by Gee, Colin
One of his own men cartwheeled dramatically away, the top of his head distorted by the impact of a bullet fired from vengeful Americans who had witnessed the massacre of the assault party.
Another wounded engineer was dragged into cover before both sides recommenced a steady exchange of fire at distance.
Suddenly feeling his own aches and pains, Chekov examined himself. A lump had been taken out of his right calf. Painful now the adrenalin was abating, but no more than that.
The pain in his hip was worse and required him to drop his waist belt to examine the area.
His PPSH had been struck by a grenade fragment and the wound in his hip was actually caused by splinters from the sub-machine gun’s wooden stock. He pulled out three obvious ones and felt instant relief, but the sharp stabs of pain told him there were more present.
His PPSH was of no use, neither was his Tokarev, as he had no more ammunition for it.
Looking around he took up the rifle and bayonet his recent attacker had carried.
With no qualms, he grabbed the legs of the body lying half in, half out of the water and dragged it ashore, undoing the belt containing its ammo and trying to remember how to use the impressive weapon. Loading an eight round clip, he shouldered the rifle and moved around his bloodied engineers getting reports, encouraging the living and noting the dead.
Smina was in pain but he reasoned that at least he was alive to feel it.
He dragged himself up on a sandbag position, gritted his teeth and surveyed the scene of his attack. Dead American’s were everywhere, his assault force’s only fatal casualty lying peacefully at rest, arms strangely but neatly folded where he had been dropped by a rifle bullet.
Smina nodded at the man’s corpse, acknowledging the man’s bravery in the attack and promising the stilled heart that he would recommend him for the valour award he deserved for his actions.
The sun was rising and the Kapitan turned his face upwards and smiled, half in wonder at seeing a new sunrise and half in pleasure at ensuring his men escaped.
His smile was not well received by his enemy.
“What the fuck are you smiling about you bastard?”
Smina did not speak a word of English but he didn’t need to, understanding by the tone alone that his last sunrise had come.
The 1st Lieutenant who until recently had commanded the mortar platoon of C Coy 330th Infantry had survived his men, but only just.
Dragging himself upright and with blood running freely from his shattered left arm, he unbuckled his holster and walked slowly over to the wounded Russian.
“Smile at this you murdering son of a fucking bitch.”
The first bullet was enough but he discharged all seven to assuage his anger.
0512 hrs Saturday, 11th August 1945, Exen, south of Trendelburg, Germany.
Brennan’s 1st and 3rd Platoons were rounded up by a platoon of Guardsmen from the 12th Guards Motorcycle Battalion and chivvied along at the point of a bayonet.
The Mladshy-Leytenant in command selected a brick outhouse on the west side of Exen and directed his men to secure the prisoners inside.
The space would probably have comfortably housed a dozen men but thirty-nine survivors were shoehorned into the derelict structure, the wounded, as well as the fit.
Leaving a section of twelve men to guard them, he took the rest off to perform a tragic duty.
Quickly they buried the twenty-one dead that his 3rd Company had suffered during the assault on Exen, including the company commander, an extremely popular officer, his friend, and the unit’s female radio operator, his lover.
He spoke words of farewell over the graves of his comrades and then spoke no more. Taking up a flamethrower, he strapped it on and transformed the derelict building and its human contents into a sea of fire.
As both screams and flames rose higher, his shocked men watched as he cried and, stricken with grief, blew his own brains out.
0512 hrs Saturday,11th August. Trendelburg, Germany.
Chekov was now in a desperate position, under attack from both sides. On the positive side was the fact that his infantry comrades were nearly up to his positions on the east side of the river, the SP guns firing in direct support. On the other side, the battle was obviously hotting up on the west side of the town but he was under increasing pressure from the engineer enemy and what appeared to be infantry reinforcements.
As he watched the east bank, one of the SP’s took a hit on its flank, followed by three others that transformed it into scrap metal and immolated the crew.
The SP’s oriented to face the threat from the other side of the river and the support they offered was temporarily lost.
However, some of the Siberians pressed forward and linked up with his troops on the east bank.
None the less, the situation remained grim there as the enemy launched a determined counter-attack at the same time.
Whether coordinated or not, the west side increased its rate of fire and more Americans swept forward. Small calibre mortar shells had been landing in and around the Soviet position for some time now but these stopped for fear of causing friendly casualties.
A vehicle, the like of which Chekov had previously only seen from a distance, rattled round the corner immediately opposite the bridge and the world exploded.
Such vehicles had been supplied to the Red Army under lend-lease, but he had never seen them in action and certainly never been on the receiving end.
The quad .50cal mount was being used to good effect, eating away at the edge of the rise where his men were in cover. In horror the Lieutenant Colonel watched as the heavy calibre bullet stream chewed the earth and stone apart, reducing the cover to a nothing in seconds, moving on to savage the soft flesh beyond.
Within a heartbeat, five of his men were transformed into bloodied lumps of meat by the deadly fire.
The lethal gun mount switched to the other side of the road and repeated its butcher’s work there.
