Impasse (The Red Gambit Series) (65 page)

His upper body strength came to his rescue and he propelled himself out into the cold, rolling onto the engine cover and off the back of the vehicle. He screamed as his shattered left leg hit the ground
first; the second scream that followed immediately afterwards was louder than the first. The right leg came down, still with a partial foot attached, the swinging lump of boney flesh welting his left stump above the separation point.

Mercifully, Garcia
dropped into unconsciousness.

His driver, shocked and stunned, reversed the tank.

The hull gunner sprayed bullets in all directions, hoping to stave off a repeat from any nearby grenade thrower.

It was not until the Sherman had reversed back some forty yards that the driver noticed the flattened body of his commander.

The machine gunner was too busy to notice, seeing only the shapes of the enemy in every shadow and swirl of snow He only stopped firing when he realised that the driver was vomiting into his lap.

They
both abandoned the damaged tank and ran for their lives.

The infantry went to ground
, and took the grenade thrower’s positions under fire.

Two more RPG-6
’s hit the 105mm Sherman, but the throwers were less skilful.

Neither exploded and both bounced off the tank, which slowl
y continued on its advance, seemingly unaware of either the grenade attack, or the loss of their cover.

One of the watchful infantry put two Garand rounds through the chest of a grenade thrower, dropping him back into his snowy hole.

A special group from the 39th Engineer Sapper Brigade watched closely, assessing the position of the enemy tank, preparing to fire the explosives buried in the road.

The turret traversed and the gunner selected a building at random. In the blink of an eye, a 105mm shell blotted the group out. The Sherman crawled forward, rolling over one hundred kilos of Soviet explosives that would now not be detonated.

Inside the tank, the realization that they were alone suddenly hit the commander, and he ordered a halt.

The tank lashed out at all the surrounding buildings, leveling them one by one, as the hull machine gun sought out targets
, or just expended ammunition to calm the crew’s growing nerves.

When Garcia
’s tank had been knocked out, Moreno had pushed more of his force forward, and two Sherman ‘Easy Eight’s’ moved on either side of the howitzer tank.

Two Soviet soldiers rose up with RPG-6s
, but both were cut down before they could release their grenades.

Despite the lack of fire from the village ahead, all three Shermans lashed the rubble.

The armored infantry pushed up again, their halftracks supporting with .50cal fire. They rushed past their armored comrades, achieving the edge of the village without loss.

Pushing his own element forward, Moreno took the lead and broached the edge of the village, seeing only friendly GI
’s moving ahead of him.

As per his plan, the remainder of his armor switched to the right, intent on enveloping the village.

He had started to key the mike, having mentally rehearsed his message about the impending fall of Strassfeld, when he realized that such a message would be premature, as the uniforms moving to his right were not those of his own men.

The group of Soviet soldiers charged into the armored infantrymen, PPShs and PPDs lashing the position with a hail of bullets, dropping many of the men before they had a chance to respond.

Moreno could offer no support, but screamed into his radio, summoning more of the 53rd’s infantry forward.

The position was reoccupied by triumphant enemy soldiers. Not one GI escaped
, and Moreno watched helplessly as four men were dragged away.

In his peripheral vision, he now noticed that the assault he had watched was being repeated in a number of other places and, all except in the rubblised gasthaus nearest his tank,
repeated with exactly the same bloody result.

Hardegen was in his ear, desperate for information.

Moreno called it as he saw it and, in many ways, he was right. As he suggested, the lack of resistance on the run in had been to draw the force forwards, and into a close encounter with the Soviet infantry.

“
Mohawk-six, Mohawk-three-three. I urgently need more infantry. The place is full of commie foot soldiers and we can't progress, over.”

“
Roger, Mohawk-three-three. Use your reserve for now. Pot’s dry 'til I get reinforcements, over.”

Moreno had hoped to get his own extra resources but, as that wasn
’t going to happen, using the combat reserve seemed reasonable.

“
Mohawk-six, Mohawk-three-three, roger. We are moving around the objective, but we won’t be able to help you for some time, over.”

Hardegen had figured that one out for himself, knowing now that his flanking
manoeuvre had bogged down, and had simply resulted in him losing part of his own resources in Strassfeld, resources that would not be able to support him at Müggenhausen, hence his own plea to his commander, Greenwood.

Next to no
assistance was forthcoming from that quarter, as the rest of CCA had its own problems on Route 194.

Greenwood grudgingly released another refugee from the 808th, only recently arrived and on the strength of CCA, plus a short company of men formed from the supporting services,
and a platoon of German kommandos from Euskirchen, who had come out of hiding and presented themselves when the US attack rolled the Russians back.

The new troops came at a price, as Brigadier General Greenwood ordered Hardegen
’s force to push through Müggenhausen, and on into Weilerswist, without delay, which in Greenwood language meant ‘at all costs’.

Hardegen remonstrated, to no avail
, and Greenwood’s radio fell silent as the fighting on Route 194 grew in intensity.

“Fuck, fuck, and double fuck!”

“
Santa Maria, Major! It’s that good, is it?”

Hardegen grinned uncomfortably at his gunner.

“Well, Giuseppe, you could say that. The old man has his own problems… leastways, so it seems. Apart from a few bits of extra change, we’re on our own.”

