Casca 4: Panzer Soldier (10 page)

Gus had managed to acquire enough chits for a visit to a field whorehouse a few
kilometers to the rear by cheating the orderlies at cards, dice or anything else he could force them into betting on. The fact that they knew he was cheating was of no consequence. He wouldn't take no for an answer aid when he, as he said, had to gently shake one of them, a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound supply sergeant, the rest decided it would be wiser not to irritate the madman any more than necessary. The supply sergeant was now in traction.

Yuri never got his wish to begin a new ear collection. Langer received his transit orders and they were moved out to a training
regiment at Vilnyus in Lithuania. Two days after they arrived, Hitler relieved von Manstein of command of the sector they had just left and replaced him with Field Marshal Model, the one they called The Fireman. The wiry, thin-faced field marshal was known for his brilliance in handling crisis situations, and had time and again foiled Russian plans to annihilate German forces they had bottled up. Model was a master of fighting withdrawals, stretching the pursuing enemy out to the limits of supply and knowing just when to turn and fight.

For the most part German forces tried to straighten their lines and set up barriers to slow down the Russian winter offensive. Leningrad finally had to be evacuated after three years of siege.

The Russians still managed to advance to the Bug and Dniester rivers despite brilliant counterattacks by Manstein. The trapped 1st Panzer Army at Tarnopol managed to fight its way out almost intact with the aid of the Luftwaffe, which air dropped all of its supplies. The old reliable Junker 52 workhorse tri-motor was the back bone of a massive air resupply. Langer and Teacher spent the remainder of the winter trying to cram as much training as they could onto the replacements being sent up. It was woefully short many times. The boys they sent up had less than ten days' familiarization with their weapons. Gus was disappointed in his hopes to be sent back and discharged. Instead he was returned to Langer in May, busted down to private. Ivan had a habit of treating prisoners according to their rank; the higher you were, the worse they gave you. A private could always claim he was forced into the war and was really a Communist at heart.

The spring campaigns opened when the ground was firm enough to handle the weight of the
armored vehicles. Langer wasn't worried about going up to the front. He knew that the front would soon come to them. It was just a matter of time. In the meantime, he did the best he could to teach the replacements how to survive, not that it did much good. Already, most of the replacements were no more than seventeen, but the Russians, too, were showing some of the strain of replacing troops. They had lost millions and were now fleshing out their ranks with boys of fifteen and old men of sixty. Anyone capable of carrying a weapon was called into service. There was no medical excuse that could save one from the army, unless he was an amputee or cripple.

On 6 March, Colonel von
Mancken did his best to win the Knight's Cross and was promptly ground into jelly by the tracks of one of the new JS-1 (Joseph Stalin) heavy tanks.
Stabswachmeister
Schmitt managed to steal the colonel's car and drive fifteen kilometers to the rear, where he tried to bribe a couple of hard-nosed members of the field gendarmerie, who promptly hung him by the neck from a telegraph pole, and divided up his bribe among themselves anyway.

By mid-April the Russians had advanced to striking range of the frontier of Poland and were facing the Carpathian
mountains to the south. The Crimea had fallen, the 17th Army fought without support until it could hold out no longer. Some units were rescued in a German version of Dunkirk but not all. Thousands of horses were driven off the cliffs to drown in the Black Sea, the German defenders' last act. Destroy anything that might be of use to the Russians. By the end of July Langer's prediction that the front would come to them came true. They were pushed out of Vilnyus to form a hedgehog northwest of the city, surrounded and cut off.

Yuri motioned to Gus to come and take a look. Gus raised his head up far enough to get a good look at a T-34 sitting just a block away beside a burned out bakery on the outskirts of
Vilnyus. The crew was taking a break to enjoy their lunch. They had already strung up, and were butchering a pig for their lunch.

Gus whispered to Langer, who was talking to Teacher.
"Hey Sarge, chow time. There's only four of them."

Langer took a look, not at the pig, but the tank. "You're right, Gus, and there's our way out of here."

Gus looked at the sitting T-34 and smiled. "I'll make you a deal. You get the tank and I'll get the pig.”