Chekov’s shocked engineers recoiled from the attack, ceding the edge of the rise to the attackers and, in doing so, placing themselves in the utmost danger.
Chekov acted quickly.
He had seen the Garand used when his unit had a shooting competition with some American troops during the celebrations in May, a contest his troops had won very convincingly. It was then he had seen the loading process he had already performed. However, each weapon has its own distinct characteristics, which he would have to learn in combat.
He pulled the unfamiliar weapon into his shoulder and took aim at the fraction of the halftrack gunner that he could see.
Discharging the rifle’s eight rounds completely he shouted to his surviving men.
“Prepare Grenades!”
Those retaining their senses grabbed grenades and readied themselves.
The fire from the AA halftrack had stopped but only because the ammunition had run out. Chekov had missed his target.
However, the loaders were vulnerable and he fumbled for another clip as he watched the assault wave close.
He caught an inexperienced finger as he pushed down, yelping as metal sliced flesh. The shock and surprise more than the pain caused him to drop the eight round charger on the muddy ground.
He reached for another, successfully drove it home and brought the weapon up.
Some of the attackers saw him too and bullets sprayed from frightened running men with heaving chests, all inaccurate, and Chekov remained unscathed.
However, a rifleman at a window supporting the attack, was better placed and fired a bullet that struck Chekov’s left arm. Fortunately for the Lieutenant Colonel, it was an M1 Carbine, which penetrated without doing major damage.
“Grenades, throw!”
His men launched their explosives up and into the assault force, causing carnage.
Despite his arm wound, Chekov managed to get off aimed shots at the reloading crew and dropped one to the floor of the halftrack.
His men regained the edge
of the rise and fired into the surviving attackers, receiving casualties in turn from the supporting infantry.
The bodies were mounting up and nothing was being gained by either side.
The AA halftrack backed off, probably to re-ammo out of sight.
A few Americans reached the defenders and again desperate close fighting ensued.
One American with a Thompson sub-machine gun was felled by a single shot from across the river. Chekov quickly turned to see a casual wave from a grinning Starshina Neltsin who chambered another round in his Mosin-Nagant rifle and turned back to his own problems once more.
One bloodied US Corporal continued gouging out the eyes of the unit’s youngest soldier, even as others were bayoneting and hacking at him with spades.
He fell dead onto his blinded enemy, the young boy screaming with pain and fear as they dragged the mangled corpse off him.
The combination of Siberians and engineers on the east side of the bridge were heavily engaged by infantry, both American and German from reports.
Chekov’s position was precarious, as it seemed that the south-west prong of the assault had been blunted and the southeastern thrust was heavily engaged.
One moment of relief was brought when an ISU-152 spotted the returning AA halftrack. The vehicle had fired less than a second’s burst before it and the crew were struck by a heavy 152mm shell, flesh and metal being converted to small pieces and driven sideways and backwards into the adjacent house, causing further casualties amongst the infantry firing from there.
His position on the east bank was now in great jeopardy, as two M5 Stuart light tanks and a half-track rushed into sight.
More Siberian infantrymen had siphoned up the bank into the defence but it seemed only a matter of time before the position was broken.
Chekov thought the situation through. He had to hold no matter what.
Looking at the heavy self-propelled guns, he worked the problem.
‘The ISU’s can’t engage the enemy light tanks but it is the infantry that is more of a threat.’
In that he was wrong but didn’t realise it at that moment.
‘Obviously the enemy wants the bridge intact too or mortars and artillery would be falling on their heads.’
‘Can’t radio the ISU’s to fire at the enemy positions on the west bank and they obviously won’t fire unless they have a recognised target.’
A soaked engineer Kaporal interrupted his thought process.
“Comrade Lieutenant Colonel, the enemy have been driven back once more but we are very low on ammunition. Leytenant Munin has stripped our dead and that of the enemy for weapons and ammunition but he says it is unlikely that we can hold another attack.”
There was little to be said by way of positive response.
Gripping the Kaporal’s shoulder, he responded with all he had to give.
“Tell Leytenant Munin that the rest of our battalion is on its way. We have but to hold for another quarter of an hour clear?”
“Yes Comrade Lieutenant Colonel, clear.”
“Go back now and thank you Comrade.”
The Kaporal rushed back to the river and dived headlong into it, returning to pass on the news of impending relief.
Chekov hated himself for it, for he doubted that the rest of his unit would arrive within that time scale. As it happened, they were already over the river and had been sent into the fighting south-west of Trendelburg, where the Americans had been more than holding their own.
Returning to his thoughts, he concluded that, barring a miracle, there was little to prevent the loss of his command and the bridge.
‘If only the radio had not been lost in the river, maybe…..’
Standing upright, he tugged down his tunic, ending such self-pitying thoughts.
Speaking aloud he summoned his inner-strength.
“You are a Lieutenant Colonel in the Red Army. Now act like one.”
