Devil's Guard- The Complete Series Box Set

by Eric Meyer

  “Felix, you’d better take care of the horses, the rest of you, make sure your weapons are ready in case it’s a Soviet trap.”

  I cocked the bolt of my MP38 and led the way to the edge of the ravine. At first there was no sign of any life. Had the Reds captured them? Was a machine gun about to open fire and spray us with machine gun bullets?”

  “Hoffman?” a voice whispered.

  I recognised Wiedel’s voice as he walked up to us.

  “Are you all ok?”

  “So far, yes, we’ve had a few near misses but no one has seen us yet. Am I seeing things or have you come on horseback?”

  “We’ve formed a Cossack unit of the SS, Wiedel. We’ve got horses for all of you, we need to get you in the saddle and start moving back to our own lines.”

  “We’ll need a hand with Mundt and Foch, they’re sheltering in a small farmhouse behind those trees. I didn’t want to leave them with the truck in case the Soviets found it, they’d hack them to pieces.”

  I thought of Felix Gusava hacking the sentry out of his path. “Yes, they probably would.”

  I sent Bauer and Voss to help, made certain that Gusava was keeping a good watch and then we followed them to look at the injured men.

  We went around the edge of the ravine, pushed along a narrow path through a small wood and there stood a farmhouse. Its roof missing, we walked through the open door space. A man in the uniform of the SD lay on the ground, his legs tied between pieces of wood, Voss and Wesserman were trying to help him get to his feet. Mundt lay there, his ankle swathed in torn rags that someone had torn up to bind his ankle. A girl was bending over him, giving him a drink of water. When she stood up I saw that she was quite short, petite and pretty, what people would describe as gamine. Unlike many Russian women I’d seen who tended to be taller, stouter and tougher, perhaps to survive their terrible winters. I looked at Wiedel with raised eyebrows.

  “It’s ok, Hoffman, she’s helping us.”

  “Is she Russian?”

  “She is, yes, but she’s definitely not a Red.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  He smiled. “Her name is Nadia Vlasov, she was trapped here when the Red Army arrived. Is the name familiar?”

  I shook my head.

  “Her uncle is Andriy Vlasov. Lieutenant-General Andriy Vlasov. After his army was surrounded in July last year, Stalin insisted that he should escape by aeroplane. The General refused and hid in German-occupied territory, but a local farmer betrayed him to our troops. General Georg Lindemann interrogated him and then had Vlasov imprisoned in Vinnitsa, but Vlasov claimed that he was totally opposed to the Bolsheviks and believed that Stalin was the greatest enemy of the Russian people, so they let him go. You can imagine how that went down!”

  “Jesus Christ, they must have gone crazy in Moscow.”

  “They did all of that. We’re talking to Vlasov about forming a Free Russian Army, although I don’t know if anything will come of it. But if they get their hands on his niece it won’t be very pretty.”

  “Yes, they’ll execute her, it’s the way the Communists punish traitors, by murdering the relatives.”

  I didn’t add that our own Nazi leaders operated a similar policy.

  I left him and looked at Mundt, he seemed cheerful enough.

  “Did I hear something about horses, Sir?” he asked me.

  I nodded. “The mud is still pretty bad, horses are about the only thing that can move with any freedom.”

  “For invalids with broken ankles and legs, you mean.”

  I smiled. “That’s true, but they saved us a long walk to come and get you.”

  “Getting out may not be so easy, Sir.”

  “They don’t know we’re here, so provided we move fast, we can be out before they realise.”

  I stood up and looked at Wiedel.

  “What do you plan to do about the girl?”

  “She comes with us, of course. If we leave her for the Russians, they’ll kill her, or use her as a bargaining chip. Besides, Vlasov would never forgive us if he found out we’d left her. Have you brought spare horses?”

  I nodded. “We brought two extras, so no problems there. We need to get moving, we haven’t much time.”

