by Colin Gee
“Yes, Sir!”
“Oh and Sam… pretty soon we’re gonna be all over these suckers. We’re stepping up the pressure big time… all across the front. I don’t want anything interfering with my ticker tape parade back home. Get on top of this shit and stay on top of this shit.”
“I heard the buzz, Sir.”
“It’s gonna be a lot louder than that, General.”
Across Allied Europe, a few officers pondered new orders, unspecific directions that implied a difficult operation ahead.
In airbases and barracks, men worked to put together a plan to fit the requirements issued by Brigadier General Rossiter.
Enquiries made with higher commands were passed on until they met the cascade coming down from Patton’s headquarters.
Those who questioned Rossiter’s authority were left in no doubt that the plan would require their full cooperation, or the NATO commander would take an unhealthy interest in their future career path.
Back in Horberg Masslau, the two disparate groups of soldiers came together to plan the operation that would probably kill them all.
They had questions, but they also had orders and both Shandruk and Crisp had no uncertainty that the mission, whatever it was, was as vital and important as they came.
When Brigadier General Rossiter returned to the camp the following evening, he briefed them on the precise nature of their mission, and the special tasks that would need to be performed.
Rossiter, with mission security as his prime concern, forbade the cascading of information to the troops.
Both Crisp and Shandruk railed against that, but the General was adamant.
The impasse was broken when the two officers conceded the point, with the proviso that, before the men left they would be told the true nature of the site and the equipment they were there to photograph, steal, or destroy.
As both Crisp and Shandruk put it, ‘men who are about to risk everything deserve to know what they’re gonna be dying for!’
It was the first real moment of unity between the two officers, and, as consummate leaders, they both decided to build on it, for the benefit of their men and the mission.
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
Albert Einstein
Chapter 196 - THE HUSBAND
0615 hrs, Tuesday, 25th March 1947, with the Polish Army, Lithuania.
To the second, the guns of the Polish Army fired together and sent a stream of high explosive washing over the Soviet front and second line positions.
The bombardment was organised with great precision, the Polish attack only part of the huge offensive that Patton had planned.
As usual, the counter-battery units waited on accurate information and took out a large number of the Red Army artillery that sought to hit back.
Patton’s initial efforts to strike back had floundered, as much for the Allied lack of readiness as for the Soviet sternness in defence.
Only in the German and Polish zones had there been any recognisable success in terms of ground made, although the success in killing Soviet soldiers and destroying their means to fight was notable along the entire front line, particularly as the Allied air forces held sway over the battlefield, both by day and by night.
This time, George Patton had taken his time to set everything up properly, and his forces were attacking from the shores of the Baltic to the border with Yugoslavia to the south.
He knew what was coming to Europe, kept safely in the bowels of the USS Guam, and he knew that President Truman now had the will to use them, so George Patton was determined that he would remove the imperative and cover himself in glory at the same time.
The 1st Polish Armoured Division’s lead units watched and waited as second hands clicked round to 0645, the time of the scheduled advance.
Their artillery would not stop, but it would advance slowly at a fixed rate, timed to move away from the advancing line of armoured vehicles, both tanks and APCs.
Fig # 234 - Seirijai, Lithuania.
Fig # 235 - Polish Forces engaged at Seirijai, Lithuania.
Leading the way were the reconnaissance troops of the 10th Mounted Rifles, their Coventry and Boarhound armoured cars surging from cover to cover ahead of the main advance, whose axis was on a broad front out of, and either side of, the ruins of Avižieniai, the main body of which was to roll over and through the villages of Mikabaliai and Paserninkai, before enveloping the waters of the Seirijis and forming a corridor all the way to the Neman River southeast of Dubravai, where the Corps’ engineers would throw bridges across the obstacle, with a view to delivering part of an envelopment of the Soviet forces that would then become trapped in the Neman River bend, centred on the village of Vilkiautinis.
The southern element would repeat the Neman crossing at Druskininkai, where there were still viable crossing points, although more bridging assets were available, should they be required.
North of the main thrust was a secondary effort based around two squadrons of tanks from the 1st Armoured Regiment, supported by men of the 1st Highland Battalion, spearheaded by the Light Tank Troop of the 1st Armoured Regiment’s Headquarters Squadron.
Their mission was to strike down Route 132, straight through to the junctions with Routes 180 and 181, where they were to take and hold the pile of rubble that was once Seirijai and ensure no interference from the Soviet forces to the north and northwest.
In peacetime, Route 132 had wound its way through lush forest, a landscape that now only lived in the memory, as high explosive and napalm had converted the countryside into a barren wasteland, bereft of anything but Soviet fortifications and bunkers.
0700 hrs, Tuesday, 25th March 1947, Bagdononys, Lithuania.
The second hand clicked into place and Czernin’s commander gave the order to advance.
He spoke in a normal voice and ordered his driver to move forward.
