Breakthrough (The Red Gambit Series) (33 page)

“And did he
circumcise
an elephant at the circus?”

Rosenberg
’s face split from ear to ear.

“Would I lie to you?”

“Damn right you would
,
you yiddisher bastard! The whorehouse in Marseille?”

“
As G
od is my witness
,
you have a memory for things don’t you? Anyway, t
he place was schlock. Not good enough for a mentsh like you
.”

“That is not what I heard
,
Zack
,
as well you know. You’re lying.”

“OK
,
OK, I am lying. It was a Rhino.”

The men in Headquarters C
ompany were used to the constant sparring of this unusual duo, a friendship between opposites sparked by the
extremes
of military life.

As the two continued their bickering
,
Clayton
Randolph, the unit’s junior soldier
,
handed out the last of the coffee
and left the verbal warriors to their business
.
The two
watched the last
halftrack
disappear on the
Heroldhausen-
Eichenau
road.

Rosenberg
stood
‘
five foot and a
mosquito
’s
dick short
’
, or
at least that was how
the six foot two inch NCO put it.

Combat had moulded them into a team
,
and set in place a friendship that only death could sunder.

“Talk English. I don’t understand your Jewish speak.”

Springing to attention the diminutive figure threw up a formal salute.

“
Jawohl,
Herr Feldwebel.”

Hässler went to cuff him playfully but the Corporal ducked away, picking up his pack and slinging it aboard ‘
Liberty
’, the half-track they had all called home since they had landed in
Europe
.

Cigarettes lit, no sound came from the tired men as they waited for the clock to count down.

Something didn’t feel right to the Master Sergeant
,
so he kept his men
in position beyond the ten minutes, watching and ready for action.

Looking at the watch
,
he decided fifteen was enough and that his senses had let him down for once.

The troops loaded up quickly
,
and in less than two m
inutes
,
the last vehicles of 2nd Battalion were on the road to
Diembot
.

M5A1 halftracks were not the quietest of vehicles
,
but the sound of explosions and gunfire rose over the top of the roar of
7.4 litre Red-B engines
at high revs
.

Hässler signalled a halt
,
and the
four
vehicles smoothly slipped into cover, leaving the road empty.

Randolph
was behind the mounted .50cal, scanning the road ahead and the woods to the right. Beside him stood the American-German, both men’s senses straining to the limit. At the rear of the track
,
Rosenberg
traversed his .30cal very deliberately, checking the undergrowth beyond his sights
for the slightest sign of movement
.

Orienting themselves on the noise
,
the men in the small convoy quickly placed the shooting to their
south-east
.

Rosenberg
spat, not turning from his field of responsibility, and threw a question at the Master-Sergeant.

“Pritchard?”

“You can bet your
kosher
ass on
it
.”

Thus far
,
the 179th Guards Rifle Regiment had advanced without contact. Since
the blood-letting of
Reichenburg
,
only a few minor skirmishes had occurred, claiming a life here, two there.

Moving forward towards his allotted targets
,
the villages of
Leibesdorf
and
Seibotenberg
had fallen silently
,
so
Colonel Artem’yev had split his force, sending his 1st and 3rd Battalions
to
Elpershofen
and
Hessenau
respectively,
with
3rd Battalion
additionally
tasked to push out to the south-east towards Diem
bot if circumstances permitted.

E
mploying his headquarters
alongside
the savaged 2nd Battalion
as a reserve, he
move
d
behind them
, and
to the south-
east.
Ar
te
m’yev intended to remain
out of trouble unless summoned
,
or 3rd
Battalion
was
ready
to attack Diembot
.

His men moved swiftly through
the woods to the south-east of Seibotenberg,
rapidly
crossing
one hundred
metres of open ground before ag
a
in
secreting
themselves in dense wood to the south of Heroldhausen
.

Scouts at the head of the unit gave warning and
the guardsmen
deployed instinctively
, moving into cover
along the edge of the
north-south
road
that cut through the
woods
.

Despite the hell it had endured in Rottenburg, the179th was still a
crack unit and it showed, its
calm
veterans
speedily
dropping out of sight, ready to fire if called upon or to remain silent and, if necessary, let the threat pass.

