The last enemy, p.19
The Last Enemy, page 19
He lay on his back and the agony began to recede. Gordon, the big black South African, surprised him once again by gently replacing the dressing on his shoulder. He could’ve been a nurse, except for his ugly, battle-scarred, scowling countenance. While he cleaned and redressed the wound, Kelly wandered around, keeping an eye out for threats. They were still deep inside enemy territory, and they had more than one enemy to watch for. He returned and reported there was no sign of trouble, so they could relax. With a sly grin, he offered him a shot of morphine he’d acquired ‘just in case.’
He refused. Said a rest was enough. But he couldn’t rest, something was nagging at his thoughts. A battle was raging out there. The Russians were out there. The wounded, Captain Burgess, and Colonel Debrett were out there. Colonel Lawson, Neuberg, as well as Clemence Delon, were out there. His platoon was out there, as well as the remnants of Witherspoon’s men. And Richter was out there, transporting a device that had the potential to explode with the force of several thousand tons of TNT. It was a no-brainer. Since the nineteenth century, the Germans had named it the ‘Schwerpunkt.’ The center, the focal point. The critical path.
If that device detonated, it was all over. He was going after Richter.
He called Dan over. “We have to find him. Richter. I can’t lie here while he gets further away. We’re going after him.”
He shook his head. “Lt, we aren’t going after anybody. You need to rest. You’ve been badly wounded.”
“We’ll be worse than badly wounded if he detonates that bomb. We’ll be dead, so help me up.”
They argued that the countryside was crawling with enemy troops. A battle was taking place not far away, a battle the Germans had to lose. When they realized it was all over, they’d run for their lives, heavily armed and blasting everything they met. Desperate to get away. “Then there’s the Russians.”
“Fuck the Russians. They don’t have any business in these parts.”
“There’s a lot of them, and they won’t take kindly to leaving.”
“Then they’ll have to take it unkindly. We’re moving out.”
They stood back, reluctant to help him, so he dragged himself to his feet. Glanced around trying to work out which way he’d gone. South, toward Berlin to join his bosses, the Nazi hierarchy? Or north, to destroy an Allied army in a single, blinding explosion? A ‘Gotterdammerung,’ a Twilight of the Gods. He had to decide, and he didn’t like to think of the consequences if he chose wrong.
He'd last seen him driving northwest. It could’ve been a ruse to hide his intended route, or he could be planning to catch the Americans on the flank.
“We’re heading northwest. Gordon, you said you were a tracker in South Africa. Keep your eyes peeled. We need to pick up his trail.”
He nodded. “That vehicle will leave more tracks than a herd of bull elephants. Gimme a few minutes. I’ll cast around and see what I can find.”
“Don’t take too long.”
In the event, he took two hours, and when he arrived back, the news was good and bad. Good, because he’d picked up the trail left by the German, but bad because it had started to rain heavily. It came down in torrents, and Gordon gloomily said it would wipe out the trail.
Murphy grunted. “We need to move fast if we’re gonna find him. We’re leaving!”
They gave him a dubious look, but he was determined to push through the pain. At first, he surprised them by keeping up, but the rain caused the going to become soft and muddy, so every step was a slog. They reached the place where Gordon had picked up the trail. The tracks were still visible, although with every minute that went past, the indentations in the ground became fainter as the rain wiped them out.
The pain dominated his brain, dominated his body, yet to his surprise it started to ease as they marched further. His mind had entered a kind of denial, blocking off the signals sent to his brain. He smiled to himself. Maybe it was just the rain that’d soaked everything, so he was colder than he’d known since he last tackled the mountains of his home. He’d suffer afterward, but if they didn’t find the bastard, there may not be any afterward. They’d all be a long time dead.
* * *
Richter cursed as the tracks failed to maintain grip on the soft ground that’d almost turned to a swamp. It wasn’t just the heavy rain. He’d passed what had been a pumping station a mile back, destroyed by either bombs or shells. Water was pouring out from a shattered pipeline fed from some distant reservoir, and now that reservoir was spilling out over the ground. The route took an uphill climb that normally wouldn’t have been a challenge for any tracked vehicle. At least he was out of the worst of the low ground, but the rain had made the slope even more glutinous with thick mud.
