Rhinelander (Kirov Series Book 40)

by Schettler, John

  Theo Wisch was a veteran of the SS, highly decorated, and firmly ensconced at the head of the Leibstandarte Division. In the real history, he had been wounded at Falaise Gap, but that battle had never happened here, and so he still held the reins of the premier fighting division in all the SS. Yet Wisch was also a realist. He knew what his men could do, and had every confidence in their fighting élan, but he had also taken the measure of the enemy here on the Western front, and found the Allied divisions formidable. They had good, experienced soldiers, lavish armament, and were backed by the best artillery and air support he had seen in the entire war.

  The Russians could pound the ground itself senseless with the thunder of their artillery, massive fires that bludgeoned every defensive front before an offensive. They used their guns like a blunt instrument, but the Allies wielded their artillery like a flashing sword. Just as an attack looked promising, they would lay down smothering, killing salvos of artillery fire that never seemed to miss their intended targets. Their distant guns could support their front line troops with amazing effectiveness. The rounds themselves seemed to have eyes, or so he came to feel. They seemed to explode at just the right moment to do maximum damage, and those guns could break any attack, or pin down a defensive position with precision accuracy when used on the offensive.

  He did not realize that he had been witnessing the new radio proximity fused shells the Allies had developed. Instead of the old impact fuses where the shells would detonate when they hit the ground, these rounds could bounce a radio wave off the ground, or any object they approached, and that would detonate them ten feet from the target, shredding it with shrapnel. Against infantry in the open, the new rounds were absolutely lethal. Even troops in halftracks or other open topped vehicles were massacred when the rounds would explode right above them. Plane kills against the Japanese in the Pacific increased exponentially, and even Himmler’s vaunted V-1’s fell prey to the new rounds developed for the flak guns. Yet neither the Japanese nor Germans would ever know about these new proximity fuses, one of the best kept secrets of WWII.

  So when Wisch started his division up the road from Xanten to Marianbaum at the top of the Hochwald, he had real misgivings. He had just fought a battle where his division and its brother, Das Reich , had been fought to a standstill by two American armored divisions. They had managed to sidestep to the east, reorienting their attack towards Aachen, but it was Bayerlein’s Panzer Lehr that broke through to the pocket. That wounded his pride a bit, but he realized, deep down, that the days when Steiner could cut through an enemy position like a scythe were now over. His troops were strong, well equipped and determined, but their enemies were too.

  Then, when the news of the big Soviet offensive came, Wisch knew he would be spending another long and terrible winter on the Ostfront . Now, almost as an afterthought, Guderian had urged him to make one more attack before he was transferred east. His division would attack up the southern bank of the Rhine towards Emmerich, while at the same time, Panzer Lehr would attack up the northern bank. Wisch reluctantly agreed, but his worst misgivings were soon proven true. His attack had made a three kilometer inroad into the lines of Prichard’s 2 Para Brigade, but right behind it, at Calcar, was the whole of Lathbury’s 1st Para Brigade, and at Louisendorf, the 131st Brigade of 7th Armored held forth in reserve.

  When both those British reserve units were committed, the attack ground to a halt, and prospects for getting through to the bridge were even dimmer than Wisch believed. The British still had all the rest of Erskine’s 7th Armored, and both the 6th and 8th independent Armored Brigades in reserve. So 1st SS, even when supported by Menzel’s Paratroopers, was not going to make any further headway, and Wisch contacted Guderian from Xanten to say as much.

  “What about Bayerlein?” he asked.

  “He got a late start,” said Guderian, “but he will attack this morning.”

  “Herr General,” Wisch said flatly, “we might do better to save our strength. Sooner or later the armor I am facing here now will attempt to break out of that bridgehead. That is what this big offensive to the west is aiming for, and you know my division will not be here to lend a hand. Who will hold any ground I take in this attack, Menzel? Even with Das Reich at my side, this would be difficult.” He paused, letting his remarks sink in. Then, always the good soldier, he asked Guderian for orders.

