Devil's Guard- The Complete Series Box Set
Page 24
“Don’t be crazy, they’d shoot us full of holes if we tried to cross the lines in this noisy thing. We’re on a straightforward recon mission, Haupt, we’re not even taking the half-track with us.”
“Alright, you can go forward. There’s a Russian position about three hundred metres in front of us, if you go straight ahead you’ll run straight into them.”
“We’re not going straight ahead,” Irina said.
He looked at her keenly. “A woman?”
“Have you never seen one before?” she asked caustically. “If you men are finished chatting we need to make a start. If we’re not well behind their front lines by dawn we’ll be in trouble.”
The officer raised his eyebrows and looked at me.
“She’s a local,” I said with a shrug.
We dismounted from the half-track and Irina led us forward, striding along confidently in the darkness of the steppe. Within a hundred metres we dropped into a culvert, it was heavily overgrown and we stumbled along out of sight of the enemy. They called them balkas in Russian, the ravines, dried up riverbeds that littered the steppes, some shallow, and some deep enough to swallow a regiment of Panzers. After another hundred metres Irina stopped.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“Russian sentry, he’s about thirty metres ahead. Can’t you smell the pig? He hasn’t bathed for months! He’s smoking Russian tobacco, it’s called mahorka, smells like a garden bonfire.”
Was she serious? I sniffed the air and sure enough the faint, rank smell of unwashed human body overlaid by the pungent stench of the Russian tobacco smoke assaulted my nostrils. I turned to the men.
“Willy, there’s a sentry up ahead, take Bauer with you in case there are two of them. Knives only, no shooting, for God’s sake!”
He nodded and signalled for Stefan Bauer to accompany him. We waited quietly while they slipped forward. After an agonising ten minutes, Mundt called out softly in the dark.
“It’s Mundt, we’re coming in.”
They materialised quietly out of the darkness.
“All ok?”
He nodded. “No problems, there were two of them, we dragged the bodies together and put their bayonets in their hands as if they’d been fighting.”
It was feeble, but it might confuse the enemy for a short time.
“Well done. Irina, take the lead, let’s move on.”
She knew the ground well, we were able to move along balkas and paths that were less muddy and better hidden than those that the military would use. Most of the ground around us was little more than quagmires waiting to trap those men and their machines that dared to try and traverse them. We saw the occasional vehicle that had been left stuck in the mud for later retrieval.
“In Finnish, they call this season rospuutto, it literally means roadlessness,” she said quietly.
“I’ll bear it in mind if I ever visit Finland, Miss Rakevsky.”
She smiled. “You may call me Irina, Obersturmfuhrer.”
“In that case you must call me Jurgen, Obersturmfuhrer is much too military for a pretty girl like you.”
Did she blush? I couldn’t be sure, but she quickly looked away and concentrated on the path ahead. We made good time and I estimated we’d covered around thirty kilometres on a northeast heading. We’d find somewhere to lie up during daylight, watch the enemy, and try to assess their strength. Tomorrow night we would head back and attempt to find at least one Soviet officer to take back with us for interrogation. Then we could cross back south of Belgorod. It sounded so easy, and perhaps it would be, for once. We found a natural place to make camp. It was in a shallow bowl at the top of a low ridge that would give us a good view across many miles of the open steppe. Dawn was breaking by the time we were all inside cover. I took the first watch and took out my binoculars to watch for enemy movements, that was when the cavalry came.
Willy Mundt saw them first. “Cossacks,” he hissed.
I didn’t need to give the order, we all ducked low, but clearly something had alerted them, they’d probably seen movement before we were all properly hidden. There were six horsemen, no, seven, one of them had a woman riding behind him. They approached from the north, the slope was steep and rocky making it impossible for horses to climb up to where we sheltered. They dismounted and the woman tethered their horses to a tangle of bushes while the men drew their sabres and started to climb, slashing the foliage out of the way as they came up. They looked magnificent, wearing dark blue breeches tucked into knee-high riding boots, standard Soviet pattern baggy brown tunics and dark grey Cossack Astrakhan hats. More worrying than the sabres, they carried PPSh sub-machine guns slung over their backs. A development of the older PP type, Georgi Shpagin had designed the new weapon for use by untrained conscript soldiers. The PPSh mounted a drum magazine loaded with the shorter 7.62mm pistol round. They were appearing in huge numbers on the Eastern Front, at close range they had proved to be devastating. The Cossacks came within close range and we could see their features distinctly. They all had large and fierce moustaches, some had beards, with dark-skinned weather-beaten faces. They looked magnificent, men who were born to make war. Mundt looked at me with his eyebrows raised and whispered.
“Any ideas, Sir?”
“Do all of the men have pistols?”
He nodded.
“We might just get away with a few pistol shots but if the enemy hears automatic fire they’ll be all over us.”