He laughed and summoned a nearby Yefreytor, instructing the man to get a section together to strip arms and ammunition from friend and enemy alike, ready for the next assault.
Colonel Serov had moved forward from Stammen, too far forward for his staff’s liking, and was now perched on the edge of the heights some two hundred metres north-west of Stammer.
From there he could add visual images to the flow of reports that were bombarding his staff, or more precisely add visual images ruined by the heavy rain, which was still descending unabated.
Behind him, to the southeast, lay the detritus of a destroyed enemy AA unit, all done with the silent edged weapons carried by his Siberian troops.
Clearly a lot was going wrong on the west bank and he had spent a few heated minutes on the radio to the commander of the bridging engineers near Seilen to ensure the tanks could get across very soon. The Kapitan of Engineers understood what was at stake for the army, and was now under no illusions as to what was at stake for him personally.
Sweeping the battlefield, Serov was appalled to see American tanks on the Deiselberg Rise taking his troops under fire in the valley below, although he appreciated the fact that they were not deploying to Trendelburg, which might have caused serious problems.
None the less, it was hard on the Guards and Penal troops, who had already suffered greatly at the hands of enemy AA weapons in the valley.
He had been able to help with removing that force and the destruction of a nearby enemy anti-tank unit by use of some well placed artillery.
Soon he hoped to have some airpower to back up his under-pressure force.
Moving his glasses and scanning Trendelburg his eyes were drawn to its most noticeable landmark, the Rapunzel Tower, which was aflame after receiving the attention of one of his ISU gunners.
He could not see the bridge, obscured as it was by smoke, but that smoke meant that someone was still fighting and he knew that Chekov would not let him down.
The infantry of 1st Battalion, 1323rd Rifles had taken murderous casualties from enemy mortars and then dug-in infantry south-east of the bridge.
The mortars seemed to have switched their fire elsewhere for now and the enemy infantry had been driven back but 1st Battalion was a spent force.
One unit of SP’s from 2nd/399th had been ordered to take the American armour west of the river under fire, the other to proceed on orders to cover the approaches from the east.
That latter unit had recently reported that they had crushed an American counter-attack on the heights to his northeast.
Guards motorcycle troops and the 3rd Battalion of Siberians had overrun American units on the heights and joined battle with another enemy infantry group in the woods on the northern edge of the heights.
They had been attacked on their eastern flank by American light tanks and half-tracks, which were repulsed.
Serov assumed this was the same attack driven off as reported by the SP’s of 2nd/399th.
He had edged his reserves forwards, but had already committed the Engineer-Sappers to get over the river and help drive into Trendelburg.
That left him with 3rd/399th’s ISU-152’s and the infantry of 2nd Btn/1323rd Rifles.
He hated not having anything left in his bag but there was no choice as 1st Battalion simply did not have the strength any more.
“Order the 2nd Rifle Battalion to advance at top speed into Trendelburg to support the bridge defenders, keeping to the east bank at all times. Order C Company of the 11th Guards Tanks to drive at high speed to support 3rd Battalion. Warn both about the enemy tanks at Deiselberg.”
He waited as the Kapitan finished taking his notes.
“Order 3rd/399th to move up to….” Serov stepped back under the rough shelter his staff had erected and camouflaged, grabbing the edge of the map table, his finger prescribing the river shape, ending up at the bulge two hundred metres south of Trendelburg, “Here, and engage the Amerikanisti at Deiselberg.”
Pausing for a second, he added.
“Tell them also to be aware of friendly tanks fro
m 11th Guards coming up on the east bank. No accidents.”
The Kapitan saluted and moved to the radio operator. The messages were relayed in good time and Serov received a report that all units were moving as he stood desperately probing the smoke with his binoculars.
‘Where is Chekov?’
Major Brennan and the survivors of A Company had collectively held their breath as enemy infantry and armour moved past them on all sides.
The huge SP guns, although they come closest of all, failed to realise they had driven through the hiding place of a large number of desperate men.
Forty-eight desperate men to be precise.
Holding a quick meeting with Brown, Finch, and Collins, the matter was laid out in easily understood terms.
There would be no surrender.
Equally, it was pointless to stay and fight for a position already behind enemy lines.
It was swiftly decided that safety lay the other side of the Diemel River.
Mortar Platoon had the means after all and three usable dinghies were ready to be dragged from under their camouflage.
The half-tracks would be left in place after being wrecked, an escape on foot being most likely to succeed.
A heated exchange on the perimeter behind them interrupted their conversation.
Collins stepped off smartly to sort it out whilst the officers continued.
Brown was finger tracing his suggested route to the river when he became aware of the look on his Major’s face. Following the direction of Brennan’s gaze he saw Caesar, or rather Caesar looking like he had never looked before.
For once, the man seemed lost for words.
There was no time for sensitivity and so Brennan prompted the man.
“Go on Caesar?”
They sensed that Collins was composing himself, which made the three officers very wary indeed.
“Two boys from 3rd Platoon just blundered past and we pulled them in quick. Seems they have a story to tell Major.”