  I got up and asked Bauer to bring the horses around to the farmhouse. Ten minutes later he was back with our mounts. We got Mundt onto one of the horses and Foch to another, his broken legs would be useless with stirrups so we fastened him down with straps and told him to hang on. If he fell off he risked a compound fracture, but if we didn’t get him out of here he risked rather more, a Soviet bullet and a shallow grave at best. The rest of us mounted up and headed back towards the German lines.

  Perhaps it was the noise of our horses hooves that prevented us from hearing them, but halfway back we ran into the worst possible foe, a genuine Cossack squadron. They came on us suddenly out of the darkness, one moment we were alone on the desolate plain that led west. At first they didn’t recognise us and one of the leading horsemen shouted to Gusava , who replied in Russian. The Cossack acknowledged and they were about to go past when one of them looked closer, recognised our uniforms and opened his mouth to shout. We were lucky as they had their rifles slung, not expecting trouble. We had our machine pistols ready, I pulled the trigger and the first two horsemen were thrown off their horses in the hail of 9mm bullets. There were fourteen others, if they’d turned tail and ran they would have survived and brought reinforcements, but they were Cossacks. One of them shouted a single word of command, as one man they whipped out their long, wicked sabres and charged us. It was slaughter as we were armed with semi-automatic weapons. Despite the speed and ferocity of their assault we hammered at them with our six machine pistols, a hail of lead that plucked them from their saddles and hurled them to the ground. Only two were left unscathed, they had been at the rear of the charge but were almost on us, my MP38 was empty but I drew my Walther PPK and fired, emptying the clip at the two Russians, Gusava fired too. One of them fell, the other flinched, wounded, but rode on towards us. I tugged at the reins to move my horse out of his path but abruptly I was shoved aside as another horse charged forward, Felix Gusava, sabre drawn and raised to parry the Cossack’s blade. The sabres struck with a clang and a shower of sparks, the two riders circled each other, swords whirling and clashing together as each tried to gain the advantage. I reloaded and heard the clicks as the rest of the men put fresh clips into their weapons, but strangely we sat on our horses and watched the epic struggle.

  It was like being transported back to the last century, to the time when Napoleon’s elite cavalry swept all before them on the battlefields of Europe before the English Duke of Wellington and our own Prussian Marshal Blucher finished the French Emperor’s dreams for the last time. On the field of Waterloo sabre fought with sabre, and so it was on this dark, miserable Ukrainian field. Gusava was clearly outclassed, fighting more with savage ferocity and hate than any real skill. The Cossack was a disciplined and trained swordsman, but his horse suddenly stumbled, probably in a rut created by a tank track, and in order to regain his balance he dropped his guard for less than a second. It was enough, as he was bringing his sabre up again to slash as Gusava struck, using the point to skewer him low in the guts, just above his groin. The man screamed in agony, and then slowly toppled from his horse. Gusava leapt off and stood over him, then hacked down on his neck finishing him. Voss clapped ironically.

  “A good kill, Russian, but couldn’t you just have shot him?”

  “It was a Cossack that killed my wife with a sabre, I wanted to give him a taste of what she had.”

  “That’s enough,” I said to them urgently, “We’ve made a hell of a lot of noise, they’ll be around here shortly to check it out. Let’s move, and fast!”

  I forced the pace hard, taking the lead away from Gusava. If we ran into any Russians now, it was too late for talking. We hurtled across the Soviet-held countryside. Perhaps the only thing that saved us was that no one would bel
ieve that anyone other than a Cossack unit would be on horseback in this area. At one stage, as we were crossing a patch of open terrain and moving into a small forest, someone shouted. I twisted to the side and saw that we were riding adjacent to the edge of a Soviet encampment, but no shots were fired. It was impossible to tell when we crossed the lines but suddenly we were clattering into the farmyard, von Betternich stood next to the BMW motorcycle and sidecar and watching us come in. The motorcyclist was standing next to him and both had their pistols out, as if they would have been of any use had we been a real Cossack raiding party. Behind them were two of our military ambulances. Von Betternich had obviously been busy.

  We dismounted and shook hands. While the men were helping the two casualties down from the horses he greeted Wiedel, then looked questioningly at Nadia Vlasov. The Gestapo man explained her presence and he nodded his agreement.

