We could do with a few of them now, he thought. The Americans will probably sell them to us, if we offer our firstborn children in exchange.
He gritted his teeth as he headed back to the airbase, keeping a wary eye on the sky behind him. The SS would be sending jet fighters after him, now they knew there was at least one HE-477 in the sky. They wouldn’t underestimate the danger he posed, not when they’d turned CAS into an art form. But intercepting a tiny – and slow – HE-477 with a jet aircraft was nowhere near as easy as it looked. He could fly through a forest road, barely above the ground, while a jet pilot who tried would wind up dead.
But there was no sign of enemy aircraft in the air, even when he approached the airbase and landed quickly. The fires he’d seen when he took off – set by a pair of SS commandos who’d killed nearly twenty men before they’d been stopped – had been put out, while four more aircraft were taking off from the runway. Felix allowed himself a moment of relief as the fuel and ammunition trucks raced towards his plane, then took advantage of the opportunity to relax. There was no point in unhooking himself from the seat and leaving the plane, even to piss. He’d wait until his plane was refuelled and rearmed, then he’d take off…
…And then he’d do it all over again.
“Pawn to king four,” the radio squawked. “I say again, pawn to king four.”
Major Jordan Beschnidt nodded once as he waited, trapped inside his panzer. The SS was on the march – and heading right towards his position. He hadn’t been expecting to go to war, certainly not against the SS, but there was a part of him that relished the challenge. The Waffen-SS bragged of being the best panzer drivers in the Reich and Jordan would enjoy the chance to show them that wasn’t the case, even if it did come with the very real possibility of getting blown up, burned to death or being captured and thrown into a concentration camp.
“No reply,” he ordered. “We wait.”
He felt sweat trickling down his back as the seconds slipped by, one by one. It had been sheer luck that he and his men had been anywhere near the east, particularly as no one had expected to have to fight a civil war in the middle of the Reich. If he hadn’t been stationed at the Panzer Lehr training camp… he smirked at the thought, then peered through his scope as the first SS panzer came into view. They would think – and not without reason – that the defenders had no panzers closer than Occupied France. And they were in for a terrible surprise.
“They’re advancing fast,” the driver muttered, as three more panzers appeared. “And they’re alone.”
Jordan nodded in agreement. There were no infantry, even though doctrine insisted that panzers should always be supported by infantry. But then, he knew – all too well – just how easy it was for the panzers to outrun their escorts. Getting through the defence line and into the rear had been part of German military doctrine for the last fifty years. The SS wouldn’t want to slow the advance long enough to give the westerners a chance to reshuffle their forces and block their thrust.
He picked up the telephone – using a radio so close to the enemy would pinpoint their position for any marauding aircraft – and muttered a command. There were only four panzers under his command, all pulled from the training school… normally, he would never have dared send instructors into combat. They were good at their jobs, very good; replacing them would be a nightmare. But there was a shortage of crew – and besides, they wanted to show the SS what they could do too.
“Choose your targets,” he ordered. Four more panzers were coming into view, bunching up as they made their way down the road. He’d have clouted any student who did that on exercise, although he was fair-minded enough to admit that combat rarely took place under ideal conditions. “And fire when we fire.”
“Weapons locked,” the gunner said. “They’re closing…”
Jordan nodded, bracing himself. The closer the enemy came, the greater the chance of scoring two or more hits. But, at the same time, the greater the chance of the enemy realising they had walked right into a trap. The crews had camouflaged the panzers as best as they could, but the SS crews had plenty of experience in South Africa. They’d know what to look for, as they watched for unpleasant surprises; they might just spot the panzers lying in wait before it was too late. And if they did, they might just manage to slam a shell or two into his panzer before he realised he was under attack. A quick-thinking enemy commander could turn the ambush into a disaster in a matter of seconds.
“Fire on my command,” he ordered. The enemy were coming closer… were their turrets starting to move? “Fire!”
The panzer jerked as it fired a shell into the leading enemy tank. At such close range, it was hard to miss; the shell punched through the heavy frontal armour and detonated inside the vehicle. It exploded into a fireball, the turret rising into the air as it was blown off. The crew, Jordan was sure, would have been killed instantly. He hoped, grimly, that they had been killed instantly. He’d seen enough men pulled from burning hulks, more dead than alive, to wish otherwise. No one, not even the worst of the SS, deserved such a fate.
“Pick the next target,” he snapped. “Fire!”
He took stock of the situation as the gunner engaged a second target. Four enemy panzers had been destroyed; three more were rapidly targeted and blown apart while he watched. But the enemy were returning fire, hurling shells at random into the foliage. They hadn’t got a solid lock on his panzers, he noted, but it hardly mattered. They’d score a lucky hit if they kept hurling so many shells in his direction.
“Move us,” he ordered.
The panzer lurched to life, racing backwards. Jordan hung on for dear life, watching as the gunner sighted the main gun on another advancing panzer and opened fire. The shell struck the panzer’s treads, disabling it; the crew hastily evacuated, seconds before another shell blew the panzer into flaming debris. The nasty part of Jordan’s mind was tempted to mow them down with the machine gun, just to make sure they couldn’t go back to the war, but he suppressed it firmly. Atrocities would only make the war more savage as both sides struggled to outdo the other in sheer beastliness. He’d heard too many horror stories from South Africa to take it lightly.
Where captured men are lucky if they’re only castrated, he thought, darkly. It wasn’t even the worst of the stories he’d heard. Savage tribesmen took delight in inflicting unspeakable wounds on their prisoners. We don’t want those atrocities here.
He cursed savagely as one of his escorting panzers was hit and ground to a halt, smoke pouring from its turret. The crew bailed out hastily, running westwards without looking back. They’d link up with the remainder of the unit at the RP, assuming anyone else survived. Jordan muttered a command as the panzers kept moving back; the gunner put a shell into the disabled vehicle, ensuring that nothing could be salvaged from the wreck. The Heer engineers were trained to break down a disabled vehicle, stripping everything useful from the remains; he dared not assume that the SS would be any less competent. Killing one of his own panzers – and probably one that could be repaired – did not sit well with him, but there was no choice.