Breakthrough (The Red Gambit Series) (57 page)

“This is just to ensure that you listen to what I have to say
,
Knocke.”

His own Walther was still in its holster, attached to his belt, the same belt he had taken off a few minutes beforehand when he expected to get some rest. It sat in his line of sight immediately behind the Russian, taunting him with its nearness and yet infinite distance.

“You have my attention. Say your piece.”

Knocke’s mind was working hard, different parts looking at alternatives, planning and processing options.

As Kovelskin spoke
,
that all changed, every cell in his brain focussing on the simple stateme
nt that
preceded the Russian’s business.

“Greta and your daughters say hello.”

Being a
ble to see out of only one eye wa
s an inconvenience at the best of times. A clod of earth and grass had been propelled by a
n
artillery shell and hit him directly in the
left eye. Marion Crisp was finding it hard going but there was nothing he or the medics could do to restore his sight at this time
,
so he bore it as best he could.

Anyway, it was the least of his problems
,
as
the
101st US Airborne was bleeding out trying to stem the
Soviet
advance.

2nd Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, Crisp’s command, was still in reasonable shape
,
but
other units
throughout the division were shadows of their former selves.

In fact
,
the situation was so fluid that the division, indeed all the divisions in the area, had started to lose their cohesiveness, units out of place and fighting alongside comrades wearing different insignia and sometimes national uniform.

At the moment, Crisp was withdrawing from a perfectly good position at Baiswell, forced back to Eggenthal by
Soviet
advances to the north and south.

The handful of trucks he had
remaining
were
loaded
up
with the wounded
,
and an advance guard briefed to start setting up a d
efensive perimeter at Eggenthal;
all had set off an hour beforehand.

As Crisp pushed his men hard down the road, the grim wrecks of two of his trucks gave testament to the activities of
Soviet
ground attack aircraft, both vehicles
’
passengers
still aboard, having been
either too wounded or too drugged up to be able to save themselves from the subsequent fires.

The paratroopers had heard the air attack behind them as they were driving off the
Soviet
infantry in the last enemy attempt at capturing Baiswell.

Now, they had handed the insignificant German village to the enemy for nothing, high-tailing it back to the next defensive point as fast as their legs could carry them.

Just off the road lay a shattered
Soviet
aircraft, an Li-2, the
Soviet
copy of the DC-3.

His senior non-com had organised a small group to check out the wreck, although it wasn’t fresh and
had
probably been down since the start of the Russian attacks.

The Master-Sergeant dropped back to Crisp’s group
with his
report.

“Three
enemy
dead aboard
her,
Major. Stinking to high heaven
,
so been there a’while.
Preacher
Manley found this
and
I confiscated it
before he did his thing
.
” They exchanged grins, conjuring up a scene of fire and brimstone centred around the devout
Christian
Manley and the devil of alcohol.

“Anyway, n
ow is not the time.”

Crisp took the extended bottle and examined the label. None the wiser, he handed it on to Captain Galkin for translation.

“
Moscow C
rystal
vodka
, Major. That’s as good as it gets in Mother Russia.”

Galkin’s father had served with the White Russians and escaped to start a new life in
Oregon
,
USA
.

The bottle passed through hands again before coming to rest back with Master-Sergeant Baldwin.

“When we get settled later, share it
a
round
,
Rocky,” no-one could remember how
Baldwin
had acquired the name
,
but it was his none the less.

“Yes Sir. Left a little present in there for our red friends.”

“We will steer clear then. Now, get the boys moving Master-Sergeant.”

Eisenhower had retired early so
that
he could be up
early enough
to listen to Operation Gabriel, so
Bedell-Smith satisfied himself that all was in motion for tonight’s
big plan
involving
the RAF and the following dawn’s effort by the USAAF. It was an innovative idea and it had to be tried, if only the once.

An orderly presented him with his usual 10 o’clock coffee,
the General’s
eyes straying to the large clock to
confirm
the time.

At 2200 hrs, in a dimly lit white church in
Eggenthal
, Major Marion Crisp discussed the tactical position with his officer group, having already walked the
defensive
lines
, touching
base with all his units
and assessing the morale of his troopers
, noting the now empty vodka bottle in Fox Company headquarters, now acting as a vase for some colourful weeds, courtesy of some wag.

