by Colin Gee
The waiter retreated, watching his customer carefully, not only so that he could be as attentive as possible, but also because he was Deux’s man.
Outside the church, the young priest was deep in conversation with two nuns, although all three were more than aware of the fact that Serena di Mattino had packed up her kit and was on her way home, for all three were also Deuxieme Bureau, as was the balding man reading a novel, two tables from where Weiss was sitting, and the two walkers who bracketed the Swiss woman on her way to the bus stop, and who knew for a fact that she now carried the plans that supposedly outlined Operation Spectrum.
The idea that a war can be won by standing on the defensive and waiting for the enemy to attack is a dangerous fallacy, which owes its inception to the desire to evade the price of victory.
Douglas Haig
Chapter 131 – THE LULL
February 1946, Europe.
At the time, it was described as a lull. Historians writing about the war later described the period of January, through to mid-March 1946, as a respite, an enforced break, and, in territorial terms, nothing of note changed hands.
But to those who froze and struggled to survive, it was anything but.
To those who flew, day in, day out, the war went on in its normal savage way, but with the extra complications of extreme temperatures and the very worst conditions.
The Soviet incursion that was driven back by the 2nd US Infantry and Legion Corps D’Assaut was the last large ground action on the European front, as the continuing winter combined with logistical problems, low morale, and growing non-combat casualties, creating a general malaise that affected both sides of No Man’s Land.
The lull; a time when the armies stood quietly apart and exchanged artillery.
The respite; a time when the air forces of both sides did what they could to keep the enemy on the back foot, the Allies with far more success than the Red Air Force could ever have hoped to achieve.
The enforced break; a time when the dying stopped?
Far from it.
2054 hrs, Sunday, 3rd February , Der Brankenwald, one and a half kilometres south-east of Hollenbeck, Germany.
The group had shrunk considerably since the heady days of its early successes, when the enemy was less organized, the targets more numerous, and the cold was a thing of the future.
Now, Kommando Bucholz was virtually on its last legs, out of supplies, nearly out of ammunition, with only hope and iron will sustaining them, and the former was fading fast.
At one time, the Kommando had risen to a strength of fifty-two men. The first casualties were all caused by enemy action, but, since the snows came, winter had extracted its price from their ranks, as well as the constant NKVD patrols, leaving only nine men alive.
Their base at Ekelmoor had served them well until it had been discovered, and its loss, and that of nineteen men, had set the Kommando on a downward spiral. Offensive action was almost impossible as they were constantly hounded from position to position by the pursuing Soviet security forces, unable to get any supplies, unable to rest, and unable to respond effectively.
An attempted ambush had cost the Kommando another dozen men, without any notable improvement in their condition.
Lieutenant Staunton, late of the Carleton and Yorks, had succumbed to wounds that morning, two weeks after the mine had taken his right foot and ravaged his body with shrapnel.
In the end, it was a merciful release, as their limited medical supplies had not lasted as long as the ravaged young Canadian.
Now ‘Bucholz’ had nothing but the nine men; no food, no supplies, only the nine men and the weapons they carried.
Soviet policy in the area had been harshly implemented, and numerous farms that could have given them shelter and food now lay black, where the occupiers had burned them to the ground. The Soviets moved whole families into ‘holding areas’ and collected foodstuffs into more easily defended locations, effectively cutting off their civilian support.
The survivors had found refuge in a derelict hut in the Brakenwald, a modest forested area surrounded by boggy moorland. It was a double-edged sword for them, the awful conditions keeping the enemy at bay whilst providing them with little let up from the harsh temperatures, save the dubious comfort of the ramshackle building, whose holes were too numerous to plug with snow.
Unable to light a fire, the survivors huddled together under blankets and greatcoats, gathering their strength for the evening’s foray.
Driven by hunger and cold, they had decided that the small Soviet supply dump at Hollenbeck would receive a visit.
It was not wise, neither was it well thought through, their desperation driving them to make decisions based on survival, not military reasoning.
Unfortunately, their desperation was anticipated, and their arrival was expected.
2054 hrs, Sunday, 3rd February Three hundred metres south-east of the Soviet supply base, Hollenbeck, Germany.
Having rubbed his stump back into life and re-attached the prosthetic limb, Schultz and Irma settled into position, the lovingly cared-for Mosin sniper’s rifle cold against his cheek.
Admittedly, without night sights, Irma would be of limited value, but Schultz also had the flare pistol to hand, ready to send up illumination if there was a problem, illumination that would bring the superb weapon into play.
The rest of the Kommando were implementing the hastily-agreed plan, with four men moving up on each side of the Oberdorf, the long road they intended to use to close on the depot quickly, using the hedgerows as cover.
MacMichaels, the Canadian Seaforths’ Sergeant, led the assault group, moving ahead of the second support group by thirty metres. Its commander, ex-Hauptmann Müller, once of the GrossDeutschland Division, drove his weary men on, knowing in his mind that the raid might prove to be a risk too far, but that necessity and survival held sway in his decision making.
