by Gee, Colin
The concrete aprons and runways had been cleared of snow and the soft joints between the heavy pads proved inviting for the fuel to flow into, creating large rectangles of fire.
Someone, somewhere, gave the order and return fire started slamming into the bowser.
A rear tyre went and, even though he was slowing to take out his fifth aircraft, Hoosen nearly lost control.
The B-29 succumbed to the bowser’s attention and he moved on, smashing into jeep containing three MPs, crushing them and their vehicle without losing an ounce of momentum.
The jeep caught fire and ignited fuel spilling from the bowser.
His comrade took a round in the shoulder, dropping his sten on the floor of the bucking vehicle. As the man bent to retrieve it, he was hit half a dozen times.
Hoosen, suddenly terrified, increased his speed and sped towards the next target.
A bullet clipped his hand; a second entered the door and stuck in his calf.
From the other side, two bullets smashed the side window, one of which grazed the back of his head.
He yelped in pain, but held the bowser steady, despite the growing orange fire in his side mirrors.
Up on the control tower, the base commander watched as the extremely valuable silverbird squadron was destroyed one by one, by nothing more complicated than man’s old adversary; fire.
The tender bore a charmed life, as did Hoosen.
Four more bullets had struck him, but none vitally so, his ability to steer intact, although his clutch leg now felt too numb for words.
Whatever it was that was going on, off-duty or not, Riley wanted a piece of it.
Rousing his ten man section from their pits, he got them into order and deployed them in defence of their small building.
Nipping up onto the roof, he was able to observe the destruction of the Superfortresses and, more importantly to him, what it was that seemed to be causing the mayhem.
Almost like a cartoon, the Grenadier Guardsman looked at the moving bowser, then at the B-29 nearest him, the last in the line and, as yet, untouched
Looking back at the weaving fuel bowser, Riley made a decision.
“Right lads! Push up to the apron there, next to the marker.”
Faces were raised and they noted where the big Sergeant was pointing.
“You two,” he selected Jones and Newton, “Grab the Vickers and get it set up on that small rise to the side. You, get the daisy chain. Now move!”
The section moved as swiftly as they could and deployed towards the apron, setting themselves between the end B-29 and the now fiery bowser.
Hoosen saw that the fire had followed his progress like a faithful dog, the early morning sky and its snow filled clouds orange in reflected light. Everything was on fire; aircraft, men, the very earth itself.
His breathing was labored now; a single bullet had taken him under the rib cage and hammered the breath from him.
‘One more, just one more.”
He pushed the bowser on, cornering on the point of the revetment and turned hard left towards the final bomber.
He screwed his eyes up, his vision impaired by fumes, by smoke and by blood loss.
“Fire!”
The Vickers started lashing the bowser with .303s, the front tyres simultaneously giving up the ghost.
Perhaps if they had done so independently, the result might have been different but, with the destruction of both came a sort of balance to the steering that enabled even the weakened Hoosen to control.
The radiator suffered under a number of hammer blows, and steam and scalding water spurted from the holes.
A single rifle bullet struck his shoulder, wrecking the ball joint and making him scream in agony.
The vehicle lurched and a stream of .303 bullets wrecked the passenger side, visiting more damage on the corpse by his side.
But Hoosen’s luck was holding out until the last.
The lurch took the bowser away from the daisy chain of mines that would have stopped it dead.
The lurch also took the bowser straight up and over the small rise on which the Vickers was positioned.
Newton and Riley were pulped in the blink of an eye.
The trailer bounced up and over the hump, coming down with such force that it split at two of the numerous damage points, allowing a greater flow, almost emptying the few gallons still left behind in an instant.
Unable to control the vehicle, Hoosen just did what he could with the steering wheel, now unable to see anything but a hazy shiny shape some distance away.
The front wheels, devoid of rubber, struck the concrete of the slipway and generated enough sparks to light a thousand fires.
Only one was needed.
The trailer disintegrated with explosive force, the fireball shooting out the ruptured rear end like a flamethrower, removing Riley and his men in an instant.
The momentum of the bowser carried it forward and it closed the small remaining distance to the surviving silverbird.
Hoosen coughed clots of blood and his eyes went glazed, the totality of his wounds meaning that he did not survive to see the bowser come to rest against the bomber.
Nor did he live to hear the first of many huge explosions, as bomb loads cooked off.
All but one of the communists guerrillas was killed, the wounded survivor taken prisoner. His captors assured of the most horrible existence until they knew all that he knew. He lasted two hours.
By the end of the incident, Maaldrift was wrecked, its silverbirds were all destroyed, and over four hundred casualties were either in the morgue or being cared for in the makeshift hospital, set in one of the hangars.
1107 hrs, Tuesday, 24th December 1945, RAF St Angelo, Northern Ireland.
“Top of the morning to you, Sam.”
“Merry Christmas to you, Dan.”
