by Leo Kessler
CONTENTS
Title
Assault on a Deadly Mountain
Section One: A Climb is Proposed
Section 1 One
Section 1 Two
Section 1 Three
Section 1 Four
Section 1 Five
Section 1 Six
Section 1 Seven
Section 1 Eight
Section Two: A Trap is Sprung
Section 2 One
Section 2 Two
Section 2 Three
Section 2 Four
Section 2 Five
Section Three: The Battle for a Pass
Section 3 One
Section 3 Two
Section 3 Three
Section 3 Four
Section 3 Five
Section 3 Six
Section 3 Seven
Section Four: The Red Ravens
Section 4 One
Section 4 Two
Section 4 Three
Section Five: The Final Ascent
Section 5 One
Section 5 Two
Section 5 Three
Section 5 Four
Section 5 Five
Section 5 Six
Envoi 1
Envoi 2
Also by the Same Author
Copyright
ASSAULT ON A DEADLY MOUNTAIN
‘A symbol!’
‘What did you say, mein Führer?’
‘You heard me, my dear Jodl. Soon our armies will march again; and this time we must kill the Russian monster for good.’ But my brave soldiers need a symbol, one that the Reds, and those corrupt, cowardly Anglo-Saxons — indeed the whole world — will understand. Something that will symbolize the unbeatable prowess of German arms, and demonstrate that the holy creed of National Socialism cannot be stopped. It must be something…something that will transcend all time, will be remembered when you and I are long gone, General Jodl.’
‘You speak as if you intend to conquer nature itself, mein Führer.’
‘Excellent, Jodl, excellent! What a grandiose idea — the conquest of nature itself… Like the ascent of some hitherto unclimbed mountain. What a symbol that would make for the universe! Nature submitting to the heroic creed of the National Socialist Movement. The echoes of such a deed will reach the remotest village in the furthest corner of the earth. It would be a tremendous triumph for German arms and our unbeatable movement…
JODL, GIVE ME A MOUNTAIN TO CONQUER!’
Adolf Hitler to Colonel-General Jodl, his Chief-of-Staff,
Spring, 1942.
SECTION ONE:
A CLIMB IS PROPOSED
ONE
The little Yak observation plane made its third circuit.
Sitting next to the pilot, the officer in the earth-coloured, loose blouse of the Soviet Alpine Corps saw below, a thick wood of tall trees, with scores of well camouflaged tents carefully dispersed among them. Beyond the wood there was the steppe, still winter-bleached and criss-crossed with tank tracks. And on the white ribbons of dusty roads, there were scenes of intense activity. There were field-grey columns everywhere, heading for the mountains, with long slow convoys of tanks and trucks lumbering up behind them.
The young officer bit his bottom lip in dismay.
The pilot, a cocky black-haired, swarthy-skinned Georgian, caught the look. ‘Yes, comrade, the sons-of-whores are advancing again. And you don’t need to be old Leather-Face to know where they’re heading for.’
The Alpine Corps officer ignored the disrespectful description of Marshal Stalin as ‘old Leather-Face’, though he told himself it wouldn’t be long before the NKVD had the pilot in their cellars if he kept on talking like he did.
‘Yes, I know, Comrade Lieutenant. They’re after the Caucasus and our oil,’ he said.
The pilot nodded his head sagely and concentrated on finishing their third circle before levelling out. ‘Now what?’ he asked, casually ignoring the lazy white tracers which started to curve their way towards them, gathering speed at every moment. ‘Do I make another run over the Fritzes?’
The observer, his mind still full of the new German threat to his Motherland, grunted, ‘No, Comrade. Now we fly to the mountain.’
The pilot shrugged. ‘Horoscho, comrade. But be prepared to get out and begin walking on air, if this old crate’s wings fall off at that height.’
The observer didn’t even deign to answer.