After heavy rains, followed by snow and the thaw, he’d heard of a similar phenomenon on the Eastern Front, but this wasn’t Russia, this was Germany. Yet it was happening. He rocked the vehicle backward and forward several times and gained enough traction to move a few feet. But in the wrong direction, he was going backward. The half-track bogged down again, and he had to repeat the same process, shunting it backward and forward. He gained a couple of feet, but still in the wrong direction.
Almost two hours elapsed before he reached firmer ground, but now he had to search for another way forward. He drove to the crest of a low hill, from where he could survey the region. The entire area was a mass of water and mud, but he figured if he drove along the crest, heading due west, he could get past the low-lying ground. He glanced at the gauge to check the gas tank. It didn’t function, so he stopped and opened the cap to make a visual inspection. He noticed a long wooden stick lying nearby.
The purpose was obvious, and he inserted the stick into the tank and withdrew it. He estimated he had around four gallons remaining. It may be enough, or it may not. Tracked vehicles burned up fuel like crazy, especially driving cross-country, and he may only have sufficient for the next three or four miles. Unless he could find more gas, although in fuel-starved Nazi Germany, that was unlikely.
He climbed back into the driver’s seat, started the engine and continued driving. Keeping a wary eye out for enemy aircraft. Perched on top of a ridge, a military vehicle would present a tempting target to any roaming fighter. In the distance he could see scores of dots in the sky. They’d be fighters, fighter-bombers, and heavy bombers. More aircraft than he’d ever seen, but thankfully, all were some distance away. If they came close, he’d be a sitting duck. He mentally shrugged, that was outside of his control. So far, they hadn’t come close, and he continued driving. Heading toward the fiery hell of his appointment with destiny.
* * *
Grechkov was in trouble. The Germans who’d ambushed the American advance on the west side of the Harz were falling back in the face of heavy shelling. Their fortified positions had held at first, but heavy balks of timber and sandbags can only take so much, and they’d taken that much and more. Slowly, their positions were blown apart, forcing them to retreat up the hillside and along the top. They were heading south, in the direction of Berlin where they assumed they’d encounter the bulk of their army. But first, they’d encounter Grechkov’s paratroopers.
* * *
The battle had raged for almost an hour, but the Germans were low on ammunition, low on morale, and low on hope. They’d done their duty, held off the Americans as much as they could, and if they didn’t get out now, they faced obliteration. The Russians were pushing them brutally hard in the east in a series of frontal attacks, with no consideration of the enormous cost in lives of their own troops. With ammunition running low, they had to get out fast, there was only one place close enough to find concealment. The gloomy depths of the Harz. They abandoned their positions and went up the slope and over the top, heading toward the cover of the thick forest.
* * *
Grechkov had no interest in the escaping Germans. He had problems of his own. The half-track had disappeared, their principal target, SS-Obergruppenführer Karl-Heinz Richter, had disappeared, and Comrade Stalin had made it clear he was to fetch him to Moscow. No ifs, no buts. Even worse, they’d watched the half-track disappear carrying what had to be a prototype device. Their only chance was to follow on foot and hope something changed.
His men were grumbling and bitter. They’d taken heavy casualties for little or no gain, and Grechkov had insisted they abandoned their wounded to continue the pursuit. But orders were orders, and these were highly trained and experienced veterans. Men abandoned their wounded comrades, men they’d fought with during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union and fought all the way back to the Third Reich. The wounded didn’t deserve to be left to whatever fate awaited them, but their discipline held, and they obeyed the Captain.
They slipped through the mud until they reached a metaled road where they had a stroke of luck. Although the road was pitted with potholes from incessant bombing and shelling, enough of the surface remained for them to spot the traces where the half-track had churned up the tarmac.
