by Gee, Colin
Sixteen canisters detached from the Allied attack aircraft, hitting the ground within seconds of each other, and spreading their version of death amongst the Allied soldiers who screamed and cursed the already empty sky.
Across the river, Hässler was squealing with horror as the fire washed over everything.
Grayson disappeared in an orange wall, the rising fiery killer moving forward at high speed, engulfing everything and everyone the Master Sergeant could see across the Hunte.
“Rosie!”
Hässler had sent the wounded corporal back across the river on an unimportant errand, keen to get him away from certain death on the east bank.
Even Bluebear stopped fighting, the wall of flames drawing his eye, horrifying even a man whose style of fighting brought him close and personal to the enemy in an extremely brutal and messy way.
Across the river, friends and comrades had been incinerated in the blink of an eye.
Some staggered around, enveloped in flames, lungs burnt by hot gases, unable to scream.
Others ran squealing noisily, their clothes and flesh falling from them as the sticky jelly did its horrible work.
Two Soviet soldiers, intent on nothing but self-preservation, dropped into the hole, not knowing that it was already occupied.
Death was waiting for them in its most horrible form.
Hässler watched horrified as Bluebear’s tomahawk rose swiftly up and down, two blows for each disoriented guardsman, both faces quickly driven in, easily yielding to the heavy blows.
Still one lived, at least for the briefest of moments, a third blow ending his struggle for breath.
Wide-eyed, the Master Sergeant felt shock creeping over him, and punched his thigh in an attempt to break out of it.
Bluebear understood, and a large hand wiped itself across the German-American’s face, the sound of the slap penetrating into Hässler’s consciousness as much as the pain of the blow.
“Master Sergeant. Now is not time. Later we mourn. Now, we get outta of here.”
The two men slithered out of the hole and down to the water’s edge, moving to the north and away from the hell on earth behind them.
Yarishlov was unsteady on his feet, but made the journey anyway, supported by Deniken and Kriks.
Helping him into the jeep, Deniken climbed aboard as Kriks started the vehicle on its journey.
All around them, men of the Obinin assault force lay dead, killed by one of nature’s most terrible forces.
None was recognisable.
And the smell.
Not even the rain could remove it.
An overriding taste of petroleum pervaded the air that they reluctantly dragged into their lungs, almost narcotic in its intensity.
Not as strong, but with their own special pungency, were the diverse smells of the burning, fuelled by rubber, wood, and man.
The sights were too awful, even for men used to the extremes of combat.
All three cried, the smoke undoubtedly playing its part, stinging their eyes, but their basic humanity was the larger contributor.
No guns, no explosions, no cries of pain.
The battlefield was silent now, the growing wind that distributed the fine ashes providing the soft steady accompaniment to the sound of the jeep’s engine, gently cajoling the vehicle through the horrors of war.
All who would die had died. Those who were alive, too shocked to even talk, would survive the day.
Here and there, blackened soldiers and tankers shared cigarettes and canteens in silence, scarcely acknowledging the passing of their senior officers.
Moving on through the carnage, the rail bridge came into view.
Intact.
“Blue Three to lead. Those seagulls sound excited, Flight.”
“Blue leader, roger. Now shut up.”
Hall was trying hard to work out where the hell they were, the squalls and low cloud making any sort of navigation difficult for the one-man Typhoons of Blue flight.
The airwaves had been full of the sound of the Fleet Air Arm attack, the seagulls as they were affectionately called, calling in successful drop after successful drop.
Regardless of the urgency of the situation, Hall had to face facts. They were lost.
‘Think it through man! Think it through!’
He summoned up the map in his mind’s eye, ignoring the one in his lap, seeing his airfield, factoring in the wind, the speed, working the problem.
“Blue Two to leader, over,”
The train of thought was ruptured, and he responded in a clipped tone, convinced he had nearly solved the problem.
“Blue leader, Blue Two, this better be good, over.”
“Skipper, that’s a main road off to our right there. I think it’s the 214, over.”
Hall looked at the break in the clouds.
“Blue section, slow turn to port, execute.”
The four aircraft turned lazily left, circling the break, examining the ground below.
“Blue leader to Blue Two. I don’t recognise it, over.”
Hall knew little of his number two, except he had been shot down twice in the German War, and had claimed three and one third aircraft destroyed.
“Blue Two to Blue leader. That town up ahead. See the five-point junction? That’s Diepholz, Skipper. I went with a girl from there in June. That’s Diepholz for sure, over.”
The map almost leapt from Hall’s lap, the paper pattern reflecting the junctions on the ground below. A swift look to the northeast was all he needed.
“Blue Leader to Blue Two, spot on Wallace, spot on. Blue section, turn to port, heading zero-four-zero.”
The four Typhoons turned and applied the power again, following Route 51 north from Diepholz to Barnstorf.
‘Intact?’
Deniken gave voice to their thoughts.
“It’s intact.”
The sight brought Yarishlov back to some sort of reality.
“We’ve done it, tovarich, we’ve done it!”
The infantry officer was already leaning across to the radio pack, seeking out Obinin to pass on the good news.