  “But how the hell did you wind up in Soviet territory, Wiedel?”

  “It was my fault,” he said with a grimace. “Our driver felt ill and I said I’d drive, but I took a wrong turning. Before I realised what was happening, we were already behind the lines and a Soviet unit had manoeuvred in behind us. I just drove on hoping to circle around and get back. Then we ran into that damned ravine. Fortunately Miss Vlasov was there to help us, and of course our radio was undamaged so we were able to call for help.”

  We watched one of the ambulances drive away with the casualties.

  “This doesn’t help us find the Lucy spy ring, Wiedel. Now we’re short of a truck. Do you have any ideas?”

  He shook his head.

  “Damnit, we’re back to square one,” von Betternich sighed.

  “Look, Sir, I don’t understand this,” I said to him. “The Russians are waiting for us in strength, probably in far greater numbers than we can ever hope to have. Isn’t it folly to continue with the attack? I know about the military advantages of taking the salient, but it seems to me that they must be outweighed by the massive numerical superiority that the Russians have got over us.”

  He smiled. “There may be something in what you say, Hoffman. But you see, the Fuhrer does not think so. Look on the bright side, if we can find the spy it will mean that we can change our deployments and hit them where they least expect it, that way we could defeat several Soviet armies if we can only surprise them. It’s still possible.”

  He seemed to be thinking about something else, his mind obviously far away.

  “Yes, perhaps we can do this in a different way. We need to find accommodation for Miss Vlasov. Wiedel, put her up in the Hotel October.”

  He nodded. “Yes, Sir.”

  “That radio code that the Soviets were able to break, do you still use it to spread false information?”

  “We do, yes.”

  “Good. We’ll send a message from von Manstein’s headquarters, advising that Miss Vlasov has been accommodated in the Hotel October, use that code so that we know they will hear it. Perhaps that will lure them to us.”

  They both smiled, two arch-conspirators satisfied with their dark scheme.

  “Wiedel, when get back to Kharkov set up the ambush at the hotel, if we’re lucky they’ll fall into our laps. Make sure you capture them alive when they come to kill her. We might just get a lead from them to Lucy if we can find out how they get the information passed to them.”

  I couldn’t help but overhear. “You’re using an unarmed civilian as bait, what about Nadia Vlasov, she could be killed?”

  The SD man shrugged. “What about it? When Vlasov finds out that the Soviets have murdered his niece he’ll have even more of an incentive to fight for us.”

  I went to the second ambulance and told the driver to follow us back to the city, then ordered Voss and Wesserman to go with him. Gusava led the horses away and I climbed into the back seat of the Kubelwagen with Nadia. Bauer got in the front with Wiedel beside him and drove off, the ambulance pulled away behind us.

  “You heard that you are to be billeted in the Hotel October?” I asked Nadia quietly.

  “I heard it all, Obersturmfuhrer. I hope they catch the people they are looking for.”

  I was quiet for a few moments. Then I leaned nearer and said, “They’ll do their best to protect you, I’m sure. I’m sorry, it wasn’t my idea.”

  She smiled tiredly. “You know, when they came to our town, the Communists, they arrested many of our people, most of them Kulaks. I was young then, but my father was in command of a company of the Red Army. Our neighbours were arrested and marched towards the station to get on a train bound for Siberia. You know what that means, the Gulags?”

  I nodded.

  “They saw my father, his company were also at the railway station, they were there to prevent any trouble, any riots or demonstrations. Our neighbours saw him and the wife ran across to speak to him, she begged him to help, at least to spare their children, there were four of them, the youngest was only four years old. Do you know what he replied?”

  I shook my head.

  “He said, ‘I’m sorry, it wasn’t my idea’. You reminded me of him, please, spare me your false sympathy and spare me your help. I will protect myself. ”

  I looked at her in surprise. “Are you armed, Miss Vlasov?”

  “Yes, I have a pistol hidden in my jacket. Is that a problem for you?” she asked fiercely.

  “No, it’s no problem.”