The observer pressed his handsome tanned young face closer to the window and gazed down. Now the little Yak was flying over high, rugged country, the naked rock a deep brown against the patches of snow. Here and there, rough country tracks were visible, scratched into rocky hillsides at impossible angles, but roads were few and far between, as he already knew from his study of the maps before he had set out on this reconnaissance mission. He strained his neck and caught a glimpse of a long column of labouring camels, plodding up a steep track.
The pilot grinned, amused. ‘Something out of the Middle Ages,’ he commented. ‘You wouldn’t think we were in the middle of a total war, would you?’
‘No,’ the observer answered, his keen eyes searching a cluster of stone and wooden buildings below, for any sign of life. There was none — the village was abandoned, and he could guess why. The only vegetation up here in the mountains was an occasional patch of withered scrub or gorse, bent at a forty-five degree angle by the tearing wind. The only people who lived in the mountains were the damned Karatski — and everybody knew that they were bandits.
The interior of the little plane started to grow lighter. They were out of the overcast and above the snow-line. From below and above there was the glare of sun and snow. The pilot flipped his sunglasses over his eyes and the smile vanished from his face, as he concentrated on gaining height.
It was a brilliant spring day now. All around the snow-capped peaks shone in the hard yellow sun with a blinding clarity. The observer felt his heart leap. In the good old days before the German invasion it had always been his dream to come here and climb. He knew that the Caucasus Mountains weren’t always like this: calm, clear, brilliant. Sometimes the rocks would be as slimy as seaweed with dripping mist, with the wind shrieking like ten thousand banshees, trying with in visible hands to throw the climber off the mountainside. The mountains were like a glorious battlefield, he realized that, illumined by scenes of human treachery, but also of human heroism.
‘Comrade, there she is!’ the pilot cut into the observer’s reverie, the muscles standing out on his dark hairy arms, as he fought the Yak ever upwards, its radial engine protesting at the effort.
‘Elbrus!’ the observer said reverently and gazed in awe at the treat mountain’s twin peaks, pink and white against the brilliant hard blue sky.
‘Look like a couple of tiny tits, don’t they?’ the pilot gasped irreverently. ‘We Georgians like our women bigger than that.’
The observer ignored the pilot’s comment. Little did he know that the highest mountain in the Caucasus range had been called the Elbrus — the Breast — by some long-vanished people because it resembled the female bosom. Instead, the observer hurriedly took out his binoculars and started to sweep the range from west to east. But the great field of glittering snow was empty. He adjusted the focus and directed his gaze at the west peak, the higher of the two. Metre by metre, he searched its surface, looking for the signs that they had been there, while next to him the pilot, suddenly grim-faced and sweating, tried to hold the Yak steady in the thin mountain air.
Nothing! Not a sign of them. Ignoring the Yak’s sudden upwards surge, the moment of suspension, followed by an abrupt sickening drop, the observer turned his attention to the east peak. Again he searched its surface, hardly hearing the spluttering protests of the overtaxed engine and t
he pilot’s thick curses in his native Georgian. The east peak, at five and a half thousand metres a hundred metres lower than the other, revealed nothing. They hadn’t been there, either.
Satisfied, he slipped his binoculars back into the well-worn leather case. His mission was completed. ‘All right,’ he said expansively, ‘take her over now, Comrade Pilot.’
The pilot, his thick black eyebrows gleaming now with beads of sweat, shot him a murderous look. ‘Holy Mother of Kazan,’ be cried above the spluttering roar of the radial engine, ‘have you had your hundred, man?1 This wooden son-of-a-bitch couldn’t cross those tits up there! Her wings would fold up like matchwood.’
The observer from the Alpine Corps shrugged easily. ‘You’re the mechanic, comrade,’ he said, deliberately omitting the ‘pilot’. ‘Take her back any way you want.’
The sweating pilot did not need a second invitation. While the observer sat back more comfortably in his leather seat, he swung the Yak round in a tight circle and grunted through gritted teeth, ‘All right, back over the Fritz lines and down the valley of the River Kuban. And let’s hope the field-greys are not waiting for us, this time.’
