Opening Moves (The Red Gambit Series)

by Gee, Colin

  A short platoon of battle-hardened Russians burst upon the already unsteady survivors of the Admin platoon and virtually wiped them out in close combat, the clerks and drivers being unprepared for the horror of bayonets and sharpened spades wielded by a enemy filled with hate.

  Two sections from ‘A’ Coys 2nd Platoon were swiftly thrown into the fray and managed to beat the Russians back into the corridors and rooms from which they had emerged. The reserve platoon was summoned and the Captain now commanding the depleted company held his ground until they arrived and he could throw the Russians back out into the street. Very few Soviet soldiers lived to retreat back across the road.

  In the initial rush across the open ground, a larger group had managed to reach their intended target and, as with ‘A’ Coy, the Fusiliers of ‘C’ Coy found themselves in fighting where the hand grenade and sub-machine gun ruled as a king until the closer bestial work required less sophisticated weapons.

  A 6-pdr position became the focus of much fighting, with the Soviets determined to capture the weapon and the Welch equally determined to retain it. The gunners had succumbed in the first rush and lay dead around their weapon.

  A T34 pushed forward, encouraged by signs of friendly infantry in the buildings on either side of Adolphsplatz. Another survivor of the previous attack, this commander, an experienced and decorated Starshina, had got through his war so far by skill and luck and, by his own admission, more of the latter than the former.

  His hull gunner was on the ball and a short burst killed a ‘C’ Coy Corporal intent on setting up a PIAT to their front. A quick glimpse through the smoke and another burst took the lives of two stretcher-bearers rushing forward through Adolphsplatz as they searched for ruined bodies to transport to the Aid post.

  The same hole in the smoke gave the tank commander his own glimpse of other enemy to his front, and he knew his luck had finally run out.

  An ‘A’ Sqdn Sherman had him targeted and he watched as the white blob reached out towards him, struck in a shower of sparks and then whined away off the mantlet, failing to penetrate.

  Ordering his gunner to return fire, he got his driver to manoeuvre to the right, moving the T34 into the lee of the building where ‘C’ Company was fighting for its life against his infantrymen.

  The 85mm barked and the shell streaked past the enemy tank, striking the bridge beyond and ricocheting skyward.

  The Sherman fired again, hitting the side of the building and bringing down brickwork, adding more dust to the smoke and immersing the T34 in a cloud of particles and smoke, shutting off all sight of the enemy.

  Opening his hatch and holding the half-moon section forward to provide cover for his upper body, the Starshina deployed his PPS, in case enemy infantry took advantage of the cover offered by the smoke and dust to try and get close in.

  The Sherman, having no target registered, decided on a speculative shot and fired another AP shell.

  The Starshina’s luck had indeed run out and it was an unusual death.

  The solid AP shell would have missed the tank but the vertical commander’s hatch increased the height by a short distance. Even then, the round only lightly kissed the top side of the hatch on its way past and into the buildings behind. That ‘kiss’ was enough to slam the heavy cast of metal into the NCO at a speed, which destroyed his chest in a micro-second, leaving him trapped in the hatch and hanging down inside the turret. His crew were oblivious to his death until the smell of blood, urine and faeces overtook them. They withdrew immediately, the turret gunner firing parting shots from main and coaxial weapons as they went.

  It was ‘D’ Company RWF who had the hardest fight to date, with scores of Soviet troopers breaking into the ground floor of the Rathaus and forcing the fusiliers back. This permitted more Russian troops to charge across Gro²e Johannisstra²e relatively unhindered.

  Major Llewellyn immediately ordered the 555th Engineers forward and made efforts to push the stubborn Soviets out of the Rathaus.

  A runner was dispatched to bring forward ‘D’ Coys reserve platoon and this arrived within minutes, less two men wounded in the Soviet artillery and mortar barrage.

  As Allied reserves plunged into the fight, the 134th Flamethrower Company was sent forward to expand on the success of the ravaged 215th Rifles.

  Yells accompanying Welsh and English success were soon replaced with screams in the universal language of fear and pain as Scelerov’s men set to their grisly work.

