Blood and Ice (6 page)

‘You look very pleased with yourself,
Obersturmbannführer
,’ Kreuz remarked, cleaning the snow off his monocle, and wishing himself in Berlin with a glass of steaming hot grog.

‘I am,’ Habicht replied ‘In spite of the weather we are making excellent time. Another day, in my estimation, and we should be through the mountains. Then the road to Budapest should be wide open for us.’

‘Providing that the
Viking
and
Death’s Head
keep up their attack-schedule,’ Kreuz objected mildly.

‘But they are, my dear Kreuz,’ Habicht answered. He indicated the chattering command radio at the back of the halftrack, with its freezing operator crouched over it. ‘Division signalled an hour ago that the
Viking
is making progress all along the front. The first day went splendidly and we’re doing just as well today. We caught the Reds with their pants well and truly down yesterday.’

‘Excellent!’ Kreuz said with hollow enthusiasm.

‘Besides,’ Habicht continued, ‘even if the Division weren’t making such splendid progress, I would go on.’

Kreuz looked at him aghast. ‘
Alone?
’

‘Alone,’ Habicht echoed, a faint smile on his thin lips. ‘You see we are a symbol, we of the
Europa
.’ He paused moment airily, as if he were first having to convince himself of the truth of what he was about to say. ‘And sometimes symbols are more effective when those who create them are…are dead, don’t you think?’

Kreuz shivered. Now he knew the Hawk was insane.

Otto Habicht had decided on that day in the peaceful little SS Cavalry Hospital in Heidelberg that he was not going to survive the war. He had done so quietly and completely undramatically in the stillness of the big summer-white room, with the only sound of the barges on the Neckar outside to disturb the sterile hospital calm. It had not been the loss of his lower leg which had caused him to come to his overwhelming decision. It had been the other thing.

SS Oberstabsarzt
Phelps had broken it gently to him when he felt the sudden strangeness between his legs after the three day series of operations on his lower body. At first, he had hidden his terrible revelation behind medical terminology:

‘Wounds in the scrotal sack…inguinal canal…removal of sin and dex…’ Habicht had interrupted him coldly: ‘Have you taken my balls off, doctor?’

Numbly Phelps had nodded.

‘Am I a eunuch now?’

‘Yes, both dex and sin – I mean right and left testicles were irreparably injured by the mortar burst which took off your lower leg. I’m afraid there was nothing else I could do…’ his voice had tailed away. There was nothing more he could say to the man lying on the simple white bed in front of him.

Habicht had thanked him gravely for saving his life, asked him to leave and considered the situation as any other military problem, weighing the pros and cons, considering the possibilities – the inability to marry, the inevitable accumulation of more and more fat, the increasingly high-pitched voice, the female instability of the eunuch. He had come to his decision. Before the war ended, he would die – grandly – in some desperate bold venture at the head of his men as befitted a Habicht, whose family had served Prussia since the days of the Great Frederick himself. Now as his regiment ground its way ever higher into the Vértes Mountains, Colonel Habicht knew this was that desperate, bold venture he had promised himself.

The Grey Eagles had been climbing steadily for over three hours, plodding upwards in strained silence, weighed down with thirty kilos of equipment per man. There was no sound, save the squeak of their frozen boots on the packed snow and sharp exhalations of breath.

But ahead of them Suslov knew they were coming to the end of their march. Before them the key height, which dominated the mountain road, loomed ever larger. He had chosen it because of its excellent strategic position. Behind it to the north, there was a sheer rockwall. To the east and south it was bounded by a ravine, narrow but very deep. In both directions there was an excellent field of fire. To the west, it overlooked the road the Fritzes must take if they were to break out of the mountains. From the point of view of defence, the height could not have been better situated. Once established on top of it, a handful of men, well dug-in and determined, could hold off an army.

Suslov knew his men needed a rest badly – they had been going with only one ten minute stop since the drop – but he knew too he could not let them halt. They had to be in position on the height before the Fritzes arrived. ‘Grey Eagles,’ he cried, feeling the icy mountain air stab at his lungs like a sharp knife, ‘at the double! ‘He pumped his clenched fist up and down twice swiftly: the infantry signal for ‘at the double’.

Eyes glazed, yet determined, the paras stumbled after him.

