Devil's Guard- The Complete Series Box Set

by Eric Meyer

  “No, it is not, Irina, you should understand that...”

  I didn’t get any further.

  “Get out, I never want to see you again! Don’t come here! Don’t ask for my help! Just go away. I hope the Russians come back and shoot you all. Go on, get out, now!”

  Miserably I walked away, back to our Kubelwagen. Bauer gave me a sympathetic glance.

  “Not good, Sir?”

  “The worst it could possibly be, Stefan. Let’s get back.”

  We returned to Podvirky and I spent the rest of the day numbly supervising the men as they helped unload more armour from the flatcars, as we unloaded crates of armour-piercing ammunition. A funkwagen lumbered up and Wiedel climbed out.

  “Hoffman, I’m glad I caught you, this is our new truck, we’re working with two vehicles tonight, can you bring your men in straight away, we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  “Sorry, Wiedel, I can’t do that. We’re too busy here. Why not ask your friends in the Einsatzgruppe to help you?”

  He smiled. “Still bitter, eh? You know there’s nothing we could have done about it. But I need you in the city, here is the order from von Betternich.” He handed me a document. “You will see that it gives him total authority over you and your platoon, you can show it to the CO if you wish, but make it quick.”

  He drove off. The men were watching me carefully.

  “I wouldn’t push the Gestapo too far, Sir,” Mundt said. “They can be touchy bastards at times.”

  “I don’t care, Scharfuhrer, they can do their worst as far as I’m concerned, they’re all a bunch of crooked thugs.”

  “No doubt they are and I’m sure you don’t care. But we all have to be careful. Go easy on them.”

  I found von Meusebach in his HQ building. Outside, a trooper was busy polishing his black Mercedes. He was inspecting the map on the wall. He nodded as I saluted.

  “Well?”

  I handed him the order that Wiedel had given me. “They want my platoon in the city now, Sir.”

  He gave me a sharp look. “I can’t spare one of my platoons just on the Gestapo’s say so, Hoffman. Denied.” He tossed the letter aside.

  “I believe it’s the Reichsfuhrer’s say so,” I replied, deadpan.

  He looked at me suspiciously, snatched the letter up and reread it.

  “I see. You’d better hurry then.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  I gave him a perfect salute and walked out of the building. I was still angry at the way he’d altered my report to suggest that he had been in action. It was by no means unknown, senior officers taking credit for the actions of their juniors, but it was regarded with distaste by all ranks. I had other problems on my mind, though, Mundt was right. Whatever difficulty I had with the Gestapo, the SD or the Einsatzgruppen, I should be careful not to push them too far, they made dangerous enemies, much more so than the Soviets. We drove past the street where Irina lived and I felt even more miserable, but it was too late to do anything about it, they were dead and she hated me for it. When we reached Gestapo HQ both funkwagens were in the courtyard, both had their engines idling quietly. Von Betternich was talking to Wiedel, the two men walked over and I saluted.

  “Hoffman, one of the funkwagens is going out north of the city, the other to the south, each will be stationed about ten kilometres away. Both trucks are in direct radio contact so if we do get a fix on a transmission we can pin the location down in seconds. Wiedel is in the northbound truck, can you send two of your men with him, we’ll go south and you can follow with your men.”

  I detailed Mundt and Wesserman to go with Wiedel, they climbed into the back of the truck. I would go with Voss and Bauer in the Kubelwagen. We left the courtyard in convoy, when we reached the main crossing point next to Kharkov Central Square Wiedel’s truck peeled off and went north, we turned south. We drove out of the city and into the suburbs and then stopped on top of a low hill. Von Betternich climbed out of the truck and I joined him.

  “We need to triangulate his position from here, as soon as he starts to transmit we’ll get our first fix and then start to drive into the city. Wiedel will be working on his own fix and will radio us when he has it, we mark it on the map and we have him.”

  I nodded and was about to join Bauer when he said, “Hoffman, I heard about the Einsatzgruppe, it was outside of our control, that problem with the girl’s parents.”

  “It always is, I’m beginning to wonder who the real enemy is, Sir.”

