Stalemate (The Red Gambit Series)

by Gee, Colin

  The situation was perilous, as much of the ammunition had been left behind. The senior NCO commanding the Kompagnie, Hauptfeldwebel Schränkel, radioed for ammunition and reinforcements, all the time praying to his god.

  His efforts to contact the machine-gun platoon failed purely on language grounds, and the Hauptfeldwebel could only hope that the Britishers would stick like glue when the time came.

  Yolkov determined otherwise, meeting up with the deafened mortar officer, and directing a strike upon the enemy beyond the MuhlenStraβe Bridge.

  The machine-gun platoon was not the direct target, but the Katyusha was a notoriously inaccurate weapon, fit for area strikes, not precision hits.

  Seventeen rockets landed in an area of fifty metres by sixty metres.

  2nd Platoon of the 1st Independent Machine Gun Battalion ceased to exist.

  Many of the other rockets found themselves hitting water, either exploding on contact with the surface or disappearing beneath the lake, permanently consigned to the Brahmsee.

  The remainder spent themselves in and around the positions of 2nd Kompagnie, rending the ground and the soft bodies of men equally.

  Seeing the strike throw body parts in the air, Yolkov leapt up and screamed for his men to follow him, rushing the bridge.

  The Vickers were all silent, a fact Hauptfeldwebel Schränkel noted through his extreme pain, two hot fragments of rocket casing lodged in his stomach.

  Nonetheless, he served the gun.

  Its gunner was dead, victim of the Katyusha strike, but the MG42 was intact, as was the white-faced loader.

  The machine-gun started its work, lashing the bridge with small, controlled bursts. Men dropped, smashed to the ground by the impacts.

  The body armour of the SMG troopers saved many a life, although exposed limbs received savage treatment at the hands of the MG42’s intense fire.

  Gritting his teeth as the recoil jarred his shoulder, agitating the shrapnel in his belly, the Hauptfeldwebel shouted at his number two.

  “Ammunition, you idiot! Another belt!”

  As he fired the last of his belt, the Soviets went to ground.

  The young grenadiere showed the empty ammunition box by way of response.

  “Go and get some, Hannermann! Raus!”

  Bullets zipped around the position, one clipping the ammo box and sending it flying from the loader’s hands.

  Petrified, the young grenadiere hugged the earth, crying, urinating, defecating, and calling for his mother.

  Schränkel looked at the boy with a mixture of pity and disgust. He hawked and spat fresh blood, before setting himself to locate more ammunition.

  At the bridge, Yolkov had turned, his men rooted to the spot. Walking back and forth, screaming at the hiding soldiers, he threatened execution and reward in equal measure, but nothing he could do brought any response from those lying in the dubious cover of the side of the watercourse.

  Furious, Yolkov gestured at the German positions, encouraged by the slackening fire, and the obvious damage wrought by the Katyusha strike.

  One or two men started to rise, and the movement became infectious.

  Satisfied, Yolkov turned back to face the enemy and ran, his armour clanking, as the metal panels clashed in time with his urgent movements.

  Less than a hundred metres away, an MG42 hungrily received a new belt of cartridges and was brought to bear.

  With a sound like tearing cloth, it spat out its bullets, and many found gaps in the metal protection, ripping Yolkov to shreds, and sending his bloodied corpse tumbling back amongst those who had started to follow.

  A DP gunner, calmer than the rest, had set himself up beside a tree stump and returned fire accurately.

  Five bullets struck the NCO.

  Two took Schränkel in the shoulder, another added to the misery of damage inflicted upon his stomach, the final two striking symmetrically above and below his left elbow.

  His screams pierced the mists enveloping the loader, the subsequent sight of his Hauptfeldwebel smashed and bleeding, proving more of a curiosity rather than tipping him over the edge.

  Shuffling low to the wounded NCO’s side, he started to pull at the bloodied tunic top.

  Schränkel slapped his ministrations away with his good hand.

  “There, Hannermann, there! Give them every bullet, boy. Keep the schwein away from our position!”