‘They won’t be,’ the observer answered, with all the supreme confidence of youth. In an hour, we’ll be home and you’ll undoubtedly be filling your guts with fire.’2
But the young observer was wrong. There would be no more fiery Gorilka vodka for the pilot, and no more mountains for him to climb.
The Georgian was down to a thousand metres, flying through the canyon of the Kuban, when it happened. Behind him lay range after range of snow mountains, as desolate as the surface of the moon. Before him lay the first twinkling pink lights of the front. Once he had crossed them he would be safe. Suddenly a sinister black object hissed at a tremendous speed across his front. He had just time to catch its black-and-white cross insignia, and his heart sank.
‘Ass-shit!’ he cursed. ‘A Fritz fighter!’
A moment later, even before he had thought of what evasive action he might take in the narrow valley, the Messerschmitt ca roaring in, its engine howling. Its machine-guns chattered crazily. Slugs thumped into the Yak’s wooden fuselage. The observer screamed, his face a sudden mass of red gore, as he slammed against the side of the cockpit. Desperately the Georgian tried to swing the plane to the side. But the Messerschmitt pilot beat him to it. A burst of fire shattered his tail. He had been badly hit! The Georgian wrestled frantically with the controls. No good! The tail had gone. As the plane started to plummet to the rocky floor of the canyon, the German’s final burst of machine-gun fire struck the cockpit canopy squarely. It shattered into a crazy spider’s web. Screaming with fear, blinded, blood pouring from his face, the pilot let go of the controls.
With a great rending, tearing crash, the little Yak struck the valley wall, echoing and re-echoing down the length of the chasm, as if it might go on for ever and ever…
Notes
1. The Russian phrase for drunkenness, based on the fact that alcohol is sold in gram units.
2. Alcohol.
TWO
‘In three devils’ name,’ Major Greul barked his breath fogging in the cold mountain air, ‘do you men call yourself mountaineers?’ He looked down at the troopers in the peaked caps and baggy uniforms of the élite Stromtroop Edelweiss, as they toiled up the sheer rock face, hands on his hips, his muscular legs thrown astride, a look of utter contempt on his hard arrogant face. ‘From here you look like nothing so much as a bunch of Munich beer-bellies doing a little rock-scrambling — and badly at that. Now, move it!’
Sergeant-major Meier, known to his comrades, on account of his huge bulk and supposedly thick head, as ‘Ox-Jo’, whispered to his running-mate, Jap, ‘I’d like to move that arrogant bastard — with a push of my alpenstock up his skinny ass!’ Aloud, he said: ‘You heard the major, you bunch of juicy ballsacks! Get the lead out of your butts and get up that wall!’
Major Greul, Edelweiss’s second-in-command sighed at the big Bavarian NCO’s choice of words, but he knew Meier achieved results, and so he turned to concentrate on working out the last phase of their climb to the wrecked Yak reconnaissance plane, somewhere out of sight about three or four hundred metres above his present position on the rock ledge. The forward Luftwaffe base, to which the Messerschmitt pilot belonged, who had shot the Yak down, had immediately notified the 1st Alpine Corps of the ‘kill’ and had requested its help in searching the wrecked plane for maps and any other information that Intelligence might find useful. General Dietl had naturally turned the assignment over to his élite Edelweiss and he, Greul, had been forced to break off an important training mission to carry out the task.
Most of the pitches had been routine, calling for no more than the usual techniques of the practised rock climber — the knee jam, the press-and-push, the friction hold. All the same, progress had been slow, with constant hold-ups, due to the fact that he didn’t know the climb and could only move by a process of trial and error. And time was running out. In an hour it would be dark. He sniffed angrily and stared up at the almost sheer rock face above him. To his right, he could see good holds and what looked like a promising chimney beyond. If he could reach that, he’d probably be able to reach the unseen plane in about thirty minutes.
He made up his mind, just as Sergeant-major Meier reached the ledge below him.
‘Meier, are you prepared to try a pendulum?’ he asked.
Meier looked down at Jap’s wrinkled, oriental face. ‘That piece of ape-turd must think I’m a shitting monkey,’ he whispered. To the major, however, he called, ‘Yessir. Ready when you are.’ He braced his feet apart and tightened his hold on the rope which linked him to the major.
