Opening Moves (The Red Gambit Series) (88 page)

Whilst most of his comrades recoiled from such bestiality, one American saw, for the first time, his natural element. Or rather the raw natural element of his tribal ancestors. Tsali Sagonegi Yona of the Aniyunwiya Tribe, named as Cherokee by the Creek Indians, named as Corporal Charley Bluebear by the US Army, and known both jokingly and seriously as Moose by his friends. The 6’5” frame had all the litheness and flexibility associated with his tribe but accompanied by a body tone, solidity and strength rarely seen in combination.

Add to the mix, courage beyond measure and then offer up an enemy disposed for close quarter fighting and the recipe for untold savagery and slaughter was in place.

What happened next was a blur of metal and blood.

Bluebear discarded his BAR and reached around his waist belt, extracting his heirlooms, ready to fight in the manner of his ancestors and with their weapons, treasured items entrusted to him by his family before he left for the war. A tomahawk and a battle knife that had last seen enemy blood in the Argonne Forest during 1918, when wielded in his father’s hands against the German. Uttering his father’s name, he plunged forward. As he struck out and killed he bellowed the battle cry his father had taught him, once for each enemy who fell under his blades.

“Tsuhnuhlahuhskim!” for which the English translation would be, “He tries, but fails.”

The US platoon officer went down, stunned by a rifle butt, the attacker shaping to plunge his bayonet deep into the senseless man while another guardsman drew back his entrenching tool, also intending to end the officer’s life.

In a blur, the Cherokee stepped over his leader and struck out, his tomahawk curving in a backhanded stroke, from right to left through the eye sockets of the rifleman, bodily detritus flying from the awful wound, closely followed by the knife slamming low and hard into the groin of the other attacker.

The screams were as much for the horror of the witnesses of both sides as they were for the pain of the wounded.

“Tsuhnuhlahuhskim!”

Bluebear stood in defence as others grabbed the unconscious officer and pulled him clear.

Another bayonet lunged but missed.

The brave Russian soldier ducked the intended hatchet blow only to have the battle knife driven powerfully and terminally into the side of his neck.

“Tsuhnuhlahuhskim!”

Gushing blood over his killer, the dying Russian stuck on the blade, pulling the Cherokee to one side with his body weight.

Another soldier with the courage of youth, that courage the young possess that makes them feel invulnerable, saw his chance and leapt forward, thrusting a bayonet forward, and penetrating the jacket of his target.

Bluebear did not notice the blade slice his flesh, although pain caused by the swift movement of it down his rib could not be ignored or overcome by his adrenalin.

He backhanded his tomahawk into the young soldiers’ neck, a glancing blow because of his lack of balance, penetrating but not enough to kill by itself. However, the blow caused swelling to such an extent that the airway virtually closed up in an instant.

Letting go of his rifle, the youth fell to the ground, not aware of Bluebear’s yelp of pain as the unsupported Nagant rifle dropped away and caused the bayonet to rip out his side.

Focussed by pain and anger for a moment, the Cherokee spared a second to stamp on the back of the head of the dying boy, breaking the neck instantly and, although not his design, releasing the soldier from the longer and more painful journey.

“Tsuhnuhlahuhskim!”

Men who had stood the rigours of a Stalingrad winter, and who had been in close combat in a score of skirmishes since, paled before the deadly whirling apparition.

An experienced Corporal managed to slice through Bluebear’s left forearm with a spade cut but received a blow to his left temple that stove his skull to his brain stem and dropped him dead to the floor.

The battle knife dropped from Bluebear’s useless fingers but the killing went on.

All around the stable block, men scrambled away from the death giver, friend and foe alike recognising the bloodlust that had overtaken him. No longer using his war cry, simply screaming as hard as his capacious lungs permitted, the Cherokee moved like lightning, slowed neither by the wounds or by the efforts he had already expended in his frenzy.

Panic is a virus that spreads at speed. Self-preservation took over and the surviving guardsmen escaped as best they could, more than one screaming in fright as they ran.

One Guards Sergeant turned and fired off every round left in his pistol unaimed, in panic and desperation, virtually closing his eyes to blot out the apparition he was running from.

Bluebear, in the act of pulling his hatchet from the head of another victim, felt the sting as two bullets hit him in the right thigh.

Anyone else would have gone down immediately but not the Indian. Bluebear managed the ten yards or so to the Sergeant who had tripped over a dead comrade in his terror, claiming his last victim of the battle when he sunk his weapon into the man’s forehead.

The remaining guardsmen could be heard shouting warnings to their comrades in the Schloss as they ran for their lives, some splashing through the moat in their blind panic, not knowing that the Devil had collapsed from exhaustion and blood loss behind them.

A shaking armoured-infantry medic quickly bandaged the bloodied thigh wound, applying a tourniquet and squeezing the femoral artery virtually shut, saving Charley Bluebear’s life.

The Soviet reverse really did not matter in the greater run of things, as the shocked American troops decided to withdraw, led by a wide-eyed Sergeant who would need treatment for his traumatic experiences until the day he died.

After the battle, reports from the survivors who escaped the day’s slaughter were incredulously assessed. Conservative estimates suggested a total of twenty-two men personally slain by Tsali Sagonegi Yona of the Aniyunwiya Tribe, named as Cherokee by the Creek Indians, named as Corporal Charley Bluebear by the US Army, and known both jokingly and seriously as Moose by his friends. Except those who witnessed that day first hand, and those enemy who escaped the stables and lived, for whom, be they Armored-Infantry or Guards, he was forever named Death.

