by Leo Kessler
For once the Gauleiter’s fears were overcome by scorn. ‘My dear young sir, do you really expect the enemy to wait till then? They can read the weather just as we can. They’ll undoubtedly attack before then.’
Almost as if responding to his scornful words, there was a sudden burst of noise on the horizon and swinging round Peiper was in time to see the first little group of armoured reconnaissance cars, well spread out on the sparkling surface of the new snow, begin to slither down the slope towards them.
‘Get that panzerfaust up here!’ he cried, the Gauleiter, the missing planes everything forgotten now in face of the final threat, ‘They’re coming....’
*
‘Squadron Leader, here,’ von Igel pressed the throatmike, automatically noting the patch of clear sky ahead of him. ‘Are you reading me? Report in. Over.’
He waited tensely, flashing looks to left and right, but in spite of the fact that the snowstorm was beginning to peter out, unable to see a single Stuka.
‘Able One,’ a metallic voice crackled over the air.
‘Able One close in,’ he ordered immediately. ‘Able Two?’
‘Hello, here Able Three,’ another voice replied, ‘Able Two bought it at take-off. Over!’
‘Shit!’ von Igel cursed. ‘All right carry on. Over.’
Within a minute, the Black Eagles’ Commander knew the worse. Three of his pilots had crashed on take-off, and two had disappeared without trace during the storm. Out of a squadron of nine planes he had exactly four left, including his own. It wasn’t the biggest force in the world to tackle the kind of opposition Jodl had told him to expect. But still there was nothing he could do about it, and the losses made him even more determined to carry out their mission. He owed it to those who might now be dead on account of his own inability to refuse.
‘All right, Big Able to all... close up now... and keep your glassy optics peeled... Peiper and his merry men can’t be far off now.’
They emerged from the storm and into the clear sky ahead, though already he could see fresh snow-clouds forming. The Stukas closed in on him, until they were flying in a small V, von Igel’s own plane in the lead. Satisfied, von Igel jerked his thumb downwards and started to descend. The others followed like the well-trained veterans they were.
Now they were flying at tree-top level, skimming across the gleaming white steppe like dangerous, metallic hawks, dragging their evil shadows behind them, flashing looks to left and right trying to spot Peiper ‘s column in that endless, seemingly deserted waste.
‘Hello, Big Able... Hello Big Able... wake up you dozy man!’ An urgent voice crackled over the air and made von Igel’s eardrums buzz.
It was the Mad Polack, Gustav, no respecter of persons or ranks.
‘What is it, you garlic-chewing sub-human?’ von Igel demanded, knowing instinctively that Gustav had spotted something, for he had the keenest eye-sight in the whole Squadron.
‘Cavalry... to port!’
Von Igel swung his head round. For a moment he was blinded by the glare now coming from the snow, as the red ball of the winter sun peered out of the grey snowclouds for a few minutes. Then he saw them: dark figures urging their horses through deep snow and then beyond them two men crouched in the cover of some firs, what looked like sticks clutched in their hands.
‘Popovs!’ Gustav identified them with those tremendously keen eyes of his. ‘Shall we give ’em a buzz?’
‘No,’ von Igel decided, as his Stuka flashed over the tense little scene, wondering who those two men were and why they were crouching there in that white wilderness. ‘We’re after bigger fish. Let’s find Obersturmbannfuhrer Peiper first.’
‘Crap said the King, and a thousand arseholes bent and took the strain — for in those days the word of the King was law,’ Gustav said, and then added, ‘poor sods. Over!’
‘Over and out!’
The Stukas flew on.
*
One after another the enormous black shadows swept across the steppe, darkening the faces of the Cossacks who had looked up, momentarily startled.
Ivan the Terrible tugged savagely at the bit as his horse reared and bucked, terrified at the sudden noise. ‘Keep still, you bastard!’ he grunted, taking in the black crosses on the wings of the blue-bellied planes and knowing instinctively that the Fritz he had tortured to death had been telling the truth, after all.