Up ahead, the Soviet facility, set in the field adjacent to the junction of Oberdorf and Stahlmannskamp, displayed little by way of life, and what little movement there was betrayed sentries struggling to stay warm, rather than on high alert.
At the main entrance, a Soviet soldier was stamping his feet and slamming his arms against his sides, desperate to maintain blood flow whilst he did his stint outside, whereas his two comrades tucked themselves up in the guard post, complete with stove and extra blankets.
Across the Oberdorf, a line of lorries were parked in a wired-off area, backs towards the main gate, almost ready to reverse in and load up at a moment’s notice.
The two open guard towers showed no presence, the sentries clearly skulking below the woodwork and staying out of the icy wind.
That same wind was cutting through the clothing of Kommando Bucholz, bringing already debilitated men to the edge of their tolerance and capacity to endure.
Corporal Forbes, another of the ex-POW Canadians, grabbed Müller’s arm as the German amputee’s false leg slid away on the ice, threatening to send him flying.
“Steady on, boss. I got ya.”
“Danke, Forbes.”
The effort of movement left neither of them capable of more words.
Fifty metres from the wire, MacMichaels signaled the groups to ground, allowing himself a few moments to take in the base and the challenges it might pose.
A curtain fluffed at one window in the facility, a building MacMichaels immediately assumed to be a barracks.
Despite his cover, the Sergeant shrank back as two Soviet soldiers padded round the inside of the barbed wire, moving as quickly as they could in the circumstances, clearly wishing to be back inside in the warm.
He watched and congratulated himself when they both disappeared into the suspected ‘barracks’, which building subsequently disgorged another two men to take over the perimeter patrol.
Müller’s unit had swung left, approaching the south-west corner of the supply dump, keeping their attention firmly fixed on the front gate and the nearby tower.
&nb
sp; MacMichaels nodded to the man adjacent to him, who slipped his rifle over his shoulder and extracted the wire cutters that would get them inside the facility.
Using his fingers to indicate his chosen point of entry, the Canadian settled behind his PPSh, watching and covering the US engineer as he slid forward over the virgin snow.
The quiet magnified the explosion.
The detonation was followed by screams of extreme pain.
Followed by a moment’s silence.
The US Engineer had lost half his face, all of his left arm, and his body had a hundred holes, all leaking blood, fluid that was no longer pumped around his body as the heart was already motionless.
“Mines!”
Both towers came alive and muzzle flashes illuminated the men that had been concealed behind its wooden sides. Both of MacMichaels’ other men were hit immediately, their reactions dulled by hunger and exhaustion.
The PPSh leapt in his hands, and the Sergeant was rewarded with a reduction in fire from the nearest tower.
A flare rose and cast its illumination over the scene.
Müller shouted his men into a firing position and they too engaged the suddenly wide-awake defensive force.
None of them noticed the soldiers bailing out of the parked lorries until the bullets started to impact.
Forbes turned and got off one shot before the top of his head flew off, a round from an SVT auto-rifle striking him in the forehead at the same time as two from the gate guard’s PPd took him in the side of the temple, splashing red and grey matter all over Müller.
A rifle bullet slammed into Müller’s false leg, sending the wooden limb flying; another struck him in the lower stomach, bringing red-hot agony in immeasurable quantities.
One Soviet soldier dropped from the tower, a single rifle bullet in his brain, as Schultz joined in.
MacMichaels rose, firing first at the lorries, then at the tower, his body blossoming in spectacular red flowers as bullets struck home and he was knocked to his knees.
His screams were more of anger than pain, and the PPSh continued to pluck the life from some of his targets.
In the tower, one Soviet soldier took careful aim and put a single bullet through the Canadian’s throat, dropping him to the snow in a microsecond.
There was only one more shot, and that was fired three hundred metres away, from a distance of two metres.
The Kommandos’ bodies, there were six in total, were laid out by the side of the road. The US engineer having been recovered in stages, and pieces, as the attempt to drag his body out of the minefield set off another mine, wreaking more ignominy on the dead man.
MacMichaels had also come in for extra attention, a number of soldiers who had lost friends to his firing using their rifle butts and boots to take a little extra revenge on the corpse.
That left three men, wounded, bound, and near death, clad only in the thinnest of tunics and trousers, their greatcoats and blankets stripped from them by their captors.
Müller, his stomach wound frozen, was closest to death. His German Army uniform tunic, with its accompanying medals, had earned him a few blows.
Schultz’s Ritterkreuz had been snatched from him and a bayonet wound in the thigh added to the hole in his shoulder gained when the small detachment that had been trailing ‘Bucholz’ came upon him. More than one of the Russian security troops had given him a punch, as no-one soldier liked a sniper, and his GrossDeutschland armband, as usual, was mistaken for that of an SS man.
Willis, a British latecomer to the Kommando, was unconscious, his skull fractured by the rifle bullet that had creased his head and laid him out.
The Soviet ambush force commander, an NKVD Major, decided that the prisoners had no use for him and ordered them to be tied to the barbed wire fence.
