by Eric Meyer
“Drop everything, let’s go!” I shouted.
We hurtled back along the balka. A machine gun had started to fire at the Russians. The crew of the MG42 set up alongside Beidenberg had seen the danger and were giving us covering fire from the pursuing Russian infantry. Some of the Soviets managed to jump down into the balka and start after us and several shots came over out heads until we rounded a bend in the ravine and were out of their sight.
“How many of them do you reckon?” I asked Mundt.
“About four or five, not too many, Sir.”
“Maybe we should hit them when they come around that bend, Willy, otherwise we’ll be sitting ducks, we can’t fight them at long range with out MP38s.”
He nodded. “Good plan, Sir. Bauer, Wesserman, stop, we’re going back to the bend in the ravine to wait for the Russians.”
We raced back and crouched down. In the distance we heard the excited shouts of the Russians, the pounding of their boots and then they were in front of us, five Soviet infantrymen. Each of us was lying prone on the ground to minimise our target profile but the enemy were clearly visible, easy targets and we knocked them all down in a series of short bursts, at a range of no more than fifteen metres the MP38 was unbeatable and they stood no chance. Three of them had Moisin-Nagants that could have shot us at a range that rendered our machine pistols virtually useless.
“That’s it, they’re all down, let’s go!”
I jumped to my feet and made sure they were all up with me and we ran for our next defensive position. The Panzers and assault guns continued their deadly duel with the Soviet armour, but it was clear that there were too many for us and after a few minutes I ordered the position evacuated and a fall back to the next defensive position. As we started to run I saw other platoons of Panzer Grenadiers heading the same way, then our armour started to back away, keeping their heavy frontal armour towards the enemy.
We fought from the next position, constantly whittling down the enemy forces and pulling back, but when the pace of the battle finally died down and the Soviets stopped attacking, we were dangerously near Kharkov. Muller came around and gave orders for us to fall back to the city and establish the last line of defences there. We set off at a fast march and crossed into the relative safety of our own lines of armour and guns.
“What do we do now?” Wesserman asked. “Are we going to just wait and keep retreating every time those bastards attack? Why aren’t we hitting back?”
He was tired and angry. We were all tired and angry. It seemed that no matter what we did the Soviets had the answer for us, they had repelled our attack on the salient and were now smashing back at us almost without drawing breath. Our own forces were worn out, exhausted, low on men and morale, low on armour and aircraft, low on petrol and ammunition. I shook my head.
“I don’t know, Gerd, I’m sorry. If I was to guess I’d say that we’ll be retreating from Kharkov fairly soon, if the Soviets keep attacking in the kind of numbers they seem to be able to muster.”
I thought of Irina then, I’d promised to get her out of the city and on a train back to Germany. I had to get her out tonight. Tomorrow the Soviet hordes could attack in such massive numbers that we’d be driven out of the city in the first attack.
“Scharfuhrer I need to go and see Muller, take over the platoon. I may have business in the city, if I’m given permission to go I’ll be gone for a couple of hours, no more.”
“Give her my love, Sir,” he grinned.
I raced to find Muller and told him what I needed to do.
“You may as well go, Hoffman,” he said tiredly. “It doesn’t make much difference now. Call into Divisional Headquarters and see if they have any dispatches for us.”
He wrote out a movement order for me, as I watched him I was shocked at his appearance. He had always been neat and smart, the perfect senior officer. Now he was ragged and dishevelled, unshaven, streaked with soot and grease, his shoulders hunched over in resignation.
“Do we have any idea of where we may be going next, Sir?”
He shook his head. “Only that it will be towards the west, Hoffman. We’ve started this retreat and God only knows where it will end. We’re fighting for our very survival.”
“But, Sir, we’ve got massive forces in place, we can beat back the Russians!”
He smiled sadly. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I’m not sure if it is well-founded. We need men, Hoffman, equipment, tanks and guns. What do they send us? The fucking Gestapo.”
I’d never heard him swear before either, I saluted and left, Muller’s demeanour suggested that the future for us was not likely to be the golden future we had been promised.
I managed to avoid the snipers on my way into the city. Two of them took shots at me but I was moving from cover to cover. I found Irina and told her to put a few things in a bag.
“Are the Russians coming then, Jurgen?” she asked me, surprised at the sudden urgency.
“Irina, they could be here within days, you need to move now before most of the city tries to get out!”
We got to the station and I produced a document I’d had drawn up earlier, stating that Irina Rakevsky was formally betrothed to Obersturmfuhrer Jurgen Hoffman and was travelling to the Reich on his behalf to prepare for the wedding. Despite the prevalence in Russia for recruiting women to fight on the front lines and fly fighter aircraft and bombers, as well as man the Soviet armaments factories, in the Reich the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, still place family life above all. A woman’s place was in the home and there was nothing unusual about the arrangement I’d made with Irina, who after all was a citizen now of the Greater German Reich as well as betrothed to an officer of the SS. I managed to get her a ticket to change at Leipzig en route to Dresden. I gave her the address of an uncle of mine who lived in the centre of the city.