He waited an instant until his men had controlled their horses, with the planes already disappearing over the horizon, before he cried. ‘All right, you mare-lovers, close up now... The Fritzes can’t be far off... Come on, close up!’
Hastily the Sotnik repeated his CO’s command, slashing his knout across his horse’s steaming gleaming flank, to urge it to ever greater effort as it ploughed through the deep snow. ‘Close up!’
Ivan drew his sabre. Automatically the others did the same, the silver blades sparkling in the blood-red glare of the morning sun. Ivan licked his thick sensual lips in anticipation. Soon, they’d fall on the Fritzes marooned somewhere in this white waste and then there would be a great slaughter — a great slaughter indeed.
‘Forward, Cossacks!’ he cried, raising himself in his saddle and waving his sabre above his fur-capped head, ‘I can smell the blood of a Ger-man...’
*
‘Now!’ Schulze breathed, and pressed the trigger of his machine pistol as the Cossack cavalry streamed forward, the fur-capped Ivans waving their sabres about their heads, screaming wildly as they charged forward. Next to him Matz did the same, feeling the gun chatter into crazy life at his side, smacking into his skinny ribs, as 9 mm slugs streamed towards the Russians.
Man after man went down, sliding from their horses, falling backwards, arms flailing, being dragged through the snow, as they sprawled, trapped in a stirrup, as the crazed mount kept on going, mane flying, eyes white and distended with fear. But the others kept on coming, knouts lashing the sweat-gleaming rumps of their horses, curved swords whirling in silver circles above their heads, wild cries wrenched from their lips by the wind.
Now Schulze, desperate as they grew ever closer, started to pick out his targets, picking them off with quick snapshots and controlled bursts, knowing he must stop the bastards soon or they would overrun him and Matzi.
A standard-bearer went down, his black banner hurtled into the snow with the last dying impact of a burst that ripped his chest open. A sergeant, his face turned into a gory red mess, as if someone had thrown a pot of crimson paint at it, reeled from his horse and fell beneath the trampling hooves of those following. A bugler died, his last note strangled by his own blood, as Schulze caught him with a salvo in the throat.
There were fewer of them now. Still they kept coming. Now they were less than a hundred metres away. Next to a cursing Schulze, Matz ripped out an empty magazine and groped for another one.
‘Scheisse!’ he cursed suddenly, face contorted with alarm. There wasn’t one. They had run out of ammo!
Out of the corner of his eyes Schulze caught the movement, as Matz rose to his feet, Schmeisser grasped by the barrel like a bat, ready to fight it out like that to the last.
‘Crap on this for a lark!’ He yelled, consumed suddenly by an overwhelming rage. He sprang to his feet too.
The yelling Cossacks were fifty metres off now. Schulze searched the front rank for their leader. A great hulk of a man with a flying beard came into view. Instinctively the Hamburger knew that this was the one. He pressed the trigger hard, feeling the Schmeisser slap against his hip.
The Cossack ducked. The stream of tracer zipped above his head. Like a circus rider, he flung himself to the flying horse’s other side, expertly transferring his sabre to his right hand. Schulze could see the pock-marks on his evil bearded face quite clearly now.
He took more careful aim, knowing that his magazine was nearly empty too now. The m.p. burst into life at his hip. Less than twenty-five metres away, the Cossack, a look of triumph on his broad face, spurred his flying mount straight
at the big German standing there, sabre directed at his throat, ready to slice off his head with the first stroke. And then he suddenly was flying from the horse, his face smashed, blood-red, every feature disappearing under the impact of that burst of lead at such close range, and his mount was careering by Schulze.
It was as if the death of Ivan the Terrible acted as a signal. Just to his rear, another officer tugged feverishly at his bit. His horse reared up high on its back-legs whinnying piteously, its forelegs pawing the air. Next moment the Sotnik had wheeled his horse round and with the rest of the surviving Cossacks was galloping furiously to the rear, springing over the bodies of men and mounts writhing in the bloodied snow, knowing nothing but that he must escape that murderous fire.
Weakly Schulze leaned against the nearest tree and let his smoking Scmeisser hang from a nerveless hand. ‘Himmel, Arsch und Zwirn, Matzi,’ he gasped, ‘I thought we was going hop just then!’