Obersturmbannführer
Habicht also looked eagerly towards the gleaming white peak, knowing that it was the highest point in the Vértes. Once it was passed, the going would be downhill, a straight run to the floor of the valley and the vital road network beyond.

He urged on his column, taking risks on the surface of the mountain road, which he would not have dared to that morning. ‘
Tempo…tempo
,’ he barked over and over again into the radio which linked him with Schulze’s VW jeep. ‘Get those men moving, Sarnt-Major!’

Schulze hurried the rest of the convoy along like an angry sheepdog, switching in and out of the ponderous halftracks with the little jeep, taking appalling risks as he wheeled back and forth. At his side, a fearful Chink, his face now a sickly green, could do nothing but close his slant eyes and groan, ‘Sarnt-Major, you think Hamburg, eh, and fucki-fucki shop after big war!’

Habicht’s tactics paid off. Even the hard-pressed young drivers, virtually exhausted by the terrible conditions through which they had been forced to drive these last thirty-six hours, seemed to be infected by the Commander’s enthusiasm. They, too, started handling the clumsy dangerous half tracks, as if they were light racing cars, accelerating just before they came to a bend, changing down with a crash – right across the gated gear box – and swinging round it with only the merest tap on the brake pedal, ignoring the frightening swing of the vehicle’s rump towards the off-side edge of the mountain road and the awesome drop.

The height to their right loomed ever larger in their worn, red-rimmed eyes. Soon they would reach it.

Suslov plodded determinedly through the deep snow at the top of the height. Everywhere his Eagles were digging in, forming large walls of snow, broken by firing slits, opening their flies to urinate with a hot hiss onto the walls so that when the surface of the suddenly melting snow refroze, it would form a solid sheet of ice to ward off any stray slug.

The skilled airborne men had formed a three-sided perimeter of some 200 metres in length, with its open, undefended end towards the sheer, naked rockwall – so sheer, indeed that even the blizzard which was abating had not lodged any snow on its surface. It was an excellent position, easily defensible even if the weather improved sufficiently for the Fritzes to call up an air strike. He was confident that he could withstand anything the Germans threw at him.

He paused at the twin mortars set up in the centre of the perimeter, next to the big snow-covered boulder which he had chosen as his own command post. The mortarmen were busy rubbing more winterized grease on the sights of the weapons and the levels they used to judge their firing angles. ‘
Horoscho
, my Eagles,’ he complimented them on their foresight. ‘You are thinking well.’

Sergei Kolchak looked up at his commander: ‘And what are we going to call this mountain, Comrade Commander?’ he demanded.

Suslov’s gaze fell on the Grey Eagles’ battalion flag, thrust into the snow by the boulder command post: a grey eagle against a bright red background, its claws extended, its cruel beak ready to tear its prey.

‘There you are, Kolchak, there’s your name for you.’

‘What, Comrade Commander?’

‘Why, Grey Eagle Mountain!’

Kolchak beamed, ‘Of course,’ he breathed.

‘Comrade Commander.’

Suslov swung round. It was Oleg, the battalion runner. ‘What is it?’ he snapped, the flag forgotten now, at the sight of the urgent look on Oleg’s face.

‘The Fritzes, Comrade Commander – they’re coming up the road!’ He doubled to the edge of the perimeter with Oleg. Together they flopped into the snow.

Down below the first evil snout of a halftrack had begun to nose its way round the bend in the road on the last stretch before it surmounted the pass. Suslov focused his binoculars hastily, taking care to shade the lenses with one hand to avoid giving away his position.

The men, crowded in what was obviously the command vehicle, sprang into his vision. He knew immediately from the camouflaged overalls they were the SS, the hated Fritz killers. His attention was captured by the man with the eye patch, hood flung back to reveal the cap with its death’s head badge. Suslov allowed his glasses to rest for a moment on the man’s haughty, emaciated face and knew instinctively that this was the commander. He would be the man they would kill first.

Swiftly he squirmed back through the deep snow and doubled back to the waiting mortarmen. ‘All right,’ he barked, ‘we’ve got Fritzes to kill at last!’