The two shook hands and moved off to the warmth of the staff car, the RAF marked Hudson already on its way to a hangar where its doubtful parentage could not be noticed.
“So, what brings you all the way here on Christmas Eve?”
“I’ll save it for the group, Sam. But it’s a bloody can of worms and no mistake.”
The car arrived at Rossahilly House, the normal venue for the clandestine meetings of the shadier arms of the Allied forces
Percy Hollander was away in Cambridgeshire with family but, as always, he placed the house at the disposal of the Intelligence services.
Major Generals Colin Gubbins and Kenneth Strong were absent, but Sir David Petrie was there on behalf of MI5.
Colonel Valentine Vivian of the SIS had made it, although his vehicle had been involved in an accident en route from RAF Belfast.
Only Bertram Leonard had made it on time, the rest of the normal attendees either away on leave or unable to answer Bryan’s call in time
The smells of their dinner pervaded the smoky atmosphere, making them hungry, although the greater hunger was to find out what had so exercised the head of the Irish Army’s Intelligence Service that he had summoned the group to a meeting this close to Christmas.
Bryan stood on cue and walked to a board and easel, producing a map and pinning it in place.
The four pairs of eyes took it in, the roads, the sea and the buildings.
Bryan walked to the map that had been positioned on the wall long before he arrived.
Selecting the target carefully, he pressed the pointer to the north-west part of Éire and spoke but one word.
“Glenlara.”
They all got it immediately.
“You’ve confirmed it. We’ve found the bastards!”
He nodded at Vivian in acknowledgement.
“Indeed we have. Your submarine base... and more besides, I think... it’s all here...at Glenlara.”
The rest of the meeting and the luncheon that followed was occupied by the nature of the response, the timing of the response and the depth of the response.
By the time the cigars were lit, the answers had been found.
Land forces, as soon as practicable, and total annihilation.
Sam Rossiter, USMC, came up with the solution on all three counts, with the assistance of some underhand thinking by Dan Bryan, and the expectation of some assistance from a Squadron Leader who had recently lost a brother.
2239 hrs, Tuesday, 24th December 1945, Frontline position, 400 metres north of Hinteregg, Austria.
To Leander, it must have seemed like a lifetime since his platoon had been butchered by silent Soviet ski troopers.
For many soldiers on both sides it had indeed been a lifetime, terminated in blood and darkness, as their commanders, keen to appear active and full of fight, ordered their frozen men to cross the no man’s land and kill, sometimes seize, occasionally destroy, but always kill.
The boy had become a man in those handful of days, going from the platoon’s worst soldier, to the platoon’s only soldier, and finally to the platoon’s Sergeant. All in seven weeks of enduring the unendurable.
And for what?
King Company’s position was the same one he had been in that night. Third battalion had not advanced one yard; nor had it conceded one either.
The 370th Regiment sat on the same line it had occupied seven weeks ago, as did the entire 92nd Colored Infantry Division.
The only things that had changed were the faces.
Men came and went, sometimes alive, often dead. After the incursions, snipers started to play their part, claiming the unwary and the unlucky.
Mortars joined in, adding their tree bursts to the litany of exciting ways to die during an Austrian winter.
And then the cold decided to make its presence felt, making all that had gone before a walk in the park.
The Sergeant’s eyes were fixed on the tree line ahead, watching, waiting, and prepared, his Garand on the trench parapet in front of him, covered with a white blanket, two grenades placed ready for use to the right of the rifle.
His eyes saw nothing and his ears detected no sounds.
The forest was silent.
No mortars came, no artillery, and no snipers.
The enemy had attacked stealthily, just after 2000hrs, and the work had been hot but brief. They went as quickly as they came, leaving a dozen bodies behind in the crimson snow.
Leander had done the rounds, organized the removal of their five dead and the evacuation of the eight wounded.
His work done, he returned to his position, now occupied by him alone, his terrified partner shot down as he turned and ran during the attack.
The blood had stopped flowing from his own wounds; wood splinters in his shoulder and back, the slightest graze from a rifle bullet across his arm.
He did not complain, just maintained his silent vigil whilst his men, boys like he had been but a few weeks beforehand, nestled low in their holes and did all they could to keep the chill from their bones.
Leander had no greatcoat, just a padded jacket, a thick jumper, and a scarf round his neck, but he stood to his post, defying the cold.
The company commander, Captain Forbes, moved carefully through his positions, surprising some who had fallen asleep, welcomed by others who had managed a small triumph over winter in the form of a warm coffee.
To the left of Leander’s position one such victory had brought forth coffee for the four men in the hole, plus enough for more besides.
Accepting a cup for himself and Sergeant Leander, Forbes worked his way round to the front of the Sergeant’s position, making sure he could be seen by the veteran NCO.
Holding the two mugs, Forbes moved forward and then stopped.
The coffee makers watched, wondering why until Forbes sat on the parapet to drink the hot liquid, merely setting the metal mug in front of the ever-vigilant Leander.
The answer to that was simple.