  He stared at me coldly. “I suggest you keep that kind of thing to yourself.” He looked up. “Ah, my radio operator is signalling, I think we may have some custom tonight.”

  He limped away and I went back to our Kubi. “Better get started, Stefan. They’ve got something coming in.”

  Von Betternich was waving and shouting at me and I went back over to the truck.

  “Get in here, Hoffman, Wiedel has run into problems.”

  The operator passed me the headphones. I heard Wiedel’s voice.

  “We’ve run into the whole fucking Red Army, we’re completely surrounded. Our truck crashed and overturned, I have two casualties, Scharfuhrer Mundt may have broken an ankle and my radio operator has broken legs and other injuries, neither is able to walk. We’re at coordinates 50, 34, 66, please advise.”

  I looked at the large-scale map on the planning table. Von Betternich was already checking.

  “I’ve found it here, a place called Velikyy Berlun,” he said, pointing to spot on the map.

  “But, that’s behind Russian lines, they can’t be there.”

  We checked the coordinates twice more, but it was inescapable. They were approximately five kilometres behind the Soviet front lines.

  “Do you have any suggestions?” von Betternich asked me. For all of his police experience, he was out of his depth where front line operations were concerned.

  “As far as I know, that area is occupied by Malinovski's 50th Army, there’s something like twenty thousand men surrounding them. Perhaps surrender would be worthwhile considering.”

  “Surrender? An SS NCO and a Gestapo officer, you know what they’ll do to them?”

  The Russians shot most Gestapo and SS captives on sight, just as we did with their commissars and partisans.

  “You’re right, we’ll have to help them. I can take a team in to try and bring them out, but it won’t be easy.”

  I was calculating how we’d manage to get two wounded men across the lines, men who were unable to walk, when von Betternich spoke again.

  “Make the arrangements. Hoffman. I imagine using a Kubelwagen is out of the question, it’s going to be hard to get those injured men back?”

  I smiled at him. “We wouldn’t even get past the front line in any kind of a vehicle. What is really needed, and we don’t have them, is horses. They can cross muddy ground at speed where nothing else can. Besides, if the Russians saw a cavalry unit moving they would assume it was their own Cossacks. However, in the absence of horses we’ll just have to manage, I’d better go and inform Standartenfuhrer von Meusebach that we’ll be crossing the line again.” I started to walk back to our Kubelwagen but he called out and stopped me.

  “We do have horses, Hoffman. A company of Cossacks surrendered to us during the battle for Kharkov. We have their horses and equipment in a stable near here.”

  I cursed myself for even mentioning horses. I’d intended it as an example of how the Soviets could move around in these awful conditions when we were usually stopped by soft, muddy ground. Even the Panzers bogged down on occasion.

  “Well, Obersturmfuhrer, can you do it or not?”

  “Let me see the horses. Bauer, Voss, you’d both better come with us.”

  We drove back into the city. We walked along a lane behind the Gestapo building and across a small, shabby square. An old fountain, long dried up, stood in the centre. Two ancient Ukrainian women enjoying the sunny evening sat outside a small house in one corner of the square, watching us carefully. Von Be
tternich limped forward and led us to a narrow track between a shuttered, half-ruined hardware and agricultural shop and a government office, its windows now shattered and broken office furniture littering the ground outside. Ten metres down the track there was the unmistakeable odour of horse dung. He opened a side door and strode in. A startled Unterscharfuhrer leapt up and stood to attention.

  “Relax, Wegener, we’re only here to look at the horses. Take us through, would you.”

  Wegener took us down a narrow corridor and through a door into the stable, which was surprisingly large and clean, better than our quarters, I thought ruefully.

  “The local communist party elite used this place to stable their horses before we arrived, so it’s got the best of everything. Plenty of room for the horses, the only roof in Russia that doesn’t leak and it has good drainage. What did you want, Sir?”

  Von Betternich ignored him and we looked at the lines of animals. A Hiwi stood quietly grooming a magnificent chestnut brown Panje, it looked at me with mournful eyes. There were at least fifty horses in the stable, all were obviously well looked after and I wondered what they were used for. As if to read my mind the Unterscharfuhrer said, “They’ve been here for several weeks, they’re kept here for the Brass to use, you know, the Prussian officer types who miss riding around their country estates.”