Yarishlov, coming out of his brain freeze, barked an order, forgetting the nature of his present company.
“Never mind that, Comrade. Order every available anti-aircraft gun here now. The allied fliers will be here, once they know it still stands.”
Neither man would have believed that such an important structure had not even figured in the Allied plans before they attacked, so imagining it as a priority target now that they held it in their hands was easy.
Deniken understood, and sent out the appeal, one that was taken up by other commanders, understanding the opportunity they had been presented with, as well as how fragile that opportunity could prove to be.
The SPAA weapons from 4th Guards Tank were the first to arrive, having been less than a kilometre away and already on the move.
They would have to suffice.
“Blue Three to Blue Leader, enemy tanks and vehicles, twelve o’clock low, hundreds of them, Flight!”
Four pairs of eyes looked down and forward, the sight as impressive as it was daunting.
Hall checked the map as he flicked the radio switch.
“Quartermaster, Quartermaster, this is Broadsword Blue leader, over.”
An air controller with very little to control immediately acknowledged.
“Quartermaster from Broadsword Blue Leader. Enemy armoured force, approximately two miles northeast of Barnstorf, straddling Route five-one. Strength approximately two divisions, advancing south-west at speed, over.”
A number of ears had heard the message, so no repeat was required.
“Roger Broadsword Blue leader...”
Hall’s world went white in an instant.
A Soviet 85mm AA gun had fired a single speculative shot, the shell set to explode at a greater height.
None the less, the lump of metal passed straight through the aircraft, touching only one thing of signi
ficance; the radio’s wiring.
Unable to contact ‘Broadsword’, or his flight, Hall waggled his wings and used hand gestures to pass on his orders.
The four aircraft formed line astern, Hall in the lead, and they dived upon the large Soviet force, the weather noticeably closing in once more.
Selecting the head of the column, Hall thumbed the button, sending eight RP3 rockets into the massed target.
Each rocket took lives and smashed vehicles, so concentrated were the lead echelons of the 3rd Guards Mechanised Corps.
Wallace followed on a slightly different line, diving lower still and adding his RP3’s to the destruction. A secondary explosion, brought about by one of Hall’s rockets, threw the Typhoon off track, and the Flight Sergeant caught a horrified, yet fascinating, glimpse as the body of one of the enemy soldiers flew high into the air, almost matching his height above the battlefield.
Full power and a rising stick took the Typhoon away from the sight, turning to port after his leader, the pitter-patter sounds of metal on metal showing that the lighter AA weapons were wide-awake and focussed.
Next in was Blue Three. McKenzie, the boy wonder, placed his rockets in the centre of the lead elements, wasting not one ounce of HE, flicking up and away to starboard to confuse the enemy gunners.
Blue Four, newly arrived with 182, an experienced Polish flyer, whose name was virtually unpronounceable, attacked and fired off his own rockets, even as the 37mm ZSU’s caught him in a cone of fire.
The Typhoon kept on diving, adding Pilot Officer Jan Siesztrzewitowski and his aircraft to the destruction on the ground.
McKenzie and Siesztrzewitowski had made a huge contribution to the Allied defence, the dead and dying they left in their wake belonging to the irreplaceable 77th Engineer Brigade.
Hall elected to make a second pass before the weather closed in all together, and lined up his aircraft for another run.
Yarishlov’s request for additional AA weapons had brought much of the 3rd Guards Mechanised’s self-propelled mounts forward, and Hall paid the price of the increased firepower, his aircraft struck numerous times by the proliferation of ZSU-37’s in the Soviet force.
Breaking off the attack, he could feel the difference in his aircraft, the normally powerful Sabre engine leaden, the manoeuvring worrying solid.
Hall screamed, first in terror, then in pain.
Two 37mm cannon shells struck his aircraft, immediately behind his seat, one passing through, the second exploding behind his seat, sending pieces of metal into his exposed side. The agony in his side suddenly secondary, as a heavy machine-gun bullet punched through the canopy and clipped his head.
Losing consciousness for a few seconds, he was unaware of other strikes on his aircraft. Although none was fatal, the Typhoon was a flying wreck.
Coming round and orienting himself, Hall knew he was badly hurt. Even though his vision was obscured by blood, the impairment did not stop him from seeing the gauges screaming their bad news, nor did it stop him from seeing or smelling the light blue smoke that began to fill the cockpit.
Thankful for the intact compass, the wounded pilot turned for home, hoping that his men would follow.
Wallace was already out of the fight, his aircraft clawed from the sky even as he lined it up for a second pass, his parachute opening just in time to prevent serious injury.
The Typhoon crashed into a small lake adjacent to the Am Sandhügel road, no trace of its presence left, save a few floating dead fish.
McKenzie, as ever the aggressive pilot, rapidly dropped lower, the streams of tracers missing by nearly a hundred feet above, the fuselage of the ground attack aircraft barely fifty feet above the ground. He fired, the Hispano cannons lashing out, chewing up men and vehicles, occasionally rewarded with a spectacular fiery display as something reacted badly to the stream of shells.
Pulling away, a single heavy-machine gun bullet struck his propeller, the change in note and handling instant and worrying.
