Red Army (13 page)

Kryshinin had gotten his forward security element on the move again, and the minefield and the lieutenant’s sacrifice lay several kilometers to the rear. Kryshinin felt as though he would need to perform very well now to make up for his earlier lapse. He wondered what his other officers thought of him now.

He tried to reach division on the radio, and, when that failed, he attempted to reach the advance guard that was somewhere on his trail. He needed someone in a position of authority to make a decision on further violation of the unit boundary. But his element’s route led through low ground now, and all he could hear was static and faint strains of music. He was not sure whether his radio was being jammed or if the nets had simply gotten out of control. Earlier, foreign-language voices had come up on his internal net, having a conversation.

Kryshinin desperately wanted to report the seizure of the crossing site. He suspected that, under the circumstances, division would order him to hurry to the support of the tiny patrol, despite the boundary problem.

The lieutenant who led the patrol reported that they had come up on an east-west underpass, wide enough for tanks, where the elevated canal passed over a farm road. The tunnel had been guarded only by a few Dutch soldiers with small arms, and the patrol surprised them. Now the lieutenant was crying out for support.

Kryshinin tried both stations again.

Nothing.

He halted his column, then called for his senior artillery officer and the air force forward air controller who had been detailed to accompany the forward element to meet him by the air force officer’s easily recognizable vehicle, a modified personnel carrier. The forward air controller was positioned closely behind Kryshinin, but the artilleryman was to the rear, leading the guns but prepared to come up to join the commander as soon as they were deployed. Kryshinin stood in the slow rain, waving for the artillery captain to hurry.

“Can either of you talk with your higher?”

The artillery captain shrugged. “I’m monitoring all right. I haven’t tried to talk.”

“I have a link back to division main and army central,” Captain Bylov, the air force officer, stated, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Listen,” Kryshinin said, “I want both of you to raise any stations you can. Then give my call sign and tell them my direct links aren’t working. Listen carefully.” Kryshinin unfolded his map, trying to protect it as much as possible against the fine drizzle that refused to come to an end. “We’re changing our route of advance. We’re going further south. To right there. The combat reconnaissance patrol has a crossing, but they won’t be able to hold it for five minutes once they get hit.”

The artillery captain, Likidze, looked at Kryshinin as though the element commander was crazy. “That’s out of our sector. I won’t be able to call up any fire support.”

“That’s what your battery’s for. Look, our mission is to find a passage to the west. We’ve gotten this far, and it seems as if the enemy’s covering plan has come apart. But the hardest part is getting across that damned canal. And now we have a crossing. I’m not going to pass it up just because it’s a few kilometers out of sector. But you have to call back and tell higher what we’re doing.”

“What
you’re
doing,” the artilleryman said. “You have no authorization to cross a sector boundary. That site may even be one of the targets scheduled in our neighbor’s fire plan.”

Kryshinin wanted to shake the artilleryman, who had articulated Kryshinin’s own doubts and fears. He realized that no one would share this responsibility with him. But he thought again of his earlier failure to act when confronted with the minefield, and of the lieutenant who had been so much braver and clearer-thinking than his commander. Now there was another lieutenant waiting for help who had managed to find a way across the canal. Kryshinin looked at the artilleryman in disgust, seeing himself and a hundred other officers he knew.

“Correct,” Kryshinin said. “It’s on my shoulders. Now let’s get moving.”

Time pressed harder on Kryshinin’s mind than it ever had before. The patrol commander reported incoming artillery on his position. Kryshinin realized that he might well get away with his decision as long as he proved successful in holding onto the crossing site. After all, that conformed to the essential mission. But if he had taken the wrong decision, and if the crossing site was lost and he had no results, he would pay.

He lost radio contact with the patrol.

Kryshinin spurred his element on as fast as it could go. He felt oddly lucky now that he had lost his engineers, since the big tank-launched bridge would never have been able to keep up with the increased speed of the march column. When one of his vehicles broke down, he left it for the advance guard to collect. The tanks set the pace, gripping the wet road with their whirring tracks.

