Impasse (The Red Gambit Series) (19 page)

Kalinin hadn
’t even drawn breath before Captain Lipranski headed him off.

“
There... ah... so I believe... the briefing officer was a little indiscrete but he knows me... you and a number of other naval personnel will be transferred to an Italian vessel, in which you’ll complete your journey, Comrade Kalinin.”

The submarine officer was deeply unimpressed but it was a done thing.

Despite close questioning, these was no further information to help work out why on earth Soviet Naval command had taken him from an operational command and set him on a course that would see him kicking his heels at sea for weeks on end.

Later, when Kalinin had safely transferred to the Italian flagged
‘Grosseto’, he was stunned to find out that the destination ahead was Dubrovnik.

His journey was not to stop there.

Over the coming weeks, he was to be smuggled through a still petulant Yugoslavia and into the more friendly Romania, where Kalinin and the others would be able to relax and travel more openly, moving on through the Ukraine, although their NKVD minders would still wish to conceal his identity.

And so, not that he yet knew it
, weeks after leaving the B-29 in the Atlantic, Lieutenant Commander Kalinin would finally come to rest in a brand new and decidedly clandestine naval base at Beregovoy, on the shores of the Black Sea.

Fig#80 - Gail River Valley, Austria, Overview.

.

He that fights and runs away,

May turn and fight another day.

But he that is in battle slain,

Will never rise to fight again.

Tacitus

The 6th Armoured Division had suffered badly in the few days of the Italian War, much of its sacrifice going unrecognised, as the situation demanded that a part here and a part there was sent to act as a fire brigade in desperate defence.

Units
attached to other formations withered and died, their passing lost in the mourning for the larger formation.

However, the totality
of it all meant that 6th Armoured had been badly savaged.

The force that had assembled in defence of the vital junction at Arnoldstein was a
n excellent example of a tactical formation in disarray.

The 26th Armoured Brigade, on paper at least, consisted of three cavalry regiments and a rifle battalion.

The 2nd Lothian and Border Horse was remarkably intact, but miles from Arnoldstein, committed into the front line, south of Innsbruck.

Between them and Arnoldstein lay bits and pieces of the two Lancer regiments, split apart from their parent formation by the necessities of war.

The fighting to the east had been protracted and bitter, the Allied defenders stubbornly clinging to ground soaked in the blood of both sides. What had expected to be captured within days was now a week, sometimes more, behind schedule and the Red Army commanders were in a blue funk.

Soviet casualties had been heavy but the re
latively successful defence had, with few exceptions, crippled the Allied divisions defending.

As a result, ad hoc units sprang up everywhere,
bits and pieces thrown together in an attempt to form something cohesive with which to resist the enemy’s renewed advances.

Ambrose Force
, named for the Brigadier that led it, pulled together bits and pieces of units that had already suffered badly, and combined them to make up an all-arms defensive formation charged with holding Arnoldstein at all costs.

Originally, the
relatively sleepy hollow that was Arnoldstein had been occupied solely by a small unit of Churchill tanks, five Mk VII vehicles that had been left behind with an engineering section and their crews some weeks ago, ordered to follow on once repairs had been affected. The men, tankers and mechanics alike, chose to misinterpret their orders, enjoying a safer life behind the lines in relative peace and comfort.

Their
peace was shattered by the arrival of Ambrose Force.

Fig#81 - Ambrose Force, Gail River Valley, 28th November 1945.

The 17th/21st
Lancers, equipped with Sherman tanks, and also two Challengers that had appeared from ‘
Only God knew where
’, represented the smaller contribution to the armoured element. The 16th/5th Lancers, the senior cavalry unit in the brigade, made up the bulk, their twenty-four Shermans of all shapes and sizes more numerous by exactly two to one.

Infantry from the 10th Rifle Brigade, anti-tank guns, incl
uding some of the deadly Archer SP vehicles, and artillery from 152nd Field Regiment provided support.

Other units were e
n route to make up the numbers, not the least of which was an Italian infantry battalion that had formed from men not willing to cede their country to the Communists.

It was, on paper, a formidable force and it had formed a strong defensive position
across the Gail River valley, the expected prime route into Northern Italy for the Red Army forces of 1st Alpine Front.

Peaks up to fourteen hundred metres formed the southern side of the Gail valley, those to the north achieved two thousand metres in places, confining the combatants to the valley floor.

Unfortunately, some would say inexcusably, there were few maps available to the defenders, and some were even forced to use local tourist maps from before the 1939 war, or even school geography books.