Habicht leaned forward over the top of the driving cab, urging the halftrack up those last hundred metres to the top of the pass, his mind racing with plans. Once he had the Regiment over the pass he would race through the night down the mountain, taking whatever roadblock the Reds might have set up for him on the exit to the valley by surprise. After that, it would be only a mere twenty kilometres to the Hungarian capital. He swallowed hard, hardly daring to believe it was possible that by this time on the following day he might be in Budapest.

‘More speed, driver!’ he commanded harshly.

‘I’m doing my best, sir,’ the driver answered, ‘but it’s –’

His words were silenced by a soft plop up ahead. Then another and another. An instant later the plops became an obscene, stomach-churning howl.

‘
What the hell…!
’ Habicht cried in alarm and stared upwards at the little puffs of white smoke on the high peak to their right and the small black objects hurtling towards them. Then he realized what they were. ‘MORTARS!’ he yelled.

Frantically the driver attempted to stop; but to no avail – the halftrack would not respond in the icy surface. The next instant, the first salvo of mortar bombs from the peak straddled them. One exploded directly in front of the halftrack, sending up a huge spurt of snow, coloured a brilliant scarlet. A second sailed harmlessly over the edge of the precipice, but the third bomb struck the road just under the skidding halftrack’s front axle. The ten-ton vehicle reared into the air like a bucking horse put to the saddle for the first time. Glass splintered. Metal shrieked. Habicht, the veteran, turned his head away from the hot blast, laden with gleaming razor-sharp fragments of steel just in time. His driver was not so quick.

The fist-sized piece of red-hot steel hissed through the cab window and took the top of his head off as neatly as any surgeon performing a trepan. The boy screamed just once. Then with his brains tumbling out of his head, his lifeless body lurched limp against the wheel. The command halftrack smashed into the mountainside and came to an abrupt stop, fifty metres from the top of the pass.

The Battle of Grey Eagle Mountain had begun.

On Friday morning, 4 January, 1945, Marshal Tolbuchin sacked Zacharov and took over the defence of the River Danube line himself.

Under the present circumstances his demoralized Guards could not conceivably stop the
Royal Tigers
of the two élite SS Panzer divisions which were leading the German thrust through the mountains. But the further the Fritzes penetrated into the Vértes Range, the longer and more exposed their flanks became. His first order to his Guards Cavalry, the most mobile and most flexible of his units in mountainous terrain, read simply: ‘Tickle the German’s ribs for him so he loses control of his head!’

Thus his cavalry regiments began a day-long series of bloody little hit-and-run raids along the Germans’ long, exposed flanks, forcing the
4th SS Panzer Corps
to detach more and more emergency units to protect the flanks, and by doing so weakening the point.

Tolbuchin’s next order went to the commander of the troops attacking Budapest itself. If the city fell, he reasoned that the steam might go out of the German attack. A sizeable number of German troops within the capital would be Soviet prisoners, and the relief forces would realize that they were shedding their blood for an objective already in Russian hands.

The second order was as simple as the first, but far more brutal. It read: ‘Take Budapest soon or face the consequences.’ Every regular Soviet officer had long known what the ‘consequences’ were, ever since the Great Army Purge of 1938: the camps or the firing squad. The General would understand.

His third order took more time to carry out. It went to every artillery commander on the long Second Ukrainian Front Command. It read: ‘I want every spare artillery piece, mortar, anti-tank gun rushed to the Budapest front
immediately
.’

During that grey morning, Tolbuchin’s staff built up a great barrier of artillery in front of the advancing SS, ranging from the smallest mortar to the fearsome ‘Katuschka’ rocket batteries. By midday the artillery was ready to go into action, albeit without a co-ordinated fire plan. But a fire plan was not needed in the rugged mountain territory. All the local artillery commander needed was to wait for the first SS tank to appear around the bend to his front and then call down the whole weight of fire at his disposal upon it.

Slowly but surely, the burly Marshal’s measures began to pay off.
SS Panzer Division Viking
managed to capture Vétes-Tolna that morning, but found it difficult to get out of the village and push on eastwards.
SS Panzer Division Death’s Head
captured one of its key objectives that same morning – Tarjan, but when it tried to link up with Balck’s infantry, which had made a successful assault crossing of the Danube to its right, the Division found its advance barred by massed Soviet artillery. Now the SS was measuring its progress eastwards in metres, instead of the kilometres of the day before.