Frederick Lincoln Leander had long since frozen to death.
He had spent fifty-two days in the front line, seen combat on twenty-nine of those, during which time he had metamorphosed from boy to man. Promotions had come, from Pfc to Platoon Sergeant, mostly via dead men’s shoes. Conservatively, it was estimated that he had killed twenty Soviet troopers, taken five prisoners and wounded countless more. For his troubles, his superiors had sent back recommendations for both the Bronze and Silver Stars, as yet to be confirmed or rejected.
On New Year’s Day 1946, the Leander family was celebrating until the news was delivered by a family friend… and then they celebrated no more.
2342 hrs, Tuesday, 24th December 1945, the Wilders Estate, Rottelsheim, Alsace.
Artur Wilders had not always been a farmer. Indeed, the absence of his left ear, the eye patch and stiffened left arm would give away that once he had been a soldier; a German soldier.
He had been a member of the 320th Infanterie Division, fighting on the steppes of Russia. Accidentally wounded by a German grenade, he risked being swept up in the Soviet advance, but the SS had come to the rescue and extracted his division, leading them to the comparative safety of the German front line.
Wilders owed the Schutzstaffel his life.
Hiding the ex-SS legionnaires came easy to him, an honour debt to be repaid.
He hid the two men in plain sight, as farm hands on the large estate. That both were wounded gave them the limps necessary to make their presence believable, as relics from the Patriotic War, as the hated Russians called it.
It had not occurred to the occasional Soviet visitor that the wounds were more recent and still healing.
The large hall that Wilders had added to the main building was filled with his staff and their families, all good Germans first and foremost.
They all knew the two men were not what they were presented as. Some knew exactly what they were, some even knew what they had once been, depending on the level of confidence they enjoyed with Wilders, or his wife, for that matter.
Tonight was Christmas Eve, a time when Germans find a soulful depth not normally on display.
The cold was offset by beer, wine, and brandy, all washing down plates of steaming pork, potatoes and cabbage.
The two fires were tended as the meal was cleared away, permitting tradition took over.
It fell to the master of the house to talk about the year past, and the year ahead, thanking those who had excelled, and mapping out the course for the estate over the coming twelve months.
Wilders, without notes, went through 1945 and the joys and horrors it had brought, but only relative to the estate.
There was silence for the son of his Head Gardener, killed by a strafing Soviet fighter some months before.
His description of the year ahead could only be his hopes; the war would not stop and accommodate the needs of an agricultural community.
After seventeen minutes of hopes, fears, thanks, acknowledgements, and inspiration for the future, he finished and reached for his drink.
Raising his glass, he toasted his workers, their families, and Germany.
The hour left, a new one came, and with it came Christmas Day.
He then departed with tradition, as he had been asked to do.
The room fell silent as the two ‘new workers’ stood.
“Kameraden. We thank you for helping us. You have saved our lives, and we are very grateful. One day, we will be able to repay you all. Until then, please accept this gift.”
The younger man surprised everyone by starting to sing.
“Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,
Alles schläft; einsam wacht...”
His voice was a like a dream, every note precise and with the feeling required of the German’s most favourite Christmas song.
Eyes moistened, the wonderful voice bringing every colour and emotion ever necessary to the carol.
When the older man joined in, the harmony brought the song to a higher level.
Nur das traute heilige Paar.
Holder Knabe im lockigen Haar,
Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh!
Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh!
&
nbsp; No-one else sang until the two Legionnaires encouraged them to join in.
It was a magical time that none present would ever forget.
The whole hall reverberated with the wonderful carol, rising voices bringing it to a worthy conclusion.
Jesus der Retter ist da!
Jesus der Retter ist da!
There was silence, all save the occasional crack as heated wood spat its resin. The tears fell silently.
Caporal Fritz Zenden, until recently a driver of a Panther tank, nodded to the assembly and sat down, leaving his commander to speak.
“Thank you all and Merry Christmas.”
He sat down and raised his glass to Wilders, both men understanding that the tears in their eyes were for other times and other people, now long gone.
“Thank you, Artur. Merry Christmas.”
“And to you, Rolf, and to you.”
2343 hrs, Tuesday, 24th December 1945, One kilometre southeast of Zittersheim, Alsace.
This was always going to be the trickiest part, and the Russian carefully surveyed the ground and positions with his damaged field glasses, the single intact lens finding the weakness he sought almost immediately.
He checked his watch, immediately understanding that his period of grace would soon be over.
Twelve minutes to get across and identify himself before some sentry took a pot shot at him.
He made his calculations.
‘Two hundred metres, possibly two-ten.”
The opposing positions were one hundred metres behind him, containing men who had been told not to fire at anything until 2345hrs precisely.
A flare rose up and he froze.
As it sank to earth, all he could think of was the time.
In his badly weakened state, even covering the two hundred metres might prove too much, as his guides had now left him, their support and steadying hands having got him this far on the coldest night of the year so far.