  She’d obviously been through a lot and was undoubtedly a survivor. Perhaps she would best the Russians if they did come to kill her, maybe she didn’t need protection. But I looked at her again, a small, almost childish figure of a young woman, if Russian partisans or Special Forces attacked she’d stand no chance. It was a bitter pill and I found it very, very hard to swallow.

  As we drove back the Panzers, the assault guns, the trucks and field guns were in the same places and still hadn’t moved. Troops were all around, casually doing routine maintenance tasks, there was no urgency. I’d noticed in the salient that the whole of the ground was cut up with the distinctive marks of tank tracks and wheel ruts, it was obvious that the Red Army was not taking the same relaxed attitude to the coming offensive. I felt that I wanted to drag out the commanders and shout at them, tell them what they faced the other side and how it was getting worse with every day that they delayed. But of course, without the order from von Manstein they were going nowhere. And the Feldmarschal couldn’t give the order until he himself received the order from the Fuhrer. And Hitler would not give the order, certain in his superior knowledge of strategy and tactics, knowledge that seemingly he alone possessed, or believed he did. It was as if the Soviets did not exist, that our armies were positioned here like some ancient mariner, fearful of crossing into uncharted waters where all that was marked on his map was ‘There be monsters’. It was an apt analogy. There certainly were monsters only a few kilometres away, monsters that grew bigger and more powerful with every day that passed.

  Chapter Five

  'The officers of a panzer division must learn to think and act independently within the framework of the general plan and not wait until they receive orders'.

  Erwin Rommel

  “Damnit, Hoffman, I’m not happy about you wandering off without permission!”

  I was standing in von Meusebach’s office, he was distinctly unhappy. Muller stood behind him, fixing me with a sympathetic glare.

  “I’m sorry, Sir.”

  This was the SS, excuses were worthless, obey orders and win battles, that was all that mattered. Except that we hadn’t won the battle yet, the battle that would be fought around Kursk. Von Meusebach had the order from Himmler, however, and he couldn’t go too far with his criticism for fear that it may be construed as criticism of the Reichsfuhrer. He suddenly looked thoughtful.

  “Hoffman, I understand you did a good job for the Gestapo and of course you rescued the men that their stupidity had put them behind the lines. Perhaps you would like to transfer to the Gestapo if you prefer working for them, I could sign a r
ecommendation?”

  He was clever, he could achieve more with a stroke of his pen than my platoon could achieve with their machine pistols.

  “No, Sir, I don’t wish to transfer.”

  “Very well, in future keep me advised of every move you make.” He’d evidently decided he’d pushed me hard enough. After all, the order from Himmler was not to be taken too lightly. “Look, Hoffman, you’ve had a difficult time. You should catch up with some sleep, report to Muller later, dismissed.”

  I saluted and left the office. Bloody SD, bloody Gestapo, bloody von Meusebach, and their silly games! I did as he suggested and went to my quarters. Fully dressed I tried to get some sleep, but it was impossible, the noise from tanks being offloaded, troops marching, orders being shouted and the thousand and one other sounds that are part of an army preparing to go into battle were everywhere. I dozed for two hours and then got up and put my head under the cold-water pump outside our isba. I was thinking about Nadia Vlasov, the beautiful, enigmatic Russian girl that was being offered by the Gestapo as a sacrifice. When I went back inside I found Voss and Wesserman had woken up and were brewing coffee, apparently they’d been unable to sleep much either.

  “Are we on radio truck duty tonight?” Voss asked.

  I realised that I’d no idea what they had planned for us. They still had one intact funkwagen after all.

  “We’d better go into the city and find out, Oberschutze.”

  It would be a good excuse to get away from the squalor and misery of the stinking, noisy railway yard. We still had the Kubelwagen parked outside and Podvirky was getting on our nerves. There was nothing here except grime, noise and von Meusebach. Kharkov, for all its war damage, shabby populace and dirty streets at least offered something more than this stinking backwater. We drove into the city and parked outside Gestapo HQ. I left the men with the vehicle, there was no sign of von Betternich but Wiedel was in his office. He looked up in surprise when I walked in.