Stalemate (The Red Gambit Series) (16 page)

The thought vanished as he dived into his scout car seeking safety, bullets striking his armoured vehicle, as a sharp-eyed enemy soldier saw an opportunity from the small hill to his left.

Another man, armed solely with a revolver, also saw th
e camouflaged scout car secrete itself behind a small farm building.

Consulting his map, he spoke into his radio. Receiving an acknowledgement, he returned to his observations to await the results.

The British battery fired one full salvo. He had decided to range one gun would scare the Soviet General away, assuming it was the enemy commander he was shooting at.

The first shell to arrive struck the floor of the lend-lease scout car seven inches to the right of Arsevin, exploding on contact.

Lieutenant Poulter, formerly of 662 AOP Sqdn, grunted in self-congratulation, as the enemy vehicle flew in all directions, the 4.5” shell dismantling it totally, and in the most brutal fashion.

Payback for his beloved Auster aircraft, long since smashed down by
Soviet fighters. He had been lucky to escape that action, but was almost enjoying his time on the ground as an artillery observation officer attached to 153rd Field Regiment.

The five surviving 4.5” guns of the virtually destroyed 79th Medium Regiment RA had found a home with the 153rd, becoming an additional battery, and the one to which he had given the task of engaging the enemy command
element.

It was some time before Major Dubestnyi realised his colonel was dead, and that he had command.

When he found himself in charge he immediately ordered the Siberian battalion’s to assault down Muhlenstraβe.

The artillery observers had more targets than guns with which to fire.

Poulter’s fellow officer called in a savage barrage, smashing into the enemy infantry that suddenly emerged from the woods to his south, stopping them in their tracks, as high-explosive dismembered and destroyed frail bodies.

Poulter himself selected an area in which he had seen enemy armour
on the move, dropping his 4.5” shells on the northern outskirts of Langwedel.

Close by, a Vickers of the Independent Machine Gun Company opened up, its barrel streaming unwelcomed tracers, attracting attention on itself.

Disgusted with the stupidity of the infantry, the artillery OP team stripped down their radios and prepared to move away.

Captain Ganzin, commanding the mortars of th
e 67th, selected his own target and ordered a swift barrage, before moving his mortars to another position.

Soviet
81mm mortars dropped their lethal shells over a small area, silencing two of the IMGC’s heavy weapons and killing their crews.

Relocating, Ganzin spared time to look through his binoculars and saw nothing but the dead.

On the hillock, Poulter struggled to get upright, his clearing vision informing him that his fellow officer was dead, decapitated, and eviscerated by high explosives.

The radios were smashed, the two operators beyond help.

The RA Bombardier who had kept all their spirits up with his jokes and lewd stories, was gently coughing his last few moments away, his lower jaw destroyed, and his throat laid open by shrapnel.

Surveying his own body, he counted his legs and came up one short.

“I say, that’s rotten luck.”

His comment was to
no one in particular, the bombardier having crossed over into permanent darkness.

His battledress was blown open, revealing patches of disfigured flesh below, trophies of another dice with death.

Beyond the shrivelled old wounds, he saw a steady pulsing of blood coming from his crotch, indicating a severe bleed.

Momentarily panicking, he tried to reach in order to feel his treasured possession, realising that the act was beyond him.

A further check of his arms revealed his left hand all but severed, hanging by a few strips of skin and sinew.

His right arm seemed to be there,
and seemed intact. It was just unresponsive, broken by the impact of his fellow officers binoculars, propelled by the explosion that claimed the man’s head.

“Blast it. Well
, that’s bloody unfortunate, I must say.”

Poulter bled to death within
a minute.

The experienced Siberians of the 2nd Battalion had gone head first into hell.

Their task was to cut a diagonal route, hitting the modest ridge above the main road,
securing the flank for the 3rd Battalion to concentrate all its efforts on securing the small crossing.

The Allied artillery had wiped away many a veteran of years of fighting, pieces of men flying in all directions
, as the unit attacked on a narrow front.

Urged on by the surviving officers, the soldiers of the 2nd Battalion charged forward, pressing closer to the defenders
, where the artillery would fear to touch them.

Fig #55 - Soviet developing attack on the Brahmsee Gap, Germany.

Their opponents, the German 58th Grenadieres, launched everything they had at the easy targets, dropping men to the ground with a mixture of modern MG42’s to vintage Maxim’s, taken from the Red Army in 1941.

Major Dubestnyi, slowly realising that he was out of his depth, ordered the Battalion commanders deputy to drive his men forward, failing to understand that another of the regiment’s experienced officers had fallen.

Clearing his mind, he thought back to the plan, reliving the simple presentation.

The mortars.

‘Yes of course’.

Then the tanks.

‘Yes, Yes.’

Ordering his Gaz jeep to move off, he bore down on the OP of the mortar unit, intent on wiping the enemy off the ridge to his front.

The artillery that had claimed his commander had also dealt roughly with the observation team, his arrival unnoticed as the two bloodied survivors worked on the damaged radio.