  CSM Richardson’s valour went unnoticed, the fate of many acts of bravery in wartime. He charged a flamethrower group preparing to launch a flank attack through a corridor and offices. With absolutely no expectation of surviving the experience, he fired short bursts with his Sten until all bullets were expended and his life’s blood was draining from his body, his legs and stomach ravaged by a dozen wounds. In the full knowledge of what he was doing, he drew his Webley pistol and exploded the fuel tank on a dead sapper, setting fire to the corridor and a number of attacking engineers, saving the situation with his own sacrifice. The flames reached him and started to consume his flesh so he used the Webley one last time.

  The Royal Welch were good troops, but there are few soldiers who will stand their ground when concertedly attacked with the flamethrower. They gave ground slowly, inflicting losses upon engineers and infantry alike, but the screams of the horribly burnt, wounded, and dying started to have a psychological effect upon the defenders.

  The Rathaus was now alight on every floor but still the fighting and dying continued, men fighting for and escaping burning areas at the last minute.

  A section of Soviet engineers found an undefended staircase and moved up a floor, intent on going over and coming down behind the defenders.

  Only McEwan heard them coming, having been driven back from his perch on the Rathaus’ first floor when accurate Maxim fire started peppering the position. Quickly, the indomitable little Scot exchanged his sniper’s rifle for the PPSH sub-machine gun he had taken from a dead Russian the day before.

  The Soviets came on, oblivious to his presence, and he easily wiped the group out with two long bursts of fire.

  Two of the knapsacks were leaking fuel product so he decided to withdraw after quickly grabbing a round PPSH magazine from the nearest corpse. He tossed a grenade into the pile of dead and wounded for good measure, transforming the stairwell into a maelstrom of flame and preventing further enemy sallies as the resultant fire cooked off more fuel and grenades. He had no sympathy for the wounded enemy who screamed as they were consumed by his efforts, simply reasoning that they had brought the flamethrowers to the party so they deserved everything they got.

  Reloading his PPSH, he set it aside again and took up the rifle, spotting a group of enemy all over the disabled Sherman in Hermannstra²e. Prioritising the two carrying what looked like teller mines, he took steady aim and dropped the first man to the roadway. Missing the second man, he gave himself a stiff reprimand and chambered another round, hitting the running figure in the left knee.

  Puzzled, he relaxed the rifle away from his body, swiftly examining every inch of the beautiful Standard 4 Lee-Enfield, seeing nothing to disturb him and, blowing away an imaginary speck of dust, placed his cheek into the modified stock and held his breath.

  This shot took his target perfectly in the chest, slamming him to the ground instantly. That the next target in his sights was a woman gave him an unusual moment of pause, but he pulled the trigger and she went to her maker just the same, the impact throwing her against the tank she was circling as she exhorted the others to greater efforts.

  The woman’s dying screams reached his ears, high-pitched and penetrating.

  Holding his breath for another shot McEwan relaxed, as again the paratroopers counter-attacked and drove the enemy back, one German pausing to sink his bayonet into the woman and end her suffering.

  Below him on the ground floor of the Rathaus, and in the Markt to his front, things were not going quite so well for the defe
nders.

  Major Llewellyn, singed and black, had rallied his fusiliers finally, clinging onto the last few rooms on the north side of the ground floor of the Rathaus. So much of the buildings upper floors was a sea of orange flame that he had considered abandoning the position entirely, but dismissed it immediately as his men fought on in the positions either side.

  Precious few of the 555th’s engineers had survived and Richardson was nowhere to be seen. D Company was down to about a quarter effectives and few of them were unscathed.

  In the Markt, the Black Watch had finally stopped the Soviet advance, holding a line of shell holes, sandbags, and ruined vehicles roughly halfway across the open area.

  The Scots reserve platoon, led personally by Ramsey, had mounted a bayonet charge, which saved the Fallschirmjager from being outflanked as Soviet infantry surged into the Markt end of Plan and Hermannstra²e. Joined by the paratroopers from the headquarters platoon, the former protagonists fought side by side, virtually wiping out the enemy force that had reached towards Reesendamm.