The path of their advance had already been agreed, partly from examination of the terrain through binoculars, and partly from looking for hours at the aerial photographs that had been used to form the full plan of attack.
The terrain itself made the whole affair perilous, with the undulations and folds capable of hiding many things that could kill their M24 Chaffee tank, and hiding in such a way as to spring the surprise presence of a killer enemy at the last possible second.
Ahead of the advancing Light Tank Troop and men from the Highland battalion, the artillery had done grim work amongst the Soviet defenders, but there were enough left to bring despair and death to the attacking force.
Czernin had spent months in hospital after his near-fatal encounter with a mine, and parts of him were still somewhere on the battlefield of Nottersdorf.
His old crew were no more, and he had welded his new men into a tight and efficient unit in the time since his return to the company some four months previously.
Czernin knew that their level of efficiency was about to be tested in the hardest school of all.
The tank was approaching the first of their listed special points; a place that could not be fully interpreted from photos and required further examination… and above all caution.
Czernin gave the order and dismounted, quickly scrabbling up the side of a muddy ridge to understand the area ahead, something that had been impossible to work out from the aerial pictures.
A quick look revealed a nasty surprise.
The Soviets had set an anti-tank gun into an artificial mound, one that pointed sideways across the battlefield, sited to take vehicles using Route 132 in the side.
It was protected by a group of infantry that were trying very hard to look like anything but a group of infantry, staying low and unmoving under camouflage.
Czernin spoke quickly into his walkie-talkie and the commander of the Highland battalion’s mortar platoon acknowledged with the minimum of fuss.
Within a minute, mortars shells were dropping on the se
cret position, and the defending infantry lost interest in their charge and placed self-preservation at the head of their priorities.
The observing Polish NCO watched as two, then four ran back to another prepared position, one that offered more shelter and that was not under direct mortar strikes. There was red mixed with the brown mud and green grass in the positions they had just evacuated, testament to the accuracy of the mortar strike.
Czernin gave the ceasefire order and summoned forward one of the supporting halftracks, giving the Highland Battalion’s men a quick directional steer over the rolling ground and down upon the anti-tank gun which could not traverse given its defensive set-up.
He watched as the halftrack started up the slope and almost screamed into the WT.
“Niebieskie-Bizon-trzy-dwa! Biały-Huzar-Dwa-Dwa! Stop! Stop! On foot... I said on foot... get out of the vehicle... get out of the veh...”
The other obliquely mounted gun position, set some four hundred metres back, put a shell through the front of the M5 halftrack, a solid shot that destroyed the engine and sent deadly pieces of metal flying in all directions.
The men inside needed no order and bailed out on the side opposite their nemesis and headed straight down the slope towards the mortared position.
One man fell as they ran but was quickly up and limping as the Highland soldiers charged into the AT position, following up three grenades that took much of the fight out of the gunners.
Czernin counted nine men, meaning that the halftrack, struck a second time and now burning, still held three young men from Poland.
The mistake was not his fault, but he felt a bitter taste in his mouth at not double-checking that the Highland officer had understood his words.
He would have no chance to pursue the matter further as the man in question was roasting within the roaring flames.
Czernin took another look and saw a further group of infantry sprinting down the slope to avenge their comrades, almost running into more mortar fire.
Now that the AT position had been silenced, the next Chaffee in line swept past his tank and breasted the rise before quickly dropping down again and out of sight of any waiting Soviet killers.
Having handed responsibility over to the next tank, Bazyli Czernin moved back to his own vehicle and climbed aboard.
A mug of coffee was thrust into his hand as he ordered the repositioning of his tank.
“Thanks, Jan.”
His loader grunted and passed the thermos flask back into the front of the vehicle.
‘No Russian artillery? No mortars? Strange…’
Ahead came a crack of a high velocity weapon and he stuck his head out of the cupola for a better view, immediately deciding that he needed to be back behind the metal as a white-hot shell screamed overhead.
Whilst he understood that his Chaffee wasn’t the intended target, fast-moving metal has no friends and is wisely avoided.
Up front, the commander of the tank that had been the target shouted into his radio, providing contact information and a location.
Czernin’s forehead wrinkled, as the stated enemy gun position failed to correspond with any recorded on his map, known, or suspected.
The mortars were busy again and accurately so, from the radio reports that filled his ears.
Instinct… something that cannot be underestimated on the battlefield… made him shout into his microphone.
“Driver, full right turn… top speed… head for the ruined building!”
The Katyusha rockets started to arrive as he moved out of the zone into which a company of the deadly rocket vehicles had fired.
The Soviet fire plan was quite simple.
They had understood that the dips would become gathering places for the assaulting troops, and their tube weapons had merely waited to give the attackers time to gather.
The Light Tank Company’s commander was killed as two rockets bracketed his jeep and destroyed it, him, and his men.
The second in line Chaffee was flipped over, breaking seven of the ten limbs of the crewmen inside. As they struggled to escape, fire took hold and another five sons of Poland were soon gone.