Detailing two men to guard the Kommando soldiers, he decided to accept the offer of a drink with the supply officer, and both strolled off to sample the delights of the local brandy.
It was 2136.
By 2139, the last survivors of Kommando Bucholz had frozen to death.
Treachery returns.
Old Irish saying.
Chapter 132 – THE RETURN
0551 hrs, Wednesday, 6th February 1946, airborne over Russia.
Makarenko did not sleep, although he had expected to, as aircraft held no fears for him that he could not conquer with ease, and he was very, very tired.
After a succession of medical supervisions, combined with interviews that were more often unsubtle interrogations, the NKVD and GRU officers had concluded that he had displayed supreme courage and military skill in the course of his mission and subsequent evasion.
Attitudes changed immediately, and he found himself feted as a hero for his survival and subsequent rejoining of the Army, an attitude that progressed to the very top and resulted in his summons to Moscow for a very public demonstration of the Motherland’s joy at his survival, by way of the presentation of the Hero Award from the hands of the General Secretary himself.
A number of senior officers shared the same flight back to Vnukovo, and none of them slept either.
A few were also summoned to the presence of the General Secretary to receive awards for their prowess on the battlefield or in command of their formations. For the most part, their excitement kept them awake.
Others, similarly summoned, understood that a wholly different fate awaited them, for reasons ranging from abject failure to simply bad luck, and they remained awake through fear.
The reason that Ivan Alekseevich Makarenko, Major General of Paratroops, did not sleep would have surprised many of his former interrogators.
It was neither excitement, nor fear.
It was the faces of those who had died, faces that came to him with his eyes shut or open.
‘Piotr Erasov, my second in command and friend. Dead.
Ilya Rispan, old experienced officer and friend. Dead.
Stefka Kolybareva, Doctor. Prisoner at best. At worst…
Egon Nakhimov, superb and loyal NCO. Probably no more.
Alexey Nikitin, sniper and model soldier. Most likely frozen to death in the High Vosges.’
He felt the anger build, as the anger always built when their faces visited him, reminding him of his promise.
‘All those young boys I took to Haut-Kœnigsbourg… betrayed like so many others.’
Quickly recovering himself, Makarenko looked around to see if anyone had noticed external signs of his innermost thoughts.
No-one was paying any attention to the quiet paratrooper.
‘No more betrayal, Comrades.’
The faces faded away and sleep came in an instant, not to be broken until the aircraft approached Vnukovo, and Makarenko’s day of destiny.
0701 hrs, Wednesday, 6th February 1946, GRU Commander’s office, Western Europe Headquarters, the Mühlberg, Germany.
Nazarbayeva was at her desk early, a deliberate decision to guarantee her time to read through the final reports on the Haut-Kœnigsbourg operation. A very personal matter for the Nazarbayev family, as it cost them the life of one of their precious sons. She studied the reports in her own time, sipping a morning tea, before embarking on the main business of the day; the thorough examination of a fire-damaged folder recently arrived from one of the GRUs agent
She had read much of the Haut-Kœnigsbourg file previously, shavings of information gleaned from sources on the other side of the frontline, and good quality information from their contacts in the Red Cross.
The file now boasted the most complete account yet available, that of the recently returned commanding officer of Zilant-4, Ivan Alekseevich Makarenko.
His recall of those hours was excellent and detailed, and Tatiana quickly found the sections that dealt with the death of her child, finding some strange comfort in the words of the Paratroop commander, as he described the actions of her son, Vladimir, on the lead up to and then the assault on the chateau proper.
Closing up the report where it star
ted into Makarenko leading the survivors off into the High Vosges, she finished the second slice of rye bread and downed the last of her tea.
Unusually for her, breakfast had not satisfied her hunger and so she rose to cut two more rough slices of bread, grab more butter, and refill her mug, before reseating herself.
Opening the folder again, she found herself on a page recording one of the GRU interviews with the General.
‘Tiger tanks?’
The GRU interviewing officer had calmly suggested that Makarenko’s small force could have contributed something to prevent the defeat at Barr during the disastrous Alsace campaign.
Tatiana smiled.
Makarenko had, equally calmly, suggested that the interviewing colonel had ‘his head up his ass.’
She thumbed through, seeking the abridged NKVD report, containing their interpretation of the same event, finding it with ease.
Their wording had initially been very different by far, not suggestions, just bold statements of cowardice and of deliberately avoiding enemy contact, but, eventually, they had accepted the statements put to them, and the Barr matter had been dropped.
Wiping her buttery fingers on a cloth, Nazarbayeva moved quickly forward, scanning the pages, noting the repetition, the standard NKVD attempts to wear down a suspect.
‘Suspect? The man is a hero of the Motherland and they’ve shown him no respect!’
The final sections dealt with his escape through enemy lines, Makarenko’s personal account tailoring with that of the Shtrafbat commander in almost every detail.
The last two documents covered the award of the Hero of the Soviet Union, and the travel arrangements to get him to Moscow for the presentation.