"Good enough, but let's keep it quiet; no shooting unless we have to. Let's not let their cousins know we're here if we can help it. Teacher, you take the
Mauser and cover us. Yuri, you come at them from around the rear of the bakery and wait until Gus and I move before you hit them. Gus and I will handle the three with the pig. You take out the one by the tank. Got it?" Yuri grinned his sparkling gold smile.

"All right,
then let's be at it."

Gus took his entrenching tool from its case. He had, as usual, honed the edge down fine enough to cut silk with. Yuri had his butcher knife and Langer the long M-98 bayonet. They didn't have much doubt that they would be able to get close enough to use their blades. The
Ivans were totally involved with gutting the pig and building a cook fire.

Bellies to the ground, they slid out through the brush and grass slithering like snakes. Before
Vilnyus had fallen they had been issued new uniforms and the summer camouflage of light and dark brown splinter patterns blended beautifully with the cover they used.

They moved slowly, the smell of the grass in their nostrils. The heat of the sun beat down their backs and small rivers of sweat ran down the hollow of their spines.

Teacher watched from the cellar window. It seemed to take forever for them to cover the short distance to the bakery wall. Langer raised his head for a quick look.

One of the
Ivans was showing off to the others, making swipes with a saber through the air, obviously showing them how it was done when he was still in the mounted cavalry. Langer focused on him. That could be dangerous. The swordsman wore the collar tabs of a major. He looked to be about thirty-five. Lean, with high Slavic cheekbones and deep-set eyes that were always in a shadow. He moved through some quick ghost parrying-and-lunging techniques to the delight of his comrades, and with a whirling sweep severed the head from the pig.

Langer grunted mentally. Not bad. It's hard to cut through a neck like that, especially one as thick as a pig's. You have to hit at just the right spot between the
vertebra or you can't do it. But it still takes a lot of strength just to cut through the muscle. The Order of Suvarov and the badge of a Hero of the Soviet Union were easily visible.

They reached the wall, their hearts pounding but with the calmness that comes before action. Yuri moved around the building, keeping close to the wall. He had until the time it took him to count his fingers and toes twice slowly,
then Langer and Gus would move.

Gus pointed out one of the
Ivans. A big man almost as large as himself, bending over slicing up the pig's hindquarters. Whispering, "That's my meat."

Langer nodded he'd take out the major first, and then the little Armenian-looking one by the tank would go to whoever was closest. Yuri would get the one closest to him, a youngster who looked more German than Russian, probably from the Caucasus.

It was time. Langer touched Gus on the shoulder and nodded, took a deep breath, and moved straight at the major. Gus followed, his entrenching tool held like a barbarian axe from the days of the Vikings.

Gus lurched out in front of Langer, the entrenching tool above his head, aiming to slice through the neck of the big Russian who was involved in pulling the intestines out of the slaughtered pig. He was almost on him when his feet hit a slick pile of pig guts, and he went ass over end in a heap under the knife of the big Slav.

Langer rushed in behind before the Slav could react and slice up the new piece of bacon lying helpless at his feet. He yelled, the Slav turned, a slightly surprised look on his face; what had happened hadn't really registered. The look of blankness stayed there until Langer's bayonet made a whisshing sound and gave the big man another mouth, gaping and spouting.

Yuri came out at the same time, his butcher knife held low; he raced at half crouch up to the young boy, and whipped him around by the shoulder, aiming for the gut. The youngster twisted as Yuri struck, and the blade slid between the ribs on his left side. The point of the knife reached the heart, but the spasms of muscles, combined with the natural adhesion of the rib cage, made it impossible for Yuri to draw the blade back out. He set a foot on the youngster's head to hold him and began frantically to twist the blade, trying to break it free, only to feel it snap at the handle. Spinning around, he had just enough time to see the look of pleasure on the Cossack's face, before the
saber half-severed his head from the body at the neck. Another flick of the wrist and the saber flashed again; the head fell to the ground before the body knew it was dead. Yuri's head fell to rest beside the tracks of the T-34, the face looking up, eyes open, the mouth wide in his familiar gold-toothed smile.