  “Very well,” said Guderian, a weariness in his voice. “You may pull your division out under cover of darkness before dawn. Use the pontoon bridge we built at Xanten to cross, and I will have rolling stock waiting on the rail behind the Diersforterwald, if the Jabos don’t get to it first.”

  So ended the reign of the Life Guards of Adolf Hitler in the West. They had fought well in France, gained much in Operation Valkyrie , defended in the Pas de Calais, and against the British operation aimed at Antwerp, but there were few real victories to make for medals. Wisch would now move his division as ordered, and in ten days he would be in Poland, joining the rest of Steiner’s Korps as it gathered to try and stop the Soviet advance towards the Polish frontier from Gomel. 1st SS would serve the rest of this war on the Ostfront , and just before sunrise, Guderian would telephone Bayerlein to cancel his planned attack towards Emmerich….

  * * *

  This was the grim realization that was now settling over the Wehrmacht at every level—that their best was no longer good enough. They had enjoyed but a brief Indian Summer with the Rhinelander offensive, and then the worrisome views of von Rundstedt returned. Now it remained to be seen if the Panzerwaffe was still capable of holding the line defensively with timely interventions as the old Field Marshal preached.

  Harzer had arrived just in time to contest the envelopment of Arnhem. He had sent a battalion of 36 Panthers to reinforce Graebner northeast of Deeleen, but the infantry of the 52nd Lowland spotted the tanks at the edge of the Deelerwoud forest, and it would again be the artillery that would answer the threat.

  “Look there, Harry,” said a Lieutenant to his radio man. “That looks like a concentration of armor. They may be planning to hit the flank of our penetration. Let’s get Dragonfire on them.” He squinted at the map. “Give the coordinates as 89-75, 89-76, and tell them to lay it on thick.”

  “Right sir!” The radio man was quick to his fire mission. “Dragonfire, this is Bluebell. Fire mission, heavy, heavy. Grid 89-75, 89-76. No spot. Fire for effect.”

  100 guns would respond to that call, lighting up the edge of those woods with a heavy barrage that lasted five minutes. Men caught outside their vehicles ran for any cover they could find, some simply diving prone onto any depression in the ground, others leaping under the tanks. But the rounds were exploding well up into the treetops, sending eviscerating shrapnel and shattered tree limbs down in a killing hail. Choking smoke covered the entire scene when it was over, and the sounds of the wounded calling for help could be heard.

  “God almighty,” said a riflemen, staring at the fires now rising in those woods.

  “Better them than us, lads,” said a gritty Sergeant. “Look to your front.”

  Adair’s division was now engaging the Panzergrenadiers of the 9th SS on the Velperberg Ridge, but his attack was not to be the main event in O’Connor’s offensive. That was reserved for Pip Roberts and the 11th Armored Division. His tanks, and those of the 4th Canadian Armored Division, were set to attack side by side on the second day. They had come up through Utrecht and Amersfoort, right on the main road to Apeldoorn. The 3rd Fallschirmjäger Regiment was covering that road and the rail line to the city, positioned in bands of outlying woods. Behind them, the thicker forest of the Soerenbusch darkened the horizon.

  The German Paras were tough troops, in good positions, but they were about to be hit with a heavy prep barrage, followed by 250 tanks and armored cars, and two full brigades of infantry, all attacking on a front about seven to eight kilometers wide. Where there were any gaps in the front, that onrushing tide would find them, leaving three or four German companies o
f the regiment surrounded. O’Connor was coming through, and the Paras weren’t going to stop him that day.

  Yet division commander Heidrich knew he did not have to stop this attack. All he had to do was slow it down. Without him even having to give orders, his men in the field instinctively knew the same thing. Those that had not been cut off in the initial onslaught, displaced, fell back, and took up new defensive positions at the edge of the Orderbosch Woods. That was just four kilometers from the outskirts of Apeldoorn, where the rail line dipped to avoid the thicker stands of trees, into a narrow neck of lighter woods. Right behind them, help was not far away.

  Brinkmann’s recon battalion was leading in General Harmel’s 10th SS Panzer Division, and they were coming right up the same roads the British tanks were trying to use to bulldoze their way through the forest, with throngs of infantry scouring the woods to either side of those roads.