All that his running-mate could answer was a weak, ‘You thought... I did... I just shat myself...’
*
The whole horizon seemed to disappear in flame, as the enraged Soviet artillerymen opened up on the little circle of halftracks, now that they had succeeded in knocking out two of the armoured reconnaissance cars with the single bazooka. It was as if some invisible giant was shaking the world.
Every fifty metres along the Soviet positions in front of the waiting armour, the Stalin organs, as the Germans called the enemy multiple rocket-launchers, poured their fire on the trapped Germans. Time and time again, the rockets roared an angry-red into the grey sky and curved up in a great glowing parabola to come hurtling down to engulf everything in their life-destroying fire.
Crouched in and around the halftracks, the trapped Germans trembled violently with each new salvo, heads ducked as the red-hot shrapnel whizzed frighteningly through the air, clattering down like hailstones on their helmets, their fists dug in their ears trying to keep out that horrifying roar.
Time and time again, Peiper gulped in air, trying to fight off the suffocating blast and keep his eardrums from bursting, while asking himself what he should do next. He knew better than any of the trapped men what the Ivan game was. They were trying to keep the Germans close to the ground, while they moved their armour forward under the cover of the barrage.
Any minute now, the T-34s would come bursting over the hilltops, engines going flat-out, machine guns and cannon firing, ready to massacre what was left of the men trapped down below. And that would be that.
Suddenly the murderous inferno ceased as abruptly as it had started. Peiper raised his head, dislodging the pieces of shrapnel perched on his battered cap. His eardrums thundered painfully on by themselves. With glazed eyes, he searched the horizon as the smoke rose slowly over that pitted landscape. Beyond the still burning recce cars, the first T-34 had appeared on the crest of the hill. Almost immediately it was followed by another and yet another. In a flash the whole crest was alive with armoured vehicles, waiting for the signal to advance and crush that pitiful handful of human beings below.
Peiper cast a despairing look at the sky. It was empty. Wearily he rose and fitted the last rocket into the panzerfaust. ‘Stand to, everywhere... stand-to!...’ he commanded without enthusiasm.
The men rose like grey weary ghosts. In one of the halftracks Gerda started to sob softly. Jochen Peiper knew why. This was the end, the absolute end. On the crest a single green flare hissed into the sky: the signal to advance.
As one, the T-34s started the descent.
*
‘Holy strawsack!’ von Igel breathed as the four Stukas swept over the ridge-line and he saw the massed armour bearing down on the little circle of halftracks set in the middle of the snowy waste. There seemed to be hundreds of them and he knew instinctively, even before the Mad Polack yelled the identification over the radio, that they were Popovs!
‘It’s Peiper!’ he cried excitedly, as the planes swept across the steppe at one hundred and fifty kilometres an hour, ignoring the ragged fire zipping up from the Russians followed an instant later by the joyous flares erupting from the halftracks, as the defenders realized that these were the long-awaited rescuers. Then von Igel was businesslike again. ‘To all,’ he snapped over the radio. ‘Close up now... close up now... We’re going to give them one concentrated blast, and it better sit the first time or else. Klar?’
‘Klar... klar....’ the answers came back rapidly from his pilots.
‘All right, follow me, we’re going down!’
Like a hawk spotting its prey, von Igel’s plane dropped from the sky, its sirens screaming terrifyingly, followed by the others, hurtling downwards at three hundred kilo¬metres an hour until it seemed to the watchers below that the pilot must smash into the ground. At three hundred metres, however, von Igel jerked back the controls, his body pressed hard against his seat, his eyes seeming about to pop from their sockets, his teeth bared wolfishly.
Behind him the others did the same. ‘Watch out for flak, boys!’ He screamed. ‘All right, Black Eagles... we attack!’
As one, with their wings not more than twenty metres apart, the four planes roared down in a line, scudding over the ground, coming in from the sun to blind the Soviet gunners, ignoring the tracer rushing at them from all sides, not even seeing the men below standing on the bonnets of the halftracks waving up at them madly, concentrating solely on the enemy.
