duties in Edinburgh and possible subsequent redeployment to Palestine or Greece.
Himself a regular soldier, Ramsey would remain in the post-war army and, by dint of his many decorations, no doubt carve an illustrious career and achieve the highest ranks. A date at the Palace for the investiture of the Victoria Cross was to come but the ribbon sat proudly on his chest, as was his right.
However, for now all he wanted was to be back home and spend some time with his family in the peaceful Berkshire countryside and the opportunity to discover exactly what the freedom of the borough meant in his home village of Hungerford.
In the meantime, there were other duties and so he made sure he was immaculately turned out for the tiresome yank tank display, to which he was committed for the entire day because of the absence of his CO in Bruxelles.
Still, he thought going home would come soon enough.
Somehow our devils are never quite what we expect when we meet them face to face.
Nelson DeMille
Chapter 22 – THE BROTHERHOOD
1430 hrs Monday, 23rd July 1945, Former SS Panzer Training grounds, Paderborn, British Occupied Germany.
Without putting too fine a point on it, most officers there had probably already seen enough tanks to last a hatful of lifetimes. None the less, here they were basking in the sun on the top of a steep hill in the middle of German nowhere, watching the ‘15th US Armored Division’ exercise, and had been since 1115 hrs precisely.
From a distance, the casual observer would just see a bunch of soldiers, lacking in animation, with some more bored than others. However, closer up even the uninitiated would be able to see different uniforms and realise that officers of a number of nations were gathered together.
The exercise was American run, despite the location being in the British-held portion of Germany, and so the greater number were clearly US officers, mostly from other units as the relatively inexperienced members of “15th Armored” struggled not to make fools of themselves in front of people who had actually done it all under fire on more than one occasion.
Occupying the top of the hill was the young US Senior Officer, a Major General, holding court with a Soviet Army General of Cavalry old enough to be his father. Both had their entourages in place, alternating between making positive sounds to anyone who was in earshot and pouring coffee from huge flasks sat next to the largest mountain of sandwiches anyone had seen this side of the invasion of Poland. As in all these things, there were sycophants and kiss-asses plying their trade, but there were also some serious officers there wishing to learn, or at least observe the exercise properly.
The first scenario had been a hasty attack against a fortified hillock well defended by anti-tank guns, infantry, and artillery. Experienced observers from the US, UK and Russia conceded that the attack had gone reasonably well and might even have triumphed had there been real lead and explosive in the air.
The second
exercise was nothing short of a shambles to all except the Divisional Commander and his staff, and the Russian cavalry general for that matter, or so it seemed. In the first instance, any fool could see that gathering tanks in one place, open to observation as they were, would just invite a barrage of artillery in short order. The umpires had a field day with that part. Even if that had not happened, then the choice of attacking up and over a small but pronounced ridge was not sound, as it displayed tender hull floors to any anti-tank weapon in the vicinity. More vehicles were removed at this point.
“At least the umpires are competent” was the acid aside from a British Brigadier, whose insignia indicated that he had his roots in a distinguished cavalry regiment and now had a command in 11th Armoured Division.
To be frank, it was embarrassing. The route the US Regimental commander had selected was nothing short of madness, as even the observers on the hill could see the ground turned to a marsh by a weekend of heavy rain. Sure enough, a large number of tanks bogged down, including the presentation company comprising the latest M26 Pershings.
Another of these vehicles was positioned at the bottom of the observer’s hill so that they could study it close up and even get in it if they chose, via the set of wooden steps provided. Two young Soviet junior officers were already taking in every detail, inside and out, and would submit a comprehensive report upon their return. A number of the staff officers chose to have photos taken standing in the commander’s cupola, already mentally shooting a line to their friends stateside about their time rampaging across the German countryside sweeping all before them.
The third exercise had apparently been planned as an armoured wedge attack but it would never start unless the debacle of the second attack was sorted out, and no one seemed in a position to get to grips with it.