  Those now isolated at the end of Plan stood their ground and fought back, dropping Scot and German alike with accurate fire.

  The Fallschirmjager rose up as one and drove forward, taking casualties but gaining ground.

  Ramsey could see Perlmann leading his men forward, taking hasty aim with the Walther P38 pistol in one hand and throwing grenades with the other, his supply seemingly inexhaustible, as he produced English Mills bombs from a heavy bag around his neck.

  Ramsey shouted his men to their feet and plunged forward, noting the big German go down as an enemy grenade exploded in front of him.

  Angling his run towards the paratrooper, he saw the wounded man struggle to his feet and wave his troopers on to greater efforts, again moving forward himself, albeit with the favoured gait of a wounded man.

  Having fallen a few feet behind his first line of men, Ramsey witnessed a scene more fitting of the First World War, as defending Russian infantry rose to meet the charge of the Black Watch and Fallschirmjager.

  The two forces, approaching from different axis started to blend into one as they merged on the enemy position.

  An SVT automatic rifle put down a Scottish rifleman and a German paratrooper running side by side.

  Two Russians were swept away in a short-range burst from Perlmann’s senior NCO, the Stabsfeldwebel’s ST44 almost decapitating both men as they rose to their feet.

  One eager young trooper jumped into a group of Russians and drove the bayonet of his FG42 through the neck of a Soviet officer trying to rally his troops. Discarding the empty weapon immediately, he threw himself on to another enemy, rolling across the ground. Coming to a halt on top of the screaming man, he ripped off his own helmet and smashed it repeatedly into the face of his foe.

  All around him men were dying, Scots, Germans and Russians, in every way possible. The young paratrooper bellowed in pain as a Russian bayonet sliced into the middle of his back and emerged bloodily from his belly. His pain ended in an instant as the Soviet Yefreytor blew the blade free and, chambering another round, moved on to bloody his blade further.

  Ramsey, his Webley pistol now empty, snatched up a Kar98 rifle and worked the bolt, firing and missing, succeeding only in attracting the attention of a light machine-gun crew setting up to one side of the main position. The two-man DP team considered him a threat and they reoriented the gun, its tripod skittering across the rubble to point his way. Chambering another round, he took careful aim and shot the gunner in the left eye, throwing him backwards.

  His rifle empty, he could do no more than charge forward, as the loader ripped her eyes from the fallen gunner and overcame her shock, grabbing at the weapon.

  Ramsey won the race and the young woman squealed as he dived and landed on top of her, winding the pair of them, the DP thrown to one side, the Kar caught in a cobblestone and bent.

  The commando knife slid from its scabbard and two rapid and deep strikes took the woman’s life silently and swiftly.

  The hand to hand combat in and around the end of Plan was no more than a huge confused rolling mass of soldiers and Ramsey momentarily halted to make an assessment. His eyes were drawn to a group of about forty Russian soldiers emerging half way down the street, intent on reinforcing their comrades.

  He half rolled to the DP and looked at the unfamiliar weapon, assessing his chances.

  Knowing that the previous owners had just set it up, it seemed reasonable to expect a full magazine. He had no choice as the enemy force had already covered half the distance to the melee and no other options existed.

  Flipping the weapon onto its front bipod, he determined to take the leading section first and to fire short bursts to reduce the chance of jamming. Something was wrong and the weapon just did not feel right. Ramsey spotted that the bipod was broken and couldn’t support the weapon so he lodged it across the chest of the dead woman and started firing.

  The DP was a primitive looking weapon, with a large round magazine mounted on the top. However, it was extremely effective and reliable and, more importantly at this moment, easy and forgiving in its use.

  The first burst flayed the leading enemy group as they ran at full tilt, dropping all but one. Similar success followed as first two and then four enemies were shot down. The Russians responded and Ramsey was immediately put off his aim, missing the next group completely.