Despite the horrors in the Schloss, the balance seemed to perceptibly change in favour of the defenders and when weary Guards retook St Josef’s Church for the third time, it did not change hands again.

One older guardsman committed himself to the attack with a liberated bazooka, wrecking one Sherman that had strayed too close, but setting fire to religious trappings hanging behind him with the unexpected back flash from the weapon.

A teenage guardsman started to bayonet the American wounded who lay bleeding on the pews, standard fare for the German war of course. A bloodied Starshina stayed his hand before he could send a third American boy to his god. The young man shrugged and moved off to a firing position in a damaged window. Within half an hour he would lie dead with his victims, slain by a jagged lump of stone blasted from the wall by a tank shell.

As the fight for the village became more and more stagnant, the US Commander began to realise that he was nearly as far as he was going to go unless more infantry support was available. One battalion from the 63rd Infantry division had been freed up as an infantry reserve and he made a case for its deployment with his command. He got one company allocated under his orders and it was immediately sent forward from its reserve area, ten miles to the rear. Until it arrived he would have to make do with what he had.

Rottenbauer was a stalemate, both sides having fought themselves to a bloody draw but still killing although neither side was trying to expel the other anymore. The Russians were exhausted, having been fighting since midday on Monday.

The Americans were tired but, more than that, they were shocked at their full initiation in the rigours of modern infantry combat. The 12th’s soldiers thought they had acquired good experience against the German in 1945, even though they were already defeated and lacking in supplies.

By a coincidence, the 12th had captured Wurzburg in the first week of April 1945, some four months previously, sustaining a handful of casualties in the doing.

These Russians had first been committed to action in the hardest combat school ever known to man, in December 1942, on the Volga, at Stalingrad.

The 12th Armored’s experiences at Herrlisheim, the Colmar Pocket and subsequent romps through Southern Germany were as nothing compared to that Friday morning’s initiation ceremony in Rottenbauer, District of Würzburg.

Moreover, it was not yet complete.

It had taken over two hours to progress roughly two miles and casualties had mounted as enemy resistance stiffened, Soviet commanders drawing on years of combat experience gained at the hands of the world’s counter-attack specialists.

Ambulances and adapted jeeps from the 2nd/82nd Medical Battalion extracted the American wounded from the hellhole, unknowingly under the gaze of the observing Russian gunners who, faithful to their orders, remained silent behind their weapons.

The 179th’s Regimental Commander, Colonel T.N. Artem’yev, Hero of the Soviet Union, had stayed his hand thus far, all the time knowing his troopers in Rottenbauer were bleeding and dying in close combat with the armored infantry and tanks of this American Division. A very necessary sacrifice to persuade his enemy to orient themselves as he wanted, which his enemy had now obligingly done.

He did so with regret of course but it was necessary as he waited for the elements of the capitalists’ destruction to assemble on the battlefield, which they were very close to doing.

‘Why is it always the damn tanks that mess things up?’ he mused, all the time watching the to-ing and fro-ing of American vehicles, bringing fresh meat to the grinder and taking away that which the grinder spat out, maimed and crippled.

A BA-64 arrived to his rear and he received word that ‘armour’ had finally deigned to arrive.

Taking one last look at the open ground he had spent over an hour reading and understanding, he nodded in satisfaction and went to speak to the assembled senior officers of the four arms of service about to immolate the capitalist legion on his chosen killing ground

As senior Colonel, he laid out his plan for destroying this Amerikanisti tank force, coordinating with the newly arrived Colonel of Tank troops, Popov of the Army anti-tank unit and a Captain from his own divisional Artillery regiment.

He explained the plan to them and it was a thing of simple beauty, requiring only one act of cooperation from the Americans to succeed.

Looking at his watch and judging how much time the tank Colonel would need to get back to his unit and brief them, he designated 1240 hrs as the start time for his plan.

1239 hrs 10th August 1945,
 
Soviet Ambush and Counter-attack, vicinity of Reichenberg, Germany.

Allied Forces – 23rd Tank Battalion and 17th Armored Infantry Battalion and 495th Field Artillery Battalion and C Company, 92nd Cavalry Reconnaissance Battalion, all of Combat Command ‘B’ of 12th US Armored Division and 2nd Battery, 573rd AAA Btn, all of US Fifteenth Army, US Twelfth Army Group.

Subsequently arriving - 2nd Battalion, 255th Infantry Regiment of 63rd US Infantry Division, detached from US XXIII Corps, US Fifteenth Army, US Twelfth Army Group

Soviet Forces – 2nd and 3rd Battalions and Anti-Tank companies of 179th Guards Rifle Regiment and 127th Guards Artillery Regiment, all of 59th Guards Rifle Division of 34th Guards Rifle Corps, and 242nd Tank Brigade of 31st Tank Corps, and Special Anti-tank Gun Battery Popov,1317th Anti-Tank Regiment, all of 5th Guards Army of 2nd Red Banner Central European Front.

Simple orders issued and understood, Artem’yev had but to fire three flares to fully implement his plan.

In his right hand he held a battered but functional Model 26 flare pistol, his left arm crooked so he could count down the seconds on his father’s wristwatch, an inner whispering from his subconscious registering the newly cracked glass. At three seconds to time he pulled the trigger, sending one red flare skywards, and setting in motion the death of many a young man.