“Contact him, I’ve included a letter of introduction, he’ll give you all the help you need. When I get back I will contact him for your address. Good luck.”
Her eyes were damp and shining. “Jurgen, my darling, I wish you were coming with me.”
I grinned. “Maybe you’d soon get fed up with me, I’m just a German soldier after all. Make a life for yourself. Dresden is such a nice, safe city. I’ll look you up when I am able, now go.”
We kissed passionately, then she broke away to climb on the train, most of the doors were closed and the guard was signalling frantically it was time to go. She waved out of the window. I waved back and went out of the station.
At the sandbagged Feldgendarmerie post outside I showed my papers to the sergeant. He looked at them carefully and then offered me some advice. “Obersturmfuhrer, a word of warning, we’ve had a lot of partisan attacks around here lately, they seem to be targeting the area of the main station. I’d watch your step as you leave, if I were you.”
I thanked him but before I had walked ten steps a familiar figure stepped out in front of me.
“Hoffman, how interesting to find you here. Did Miss Rakevsky get off alright?”
I fixed him with a hard gaze. “She did, yes, Sir, so you can forget about her. Tell me, why did you have Nadia Vlasov executed?”
He stepped back slightly at the force of my question. “Who said that I did that?”
“Never mind who said it, why did you do it?”
Over his shoulder I could see an opened window, a dark space inside an empty office building. I remembered the sergeant’s advice and kept an eye on it as I was talking to von Betternich.
“You have to understand, it’s politics, Hoffman. The fortunes of war, if you like.”
He grinned. I saw a barrel poke out of the window, it had to be a barrel, yet it was a perfectly round disc, which meant it was pointing in my direction. At least, in von Betternich’s direction, he was giving me protection from it with his body. I opened my mouth to shout a warning, then I though of Nadia, of Heide too, the Jewish nurse he had sent to a camp. My mind went into a kind of fugue, should I warn him, should I not? D
id he deserve to die for what he had done? It was as if everything happened in slow motion, I swore I could see the sniper, the gun barrel moved a little as he straightened his aim. This evil Svengali would be finished forever, out of my life and unable to threaten the lives of those around me. He had to die, I hesitated a fraction more, then I leapt forward and threw him to the ground as the bullet hissed pass us, digging chips out of the cobbles and disappearing to bury itself into a thick wooden fence. The Feldgendarmerie nearby had heard the shot and rush out to hunt down the sniper. I picked up the SD officer and helped him to regain his balance with his walking cane.
“Thank you, Hoffman. I wonder that you bothered, you could have let me die, why didn’t you?”
I shook my head, “I don’t know, just forget it.”
“But I won’t forget it, my friend. I owe you a favour, remember, favours are like money in the bank in the German Reich.”
“Just stay away from me then!”
He smiled broadly and sighed. “Ah, the one favour I cannot grant. But for the time being, I will manage without your valuable services. Until we meet again, Hoffman.”
I nodded, but I couldn’t bring myself to acknowledge him. Had I done a very stupid thing, saving his life? Or would it have cost me my own soul to let him die? I imagine that only a priest could answer that kind of question, but I had little time for priests. I had a war to fight and they would have their work cut out anyway with the broken and bleeding souls that war always generated in unlimited quantities. Von Betternich and people like him, Hitler, Himmler, they could find their own particular road to hell, mine was already mapped out. I thought of Bormann and that odd shooting in the Vinnitsa wood. The most probable explanation was that he had killed the partisan to stop the man revealing Bormann’s involvement with supplying the Russians with information, perhaps the Reichsleiter was already treading his own particular path to hell.
In the distance, I could hear shouts of alarm as people were running. The Feldgendarmerie sergeant ran back to us.
“Soviet armour, they’re moving on the city, they could be here any moment!”
The wind changed suddenly and the clank and squeak of tracked armoured fighting vehicles was distinctly audible. The Russians were returning to reclaim what was theirs, what we’d taken from them and we had little with which to counter their armoured might. At least I’d got Irina away in time and I’d managed to keep my conscience clear with both her and von Betternich.
It was time to return to my unit and continue fighting the unending battle, the conflict that left the steppes covered in spilled blood and broken iron, all that remained of the ambitions of glory that had brought the fallen to this war, never to return home.