  Two bullets struck the woman’s corpse and splattered him with her blood, one more rammed into the ammunition pannier, jamming the weapon and hammering it back into his right shoulder. The Nordenham wound made itself known and Ramsey felt a wave of nausea wash over him.

  The Russians, apparently thinking they had killed the British officer, accelerated forward into the fray, with just three men detaching themselves in Ramsey’s direction.

  A Fallschirmjager Oberfeldwebel dropped all three with a single burst of his MP40 without realising he had saved Ramsey.

  The Black Watch commander fell back towards his struggling men, seeking out a weapon so he could rejoin the fight. For want of anything else, he pulled the stick from his belt.

  The noise of battle at the Rathaus grabbed his attention for a moment and he dropped into cover to observe as a wave of Russians fell back from the burning building, encouraged by the bayonets and bullets of the Welch counter-attack. It seemed that Llewellyn had summoned every single spare man to retake the focal point of the Russian assault.

  Content that his rear was secure, Ramsey turned to his own predicament once more.

  They were losing.

  The Fallschirmjager and Black Watch were back on the edge of the defensive position with nowhere left to fall back to other than back into the Markt from whence they had come. The influx of men that Ramsey had tried to stop with the DP had made the difference after all.

  Bullets pinged off the wrecked Volkswagen behind which Ramsey had taken cover, betraying the presence of more Soviets that had been cautiously moving into the corner of the Markt, directly opposite the Rathaus. Ramsey slid the stick back into his belt and picked up an Enfield rifle sat propped up, almost by design, against the vehicle. Checking it automatically, the weapon seemed fine; it was just empty.

  Taking some ammo from the dead former owner, he prepared to intervene.

  However, before he could commit himself the problem was dealt with in a more dramatic fashion, as two tanks from the Yeomanry’s headquarters rounded the Rathaus and took the new threat under fire.

  One of the Sherman’s was the HQ close support tank, armed with a 105mm howitzer and its explosive shells did deadly work in short order, once again snuffing out a Soviet threat.

  A shell struck the CS tank but did not penetrate, rather carrying away the nearside drive sprocket and smashing the track. The companion tank sought out the enemy and engaged what it thought was the right target, setting fire to a T34 that had been knocked out the previous day.

  The concealed operational T34 fired again and penetrated the hull front
of the CS Sherman just underneath the machine gunners position, cutting the luckless gunner in half before moving on to destroy the main gun loader as he was in the act of sliding a shell home.

  Whatever happened in that split second turned the tank into an instant inferno, immolating the dead and living in equal measure. Within seconds, the vehicle was ‘brewing up’, a typically British understated term for the way some tanks burn like furnaces, firing flames in hard straight lines from openings and loudly whooshing like a boiling kettle.

  Those in and around the Markt who had not seen the phenomenon before could not help but spare it a horrified gaze, the more so when the awful fate of the crew occurred to them.

  Finally locating the enemy tank, the other British vehicle, a Firefly, put three shells into the now silent hulk. The 17-pdr’s sabot rounds had a high penetrative performance but lacked the punch of larger shells once inside. In this instance it hadn’t mattered, as the first shell had killed three of the crew, the last two succumbing to the second impact.

  Much to the regret of the Firefly crew, the enemy tank did not burn as their friends had burned.

  They moved forward into a sandbagged position to assume a cover position up the Mönckebergstra²e and immediately destroyed another T34 manoeuvring its way past its dead comrade. This time the Firefly gunner was rewarded with the sight of flames and a satisfactory imitation of CS tank behind him.

  In Ramsey’s position it was total chaos. Some of the Scottish and Germans soldiers exchanged fire with the majority of the Russians, who had temporarily dropped back to regroup for another attack, satisfying themselves with grenades and bullets over the thirty yards that separated the two forces. The remainder were engaged in close quarter fighting with the score or so enemy who had not fallen back with the others.

  The sudden squawk of the pipes being winded penetrated the sounds of fighting.

  B Company’s piper had taken a bullet on the leg as he ran across the Markt and had only just managed to crawl to his instrument to contribute as best he could to the fight.