Our MP38s were fine weapons, like the PPSh they were also devastating at close quarters, but they differed from the Soviet weapon in that they had no single shot capability. All that was needed was a heavy finger on the trigger and the gun would blaze away all thirty-two rounds until the magazine was empty. Mundt spoke to the men quietly. “Pistols only, knives if we get close enough but I doubt we’ll get past those sabres. Try and take your target out with a single shot. What about the woman?” he nodded at the woman at the bottom of the slope, tending the horses.
“I will take her,” Irina said, touching her jacket where her huge combat knife lay hidden.
“Very well, let’s do it. We need to wait until they almost trip over us. If we miss one and he uses his PPSh we’re done for. Wait for me to shoot first.”
We crouched low, keeping out of sight. Each of us holding a pistol, mine was a Walther PPK 9mm. I noticed that Voss had a Luger Parabellum, an expensive weapon normally carried only by more senior officers. I idly wondered where he had looted it from, but I didn’t care, only that it fired when it mattered. We were covered in mud from the night’s journey and the foliage hid us well so they didn’t see us at first. They were swishing the bushes with their sabres, but not very intently, they obviously doubted that they would find anyone. One of them came up and stood only a metre away, sheathed his sword, unbuttoned his fly and started to piss almost on top of me. He was obviously having happy thoughts, perhaps about the previous night with an attractive woman. It would be his last. His eyes caught sight of something strange, his brow wrinkled in puzzlement, then he squinted and suddenly realised he was looking at a man, a soldier. He grabbed for his sabre with one hand, trying to tuck his cock back inside his trousers with the other. I shot him in the heart, I wasn’t confident of a headshot at the sharp upward angle. Simultaneously five further shots rang out and the six Cossacks all collapsed to the ground. Two of them were still alive, one started to cry out but Mundt and Bauer had their combat knives ready, they swiftly knelt down and their knives slashed across the two throats, the Russians sagged to the ground lifeless. I could see Irina sprinting down the slope towards the woman who tended the horses. She was standing still, looking up at what had happened to the Cossacks. She was undoubtedly in shock and didn’t respond to the woman crashing down the slope and just watched as Irina hurtled towards her. Even when she saw the raised combat knife she didn’t move, our Ukrainian guide reached her and held her tightly. I looked around at the scene of bloody carnage.
“They’re all dead,” Mundt s
aid. “We’ve been looking around for signs of the enemy, but I think you were right, a few pistol shots will most likely go unnoticed.”
I looked at the bodies, the magnificent, outlandish costumes, covering the lifeless corpses inside. Wesserman was gathering up the sabres and Voss their PPSh sub-machine guns. I spoke to Mundt.
“I’d better see how Irina is doing with that woman, Willy. Do you know anything about horses?”
He grinned. “I spent my summer holidays on a family farm, yes, I know my way around horses. What are we going to do about them, they’re not easy to hide?”
“I’ve no idea, probably hide the saddles and let the horses loose, come and take a look at them.”
We climbed carefully down the slope and walked over to Irina who was standing with the other woman, speaking in Russian, I assumed.
“What’s going on?” I asked her. “I thought you were going to kill her.”
“There’s no need, Jurgen. She was a prisoner, they took her three days ago and used her as their whore. She was smiling when she realised that we were killing them all.”
I looked her over, she was pretty too, no wonder the Cossacks had abducted her. Her features were not as fine and delicate as Irina’s, she was slightly larger and heavier, but still very attractive. Her hair was blonde, her eyes blue, a genuine Slavic maiden.
“Does she speak any German?”
Irina shook her head. “Only Russian and some Ukrainian. I told her we wouldn’t kill her.”
I nodded. “Of course not, provided that what she told you is true.”
She shot me a venomous look. “I have told you the truth.”
“Yes, but has she?”
She didn’t reply.
“We’d better get back up the slope and out of sight,” I continued. “I’ll send two of my troopers down to deal with the horses.”
“What will you do with them?”
Two of the men wanted to take the horses and disguise ourselves as Cossacks so that we could cover the ground quickly on the way back. I told them to forget it. In the end Mundt and Bauer went down to remove the saddles, and set the horses loose. They were local Panjes, better than the horses we brought in from Western Europe which were not able to last for long in the sub-zero conditions found in Russia. These shaggy, hardy Russian Panjes proved indispensable to both armies for transport in bad weather and as mounts for cavalry. Many of our larger horses had died from the cold, but these native breeds could survive in the open at almost any temperature. I shuddered to think of six German soldiers racing around behind enemy lines in broad daylight dressed as Cossacks, especially if we were caught. The Russians were tough enough on captured SS soldiers, but dressed in their own uniforms would mean an immediate bullet in the back of the head. I watched the two women talking quietly to each other.
“Irina, we need to send this woman back to her own people.”
“Her name is Alina Gordievsky, Jurgen. Of course she would like to get back to her people. We were just discussing it. Her home is a small village of west of Kharkov, she was taken during a raid.”
It was not unusual, the Cossacks had an almost free run of the territory during the harsh winter and the rasputitza that followed, they roamed the steppes with impunity, secure in the knowledge that pursuit was impossible. They would sweep in suddenly, often hundreds of them in huge formations, killing and looting and then disappear as quickly as they came.