  “Well, what do you think?” von Betternich asked.

  “They’re certainly fine looking animals. I don’t know, Voss, Bauer, either of you know anything about horses?”

  I’d ridden horses when I was younger, many of us did, but what was being proposed now was something very different. Voss looked at me excitedly.

  “I’ve done a fair bit of riding, Sir. They look like they’ll do the job.”

  “Bauer, are you up to it?”

  He nodded. “I’ve ridden a few horses, yes. There’s one problem, Sir, we haven’t a Russian speaker between us, it could make it difficult.”

  “I speak Russian,” a voice said from behind us, we looked around. It was the Hiwi, a big, brawny man of about thirty-five. He had unkempt, wavy dark hair and a long, straggly beard that reminded me somewhat of the pictures of Rasputin. Grigori Rasputin was the Russian mystic who was perceived as having influenced the Emperor Nicholas II as well as his wife Alexandra and their only son Alexei. Rasputin had often been called the ‘Mad Monk’, while others considered him a ‘strannik’, a religious pilgrim as well as a psychic and faith healer. Maybe we could have done with the real Rasputin, we were definitely going to need some help to make a success of this foray behind the lines.

  “Who are you?” I asked him. “A Russian?”

  “My name is Felix Gusava, yes, I am Russian. I was conscripted into the Red Army, but I managed to escape and desert to your German army.”

  “So you’ve no liking for Stalin’s regime, then, for Communism?”

  He laughed. “For Stalin? I used to have a wife and two children. My wife tried to protest at the way some of her relations were treated. They were better-off peasants, you know, the Kulaks. They killed her.”

  I nodded. According to the political theory of Marx, the Kulaks were class enemies of the poorer peasants and were described by Lenin as bloodsuckers, vampires, plunderers of the people and profiteers, who fatten on famine. Marxism dictated a revolution that would liberate poor peasants and farm labourers alongside the industrial workers. It meant that the planned economy of Soviet Bolshevism required the collectivisation of farms and land to allow industrialisation of large-scale agricultural production, farms owned by the Kulaks. Stalin had a simple way to remove any obstacle to his Communist revolution. Mass murder.

  “What about your children?”

  “Taken by the local Communist Party bosses, they sent them away and I was never able to find out where. All I am left with is my hate.”

  I looked at Wegener. “Would you mind if I take your Hiwi, Unterscharfuhrer?”

  “Not at all. Felix knows everything there is to know about horses, he will be valuable to you.”

  “Well, can you do it, Hoffman?” von Betternich said. “I’d like to get my men out.”

  “Yes, I’d like to get my own men out too. I’ll give it a go, but time is wasting, we need to get started straight away. There’ll be four of us and four men to bring out, Wiedel, Mundt, Wesserman and your radio operator.”

  “His name is Heinrich Foch, he is one of the most skilful radio men on the Eastern Front, possibly in Germany. He is very valuable.”

  “I’ll do my best. We’ll take ten horses, that’ll give us two spares if one or two goes lame, or gets shot. Felix, would you saddle up your ten best, quickest mounts.”

  He nodded and went amongst the horses to start preparing them.

  “We’ll need to let the Regiment know, Sturmbannfuhrer Muller, of course.”

  “I’ll handle that when you’ve gone,” von Betternich said. “What else do you need?”

  “Extra ammunition for our machine pistols, hand grenades, that’s about it. If we get into a running fight, we’re finished anyway. You’ll need to give Felix a sidearm, I notice he doesn’t have one.”

  “Our policy is not to arm the Hiwis, Hoffman.”

  “I don’t care. If he’s going to risk his life, he’ll need to be armed. He’ll also need a machine pistol.”

  He nodded. “Anything else?”

  “They’ll have first aid supplies with them on the truck?”

  “Yes, they will.”

  “In that case, we’ll take rations for two days, that’s about it. We need to get moving.”

  Twenty minutes later we were saddled up and the horses were loaded with supplies, even a Cossack sabre was strapped to the side of one of the saddles. Felix Gusava, now armed with a Walther PP pistol and an MP40 machine pistol, had chosen well. We had ten horses in prime condition, their coats gleaming, whatever else failed us on the mission it would not be the horses. Felix had contrived to ride the horse with the sabre strapped to the saddle. Maybe he had some Cossack blood in him? Or perhaps he just wanted use it to hack a way through the Soviets. I’d need to watch him.