Behind, McKenzie had left two of the ZSU’s in flames, and eighty infantry and their transports out of the fight.
Turning for home, the young pilot, concerned by the weather closing in rapidly, increased his revs.
The damaged propeller protested, and he throttled back once more, losing height again, as he swept back towards Barnstorf.
In the strange light, the situation was clear, and obviously desperate.
The Soviet spearhead was approaching a huge hole, some three hundred or so yards from the rail bridge.
A cursory look at the river line showed McKenzie that the other bridges in the area were down, and that the Soviets were focussing on the rail bridge.
His eyes focussed on that bridge, straining to understand the nature of the pile on the centre. That understanding came in an instant, and he made his decision just as quickly, pulling back on the stick, rising rapidly, before side slipping to port and turning for the attack.
Yarishlov and Deniken had made their way over the bridge to the east bank, pausing for a moment to watch the engineer officer at work, delicately ensuring that no booby-traps were present, whilst painfully aware that the 3rd Guards Mechanised and 22nd Guards Rifle Corps were waiting on his best efforts.
Realising that their presence was placing increased pressure on the man, the two senior officers moved on.
Both men had seen combat in all its horrible manifestations, but what confronted them at the mound exceeded their experience.
The defenders had been overwhelmed after a bloody fight, a bestial affair that had left dead and dying men everywhere.
After receiving a report from an exhausted Starshina, the two followed the shocked man around the positions, seeing men locked in rigid positions, dead, and yet seeming still fighting each other.
Occasionally, a blackened pile transformed in the beholder’s imagination, the mass suddenly identifiable as men burned beyond recognition.
The smoke was sweet and sickly, and had a smell that clung to verything it touched.
The Starshina stopped, feeling the need to identify one such abomination.
“That is my Major, Comrades. He was assisting these two wounded men when the flamethrower tank exploded.”
There was no sign of the flamethrower tank in question, not that either officer dwelt to look for it.
The group of three burned men was more than awful enough to distract them, and they moved silently away.
A thudding sound caught their attention; regular, worrying, awful.
A Soviet soldier holding his spade continued to smash the skull of the cadaver he was kneeling on, the heavy blade now cutting into the shoulders, having destroyed everything down to that point.
The Scotsman’s rifle was still in his hand, its bayonet through the throat of the Guardsman’s brother, whose sightless eyes bore witness to the terrible indignations being visited on his killer’s corpse.
Deniken gently took hold of the man’s wrist, the wild eyes challenging him for an instant, until the moment drained from him, and he collapsed in tears.
Leaving the Starshina to get the man moving, the two moved on.
Another Soviet soldier sat with his legs crossed, every part of him shaking violently, as his system rebelled against his experiences.
In front of him lay his dead friend, both hands blown off, his stomach opened up by the explosive force of the grenade he had pulled to himself, in an attempt to save his comrades.
The sight and smell were both equally revolting.
They moved on again, through a field of corpses and body parts, comrades and enemy, smashed and broken by both the technology of the modern battlefield and other weapons of a more primitive nature.
On the top of the mound, the fighting had clearly been medieval in nature, close and bloody.
Both men recoiled from the sight of an enemy soldier, his throat ripped open by the teeth of his opponent, the Guardsman’s bloody mouth still clinging to the torn flash, even in death.
A mo
vement caught their eye.
Two Scottish soldiers sat on the floor, either side of their guard, a white-faced Corporal. All three were smoking British Player’s cigarettes in silence, heads down, their eyes a thousand miles away.
One of the prisoners, an RSM, spared the Soviet officers a look, returning his gaze to the floor without comment.
A young Lieutenant, his lust for the glory of battle satisfied in spades by his first combat, walked shakily forward to report, holding a silver-topped cane.
Finishing his brief report, in which he detailed the loss of most of his company, the officer proffered the cane to Yarishlov.
“They fought around this, Comrade Polkovnik. It must be important for them.”
The captured RSM looked up, this time, eyes keenly focussed on the object, the longing and desire evident in his eyes, something not wasted on Deniken.
He nudged the tank officer’s arm, pointing at the man.
“So it seems, Comrade Leytenant.”
All three looked at the battered Scotsman, recognising his hurt.
Taking leave of the stunned infantry officer, the two men moved slowly on.
Coming round full circle, Yarishlov saw a rifle poised, its bayonet held at the throat of a dazed Scottish soldier.
“Stoi!”
The rifle remained steady, the man ignoring the imperative.
“Serzhant, put down your weapon. Now! That is an order!”
Yarishlov got through the fog of hatred this time, the weapon relaxed, and the NCO acknowledged his presence with the briefest of nods.
“Are you alright, Comrade Serzhant?”
The NCO looked at Yarishlov as if he was a being from another planet.
“Do I fucking look alright, you stupid bastard?”
‘That wasn’t the brightest thing to say to a man who had been through hell, Arkady!’
“Comrade Serzhant Durestov, attention!”
The man stiffened automatically, and Deniken interposed himself.
“You will apologise to the Polkovnik immediately.”
Durestov’s mind cleared and he realised he was in a very precarious position.