At a crossroads, they raced by a bewildered enemy military policeman. The soldier emptied his machine pistol in the direction of the flying column, then ran for the trees. A bit further along, a medical clearing station had been set up in the courtyard of a farm, obviously intended to support the enemy’s covering troops. Kryshinin’s element left the site undisturbed in their muddy wake. Kryshinin sensed that the enemy had lost control of his forward battle now, and that his own location was not known to them. He wondered if, perhaps, his element had already penetrated the enemy’s main defenses. It was impossible to tell. Unlike the exercises to which Kryshinin was accustomed, where you knew generally how it was all laid out and usually received tip-off information so the unit would look good, real war seemed ridiculously confusing. Kryshinin had expected battle to have more formality to it, for combat to be more structured and to make better sense.

When an enemy field artillery battery appeared under drooping camouflage nets at the edge of an orchard, Kryshinin ordered his column to shoot it up from the march without deploying. He did not want to get bogged down. It was critical to maintain a single focus, and to act with speed.

The column crested a low hill, and Kryshinin saw the monumental line of the canal running north and south. He could not understand why the low ground had not been inundated. In a marvelous piece of engineering, the canal passed smoothly over a local farm trail, built up like a medieval fortress wall with a great open gate. Under the stout concrete tunnel, a single Soviet infantry fighting vehicle covered the near bank.

Kryshinin could not understand why the enemy had not blown the overpass immediately. He hastily got on his radio and ordered the artillery to deploy in the open hollow off to the left on the near bank. One platoon of motorized rifle troops would secure the near side of the crossing and protect the guns. Everyone else was to follow Kryshinin to the far side of the canal.

As he finished his transmissions the enemy artillery came again. The rounds exploded along the ridge on the far bank that paralleled the canal. The patrol’s vehicles had been well-concealed, and it appeared as though the enemy was simply delivering area fires, attempting to flush the Soviet scouts into the open. A stout, walled farm complex, just to the right of the road as it wove up onto the crest of the ridge, provided an obvious focus for the efforts of both sides.

Kryshinin pulled his vehicle out of the line and personally took the lead. He raced down into the low ground, skidding to a stop beside the guardian vehicle at the mouth of the tunnel. In the watery field beside the road, the bodies of four enemy soldiers had been laid in a row. A senior sergeant greeted Kryshinin, wincing at the still-distant artillery blasts.

“Comrade Captain,” he shouted, “the lieutenant’s up in those farm buildings.”

Kryshinin contracted back into his vehicle. “Move out,” he ordered the driver. “Up the road. To the farmyard.”

On the far side of the tunnel, a blasted enemy fighting vehicle lay like an animal carcass where it had been taken by surprise. Kryshinin spit into his mike. “Tank platoon to the treeline straddling the crest. Second rifle platoon, north of the road. Third platoon, cover the south side. Establish a hasty defense. Antitank platoon, disperse to cover the entire perimeter. All other vehicles shelter behind the farm buildings. Quickly. End.”

Through the random eruptions of incoming enemy artillery, Kryshinin could now see two fighting vehicles drawn up on a small plateau beside the farmyard walls. One had tucked in behind a fertilizer mound, and the other had found a sunken position between two apple trees.

Kryshinin told his driver to halt fifty meters to the rear of the vehicles, in a low section of the road. As he dismounted a soldier waved him into the cluster of buildings. Kryshinin ran, carrying his soggy map and his assault rifle. He could feel the wash of the artillery rounds as the enemy gunners reached toward the canal itself.

Inside the neat little courtyard, a rifleman lowered his weapon at Kryshinin, then suddenly pulled it away.

“In here, Comrade Captain. Up the stairs.”

Kryshinin vaulted through the doorway. The hallway of the house was littered with glass and smashed potted plants, the aftermath of the nearby artillery strikes. He jumped the stairs two at a time.

A lieutenant knelt low behind a broken-out window on a landing just below the second floor. He gazed through a pair of binoculars, man-packed radio at his side with the antenna angled out through the window frame. He looked around suddenly.

“Comrade Captain, you’re here!”