‘
Bismarck’, Hardegen’s M4A3E8 Sherman, accelerated smoothly as the force moved into the attack.

Soviet artillery was light and ineffective and, as was the case with Strassfeld, little or no resistance was offered on the run in.

All save whatever it was that fired at the lead Sherman, missing by, as Hardegen’s driver quaintly put it, ‘a gnat’s cock’, before burrowing into a snow drift and exploding against a tree trunk.

Hardegen, having ordered his tank to move towards cover, searched hard and found what he was looking for.

“Gunner, target at ten o’clock, four hundred and fifty. Load HVAP. C’mon DeMarco, move it.”

The turret swung past the position and Hardegen was about to override before the gunner corrected.

The words almost blended together.

“On!”

“Fire!”

Hardegen watched through his sight as t
he 76mm shell struck the ISU-152 on the right-hand side of the barrel, appreciating, almost in slow-motion, the impressive display of white hot sparks as the HVAP deflected and moved on into the housing, where it burrowed through the armor and struck the trunnion of the huge weapon as the 152mm was starting into recoil, its own shell flying harmlessly over the top of Hardegen’s vehicle.

The displaced gun wrought havoc inside the Soviet SP, taking it out of the fight.

In the absence of any orders from his commander, the ISU driver made a judgement call and quit the field at the highest possible speed.

“
All Mohawk elements, Mohawk Six, orient left and manoeuvre towards that high ground.”

In so doing, he took a calculated risk by exposing his
right flank to Strassfeld but, based on Moreno’s report, he felt it was a risk worth taking, especially as part of the other force was moving around to the east of Strassfeld.

“
Dragonfly, Mohawk-six, over.”

“
Mohawk-six, Dragonfly, over.”

“
Dragonfly, put some arty on the height ahead, then advance north in stages,” he consulted his map as the Sherman started to rock from side to side as it pushed forward over uneven ground, “Up to five hundred yards. Make sure you steer clear of the junction on the K3… err… Vernicher Strasse, clear? Over.”

“
Mohawk-six, Dragonfly, Clear, Out.”

The 191st Artillery again showed what it could do under the guidance
of a competent observer and, within two minutes, the position around where the ISU had fired from was carpeted with HE rounds.

Hardegen
drove his force forward, urging his commanders to push their drivers, the command cascading down, as the commanders ordered their drivers to get everything possible out of their tanks.

The lead Sherman disappeared in smoke,
its right track paying out, eventually flopping uselessly off the rear bogies, the left track driving the tank in an arc before the vehicle came to a halt, facing precisely north-east.

Inside the Sherman, the driver was screaming in agony, the shock wave from the anti-tank mine having shattered both his ankles.

The hull gunner was unconscious, his wounds more severe, his right side damaged by the force of the explosion, his thigh already expanding as the internal blood loss mounted.

Hardegen went for his radio, ready to cater for any new threat
, but chose to stay silent for the moment, leaving that situation to one of his officers whilst he took in the bigger picture, and listened to the frantic reports from his other force, east of Strassfeld.

Moreno had already had the hard experience of seeing his best friend die, and in a way outside that considered ‘acceptable’ to the combat soldier.

Now, hell was being visited upon him
, and he wrenched the earphones off his head, refusing to listen to the screams of dying men any longer.

In
any case, they had now stopped, them and the radio beyond repair as the flames consumed everything in the stricken tank.

He cast a baleful eye at the Sherman ahead and to the right, the fire rising in a straight line from the open hatches, wherein five men, one of them his senior NCO and rock since day one, were
being incinerated in their knocked out tank.

Another Soviet shell crossed the no man
’s land, seeking to inflict more death.

The sound of it striking metal was intense
, and the deep clang rang across the snow covered ground.

The target, another Easy Eight, shrugged off the shell and it careened skywards, disappearing from sight somewhere behind Moreno
’s field of vision.

Two halftracks
darted right, keen to be out of the field of fire of whatever it was, heading for some hedgerows.

The lead vehicle hardly lost any speed as a solid shot punched through the rear compartment, easily penetrating the metal on both sides
, and hardly noticing the two armored infantrymen that it dissected on its travel.

The driver lost control on an icy match of road and the M3 fishtailed before coming to rest, nose down in a ditch adjacent to the road.

Half the remaining crew had enough wits to throw themselves out of the vehicle.

Starshina Kon ensured that the next round was an HE round
, and it was right on target, destroying the halftrack and its remaining contents.

The
T54 shifted position again, quickly dropping back and left into a wooden redoubt, complete with an earth and board roof.

The delay in moving brought Moreno
’s tanks closer.

“
There, that small mound dead ahead. Something just moved!”

There was no time to tear the hull gunner a new asshole for his procedure, but Moreno filed it for when they got out of the battle.

‘If we get outta the goddamned fucking battle!’

The gunner was clearly losing it, his voice reflecting his fright.
”

“
On-n.”

“
Fire!”

The 76mm spat a shell at whatever it was in the small bunker
, and was rewarded with the clues of a metal on metal strike.

“
Lay it on the fucker again, Smitty!”

“
Calm down! Calm… down! It didn’t penetrate! Find the tank that hit us.”