“So she needs to get back across the front lines, you’re suggesting she comes with us, aren’t you?”
“Of course. What else can she do?”
“Very well, but make certain she keeps out of our way and out of sight until it’s time to go.”
As the day wore on, we took it in turns to either sleep or observe the broad steppe below us, we could see for ten kilometres to the north and east. What we saw was enough to take back to our intelligence people. In the distance tanks were on the move, hundreds of them, probably T34s, although they were too far away to be certain. There were teams of people digging tank traps and tank pits to hide tanks and artillery, half-buried in the earth where they could be used as defensive positions to shoot at enemy tanks with relative impunity. Some parts of the steppe were bare of enemy vehicles, just hundred of men working with shovels. Minefields, without a doubt! They knew that we were coming as soon as the rasputitza ended, that much was transparently clear. I was on watch as darkness started to fall and I woke Mundt.
“Willy, get the men moving. We’ve seen enough, this place is a death trap. If we can collect a prisoner on the way back our mission will be complete.”
He smiled. “So all we need is to find a Soviet General to make our masters happy, is that what you’re saying, Sir?”
“No, Willy. I’m sure a Colonel would be sufficient.”
He grunted. “They may have to be happy with a Lieutenant.”
“Provided that it’s another of Stalin’s sons, he would no doubt suffice,” I replied drily.
Lieutenant Yakov Dzhugashvili, Josef Stalin’s eldest son, was taken prisoner in Smolensk during the early days of Barbarossa when our German forces overran western parts of the Soviet Union. He’d been held since then in Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp until the news had emerged that he’d been killed, apparently shot while trying to escape.
“Has he got any more sons?” Mundt asked with interest.
I laughed. “I wouldn’t count on it, my friend. Let’s content ourselves with a senior officer.”
As darkness fell we started to make our way back to the crossing point, fifteen kilometres south of Belgorod. At first the going was easy, Irina kept us out of the worst of the mud although we were still plastered with it. We almost ran into a Soviet encampment, a regiment of tanks were positioned across the track we’d used the previous night, the crews were working to camouflage them with huge nets stretched over each tank. Cossacks were dragging bushes and branches behind their horses, delivering them to the crews who threaded it through the netting. It explained why our reconnaissance flights had been unable to detect the enemy positions.
“I know a path that leads around this place,” Irina whispered. “It means we will have to cross a shallow river.”
She led us away from the camp, into a narrow balka that hid us and we detoured for two kilometres to the south before we were able to continue west again reaching the river, it was about twenty metres wide.
“How deep is it, do you think?”
“About a metre, no more. During the dry season it is completely empty. It is...”
I told her to be quiet and whispered to the men to be still. Irina murmured to Alina and held her arm. I could hear footsteps, pebbles being kicked aside as someone came nearer. A sentry? The sound of voices reached us, two men. A match flared and they both lit cigarettes, they were nearer now and we could hear their voices. Irina whispered to me. “They are talking about whether to build a hidden bridge under the surface of the river that their tanks could use to counterattack.”
So they had to be officers, or at least one of them was. These would have to do.
“Scharfuhrer,” I murmured to Mundt. “We’ll take these two. Tell the men not to shoot, we’ll jump them as they come past.”
He nodded.
We spread out above the riverbank, invisible in the dark. As the two Russians walked past chatting happily to each other, we launched ourselves at them. Two troopers dragged each of them to the ground with a hand clamped over their mouths and a combat knife at their throats. Irina ran over and spoke to them urgently.
“It is alright, they understand that if they try to make any noise they will be killed, your men can let them up.”
I nodded to Mundt and the two Soviets were allowed to get to their feet, their uniforms covered in mud from the riverbank. One was a major, the other a lieutenant. It was enough, if they were discussing a bridge they were almost certainly combat engineers, they should have a wealth of information for our intelligence section to extract from them.
They searched the two Soviets until they found strips of cloth, shabby white winter camouflage hoods that were stowed in their packs, they wrapped them around their mouths as gags. We had to take the lanyards from their pistols to tie their hands, I was about to tell them to toss the guns in the river when the men picked them up and they abruptly disappeared as if by magic. Souvenirs, of course, our armies had ‘liberated’ thousands of these Tokarev pistols during the early days of Barbarossa. They still held some kind of fascination for the men as a war memento, with a very practical use if the going got tough.
I asked Irina to come up and walk with me.
“We can’t cross in the same place as we came over,” I said to her. “We left two dead soldiers, they’ll be more alert this time.”
“Yes, I understand, I’ll do my best to find another crossing point, but that one was the safest. Anywhere else will be much more risky.”
“Then we’ll have to take the risk.”
She gave me an unpleasant look, “It’s alright for you, you’re a soldier”, and then went back to join Alina. Women! Would I ever understand them? Probably not, but what more did she want from me? I could hard sprout wings and fly us over the lines. I could hear her talking in low tones to Alina, presently she came back to speak to me.