The boy’s voice sounded as though he had just experienced the relief of Leningrad. Loaded with complex emotions and thoughts, Kryshinin sensed that his arrival, in the lieutenant’s mind, had meant salvation, an end to all troubles. Yet Kryshinin could only feel how little combat power he had brought to the scene. Now they would need to hold out until the advance guard of the division arrived. If they were coming.

“Look,” the lieutenant said. “You can see them across the valley, by those woods. Orient on the lone house. They’re getting ready to come at us.” He held the binoculars out to Kryshinin.

One quick look. Tanks. Big, modern, Western tanks. Approximately thirty-five hundred meters off.

The artillery came back, shaking the farmhouse.

“They spotted us maybe twenty minutes ago,” the lieutenant shouted. “They came marching up the road like they were on parade. We had to open up to keep them away from the tunnel. A few minutes after that, the artillery started.”

Kryshinin looked at the baby-faced lieutenant. Somebody’s sweetheart. He touched the boy on the shoulder. “Good work. Good work, Lieutenant. Now let me see what I can do about those tanks.”

The concussion of a nearby artillery blast almost knocked him off his feet. Someone screamed.

“In the barn,” the lieutenant said. “The Germans. The family. They were still here, hiding. I didn’t know what to do.”

It had never really come home to Kryshinin before that warfare could have such complex dimensions. He thought for a long moment. The screaming clearly came from a female throat.

“They can take care of themselves,” Kryshinin said, turning away to organize his battle.

Kryshinin called the artillery battery commander, ordering him to either come up and act as a forward observer the way he was supposed to, or send someone else. He was prepared for another argument, but the artillery officer’s attitude had undergone a distinct change. He was excited now, too. He had contacted division, reporting that Kryshinin’s element had reached the crossing site. The chief of missile troops and artillery had personally informed the division commander. He had approved Kryshinin’s decision, and the advance guard from Kryshinin’s regiment was on the way.

“How far back?” Kryshinin asked.

“Didn’t say.”

“Find out. We have enemy tanks coming for a visit. They want us out of here.” He passed the grid where the enemy tanks were forming up. Then he hastened to the air force officer’s control vehicle. The hatches were sealed, and Kryshinin had to bang on the metal with the stock of his assault rifle.

Bylov, the forward air controller, opened the hatch one-handed, holding an open rations tin in the other.

“Taking a break,” he told Kryshinin.

Kryshinin almost gave up. At the same time he realized, jealously, that he had eaten nothing since the previous night. But there would be time, he consoled himself. Later. If they were still alive.

“Have you informed your control post of our situation?” Kryshinin demanded.

The air force officer nodded, forking up a hunk of potted meat so strong-smelling that its aroma penetrated the garlic-and-onions stink of the artillery blasts.

“Listen,” Kryshinin said, “we’re going to need air support. If you want to be alive at suppertime, you’d better get some ground-attack boys or some gunships in here. The valley just beyond the ridge is filled with enemy tanks.”

Bylov finished chewing and swallowed. “I’ll see what I can do. But if they can’t give me something that’s going up now, it won’t help.”

“Try.
And get out where you can see what’s going on. Up there by the apple trees. Anywhere.”

Kryshinin jumped back down off the vehicle, splashing in the mud. His camouflage uniform had been soaking wet since before dawn, and his trousers had been chafing his crotch. But the discomfort had disappeared in his current excitement. He raced for the tank platoon, instinctively running low, even though the enemy artillery had lifted for the moment.

The tank platoon had a problem. The platoon commander could not find any suitable firing positions along the ridgeline. In order to sufficiently decline their gun tubes to engage an approaching enemy, they would need to expose themselves to observation and fires.

“All right,” Kryshinin said. “I have a better idea. Pull back onto that low hill over there, just north of the road we took to come up here. There. See it? Hide where you can watch the approaches to the tunnel. Counterattack any enemy armor that gets through. Don’t wait for orders. Just hit them. We’ll try to hold around the farm buildings. Do your best.”

The lieutenant of tank troops saluted and immediately began talking into his microphone. The tanks belched into readiness.