  The entire Frundsberg Division was flowing into Apeldoorn. Thus far, the attack had carried the British and Canadians ten kilometers, but the last five would be the hardest. The woods just west of the city were heavy, and there was a string of old forts running north to south that the Germans had reinforced for strong points. Fort Wiessel was the northernmost redoubt, on a secondary road occupying the 10 o’clock position from the center of Apeldoorn. Forts Frederik and Iavan were at the 9 o’clock position, astride the main paved road leading due west. South of Fort Iavan was the Catgenberg Hill, which the Germans were also fortifying at the eight o’clock position. At seven o’clock, the rail line bent south with a secondary road to avoid the thicker stands of trees in the Orderbosch. If the British could force that open, they could then get around the Catgenberg position.

  Thus far O’Connor’s main attack had surged forward like water spilling over a dam, but the Germans were hastily building another dyke through those woods, and that battle promised to be a difficult one.

  The attackers were heavily concentrated, and now the German guns began to open fire, for Harmel had a good amount of artillery in his division. That was going to make the woodland into a killing ground, snapping and toppling trees, shearing off branches and churning up the underduff when the rounds hit the forest floor. The only solace the British would have would be the sound of their own artillery returning that fire with equal vengeance.

  There, in the “rail gap,” Hauptmann Brinkmann was trying to prevent any further breakthrough, but the British were determined. The open ground to the west was leading that flood tide of British tanks right to Brinkmann. Everything was heading for that thinner neck of woods hoping to break through to the clearing beyond, which was about three kilometers due south of the line the Germans were fortifying in the forest.

  The British made a rare night attack, crowding into the shadowy woods and simply trying to bull their way through. Tanks crashed into the thinner trees, flattening them and then grinding over the fallen tree trunks. The sound of wood snapping and cracking was mixed with the raking MG fire, and the sharp bark of the main tank guns. Just as they finally won through to reach the clearing, the Germans sent up a fresh battalion from 21st Panzergrenadier Regiment backed by 18 PzKfw IVH Panzers. A sharp counterattack came at the British, the tanks blazing away at one another in the dark in a chaotic clash of fire and shadow. Orderbosch would be a name the British would remember. Everything gained was lost again, and the Germans reclaimed the broken neck of woods, strongly reinforcing the defense.

  Harmel was sitting in Apeldoorn like a spider king at the center of his web. The roads and rail lines spun out in all directions, and he could easily send his minions down any one of them to reinforce a threatened approach to the city, or make a sharp counterattack. Pip Roberts and the men of the11th Armored had just had some of the toughest fighting of their war, but for Harmel’s troops, this was only another do or die battle, one of many they had fought, winning some, losing others.

  “The bloody SS,” said Horrocks to O’Connor when the reports came in. “It seems a whole division has come up and its sitting right there at Apeldoorn.”

  O’Connor had been listening to that attack, hearing the distant gunfire and the sounds coming over the tactical radio sets. He knew it was a bad scrap, and that there would be no more easy gains. It would become a battle of attrition, a grind of tanks butting up against one another in those woods. They had reached the door to the city, shouldered it open, only to have the Germans heave to and slam it shut again, like the great gate at Hougoumont. General Adair also reported a strong counterattack at Velperberg against Adair’s Guards Armored, so it was clear that the two SS Divisions were going to fight here with everything they had.

  “They’re persistent, if nothing else,” said O’Connor. “Well, we’ll keep at them. If they want a shoving match here, we’ll give them one. Let’s move the Belgian Brigade over to take up the watch on the river southeast of Arnhem. That will free up the bulk of the 49th Division.”

  “But they’re on the wrong side of the river, sir.”

  “At the moment. Now that we’ve cleared the Germans out of Oosterbeek, we can get the engineers to work on that rail bridge west of the city. Then the 49th can cross there and we’ll really be able to bulk up on the Germans west of Arnhem. With 43rd Wessex and the 49th behind them, we should be able to shoulder on through to the city.”