That, combined with the fact that the Brigadier commanding refused to acknowledge that h
e was suffering from concussion, brought together all the ingredients for a disaster in the making.

All eyes faced eastwards, when only one pair firmly fixed upon on the west might have saved countless lives.

The tankers were surly, that was for sure.

Stood at attention, or at least w
hat counted for attention in this wayward group from 142nd RAC, they all remained staring ahead, declining to answer the question put to them by a very angry Lancer officer.

The 17th/21st Captain
, in receipt of a complaint and damming information from angry locals, had discovered the totality of the local church’s altar display secreted in one of the RAC’s service vehicles, something that exercised him greatly.

As far as Ambrose Force was concerned, t
he men of the 142nd were already top of everyone’s shit list, as it was pretty obvious they had intended to sit out the war until their peace was interrupted by the arrival of the lead Lancer units.

Looting the church was inexcusable in any case, but the general mood meant that the 142nd troopers were in big trouble.

Captain Charles Stokes-Herbst was gathering momentum, his eyes taking in the shoddy state of the nearest of the five Churchills parked nearby.

That it belonged to the RAC
’s Sergeant and highest ranker was just too much.

“
You, Sergeant, your vehicle's a bloody disgrace, man!”

“
Sah.”

The
unit insignia, bridge weight indicator, and all other markings were either faded by the weather or covered with muck. The rough tarpaulin shelters that the RAC troops had thrown up prevented snow from adding to the problem, but also ensured that the issue was noticeable, unlike Stokes-Herbst’s tanks, whose pristine markings were concealed beneath a thick white layer from the previous night’s downfall.

No one failed to recognise the sound of incoming rounds and the arrival of Soviet high-explosive shells released the RAC troopers from the Lancers
’ wrath.

“
Get them mounted up, Sergeant. We’ll sort this out later.”

No sooner had his backside hit the passenger seat than his driver had the jeep leaping forward, anxious to get himself inside thick steel protection as soon as possible.

Elsewhere, the dying had already started.

The screams were awful, but they reflected the suffering of the poor man whose entrails had been flung far from his body as shrapnel disembowelled him in an instant.

A shocked medic from the Rifle Brigade did not even know where to start so, unusually for the experienced man, he didn’t, his mind constantly rejecting a course of action, which caused him to remain static.

Other
s tried but the man, the Major commanding 17th/21st, died a painful death as a few hardy souls tried to gather up the pieces in the hope that medical science could make him whole.

Other lancers were down, mercifully killed instantly by the large calibre shell. A Corporal lay in soft repose, almost unmarked, save for a bloody eye cavity, marking where
a modest piece of metal had entered and taken his life. Next to him, laid precisely parallel, was the corpse of the WO1, the senior soldier in the 17th/21st, who had first picked up a lance before the end of the Great War and whose extended career had been the very model example for any NCO.

Other shells were falling, the first arrival having been a premature discharge, for which the gun commander was
already receiving a roasting. That the shell had arrived in the centre of an orders group was unknown to the Russians, but it had robbed the two Lancer units of much of their ‘leadership talent’ in one bitter blow.

Captain Haines found
himself upside down against a stone wall. He rolled, mentally checking the continued presence of his limbs and vital organs, dragged himself upright, and shook his head to try to clear the ringing. Like everyone who had been stood in the circle, he had not heard the shell, either on its way or even the explosion.

A
ll the same, his ears seemed to be the only parts that bothered to inform him that they were suffering.

Groggily
, he rose to his feet and surveyed the scene. He saw mouths moving and saw activity but all that assailed him was the constant ringing.

“
Bollocks!”

Leastways
, that is what he thought he said.

He spotted the
dead 17th/21st Major and, fighting back the natural revulsion, realised that he had just become the senior man and, by default, the armoured commander of Ambrose Force.

‘
Oh bloody hell!’

“Driver... advance!”

The idling engine took on a deeper note and the tank lurched forward into whatever the whiteness held in store.

Major Emilian’s objections had been brushed aside and the Armoured Group’s commander, keen to impress his Soviet peers with the communist zeal and commitment of his force, insisted that the attack went ahead as scheduled, virtually nil visibility being seen as an equal factor for attackers and defenders.

Which, in some ways, it was, although being in a t
ank advancing into a roiling white wall of snow, knowing that the unseen battlefield ahead holds men with guns who do not have your best interests at heart was, and will always be, a daunting prospect.