He glanced back at his men in triumph. “We’re right behind him. Pick up the pace. We must reach him before the Americans.”
So far, his men were in ignorance of what was at stake. The Red Army operated on a ‘need to know’ basis, and Stavka, the Russian High Command, didn’t consider they needed to know. Junior Sergeant Vasily Nevsky spoke for all of them.
“Captain, if we follow those tracks, we’ll encounter thousands of American soldiers, and they’ll stop us. We don’t have the ammunition, and we don’t have the men to fight a much larger force.”
He glared at Nevsky. “Sergeant, the future of the Soviet Union depends on us.”
“I don’t understand, Sir.”
“Our nation was founded on the promise of World Communism. The General Secretary has made it clear that anything less is unacceptable. Yet other nations, including Britain and America, are determined to stop our progress to Socialist domination. The man we are pursuing has the knowledge and means in his possession to make the country that possesses it all-conquering.”
“I still don’t understand, Sir. How could they invent anything with that kind of power?”
“It exists, Junior Sergeant, that’s all you need to know. We cannot allow the West to reach him first. Our orders are to get Richter, the inventor of this weapon, to the Soviet Union. To Moscow, where our scientists can ‘persuade’ him to divulge his knowledge. Now do you understand?”
“Yessir.”
“Very well.” He pointed to a low hill that paralleled the distant mountains to the north, “Take a man with you and climb that hill. See if you can see any sign of the half-track. Or the enemy.”
“The Germans?”
“Germans, Americans, British, right now they’re all our enemies. I’ll have a man watching your progress. If you find anything, hold up a signal flag and send a man to advise us what you’ve seen. Clear?”
“Yes, Comrade Captain.”
“Then go.”
He grabbed another man and sped away. Grechkov watched them jog up the slope, while they continued to follow the trail. The rain hammered down incessantly, and after a couple more miles, the tracks petered out. The vehicle had turned off the road, and any tracks it’d left had been washed away by the torrential rain. It could’ve gone anywhere, so now it was all up to Nevsky.
* * *
They’d hit serious trouble. Rooker was leading the squad when a burst of machine gun fire chewed up the ground several yards away. He didn’t need to give an order. The men threw themselves aside to find cover. And searching for something to shoot back at, but there was no sign of them. Crockett had readied the Browning, and the machine gunner from Witherspoon’s platoon was lying prone. His weapon ready to start shooting. But finding nothing to shoot at. With no choice, he ordered PFC Rybach to scout forward and find what they were up against.
He snaked across the soaking wet ground, almost invisible in the ground mist kicked up by the summer rain. It enabled him to get close to the shooters, and he lay still, looking to identify their positions. They were well dug in, well hidden, so they’d be hard to attack from the front. But not from the flanks. He was puzzled. There was no sign they had any cover on the flanks, and after watching and waiting for several minutes more, he concluded they had to be rookies.
There was no shortage of rookies in the German Army of April 1945. During the fighting across France and into Germany, they’d encountered plenty of soldiers who had no business being in uniform. Elderly men with gray hair, gaunt, weary, tired faces. Young boys barely in their teens who should’ve been in school. Hitler Youth, turned into Nazi fanatics by incessant barrages of propaganda. Constant false promises of non-existent battlefield victories. Of greater things to come. Of the secret weapons that would change everything, but the promises never came to anything. All they faced was certain death, and he suspected this was what they faced, an untrained and poorly equipped rabble.
He slid back to where Rooker was waiting and reported what he’d seen. “If we hit them from both sides, they’ll collapse and run, no question.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do.”
He gave the orders. The two machine guns kept up a steady rate of fire, while the men split into two squads. A dozen to the west flank and a dozen to the east. Rooker stayed with the remaining men, where he could keep an eye on what the enemy was doing. When the flanking attacks went in, they should break and run, but if it went wrong, they could be waiting for them. He felt bad about killing the elderly and the young, but they were armed soldiers, doing their best to kill them, and that didn’t leave him a choice. Kill or be killed. He spelled it out to the men. Full magazines loaded, safeties off, hard eyes watching for the first sign of any movement.