  Like an automaton, the young grenadiere swept up the MG42, hefting its bulk in his right hand and feeding the belt with his left.

  Russian soldiers fell regularly until he fired his last round. Somehow it kept firing, despite the risk of bullets jamming in the expanding red hot barrel. With no time for a barrel change, he dropped the weapon to the ground.

  Hannermann pulled out his Walther and fired single shots, being occasionally rewarded with the obvious signs of a hit, and once, a red mist from a shattered head.

  Again, a weapon was emptied and discarded, thrown with venom at the rapidly approaching avenging infantry.

  The MP18 that Schränkel had been carrying lay where he had placed it, and the young grenadiere snatched it up, cocking it in one easy motion.

  Stuffing the spare magazine in his belt, Hannermann quickly cast his eye around the battlefield.

  A few of his comrades were returning fire, but 2nd Kompagnie was in danger of being overrun.

  Incredibly, Hannermann attacked, screaming in a voice stimulated by his temporary lunacy.

  The lead two Russians dropped, victims of fire from elsewhere in 2nd Kompagnie’s positions.

  Behind him, the JagdPanzer took a direct hit, found out by an 85mm on the south bank.

  Framed perfectly by the sudden explosion, Hannermann looked almost demonic, stained by the blood of his wounded gunner, wide-eyed with a combination of terror and battle madness.

  Through the mists of his pain, Schränkel watched the young man attack, one man against forty.

  The forty retreated, the one pursued, putting a bullet in a running back here and there.

  Those who watched on were incredulous, never to forget the sight.

  Scrabbling back into the temporary bosom of the waters, a number of stouter Soviet hearts turned to resist.

  T34’s started to move up, encouraged by the fiery death of the tank killer opposite, giving heart to the Siberian infantrymen.

  A Mosin rifle bullet punched into the grenadiere’s groin, taking his breath away and dropping him onto the ground. Two more bullets found him there, both legs made useless by the hits.

  Up on one elbow, he discarded the empty magazine and slipped in his only spare, the act of cocking the weapon proving difficult, as blood loss started to take its toll.

  A Panzer III, its 50mm gun spitting defiance, manouevred to get position on the bridge, knowing that if the T34’s crossed, its own existence would be short and spectacular.

  Three direct hits were shrugged off, the superior armour of the Tridsat proving too much for the 50mm.

  An 85mm shell ended the unequal fight, burrowing its way into the German’s fighting compartment and starting a fire.

  The crew bailed out, leaving their vehicle to burn unchecked.

  The lead T34 crossed the bridge at speed, a grape of ten men from the 3rd Battalion clinging to its handholds, fearful of being thrown from the bucking vehicle.

  Passing the prone Hannermann at speed, the Soviets failed to understand the threat until it was too late. Sub-machine gun bullets plucked them from their perches.

  Two men remained in place, the rest lay in the wake of the vehicle, and only one of those showed any signs of life.

  The young grenadiere swivelled to face the new threat, an approaching sound filling his senses.

  The MP18 stuttered in defiance as a solid track supporting 32 tons of metal covered the distance from head to toe in under a second, squashing Hannermann into the Muhlen Straβe, transforming him into an indescribable bloody mess, held together only by his clothing.

  Across the battle
field, the Centurion MkI of Lance-Sergeant Charles, having dealt with all the tanks supporting the Penal Unit, had turned its attention elsewhere, and saw the end of the unequal struggle.

  Witnessing the horrible end of the German soldier through his sight, Lance-Corporal Patterson growled his target acquisition, determined to avenge the brave man.

  The order came, and a projectile leapt from the 17pdr, crossing the battlefield in the blink of an eye before carving a hole in the waters beyond.

  “You missed, you tosser!”

  Actually he hadn’t, the APDS shell penetration was so extreme that it had gone straight through the second tank in line and out the other side.

  The damaged vehicle slowed, its driver lacking clear instructions from the dead commander.

  “I hit the bastard, Sarn’t, its smoking!”

  “Then hit him again, Pats!”