Extracting his map, he spoke quickly with the senior survivor, a Lieutenant whose eardrums had been shattered by a close shell.

Writing out his orders for the deaf man, he succeeded in getting his message across.

It was even more of a fillip for him when the radio showed obvious signs of life.

Slapping both men on the shoulders, he moved off to his vehicle, secreted behind a small farm building, adjacent to a smouldering wrecked vehicle of a type that he couldn’t recognise.

Behind the British lines, the battery commander, the incoming directions now dried up, took it upon himself to fire on the last location, sending his 4.5” shells southwards, one misfire earning his immediate attention.

The shells arrived on target.

Dubestnyi heard the scream of shells and threw himself into a hole.

The mortar OP survivors were obliterated by the first shell to strike the ground.

The second struck the building, blowing all four walls outwards perfectly, the flat brickwork lying symmetrically out from the solid
, but cratered, base.

The third shell struck just behind the Gaz jeep, lifting it and its two occupants into
a large tree some thirty metres away, the grisly package remaining stuck above ground level, flesh and metal swaying violently, defying the expectations of gravity.

The fourth shell landed close to the destroyed scout car, causing more insult to already slain men.

Back with the howitzers, standard operating procedure was applied and the gun re-fired.

Not that anyone expected the shell to fire off, but it did, a relief sweeping amongst the crew
, now that they would not have to complete the misfire procedure.

Back at the target, Dubestnyi raised his head at the moment the shell landed, striking the fallen wall nearest the hole in which he had taken shelter.

A brick, perfect and undamaged, propelled by the force of the shell’s violent end, struck him in the temple, staving in the front of his skull, and destroying much of the brain matter beyond.

The
Soviet commander gurgled incoherently, dying alone and unseen in the bottom of his accidental grave, his death painless but protracted, the sound of fighting long ended before he took his last shallow breath.

On the Guards hillock, the fighting was desperate.

Command of the Irish soldiers lay firmly on the shoulders of the surviving officer, a recent arrival from the halls of Sandhurst, ill prepared for the realities of modern combat.

Despite his wounds, he moved position to position, bucking up his boys, doing what he was taught an officer should do, even though the officer in question had solely one good eye with which to find his way.

The Jocks of the Royal Scots had taken a fearful pounding and welcomed the young officer, their own leader having fallen in the first attack.

Every probe, every rush was bloodily repulsed, but every pile of
Soviet dead came at a cost to the Irish and Scots.

An
unseasonably hot sun broke through the cloud and started to bake the soldiers of both sides, adding to their discomfort.

An Irish Guards Lance-Sergeant sought out the new officer.
Tumbling into the small log pile that now constituted the company headquarters, he gasped frantically for air, alternating between an upright and face down position as he struggled to get enough oxygen into his lungs. Face streaming blood from a nasty cheek wound, the NCO looked on his last legs.

“Sir, we can’t hold the buggers. Me
Brens have little ammo, and half the lads are down. We gotta pull back beyond the water there.”

The bemused officer listened but did not hear, his shock taking over.

“O’Rourke, you’re wounded.”

“Sir, we gotta withdraw or me boys will all die here this day!”

“Someone fetch the medic, will you?”

O’Rourke spat as blood filled his mouth.

“For fuck’s sake Lieutenant! Give the order or we’ll all meet the Lord Almighty on this fucking hill!”

A flight of ground attack aircraft flew overhead, hugging the ground
, as best they could, to avoid interception, intent on wreaking havoc somewhere to the north. The Irishman, distracted as he quickly checked the Soviet aircraft were not a threat, initially missed the movement of the mentally incapacitated Lieutenant.

The officer rose and headed off, his gait unsteady, his internal compass all wrong.

“Oh sweet Jesus! Sir, will you come back here now, for the love of God!”

Totally confused, the battered young man shouted constantly for medics to attend his NCO, even appealing to the
Soviet engineers who closed in on him, before they battered his vulnerable frame to the ground.

His capture gave O’Rourke command of the company, a position he used immediately, shouting to nearby men, organising them to stand fast
, whilst others were to slip away across the modest watercourse.

Seventy-nine sons of Ireland had pinned their colours to the hill. Exactly forty made their way back over the water to the north bank.

The Royal Scots did not get the order, but in any case could not have disengaged successfully, so close were they to the attackers. The Penal troopers stormed the Jock’s positions, hand grenades and sub-machine guns doing awful work amongst the trees and foxholes.

The platoon was overrun, some men choosing death, some choosing life.

The prisoners were not all lucky, and more than one man was bayoneted in an act of vengeance, payback for a comrade lying dead or wounded in the hell the Russians had charged through.

The
Soviet tank support had withered away, mainly destroyed by the accurate fire of the single tank that hugged the shallow slope, five hundred yards to the north-west.

Balianov had remained in his position, his tank concealed, whilst he tried to work out what to do about the unknown monster
vehicle.