Greul, who had climbed his first eight-thousand metre height as a sixteen-year-old Hitler Youth and had conquered the North Face of the Eiger by the time he was twenty, did not hesitate. He reached up, well balanced on both feet, and hammered a piton home into the solitary crack above his head. Letting fall the hammer looped around his wrist, he tried his full weight on the steel hook. It held.
With a practised expert swiftness, he ran a loop of the climbing rope, which attached him to the bull-like NCO below, through a snap ring and fastened the loop to his waist. He was ready to go. Taking one last look at Meier tensed on his ledge, he drew himself back as far and as high as the loop would allow and then he was gone, out into space.
The swing of the pendulum was short and swift. But it sufficed. At the first attempt at the daring manoeuvre he had seized the handhold he had noted to his right. Barely breathing hard, he found a ledge for his feet, and untied the loop. A few minutes later he and Meier had found the entrance to the chimney and had disappeared from sight, while down below, Colonel Stuermer, the C.O. of Stormtroop Edelweiss, lowered his binoculars and cursed softly under his breath. That damned Greul had gotten away with yet another spectacular, and forbidden manoeuvre!
The chimney was tough, but it was no strain. At its opening, it was wide. Palms and back against one rocky side and mountain boots dug into the other, the two Stormtroop men moved up together. Towards its top, however, the chimney narrowed considerably. Greul now took the lead. With his knees dug into the one wall and his broad muscular back against the other, he levered himself upwards, his breathing harsh and loud now with the strain.
Once he slipped, and his boots slammed into Meier’s guts. Ox-Jo had yelped with the sudden pain, but he had not let go of his own hold. In a flash, Greul, his lean hard face flushed with either shame or effort, had regained his hold, mumbled an apology and was on his way upwards again. And then they were out and sprawled in the snow, shoulder muscles afire with pain, breath coming in great, rasping gasps.
But not for long. Major Gottfried Greul had been punishing and hardening his body with an almost religious intensity ever since he had first heard the harsh Nordic call of the National Socialist creed; he was not a man to allow himself the soft decadent luxury of self-commiseration and rest. Action was his consta
nt slogan. Controlling his harsh breathing by an effort of will, he rose to his feet and commanded: ‘All right, Meier. On your feet! Let’s get to that plane.’
With a groan, Ox-Jo rose to his feet and began to trail after the major through the deep snow, his broad face brick-red and covered with a film of sweat.
‘Look,’ Greul exclaimed, as they swung round a slab of grey rock sticking out of the field of immaculate white. ‘There it is.’
Meier took in the long broad track, showing where the little observation plane had skidded across the snow before it had come to its final rest.
The track was littered with bits of wreckage — a wheel, a chunk of wing with the red star of the Soviet Air Force, a limp shape which he knew instinctively was a body.
‘Wonder what the Ivans were farting around here for, sir?’ he asked. ‘They’re bugging out everywhere.’
Major Greul frowned at Meier’s choice of words. ‘I wish, Sergeant-major, you would learn to moderate your language,’ he snapped prissily. ‘A National Socialist does not lower himself to use such filth.’
‘At your command!’ Ox-Jo said mechanically, and mentally told the arrogant major to kiss his National Socialist arse.
‘Right, Sergeant-major, you scout around to see what you can find. I’ll examine the plane.’
‘Yessir,’ Meier answered and started to plod through the deep snow, circling the wreck, while Major Greul examined the Yak itself.
The Yak was broken-backed from the impact and it was with difficulty that Greul managed to force open the buckled door of the cockpit. A Russian, the pilot he guessed from the leather jacket the dead man wore, was slumped over the shattered controls, his face a gory mess.
Greul grunted. Taking the dead man by his long black hair, he pulled him out of the way and began examining the pockets under the controls for maps.
There were two, but they were both the usual fliers’ charts, and both were unmarked. Greul frowned. Where was the route chart and what had the Yak’s mission been?