The Armenian was shocked at first, then started to scramble up the side of the tank to get inside and batten down. He had rolled out from under Langer, and out of the pig guts, some still hanging to his face and chest. Growling, Gus struck at him with the edge of his shovel. There was a "
thunk," then a wet sucking sound, as it pulled out of the Armenian's spine. Gus had hit him right at the junction between the shoulder blades with a straight thrust that sank the sharpened sides in to a depth of five inches. Gus caught a look at Yuri's head lying on the ground by the tracks, and screamed like a berserker of old. He lunged forward, swinging his tool like a meat cleaver, only to feel his hand go numb, and find he was holding only the wooden handle. The head of the entrenching tool had been severed with a clean quarter wrist sweep of the major's saber hand.

The Cossack paused, noting that the Germans were carrying no guns; he decided to enjoy himself a little. He fended off Gus's attempt to brain him with the shovel handle with a series of light taps and touches, leaving the big German's face pricked and cut in half a dozen places, in less than ten seconds. Gus couldn't get through the flashing blade, and backed away, a wounded animal, his eyes shrunk to tiny pinpoints, blood running freely down his face. The major moved in the classic fleche, the long, smooth, almost running lunge to the heart; Gus was backed up to the tank with nowhere to run. The
saber blade moved off center to ring off the hull of the T-34. The Cossack recovered.

Langer stood between them, his bayonet held to the front. The major smiled and spoke in perfect German, with a slightly British accent, "Well, well, what have we here, a sergeant who thinks he understands the
saber. Too bad you're not an officer at least, then I might have the confidence that you would have at least had some rudimentary training. But perhaps you can provide me with enough entertainment to make up for the loss of my men." He looked closely at the thick-set body of the man confronting him. "You are a tough-looking swine at any rate." He pointed the saber blade at Langer's face, at the scarred side. "
Schlager mensur
, perhaps?" his voice hopeful as he referred to the German dueling scar students of the universities loved to inflict on each other as badges of courage. "Perhaps you have had some experience after all."

The Cossack stepped, made a mock
enveloppement
that ended in the
en garde
position and saluted the man with the bayonet. "Sergei Ilye Rasdonovich at your service." Gus started to move, but Langer called out, loud enough for Teacher to hear, "Leave him alone. He's mine." The major thought he was only addressing Gus.

Teacher removed the
Mauser from his shoulder and moved to a position where he could get a better look at the proceedings. He had seen Langer with a bayonet on a rifle or, in hand to hand, but this was different, a bayonet against a saber. He consoled himself with the thought that if Langer was killed, at least he would have the pleasure of putting a bullet through the brain of the Russian major.

Langer watched the body of the Russian; he was good, but he held his blade a little too tight, the arm was stiff and he was over confident. Carl held his blade with the cutting edge facing out to the right, the blade held flat, extended. He waited, went into a half crouch, right foot extended, his left hand held low to his side, fingers open. The Cossack finished his salute and extended the point of his
saber, making a circular parry, small circles around the point of Langer's weapon, feeling the distance, and then performed a glide, not really wanting to kill, just toy with his mouse for a moment. The glide ended up being turned back on itself. The Cossack flinched.

His sleeve was opened from the wrist to the elbow, nothing deep, just enough to irritate, but how had the mouse done it? Pivoting, he again faced the German; this time there would be no toying with his prey, it was time to kill. He went on to
coupe
, trying to pass his blade over the point of the German's shorter bayonet by raising his point with a flexible movement of the fingers and hand bending the arm just a hair and extending to pierce the heart. Again he felt a burning, as his blade was turned and somehow his victim had come under him and made a quick slice on the face in the same spot that the German wore his scar. The Hun stepped back and smiled, raised his blade in a straight-arm salute, mocking him. "
Ave! te moritu salutus
." The ancient salute of the Roman arena. Blood dripped down the Cossack's arm on to his hand and wrist, making the grip slippery to the touch. He bled just enough to fog the vision in his left eye slightly. The Fascist was playing with him. He was the mouse, and the smiling, blue-eyed man in the strange stance in front of him was the cat.