Stalemate (The Red Gambit Series) (15 page)

2nd Battalion, already inserted into the southern edge of the woods, was ready to drive to the shores of the Brahmsee and secure the vital Mühlenstraβe road. This would enable the bulk of Captain Volnhov’s 34th Guards Tanks to push through, the remainder to move to the right with two companies of 3rd Battalion, and turn the flank of the forces fixed by the penal unit.

Fig #54 - 1000hrs, The Brahmsee Gap, Germany.

Allied Forces- ‘A’ Company, and Support Company [Reduced], both of 3rd Battalion Irish Guards of 32nd Guards Brigade, and ‘A’ Troop, ‘C’ Squadron of 2nd Battalion [Armoured] Grenadier Guards, and ‘B’ Battery of 153rd Field Regiment RA, and 3rd Platoon, 1st Independent Machine-gun Company, all of Guards Armoured Division, and 2nd & 3rd Kompagnies, 58th Reserve-Grenadiere-Regiment, and ZBV Panzer Kompagnie Von Besthausen, all of 160th Reserve Division, all of British VIII Corps, British Second Army, British 21st Army Group, and the remnants of Kommando Neumunster.

Soviet Forces - HQ Company, 2nd & 3rd Battalion, all of 67th Guards Rifle Regiment, of 22nd Guards Rifle Division, of 19th Guards Rifle Corps, and Armoured Combat Group Volnhov, of 249th [Separate] Tank Regiment, and 2nd Company, of 3rd Battalion, of 34th Guards Tank Brigade, and 3rd Company, 3rd Battalion, 13th Engineer-Sapper Brigade, and 60th Guards Mortar Regiment, all of 10th Guards Army, and 33rd Penal Company, all of 1st Baltic Front.

Circumstances dictated that the forces that opposed each other at the Brahmsee Gap were out of position and unready, even unsuited to the tasks required of them.

The British, after days of steady withdrawal, always holding on until the last moment, and then retiring, having given Uncle Joe’s boys a bloody nose.

The Soviet forces had pushed hard either side of the Brahmsee, and met rock hard defences.

The route through between Brahmsee and Manhagener See was less than ideal
, and the Soviets initially avoided it. The casualties sustained assaulting Ellerdorf to the south, and Route 255 to the north, were extreme, and forced the Soviet leadership to turn its gaze to the narrow Brahmsee Gap.

Determined to go quickly
, to broach the Kiel Canal at the earliest moment, only the few units at hand were tasked with the initial breakthrough, others already moving to take advantage once the line was broken.

For the Allies, a handful of His Majesty’s Guards were swiftly reinforced with some of the
German Grenadiere units of the 160th Division, straight from their hard fighting around Ellerdorf.

The orders issued to the soldiers on both sides were
straightforward, devoid of frills, brutal in their simplicity.

Red Army commanders exhorted their men to smash the capitalists and break through the line, regardless of losses. Sometimes encouraging their men with threats, sometimes with the sweet taste of vodka, the officers prepared to drive their soldiers into the narrow Brahmsee Gap.

Across the smallest divide, that was No Man’s land, Allied and German officers made sure their men understood the simplest yet most feared of orders from above.

‘Hold your positions at all costs!’

The Irish Guards had been fighting without a break for days on end, and the casualties had mounted.

The arrival of the Katyusha rockets on their positions caused havoc, killing and wounding indiscriminately, destroying trenches and foxholes, sometimes burying men alive to die in silent
, indescribable horror.

‘A’ Company had been
reinforced with men from the disbanded 15th Scottish Division, and platoons of 6th KOSB and 8th Royal Scots shared the suffering in the opening salvo.

The 60th Guards immediately commenced relocating, the new procedure adopted by the hard-pressed
Soviet artillery and rocket troops, desperate to avoid the accurate counter-battery fire.

That fire came and, even though 60th Guards moved quickly, the mixture of
high explosives and fragmentation shells still claimed lives and destroyed three launchers.

Men of the 13th Engineer Sapper Brigade moved up with the six T34/76’s, slowly moving from cover to cover, approaching a small round wooded hillock occupied by a nest of enemy machine-guns, all of which were firing rapidly, claiming a engineer infantryman with every burst.

The T34’s halted and started to put HE shells on the position, throwing up gouts of earth, occasionally stained with the blood of an allied soldier.

To the
southeast of the Guards position, the second group of T34’s, a mix of 76mm and 85mm gun versions, commenced their tentative advance, their route being more open and exposed. The supporting penal infantry knowing they had been handed a murderous mission.

Seven hundred yards away, Lance-Corporal Patterson was locked on his target, patiently waiting for the order to fire.

He adjusted as the enemy tank moved forward a few yards, angling for a better shot at the hillock. The lens also betrayed some of the Penal soldiers, scuttling into cover as the defensive fire grew in volume.

One soldier was struck in the head, his blood and brains splattering the side of the tank that he was moving past.

Automatically, Patterson screwed up his nose in disgust, as automatically as he discharged his 17pdr and sent its lethal APDS shell on its way.

The T34’s armour yielded as the high-velocity dart penetrated with ease, the driver uncomprehending as it passed through him and into the body of the tank beyond.