  The main gun boomed again, and this time the T34 died, the shell wrecking the engine and starting a roaring fire.

  The lead T34 was running amok over the German positions, repeatedly crushing men, its tracks red with the blood of its victims.

  A shell from the last surviving vehicle of the 160th’s Panzer unit dispatched the tank. The Marder III 139 mounted a captured Soviet 76.2mm weapon, more than capable of killing the Tridsat.

  Another Soviet tank exploded, marking another kill for the Guards’ Centurion, and the remaining tanks seemed to hesitate as one.

  Perhaps inspired by Hannermann, the remaining grenadieres rose up and charged, screaming at the top of their voices, encouraged by the withdrawing Soviet armour.

  The German Kommando rushed forward, urged on by their elderly commanders, who remembered the SturmTruppen assaults of another era.

  And then, within seconds of each other...

  The 3rd Battalion broke.

  The SMG Company broke.

  The Guards Tanks broke.

  The Soviet left flank caved in completely.

  The German 3rd Kompagnie, supported by the rampant Kommando, drove the Siberian 2nd Battalion survivors from the high ground, mercilessly hacking down the running men, wide backs proving inviting targets.

  Next to be rolled up were the survivors of the penal unit, the kilted Scots of the 6th Battalion, King’s Own Scottish Borderers, launching a swift attack around the Manhagenersee Bridge and testing frightened men who needed little encouragement to run, the more so as most of the NKVD security team lay dead upon the field.

  The remainder of the Irish Guards and Royal Scots completed the rout, a screaming bayonet charge proving too much for the destroyed engineer unit.

  Unfortunately, the Irish pushed too far and ran into the surviving tanks of the 1st Tank Group, whose machine-guns and high explosive killed many a son of Ireland in the moment of victory.

  The two Cromwells, the only other surviving tanks from the Grenadier Guards, pushed up to the northernmost bridge, and helped the retreating Soviet troopers on their way.

  The route between the two bodies of water, Brahmsee and Manhagenersee, had been an inviting route, seemingly a gap to be exploited, and the Soviets had hastily assaulted it in an effort to turn the Allied defences.

  It was an unmitigated disaster for the Red Army, one that virtually destroyed every unit that the Red Army had committed, leaving many dead upon the field.

  Not without cost to the Allies, the remnants of 58th’s 2nd and 3rd Kompagnies joined together to form one under-strength unit. Barely one platoon of the MG company was still able to function.

  Night brought an end to the sporadic shooting that had kept the fighting around the Manhagenersee alive.

  The Royal Scots amounted to seven unwounded men

  The King’s Own mustered twenty fit for parade.

  ‘A’ Company, 3rd Battalion Irish Guards, consisted of forty-eight men under the command of a wounded Lance-Sergeant, with another thirty-nine wounded to varying degrees.

  Perhaps the most remarkable result of the Brahmsee battle was the casualties inflicted upon the command structures, officers of all ranks seemingly culled across the range of formations on both sides.

  The Soviet force withdrew in disarray, and, as was the habit, the higher authorities looked for scapegoats.

  Only two Soviet officers survived the experience, both Junior Lieutenants, one from the Penal Company, the other from the Regimental staff.

  To satisfy the baying of those desperate for scapegoats, the former was executed by the NKVD security troops before dawn rose, the stories of a monster enemy tank lost in the clamour for retribution.

  On the Allied side, a late afternoon ground attack by a single Shturmovik robbed the Grenadier Guards of their surviving officer, his crew, and their Cromwell.

  Apart from a wounded Lieutenant in the Independent Machine Gun Company, and a 2nd Lieutenant fresh from training and placed in charge of the 1st Anti-tank platoon, real authority within the British forces lay with two Lance-sergeants, one clad in a Centurion, the other a Bren gun toting Irish Guardsman.

  Acting Oberleutnant Fischert found himself de facto commander command of very little, the small combined multi-national force exhausted by its efforts and its losses, but having achieved a great deal during the daylight hours of that awful Friday in September.