  “I’ll see to it,” said Horrocks. “I’ll have Thomas put in his reserve brigade, and we’ll give them a hard push today. With any luck we can start moving the 49th across tonight.”

  “It won’t need luck,” said O’Connor, “just sweat and steel. I’m not taking no for an answer here, Jorrocks [2] . We’ll give them two or three rounds back for every shell they send our way. Find out where their guns are, and let’s rain hellfire down on them.”

  “Right sir!” Horrocks saluted, and hastened off to get those orders out.

  Part VIII

  Uppercut

  “You become a champion by fighting one more round. When things are tough, you fight one more round.”

  —James J. Corbett

  Chapter 22

  Dawn, 27 SEP-44

  It had been a long and dangerous night, one where the darkness could not impose its will on the land, or the men who fought for it. Artillery reigned in its place, lighting up the horizon, booming like deep kettle drums, the exploding rounds glowing in the shattered woods. Red fire leapt up in the broken glens, and shadows of men and tanks seemed to dance wildly about the living, another dark army animating this contest of wills.

  Heavy rain added to the misery that morning, slowly dowsing the fires, which covered the whole landscape with the heavy weight of choking woodsmoke. Spotting for artillery was difficult, if not impossible, and no one knew who might have fired the rounds that were hitting them, be it friend or foe. It was hard, bloody fighting, but O’Connor had reserves, and he was going to keep fisting the enemy line until he broke it. He was going to fight one more round.

  After pushing all the way into the western edge of Arnhem, General Thomas now sent up his 130th Brigade, which had been waiting for two days to get into the fight. Sir Gwilym Ivor Thomas had been a veteran artillery officer in WWI, and now he bore a most formidable nickname: “Butcher Thomas.” The Wessex Division was slowly forcing von Tettau’s troops back into the city, where the fighting now began to burn buildings and blast homes.

  All along the forest land to the north, the battle renewed, with attack followed by counterattack. Casualties mounted on both sides, but now O’Connor was factoring the grim calculus of war, reasoning that Bittrich’s II SS Panzerkorps was the last great bulwark on the line. He wanted to bleed it, wear it down, grind it beneath his heel, even if that meant he would pay a high price in both lives and equipment. It was either here, or somewhere else, he reasoned. He had come here to turn the flank of the Emmerich River Bridgehead, and he was determined to succeed.

  The Wessex Division smashed its way into the western quarter of Arnhem. Guards Armored retook the Velperberg, and also pushed south
into the Tonberg woodland just above Velp. In the Orderbosch near Apeldoorn, tanks clashed at near point blank range, and the infantry was at each other’s throats in hand to hand combat. It was a dirty, bloody, muddy business, with the dead falling among the broken tree limbs. The British 11th Armored clawed its way 500 meters every three hours, at a terrible cost.

  Beat them, smash them, break them was the order of the day. Fight them, bruised and bloodied to the bone. Hammer them with the guns until the barrels were so hot they had to be cooled with buckets of water. Late that afternoon, the turning action into the Tonberg Woods prompted movement. Von Tettau could feel his command being slowly cut off, and he ordered troops in the Schaarsbergen woods to move back. The road through Velp was now his only life line, and it had to be kept open if Arnhem were to be contested or held.

  The darkness of night could not come too soon again for the weary men on either side. This night, only troops that had not been engaged that day would move, coming up to reinforce the areas that looked promising, or to fill gaps in the line. Even the deep throated song of the artillery would not be heard, and a heavy, sullen, wounded silence fell over the forest country. Beneath those broken boughs, those on the line still heard the cries of wounded comrades, left behind when one side or another had been forced to retire, alone, bleeding, dying in the bleak darkness.

  In the wee hours of the night, General Adair could sense a victory right at the edge of his division’s bloodied fingernails. He ordered anything that had ammunition, fuel enough and strength enough, to move into Tonberg Gap, sweeping south of Velperberg Hill. At midnight, the recon company of the Irish Guards pushed through the far edge of the thinning woods, out into an open field. They were 500 meters from the main road connecting Arnhem-Velp-Rheden. The Guards had broken through.