Major Pomorski, the commander of ‘B’ Squadron, 1st PAR, was thrown from his Dingo scout car as an explosion tossed the light vehicle off the road, tumbling like a toy car, over and over, before coming to rest on its wheels but decidedly out of the fight.
Pomorski, incredibly, just wiped the mud off his face and hailed down the lead tank, scrambling onto the engine and ordering the attack forward.
Fig # 236 - Soviet forces engaged at Seirijai, Lithuania.
After few dips on the uneven ground, the valiant officer understood that he had not come away scot-free as his sprained ribs announced themselves with every bump on the road and painful breath.
Czernin’s turn to lead came round quickly and the Chaffee leapt forward towards the small stream that marked his next point of reference,
The modest stream was swollen by rain and melt water, but only in width, not depth, which was just as well as the small culvert had long since succumbed to high explosive.
A bush spouted a smoky trail and Czernin’s driver, without orders, jinked to the left, allowing the hollow-charge projectile to sail past the turret.
Even as the crew struggled to reload the RPG-1, the Chaffee’s tracks ran over the bush that they had made their hiding place and snuffed out their lives.
Another projectile came their way and missed as the propellant gave out and the missile fell harmlessly to earth.
The hull machine-gunner helped the running men on their way with bursts from his .30cal weapon, without, as Czernin noted, managing even a single hit.
He ordered the gunner to rip up another bush that caught his eye but nothing emerged as a result so he felt safe to debus once more, having ordered the Chaffee to relocate, just in case the running Russians decided to stop long enough to tell someone where they were.
He slid up on wet mud and hid his head behind a pile of earth thrown up by a shell, barely exposing any part of himself, just in case the photos had been wrong.
They were absolutely correct, in that there were no enemy positions that he could see, although the incredibly detailed prints had failed to reveal his worst nightmare.
Mines.
Where shells had rent the soil, the tell-tale shapes of unexploded mines were everywhere, a mix of anti-personnel and the larger anti-tank mines being clearly on display.
‘I fucking hate mines.’
He examined the ground ahead and reasoned that the path the enemy had run down was either clear or had no anti-personnel mines.
By studying the ground, Czernin could see that the muddy footprints clearly ran between two piles of stones, piles that were supposed to look natural but seemed decidedly contrived to his experienced eye.
He also understood that he would not order the next leapfrog move and expose his corporal to the risk.
Czernin quickly pegged two white squares out in the mud, roughly five yards apart, as markers that signified a safe point to cross the ridge.
Back in the tank, he reconnected his microphone and spoke rapidly to the next tank behind.
“Bially-Huzar-Dwa-Pięć, Biały-Huzar-Dwa-Dwa! Move up to my position only. Suspected minefield ahead. Understood, over?”
His corporal acknowledged and Czernin switched to the regimental net to broadcast his warning, rapidly reading the coordinates defining his assessment of the affected area.
His commanding officer replied with a promise and an order.
‘Fuck.’
“Right, Dawid, move right.”
The driver edged the vehicle past the destroyed bush to where Czernin reasoned the safe route through the mines started.
“Move between the markers I pegged out… when we go over the ridge, go quickly, but stop once we’re below the sky line. I need to see the ground before the engineers arrive to sort out the mines. Stay alert, boys. Driver, advance.”
The powe
rful engine carried the tank over the ridgeline and down again in the blink of an eye, and Dawid Scorupco swiftly applied the brakes, although the mud proved unequal to the task of stopping the Chaffee, and it slid inexorably down the rest of the slope.
The crack of an anti-personnel mine confirmed Czernin’s suspicions… and fears…
… and then he saw something that had previously been hidden to him.
“Fuck it… gunner, gun vehicle, right four… high-ex… fire when on.”
The turret whirred and the shout came back quickly.
“On… firing!”
The breech flew back and Jan Milosz rammed another shell home.
Czernin examined the enemy vehicle as best he could through the smoke and flame that marked its death.
Whatever it was, it was dead.
The six-wheeled scout car appeared to mount something nasty and threatening, a multi-barrelled weapon that had started to swing the moment Czernin had spotted it.
The BTR-152 had been caught out of position during the artillery attack and had no chance to relocate.
Its quad KPVT mount had not fired a shot before the HE shell had snuffed out the lives of all aboard and set the wreck on fire.
Exposing the barest minimum above his cupola, Czernin swept the area on all sides, seeking anything that could interfere with the efforts of the coming engineers.
There were no enemy positions that he could see or even suspect in sight, so he sent a confirmation message to his CO and elected to move forward on foot once more.
Careful to see what he might drop on, Czernin gingerly climbed down the side of the tank, checking the ground he would step on and further field for tripwires.
The single AP mine had detonated as the tracks slid over it, causing no damage.
He could feel the nerves build but determined that he had to press on.
The binoculars moved across the ground, seeking evidence of the presence of the deadly charges and, occasionally, he saw the prongs of an anti-personnel mine, but nothing else.