  1214hrs, Saturday, 15th September 1945, Office of the Head of GRU Western Europe, the Mühlberg, Germany.

  The new purpose-built facility was secreted in the woods that covered the Mühlberg, half a mile north-west of Niedersachswerfen.

  Pekunin preferred to conduct the intelligence business close to, but not on top of, the main military headquarters, probably because headquarters attracted agents from their fellow agency and supposedly stalwart allies, the NKVD.

  The facilities they had switched to inside the mountain were unsuitable, hence the priority given to quickly constructing the score of wooden huts that blended perfectly in with the trees and shadows of the German wood.

  GRU personnel had finished transferring themselves and files from the underground facility, and the phone lines and radios necessary to conduct business were now fully functional.

  Colonel General Pekunin was sampling the tea available in the new centre, and finding things much to his liking.

  His staff was hard at work collating and interpreting the intelligence flowing in from every corner of Europe, desperate to avoid the errors that had plagued operations to date.

  A knock on the door interrupted his pleasurable thought processes, causing an irritation that disappeared as soon as he saw Lieutenant General Kochetkov, or rather the look on his second’s face.

  “Ah, something tells me this is not good news, Mikhail Andreevich.”

  The report went from hand to hand, Pekunin showing his deputy the tea stand, before sitting down to read and absorb the information.

  “Govno!”

  Kochetkov had expected worse than that.

  “We have confirmation?”

  “Not yet Comrade, but it is an official government statement. It came in two hours ago, and is our sole source at this time. I have asked for further from our officer in the embassy.”

  Pekunin re-read the report, picturing the man in question, already working out how to replace his intelligence source.

  A polite knock on the door, and a Lieutenant proffered a recently arrived communication.

  Dismissing the messenger, the GRU officer opened the sealed report.

  “And here it is, Comrade General. Polkovnik Keranin confirms the information is correct, although he has not yet seen the corpse. Death was as a result of a car accident. Apparently the vehicle burst into flames, killing all three occupants, including your man.”

  Handing the paper to his boss, Kochetkov seated himself, sampling the tea, and finding it as satisfactory as his boss.

  Waiting until Pekunin had finished, he posed his question.

  “Do you have someone else in place? According to our files, no-one senior enough from what I can see, Comrade General.”


  Pekunin gave a resigned shrug.

  “We will not easily replace Comrade Vice-Amiral Søderling and his information.”

  Finishing his tea, the GRU head replaced his cup, almost knocking the saucer flying, his mind being elsewhere.

  “There is a man, still relatively junior, but he is advancing well, and is highly thought of.”

  Pekunin moved to his personal filing cabinet and extracted a small folder marked with a numeric code.

  “Not yet activated, but I have high hopes for this man.”

  Passing the folder, Pekunin revisited the tea stand and provided both of them with a second cup, whilst Kochetkov learned of the life and career of Överstelöjtnant Boris Lingström.

  1335hrs, Saturday, 15th September 1945, Basement of Dybäck Castle, Sweden.

  The rarely used door to the basement room of the Swedish Army’s latest acquisition creaked in a monotone, as it was gently opened to permit entry to the uniformed man.

  A guard entered with him, intent on cleaning away the lunch tray that had been provided at 1300hrs on the dot, as the new regime demanded.

  The meal had not been touched, but it was removed, as per orders, the wooden cup of water removed and placed on the simple desk.

  The soldier tidied up quickly and left the room.

  A second guard closed the door behind him and took his station in the ‘at ease’ position, back to the door and facing the other army officer, avoiding eye contact with the fanatical looking soldier.

  The uniformed man examined the surroundings, finding their sparseness highly suitable for the traitorous piece of filth in front of him.

  The prisoner looked up and examined the new arrival with disdain, stiffening his back.

  “What is the meaning of this, Colonel? You know who I am!”

  Törget trumped the older man’s look of disdain with one of real malice.

  “I know who you are, Communist.”

  Søderling started to into a denial, but was cut short.

  “You are dead already. The Government has announced your sad death in a car accident, something that your Soviet friends have already investigated.”