THE END
DEVIL'S GUARD: THE REAL STORY
By Eric Meyer
PUBLISHED BY:
Swordworks Books
Devil’s Guard: The Real Story
3rd Edition Copyright © 2010-12 by Eric Meyer
FOREWORD
There have been various ‘true’ stories written about the so-called ‘Devil’s Guard’, a contingent of exclusively former Waffen-SS soldiers fighting against the Viet Minh in Vietnam; or Indochina, as it was known in the early 1950’s. My research suggested that there was never such a unit. Instead, all Foreign Legion units were comprised of men from many different backgrounds, although some inevitably had more than their fair share of former German soldiers, many of them Waffen-SS.
Many supposed ‘true’ accounts of former Waffen-SS involvement in French Indochina seem singularly lacking in the verifiable detail that is the essence of a reasonable historical account. I interviewed a number of former soldiers who fought in that war, and it was from one of these Legionnaires that I obtained this story. Is it ‘true’, the reader may ask? The answer is sadly yes and no. Yes, it is based on what I learned from people who were actually there. Yes, the details, dates, places, units and equipment could all be verified. But did these particular events ever happen as recorded in this story? That is like answering the question ‘who Shot JFK’ on that fateful day in Dallas, Texas. We shall never know. Certainly, I believe it is based on a true story, but beyond that sadly vague definition it is impossible to fully verify. But it could have happened....
I hope and trust you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Eric Meyer
* * * * *
INTRODUCTION
Following the German defeat in 1945, the Waffen-SS, Heinrich Himmler’s private army, was largely hunted down by the victorious Allies, and many were imprisoned. Post-war recruitment by the French Foreign Legion amongst former German soldiers netted a substantial number of former Waffen-SS troopers. After all, they were being hunted by the victorious allies, and the French offered them a new identity; in return for them using their renowned fighting skills for their new employers. Until 1947, there was little control on who joined the Legion, and recruit backgrounds were not extensively checked. After 1947 things tightened up, although without doubt, many former SS continued to join up.
Many of these soldiers were sent to Indochina, newly restored to France following the defeat of the Japanese. Indochina, of course, is now known as Vietnam. The French returned to Indochina determined to rule as a colonial overlord, trampling over a variety of agreements made with the native population, and represented by the regime of Ho Chi Minh. The result was a series of battles in which the French became increasingly embattled and called upon more and more troops to reinforce what to many was already a lost cause. Perhaps the Americans would have done well to read the history books before they embarked on their disastrous Vietnamese debacle.
Nonetheless, there is no doubt that troops on all sides fought courageously, notably the French Foreign Legion, the Paratroops and the Colonial Infantry who bore much of the brunt of the fighting. Ranged against them were the forces of the Viet Minh, a forerunner to the Viet Cong, and led by the notable military leader Vo Nguyen Giap. Giap was a thorn in the side of the French, and his clever leadership and organization led eventually to the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, which marked the end of French ambitions in the region.
This book documents an account of a mission to attack Giap personally. It is based upon personal accounts, and much of it is undocumented. However, there can be little doubt that French military minds would have wrestled with the problem of how to rid themselves of this turbulent leader.
* * * * *
CHAPTER ONE
Avril rapidly emptied his MAT49 submachine gun into the oncoming horde of Viet Minh, heard the firing pin click on an empty clip, reloaded and desperately opened fire again; seeing his bullets smack home into the Vietnamese fanatics hurling themselves bodily at his French troops. The firefight, one kilometre west of the town of Mao Khe, had begun as a simple skirmish. The Lieutenant’s company was part of the 6th Colonial Parachute Battalion, led by Captain Charles Balmain and attached to Mobile Group 2. They had been marching into Mao Khe when they ran headlong into General Giap’s 320th Division; who were themselves rushing to support the massed Viet Minh attack on the town.
Vo Nguyen Giap was born on August 25th, 1911, and had risen to become leader of the Vietnam People's Army. He was both a politician and a formidable soldier. He was also a journalist and served as a politburo member of the Lao Dong Party. Giap was the most prominent military commander, besides Ho Chi Minh, during the Indochina war and was responsible for all major operations and leadership throughout the war. Clever, cunning, calculating, he was a man who didn’t like to lose and would sacrifice his own troops and civilians in huge numbers, if he thought that it was necessary to win the war. The swift mobilisation of several divisions of troops to surround Mao Khe bore all the hallmarks of his effective brand of military strategy.
Initially, two reconnaissance platoons had exchanged fire, and both commanders rushed up more and more men. It was a bloodbath. Even though they were killing the Viet Minh like pigs in a slaughterhouse, a vastly superior force outnu
mbered them.
Avril heard screams and shouts from his men as they were hit by enemy rounds, and the wet ‘thud’ as the bullets smashed through tissue and bone to destroy his command, soldier by soldier. Captain Balmain was one of the early casualties. He was struck by a bullet fired from an SKS rifle, the fraternal gift of the Soviet Union who was desperate to win favour with the Vietnamese communists. He was dead, and his body lying on the ground with the back of his head missing where the bullet had drilled through his skull.