Blood and Ice (7 page)

There was only one area that worried Tolbuchin – had Suslov’s Grey Eagles managed to stop the Fritzes’ advance through the high peaks towards the road network?

A thousand kilometres away from the Hungarian front, Adolf Hitler, still conducting the last of the ill-fated Ardennes Offensive from his Western Battle Headquarters at the Castle of Ziegenberg, was concerned too about the progress of his Armed SS.

Facing
Luftwaffe
Colonel Rudel, whom he had just decorated with the highest German award for bravery, he asked the C.O. of the
Immelmann Battle Wing
: ‘Well, what do you think of the situation in Hungary, Rudel?’

The burly dive-bomber pilot, who was still flying missions although he had lost a leg and Hitler had expressly forbidden him to do so, did not pull his punches. Aware that the high-ranking staff officers, even the yellow-faced, trembling Führer himself, did not understand what the true situation on the Eastern Front was, he stared around their faces in the big echoing operations room and told the truth. ‘It is bloody awful, mein Führer!’

There was a shocked intake of breath from the servile Marshal Keitel, and Colonel-General Jodl, Hitler’s Chief-of-Staff, looked sharply at the angry-faced pilot.

‘What do you mean, Rudel?’ Hitler broke the shocked silence.

‘I mean, mein Führer, that we are doing several things wrong up there, which cannot help but make the offensive end in failure.’

‘What can we do about the state of the weather, our transport difficulties and so on?’ Keitel snapped angrily, his face suddenly flushing with anger.

Rudel turned on him. ‘It has nothing to do with weather, transport and such things,’ he retorted hotly. ‘I fly eight hours a day over the Eastern Front on missions and have been doing ever since 1941, Marshal. I know what’s going on. I –’

‘What is going on?’ Hitler interrupted the pilot’s angry outburst, his voice still gentle, almost monotonous.

Next to Hitler, Jodl tensed. He knew that voice of old. At any moment the Führer could explode with a fury of awesome power.

Rudel struck the map with his heavy hand. ‘The Vértes Range, mein Führer, out of which the
Fourth S S Panzer Corps
is trying to break east. Yet we all know that its advance is slowing down considerably. Why? Because we have lost the element of initial surprise. Now it stands to reason that the Russians will bring up more and more forces to block the exits out of the mountains. Soon our offensive will bog down altogether.’ He paused and let his words sink in.

Next to him, Hitler, peering at the map through his nickel-framed spectacles remained silent.

‘So what do we do?’ Rudel snorted. ‘We batter our heads at a closed door, only to get them beaten bloody. We keep attacking and attacking to no purpose whatsoever.’

‘Well, what do you suggest we do, Rudel?’ Jodl asked in the arrogant manner of a trained staff officer who had worn the purple leaves of a General Staff member, when this upstart from the
Luftwaffe
was still learning to fly his first glider.

‘Roll with the punch, as a boxer does,’ Rudel answered with out hesitation.

‘Explain?’ Hitler snapped, his voice normal now, tense and eager.

‘Pull the
Fourth SS Corps
out of the mountains, leaving the infantry behind to tie down the Russians, and put them into the battle for Budapest at another spot.’

‘Where?’

‘Here.’ Rudel stabbed the map south of Budapest. ‘Here, beyond the Lake
1.
Its first objective should be the Danube south of the capital, say, at Dunapentele. From there, your SS boys could fight due north right into Budapest, taking the Russians by surprise.’

The assembled staff officers listened to the airman’s performance with dismay. Yet they knew that his suggestions were influencing Hitler, who despised the General Staff officers and only listened to their advice when he was forced to by some defeat or impending defeat. More often than not he would make his decisions on the basis of his famous ‘intuition’ or the advice of some ‘frontline swine’ such as Rudel.

‘But how would we break off the action without the Bolsheviks becoming suspicious, Rudel?’ Hitler asked after a moment, his face thoughtful.

‘Mein Führer,’ the pilot answered. ‘I am just a simple soldier, who knows little of higher strategy as these gentlemen do,’ he waved his hand at the assembled staff. Jodl’s pale, wizened face grew even paler. One day, Rudel, he promised himself, I’ll make you pay for that.