Smashing into the breechblock, the APDS shell was deflected upwards, exiting through the rear upper plate in a blur of white sparks, taking the life of the Penal company commander. He had climbed up to liaise with the tank crew and was just leaning into the open hatch.

The gunner, only just realising he had lost both hands to the enemy shell, started to scream, his panic infectious. The commander and hull machine-gunner scrambled to escape, leaving the amputee to try and lever himself out on bloody stumps.

Neither escaping crewmember was hit by the bullets that spanged off the armour as they sought cover.

A second shell struck their tank, entering in at the front plate and burying itself in the engine block, starting a small but earnest fire.

As the gunner was a new man to the crew, neither of them was prepared to risk himself to save him, and those on the battlefield on both sides became aware of an animal-like howling as the fire spread.

The remaining T34’s adjusted their positions, desperately seeking the powerful weapon that had
already killed one of their number.

Screwing his eyes up, the Senior Lieutenant commanding the Second Section thought he saw something, his suspicions confirmed as the ‘lump’ lit up, betrayed by the muzzle spitting flame.

The shell sped across the battlefield, heading straight at him in tank 231.

Half a second of terror was ended by a simple clang
, as the shell clipped the left side of the turret and went on its way, leaving a thin and gleaming silver stripe in the green painted metal.

“Driver, move
right, now! Gunner, enemy tank at 11 o’clock, load armour piercing! You have it?”

“No
, Comrade. Wait, I see it.”

“Driver
, halt.”

Waiting for the rocking motion to cease, in order to give his gunner the best possible chance, Balianov judged the moment perfectly.

“Fire!”

The 76.2mm F32 spat its shell at the indistinct enemy vehicle
, and the gunner showed why he was considered the best of his unit.

The armour-piercing shell hit the British tank on the glacis plate
. It bounced off without penetrating, but wiped away most of the camouflage foliage that had been stacked around it to mask its presence.

Balianov had been studying his enemy silhouettes
, but the vehicle he saw emerge from the ravaged greenery did not figure in the Soviet intelligence documents available to him.

“Driver, move left, into the gully!”

The experienced tank officer saw enough to know that it was a big tank with a big gun, and that his chances of survival had just got a lot worse.

231 slipped out of sight before Patterson could get off a shot, so he turned his attention to one of the other two
T34’s, 233, stationary, and believing itself concealed behind a large hedge.

The tank commander, Lance-Sergeant Charles, had already ordered a change to conventional rounds, the APDS shells far too good for the modest armour of the Tridsat Chetverka’s.

A standard armour-piercing round crossed no man’s land, eating up the yards in the blink of an eye, smashing into the nearside track and front sprocket of 233, destroying both before moving on and becoming lodged in the rear drive sprocket, jamming it in place.

The crew were made of stern stuff, and tried to fight their tank, sending a shell back almost immediately.

It missed, and buried itself in the ground, short of Route 36 to the north.

233 died dramatically, a solid shot
penetrated and triggered an internal explosion that displaced the turret, causing it to flail away and come to rest, twenty yards from the burning hull.

The surviving anti-tank guns of Irish Guards opened up, scoring hits
, but failing to kill any of the targets in front of them.

The penal troops had moved away from the tanks, conscious that they were not safe near them, pressing forward, not running upright
, but hugging the ground or crawling.

Balianov had slipped out of his tank and moved up to the edge of the dip in which 231 had concealed itself, his binoculars studying the enemy tank, taking in its powerful lines.

To the north, the engineers had gone to ground, as the machine gun fire consumed their resolve. Most of their leadership was lying dead or wounded amongst the felled trunks and piles of severed foliage.

A PIAT shell had transformed the lead T34 into a torch, outdoing the sun in its illumination, before internal explosions eventually displaced the upper hull plates and ended the display.

The British anti-tank weapon and its crew lay in pieces, two HE rounds having exacted revenge.

The supporting T34’s enjoyed a period of immunity, pumping shell after shell into the British positions and receiving no reply of note.

An engineer Lieutenant pushed his men forward, bringing them in a rush to the edge of the Guards positions, before he fell and the charge wilted. The badly wounded officer was carried back by willing hands, very happy to be moving away from the field of horrors.

Fires were burning everywhere now, grenades and the growing arrival of mortar shells from both sides
, creating a desolate environment of destruction, often masked by smoke.

Occasionally, the screams of a wounded man reached by the spreading fires, assaulted the ears of men who could do no more than block the sound
, and hope that whoever it was died quickly.

Lieutenant Colonel Arsevin had ridden out from Langwedel, determined to observe the secondary assault, ready to order his main force into the attack.

His binoculars revealed a hellish scene, as the hillock and surrounding woods blazed, his eyes fixed on a moving figure, uniform streaming flame as he ran from the field, unrecognisable as friend or foe, so involved in fire was the screaming man.

Arsevin watched as tracers from both sides swept the ground on a mission of mercy, seeking the man out, finding him
, and ending his misery.

Closer to his position, the Penal Company
was having a hard time, their numbers thinned by machine guns and mortars, their tank support obviously in trouble against enemy guns of some power, judging by the ease with which the T34’s were being killed.

For a moment, he considered calling off the diversion, the waste of men and vehicles appalling him.