Artem’yev was not at the front of the column
,
so the decisions were left to an experienced Captain
commanding the
the advance guard.

Rushing to the
southern
most end of his line
,
the C
aptain assessed the enemy force.

‘Ten, no, twelve vehicles.’

He slapped
one of his anti-tank gunners on the shoulder. The man looked at his commander, following the simple hand signals and whispered instructions.

“Komarov, lead vehicle, stop him there.”

The hands indicated where the officer wished the ambush to be sprung. A nod acknowledged
the order and confirmed understanding.
T
he man
slipped to one side with his number two
, readying the panzershreck he had
proudly
carried
with him
since
liberating it at
Freistadt in May that year.

A simple nod
to the other panzershreck pair was all that was needed. They knew enough to hold until the first vehicle was dead before selecting another down the line. There was no ti
me to move north
wards so someone at the end of the line would have to close the door.

A veteran Starshy Serzhant was already setting in place an act to do just that.

Pritchard was everything Hässler thought he was, but of all his faults
,
his
incompetence was the major player that afternoon.

No screening vehicle
was moving ahead of the column and
no dis
tances ordered between vehicles. I
n fact
,
the whole group was moving in as unmilitary a fashion as it was possible to imagine. The sole exception was the manned .50cals on the half-tracks.

Fox Company never had a chance.

A flash caught the
lead
gunner
’
s eye
,
and his screamed warning coincided with the detonation of
a
warhead on the thin strip of metal to the right of the driver’s vision slit.

The d
river, the
Corporal
in
the front passenger seat
and the gunner
,
were instantly transformed into unrecognisable meat, the remainder of the crew suffering injuries ranging from flash burns
to
blast
effects
. Only one other fatality occurred in the leading half-track, the youngest man in the company horribly slain by a lump of
ragged
bone from the unfortunate driver. As he coughed his life out through the gaping wound in his neck
,
the remainder of the
crew
gathered their senses and tried to
debu
s
.

Not a man touched
the
ground alive
,
as submachine guns and DP
s flayed them one by one.

As the lead vehicle was being
professionally
exterminated
,
the ambushing line
erupted,
the
halftracks being destroyed by grenades, anti-tank rifles and
the other panzerschreck.

At the rear of the column, the Starshy Serzhant’s group had managed to get three out of six grenades into the body of the rearmost vehicle.

It, and its crew, burned fiercely.

Rifles played their part, neatly picking off the machine gunners as they tried to beat off the attack. Over half the gunners never fired a
shot;
the rest
quickly
followed their comrades into blackness without being effective.

An experienced Pfc got his BAR working and laid low two guardsmen who were
closing
up with teller mines. Neither
was
killed
outright,
but neither would see the following morning.

The Pfc heard the thump beside him but never felt the
grenade fragments
that ripped the life from him.

In the third track
,
the sole casualty so far was the gunner, shot through the neck and hanging from the MG ring
,
dripping rivers of blood down the olive green flank of the halftrack.

Pritchard knew he was going to die and his bladder
and bowels
evacuated as his young soldiers looked to him for leadership.

A grenade dropped into the back of the vehicle and the American soldiers
were divided
into two groups
by the fickle nature of high explosive
. One
group
died, the other didn’t.

Those who
had
remained in the vehicle lived, although all were wounded.
T
he Russian who thr
ew the grenade had used a G
erman stick grenade
, and was what saved them
. The Steilhandgranate was d
ependent on
blast
for its effectiveness
although the mechanism and casing caused some shrapnel wounds
in this instance
.

Those who bailed out died in the act
of escaping the burst
, all except Pritchard
,
who had shown amazing agility
.

His wounds were extreme, a burst of PPSH smashing across his legs as he dived over the side, almost severing both his
legs at his ruined knees
. A single bullet neatly amputated his left thumb and
another struck his jaw, breaking the strong bone and lodging in the bottom of his left eye. T
he officer hit the ground
hard and bounced onto his back, adding a broken left wrist to the litany of injuries.

His
bestial
screams surmounted all the sounds of
battle
.

In Track 2
,
a young sergeant got the back door open and evacuated the three survivors
,
using his physical strength and harsh words
in equal measure
.