They hit them from both flanks and the front, and it went like clockwork. The two squads went in, guns blazing. Minutes later, sixteen German soldiers hurtled out from concealment, but instead of running away they charged forward like First World War soldiers racing toward an enemy trench. Like First World War soldiers, they were cut down by the intense fire.
They made no effort to spread out to make themselves more difficult targets. Instead, they bunched up, as if for security. It didn’t give them security. All it did was get them killed quicker. The result was devastating. They didn’t make it halfway before every soldier was down. The ground was littered with bodies, and he gave the order to go out there and make sure they were all dead. They walked toward the grotesque collection of what’d been living, breathing flesh and blood just minutes before.
Before they reached them, he knew the truth. They all wore oversize, ill-fitting uniforms, like young boys dressing up in their father’s clothes. They weren’t young boys. Every fallen soldier was a young girl. If proof was needed of Nazi Germany’s callous, last-ditch determination to sacrifice as many of its young people as it could persuade and cajole to pick up a rifle, this was proof enough.
The long hair of some girls had tumbled out from beneath their helmets, framing their adolescent, bloody features. Young people who’d never had a chance to live any kind of life.
Crockett joined him and stared at the young bodies, looking sick at the slaughter he’d partly inflicted with the Browning. “This is wrong.”
Rooker didn’t reply. He was glancing around, and everywhere he saw evidence of the collapse and desperation of Hitler’s Third Reich. He turned away, listening to the thunder of distant artillery where the battle raged. The 27th Division wasn’t far away, so it meant they had to be heavily engaged. The sky was filled with aircraft, swooping at ground targets, cannons blazing. At high altitude, squadrons of bombers carried hundreds of tons of high explosive to further devastate the smoking pyre that Germany had become. Everywhere was smoke, flame, and debris. And bodies, always bodies.
“Why won’t the mothers give up?”
Crockett shrugged. “Because they’re stupid.”
He shook his head. “Because they’re probably scared. We’ve seen plenty of bodies hung from posts with signs hung over their chests stating they’d betrayed the Fatherland.”
“You’re probably right,” he grunted wearily, “Jesus, I’ve had a gutful of this fucking war. When will it end?”
“Soon. Maybe sooner if somebody puts a bullet in Adolf Hitler’s skull.”
“Maybe. Okay, we’ll take a rest up ahead. There’s a small wood with plenty of trees. They should keep the rain off us for a time. Twenty minutes, then we move on.”
Crockett gave him a quizzical look. “Sarge, do you know where we are?”
Rooker looked around, and it suddenly came to him. He didn’t have a clue. “I’ll work it out.”
They started moving toward the trees, and they were almost there when he saw soldiers moving slowly toward them. American soldiers.
“Jesus Christ, it’s Lieutenant Murphy and the others.”
* * *
They sat beneath the trees, and Murphy was close to lapsing into unconsciousness. He was freezing cold, and Ron Lucas got a small fire going to warm up his weakened body. There was no shortage of water, and he filled a mess tin and placed it on top to warm it through. When it was hot enough, he shook a handful of ground beans into the hot water and allowed it to brew for a few minutes before handing the tin to Murphy.
He heated more water while Murphy greedily emptied the mess tin. The coffee was hot and strong, too hot and too strong, and in normal circumstances it would’ve been the worst coffee he’d ever tasted. These weren’t normal circumstances, and he decided it was the best he’d ever tasted. The hot, strong, liquid felt good in his belly, and the powerful dose of caffeine coursing through his veins revived him, as did the heat of the fire. Steam poured from his uniform as it warmed through. He felt better, but when Anderson came over to him, he was shocked when he realized what state he was in.
“Lt, you can’t go like this, you’ll kill yourself.”
“As long as I can take a few Krauts with me when I go,” he growled, “Forget the morphine. We have to catch up with Richter. Sergeant Rooker, how much longer do you plan to wait here?”