Major Kowalski, his Polish persona now back in being, sat in the officers mess,
consuming
a modest
Riesling
,
and
pretending to read the latest version of ‘Stars & Stripes’
whilst
not registering a word as he processed the
day’s
events. A mess steward presented himself with another glass of wine
. Kowalski produced a fountain pen and signed the chit. The steward took away the empty glass, the chit and the pen containing a simple message. The pen was returned to him by an apologetic orderly as the clock lightly chimed out ten o’clock.

Kowalski checked his wristwatch, noting with surprise that the mantle clock was out by four minutes.

In his billet, Ernst-August Knocke sat alone, no longer needing to present a normal front to his men, now able to think long and hard about the Russian’s proposal.

‘
They are alive!
’

War is cruelty. There's no use trying to reform it, the
crueller
it is the sooner it will be over.

William Tecumseh Sherman

             
Operation Gabriel had been
underway
for some time
,
as aircraft rose from airfields across
Allied
Europe, intent on closing in on a modest area of
Northern Germany
and transforming it into a wasteland, consigning anyone and anything in the area to a sustained hell of high-explosives and fire.

The original idea had been floated on the basis of Allied night time superiority. It had been a sound idea and the planners and s
enior officers had seized on it.
The concept grew and the overseers bastardised
it into a gigantic beast, a beast
that
required
over half the
bomber
s
in the RAF and its C
ommonweal
th squadrons, from the lighter
Mosquitoes
to old Stirlings hastily serviced and put back into action.

Allied recon had improved in the last few days, the most successful missions being those late in the day, trading lower resolution photos for survivability, at a time when the day transited into night
,
and
the dark skies were r
uled by the fighters of the RAF and USAAF.

Tonight, hundreds of bombers were targeted on a specific location
,
but not on a city, a town or a village; not on a bridge or a viaduct, a road or a canal. They were all targeted on
a point on the map, representing a large number of
living beings, assault divisions of the Red Army identified to be
preparing
for an
attack
.

Operation Gabriel, conceived as a modest area bombing strike to destroy specific enemy units behind the lines
,
had blossomed into
five hundred
plus aircraft modern Armageddon, about to fall upon the prime assault units of the 1st Red Banner European Front gathered around
Celle
.

Army officers had assisted in the planning, including some German officers from the new German Republican Army, using their hard-won knowledge to assist the target planners, applying their understanding to work out where the Russian would hide and camouflage his materiel.

Tons of high-explosive were targeted according to their intuition and expertise and if all went to plan then the Red Army would lose a significant part of its forces for little Allied loss.

The Squadron motto was ‘To strive and not to yield’, a sentiment wholly appropriate for a night illuminated by a full and bright ‘bomber’s’ moon when one engine had already packed up and the starboard inner, all important
for its contribution to the airc
raft hydraulics, playing up and misfiring.

The crew of UM-V had only recently arrived at the squadron’s
home base
at RAF Wickenby in
Lincolnshire
, survivors of a submarine attack on their ship
, the
Aquitania
, which
claimed the lives of a number of their comrades.

Transferred into 626 Squadron RAF to replace heavy casualties, this was their second mission, the first having been a doddle over the area east of Lübeck.

In the gleam of a brilliant moon
,
it was easy to spot all sorts of Allied aircraft, flying in one direction
,
for a single purpose.

UM-V was a Lancaster Mk I, a venerable aircraft
that
had seen its fair share of action already, passed airworthy after strenuous tests
,
and handed to a green crew, fresh from training in
Canada
.

626 had been allocated an area immediately north of some green and yellow markers, indicators accurately laid by RAF Pathfinder mosquitoes
to indicate the line of Route 214
.

The large area earmarked for the bomber’s attention that night had been divided up into zones, beacons of different colours giving the aircrews a ground visualisation of the plans each aircraft had been issued with, permitting each bomb aimer to understand his target completely.

Pilot Officer Cecil Black had spent his war on the ground, being a late transferee into flying duties.