‘In the days when we flew Stukas, the lead plane would come roaring down out of the sky, sirens howling, machine guns chattering, making the gunners below believe he was going to fall right on top of them, forcing them to concentrate all their fire on him. Meanwhile the rest of the squadron would sneak in at another level and bomb hell out of the real target. A simple feint like that is what you need in those hills, mein Führer. Some device to encourage the enemy to believe that you are still attacking with your armour, while in reality you are withdrawing it to launch a surprise attack on a completely different front, a good fifty kilometres away.’

For what seemed a very long time, Hitler did not respond to Rudel’s words. Instead he stared intently at the big table map, as if he could see things there that no one else could. ‘A feint,’ he said, breaking his long silence. ‘That is what you mean, Rudel?’

‘Yes.’

‘But how and where?’

Jodl intervened: ‘
SS Regiment Europa
, mein Führer, presently battling its way through the mountains, and apparently to no purpose,’ he sneered at Rudel, ‘if we are to accept Rudel’s suggestion.’

‘But not my SS!’ Hitler objected.

‘Why not, sir?’ Jodl answered easily. ‘They are beyond recall now and would play no significant role if we were to withdraw the
Viking
and the
Death’s Head
, save one. If they were allowed to believe they were spearheading the main drive for Budapest, they might well fool the Russians that we were still pressing ahead with the original plan.’

Hitler looked at his cunning-eyed Chief of Staff. ‘But that is a monstrous suggestion, Jodl!’ he gasped. ‘It. would mean sacrificing many hundreds of brave young men purposelessly.’

‘Not purposelessly, sir. If they succeeded in fooling the Russians they would not have died in vain. Besides,’ he added as a sudden, malicious afterthought, ‘we could give them Rudel’s
Immelmann Battle Wing
as air support.’ He smiled maliciously in the direction of the most decorated man in the German Forces.

‘But we can’t fly at those heights –’ Rudel began, angrily.

Hitler held up a soft, flabby hand for silence. ‘One moment Rudel, while I think about this matter.’

Utter silence descended upon the big room, as Hitler limped to the window and stared out at the bleak, snow-bound landscape. The men of the Armed SS were his Imperial Guard, who had fought and died for him in their hundreds, their thousands, their hundred-thousands on every battlefront. There was no loyalty left in the Army anymore as the Wehrmacht’s assassination attempt had proved. But the SS –
his SS
– were they not ‘loyal to the death’, as their proud motto proclaimed? Could he willingly sacrifice some two thousand bold young men, who believed in him implicitly, for the sake of a tactical manoeuvre?

Even as he turned to face his waiting staff and Rudel again, he already knew that he must.

‘Gentlemen,’ he announced deliberately, trying to prevent his lips from trembling as they were wont to do since the bomb explosion in his East Prussian HQ that July, ‘I have made my decision. I have decided to break off the offensive of the
Fourth SS Panzer Corps
! It will attack again from the south-west, once it has successfully regrouped near Lake Balaton.’ Hitler hesitated and directed his yellow, rheumy old eyes at the floor, as if suddenly ashamed. ‘
SS Regiment Europa will continue its attack in the direction of Budapest
.’

Europa
’s fate had been sealed.

Note

1.
  Lake Balaton.

The Frenchmen, volunteers all, burst from their cover, heads bent behind the white rain of tracer, doubling towards the dark, unseen peak.

The Russians had not been sleeping after all. Violet light crackled all along their perimeter. Red and green enemy tracer began to cut the air. Behind the French the Cheeseheads intensified their fire, pouring the glowing 20mm shells at a rate of eight hundred a minute at the top of the mountain.

Encouraged by the elan of the French volunteers, Habicht played his next card. Under the covering fire of the flak wagon, another halftrack nosed its snout into the wrecked halftrack which blocked the road and thrust it to one side. Next moment it was rattling towards the peak, its deck crowded with crouching grenadiers.

The Grey Eagles heard rather than saw the danger.

‘Flares, in God’s name,
flares
!’ Suslov yelled urgently.

An instant later two flares burst over the snowfield below, bathing the dark figures struggling valiantly across it in their eerie icy light. Immediately Suslov took in the halftrack rumbling on towards their rear, rattling over the dead, crushing their bodies to bloody pulp.

‘Kolchak!’ Suslov ordered. ‘Stop that vehicle!’