The line of armour grew ever larger. Now they could make out individual vehicles. Von Igel, gaze fixed on his own target — a large command vehicle — flicked the gun controls on and bent his face over the sight.
The tank loomed larger and larger. He could see the white face of its commander as he ducked behind the turret for protection. Three hundred metres... two hundred and fifty... one hundred and seventy-five... It was now or never. He pressed the trigger. The Stuka seemed to stop in mid-air, as if it had run into an invisible wall. Next instant it had jumped at least fifty metres and the white blob of an anti-tank shell was searing through the air straight at its target. At the very last moment von Igel had the presence of mind to break to the left, as directly beneath him the huge ten-ton turret of the tank heaved and trembled and then seemingly effortlessly rose high into the air.
WHAM!... WHAM!... WHAM! The seventy-five millimetre shells slammed into the first-line of Russian tanks, as von Igel shrieked in at treetop height for another run, his plane rocking from side to side with the force of the explosions from down below as tank after tank disintegrated.
Again he thundered to within two hundred metres of the burning Russian line, with panic-stricken tankmen running for cover everywhere, leaving behind them their shattered vehicles. Again he pressed the button. The Stuka seemed to halt in mid-air once more, cringing under that tremendous strain, its rivets zinging off into space, the metal shrieking its protest, and then with a thunderous ear-splitting scream, it was sailing high into the air, leaving behind it another shattered, fiercely burning T-34.
The massacre of the Soviet armour was well underway.
*
‘Come on you heroes,’ Schulze grunted, two rifles slung over his shoulder, in addition to his own empty pistol. ‘Don’t tell me Adolf’s darlings are a bunch of wet-tails.’ He pointed to the Soviet tanks scattered everywhere and beyond them the little circle of halftracks, already revving their engines preparatory to moving off, as the attacking Stukas snarled round in another tight turn for a further attack. ‘That’s home boys. Come on....’ With the last of his strength he stumbled forward, chanting his old exhortation, ‘Follow me, follow me, the captain’s got a hole in his arse!’
They had nearly done it now…
*
Von Igel flew one last sortie, but what was left of the Russian tanks were scuttling towards the cover of the fir forest beyond the ridge and he didn’t fire. He wanted to save some shells for the attack on the river-line. Thus he was the unknown spectator of the link-up of what was left of the Wotan troopers and Obersturmbannfuhrer Pe
iper just one minute before the young colonel had been about to give the command to move out.
Zooming in low, throttling back to lower his speed, and followed by the rest of his Black Eagles, he wiggled his wings at the upturned faces beneath to indicate that they should follow him now.
Peiper dropped Schulze’s hand and acknowledged with a quick wave, crying upwards, though he knew the pilots grinning down at him couldn’t possibly hear, ‘My God, if we get out of this mess, I’ll buy you all a crate of champus!’
‘A whole bath-tub full each, sir!’ Schulze yelled and sat down suddenly, his weary legs giving way beneath him. ‘A swimming pool full of the....’ And with that he fainted.
*
Two hours later in a brilliantly executed lightning attack in the best tradition of the Bodyguard, and covered by the Black Eagles’ blazing seventy-fives, the survivors crashed through the Russian positions on the river-line, sending the surprised Ivans fleeing in terror, and allowing them to ford it without a single casualty.
Exactly thirty minutes later, an embarrassed Fireball was reading them out the Fuhrer’s personal telegram of congratulations, while outside his seething veterans were toiling away to clear an emergency landing strip for the transports which would take the survivors to the Fuhrer’s HQ for a personal reception by the Greatest Captain of All Times.
The big break-out was over.
ENVOI
‘Hit the sauce and hit the chow, and grab a little arse while yer can, cos there ain’t much in life for a common old soldier-man.’
The Sayings of Sergeant Schulze
It was the custom in the Ukraine to celebrate Christmas on the Fifth of January. Even after twenty years of aetheist communist domination and two of German occupation, the villages of the occupied Ukraine did so that winter of 1943.