  “I’ve requisitioned a motorcycle and sidecar to accompany you to the front, Hoffman. I’ll be coming that far, I’ve brought your documentation. I don’t want someone shooting at you before you even start.”

  I grinned at the thought of the SD man riding a motorcycle, but when the BMW R75 drew up he took the offered waterproof coat from the rider, buttoned himself into it, donned his steel helmet, and sat in the sidecar behind the machine gun. He looked at me and I nodded. He shouted to the motorcycle rider, “Let’s go.”

  It was a hectic journey out through the suburbs of Kharkov and through the darkened countryside until we reached the front, the motorcycle kept the speed down but we still needed to canter the horses to keep up. A sentry stopped us and von Betternich showed him our papers. He waved us through and we found ourselves in a muddy farmyard. Two Wehrmacht officers came out of the farmhouse to meet us.

  “We’re from the Two Hundred and Fifty Fifth Infantry Division, this is Leutnant Moer and I’m Major Klement. We’re scouting the area to look for potential attack routes for the Panzers. As far as we know there are no significant troop formations nearby.”

  We shook hands. “What about insignificant troop formations?” I asked them.

  He smiled. “None, as far as we know.”

  “Very well, we’ll go straight across. We’d better lead the horses on foot for the first stage, we can feel our way over and avoid any obvious problems.”

  “Good luck, Hoffman,” von Betternich shook my hand.

  I nodded. “We’ll do our best.”

  I let Gusava lead the way. I’d forbidden them from wearing their helmets, or even carrying them, so as not to immediately give us away. Even so, a sentry that failed to recognise who we were would have to be blind, but it would perhaps give us a few seconds edge while they made up their minds. The horses snorted occasionally that could easily have alerted
a Soviet sentry, but we hit no problems and no one challenged us. Once I judged we were well behind the lines we mounted the horses and rode towards our objective, the crashed funkwagen. We rode along a muddy track, the mud was about twenty centimetres deep and our horses were perfect for traversing its entire length, about three kilometres. At the end of the track we saw lights ahead, obviously an encampment and we dismounted and led the horses quietly in a wide circle away from the tents. Even had they heard us, it would be as I’d said, they would assume that it was one of their own patrolling Cossack units. We stayed off the track now, besides, there looked to be a whole army camped nearby. We could see hundred of tents, lines and lines of tanks, scores of trucks, obviously it was a combined arms unit which the Soviets used increasingly in this campaign. Instead of as our Panzer Grenadiers, some of their units relied on tank riders, troops who held on to purpose-built handholds on the T34s to ride into battle. I wasn’t sure about the soundness of their philosophy, apart from becoming a target for enemy anti-tank fire, the T34s carried drums of diesel fuel on the tops of their hulls. When one of our shells hit the fuel the men were instantly transformed into flaming pyres, often the tank was destroyed too. Still, the Soviets seemed to have unlimited replacements and little regard for the lives of their soldiers, so they could get away with it. As well as the T34s and their tank riders, they combined motorised infantry to keep pace with the armour and units of anti-tank guns and artillery, all designed to fight and move as one unit.

  I checked my bearings with the compass I carried and risked the torch to take a quick look at the map in my saddlebag. We were going in the right direction, the crash site about a kilometre away. We remounted the horses and trotted away along a smooth path of hard packed mud, the going was much easier until a sentry stepped out into our path and shouted something, presumably in Russian. I was about to give an order to take him when Gusava spurred forward calling out something in his language. The sentry answered but as he spoke, Felix ripped out the sabre and in one huge, wide slash brought it down across the sentry’s neck, almost decapitating him. He didn’t stop, just slowed his horse slightly as he kicked the dead man into the long grass at the side of the path. I said nothing. It was quick, neat and brutal. Five minutes later we arrived at the map coordinates, at first we saw nothing. A little further on the funkwagen lay upside down at the bottom of a shallow ravine. I signalled them to dismount.