The mortarman rapped out a series of swift orders. The mortar crews worked frantically, ignoring the white hail of death hissing over their heads. ‘
Ready!
’ the first mortar corporal yelled. ‘
Ready!
’ the second followed him a moment later. Kolchak did not hesitate. ‘FIRE!’ he cried.

The two corporals turned their firing wheels, swinging their heads to one side as the mortars spoke. The first bombs hissed clumsily into the sky.

Suslov’s gaze did not leave the dark black shape of the half track, illuminated in the dying flares like some predatory, primeval monster, seeking its prey. The mortars were his only heavy weapon; if they couldn’t stop the halftrack its cargo of infantrymen could be delivered right in front of his positions.

But Kolchak was as accurate as ever. The second and third bombs landed right on the open deck of the halftrack. There was a blinding flash of bright white light. Dark shapes whirling and turning in the air against its glare were flung in all directions. Next moment the vehicle’s punctured fuel tank exploded, sending a stream of burning red across the snow. Here and there a survivor, already a blazing torch, threw himself vainly into the snow, trying to extinguish the flames which were consuming him alive.

The sight of the burning halftrack took the heart out of the Frenchmen. They broke and ran, streaming back the way they had come, perfect targets against the red glare.

The Grey Eagles rose to their feet, regardless of the 20mm shells still peppering the peak of the mountain, and poured cruel automatic fire into their backs.

The first attack on Grey Eagle Mountain had been repulsed.

‘
Damn, damn, damn!
Habicht cursed, striking the metal of the nearest half track with his fist.

Kreuz looked anxiously at Habicht’s face – still peppered with the black dried blood of the untreated shrapnel wounds. They could neither go forward nor back. They were trapped on the top of this damn mountain.

‘If I could only get the
Royal Tigers
up,’ Habicht groaned. ‘I’d blast them out of their damn holes like the rats they are!’

‘Impossible on this road,
Obersturmbanführer
,’ Kreuz said pointedly. ‘The outer verge wouldn’t support their weight and we can’t simply toss the halftracks over the side to make room for them.’

‘Of course, of course,’ Habicht snarled. ‘I know that.’ Raising his night glasses, he stared at the stark outline of the peak ahead, as silent now as if it were deserted. ‘A frontal attack is out of the question,’ he commented to Kreuz.

He swung his glasses to both sides of the peak. ‘The flanks are just as bad, even if we could get into position there without their spotting us first.’ He raised the glasses and focused them on the sheer rock wall behind the Russian position. His trained Alpinist’s eye told him at once that they did not have a hope in hell of getting down there. Yet all the same – he lowered his glasses thoughtfully and turned to Schulze. ‘Sarnt-Major.’

‘Sir?’

‘What would you say off-hand those two automatic rifle cannon might weigh?’

Schulze knew the Hawk meant the two recoilless rifles, Germany’s latest secret weapon.

‘Fifty kilos or thereabouts, sir,’ he said hesitantly.

The Hawk mused, ‘A lot of weight to be carried by one man.’ He looked at Schulze and the big NCO could see his teeth gleam in a parody of a smile. ‘But not if he’s as big as you, Schulze, eh?’

‘Jesus,’ Schulze cursed to himself, ‘This is where I crap in my pants!’

Habicht raised his hand as a signal to halt. Schulze with the recoilless rifle strapped to his back and the four big Cheeseheads, laden with shells, flopped into the snow gratefully. They had run the gauntlet of the Russian positions without being spotted, and now they were on the peak, behind the Russians, ready to begin the impossible mission which the Hawk had dreamed up for them.

Close-up the rock face did not look as bad as he had anticipated. The wail sloped at about sixty degrees and was ribbed and terraced pretty fully. There would be plenty of hand- and foot-holds.

Carefully he searched its surface for a convenient ledge: not too high, broad enough to support them and at the same time allow them to see the Reds’ positions. Then he spotted it. He focused his glasses on the fault a couple of hundred metres above their heads.

It was broad enough, that was certain, and he was pretty sure that the inky-black darkness of the fold beyond it indicated that there was a deep narrow gully there, which might well overlook the Red positions.

He turned round and looked down at the men on the ground.

‘Now listen to me,’ he said softly and simply. ‘Everybody is frightened on mountains. But the main thing is to keep your head. Once you panic, you are finished. Do you understand that?’ He looked directly at the four Dutch volunteers.