“Not bad, Herr Leutnant,” Oberfeldwebel Helmut Loeb said, as Kurt reached the RV point. “We gave them a bloody nose.”
“Yeah,” Kurt muttered. The aircraft were coming back for another pass, their weapons glinting ominously on their wings. “Let’s just hope we can get everyone out before they surround the town.”
Someone had been a right devious bastard, Obersturmfuehrer Hennecke Schwerk thought, as he clung to the ground for dear life. Five panzers out of action – two of them would have to be righted before they could go back to war – and over a dozen stormtroopers dead or badly wounded. And getting into the town without being shot down would be far from easy, not when the enemy had near-perfect fields of fire. The town had been a trap and the panzers had driven right into it.
Idiots, he thought, as his radio operator called for help. They didn’t stop to think before advancing.
The aircraft swooped overhead, engaging the enemy with cannon fire and then dropping a pair of bombs into the town. Hennecke shouted for his men to follow him, then led the charge towards the edge of the town. The enemy had been thoroughly pasted by the aircraft, he thought. They would need time to recover themselves, time he had no intention of giving them. He and his men would be amongst them before they realised that time was not on their side.
A shot cracked out as he reached the first building, narrowly missing him. Someone was hiding in one of the houses; he saw the rifle, just for a second, as the sniper took aim and fired at one of the stormtroopers. Hennecke pulled a grenade from his belt and hurled it towards the house, silently praying that it would smash the window and detonate inside the building. Luck was with him; the explosion blew out the windows, smashing through the interior of the house. The sniper was almost certainly dead or badly wounded, he told himself firmly. There was certainly no sign he was trying to fire again or crawl out of the damaged house.
He used hand signals to direct his men forward, warning them to throw grenades into every house as they moved past. The town would barely be standing, by the time he finished, but it hardly mattered. Any town that housed insurgents – and traitors now – was doomed, by the laws of war in the east. The provisional government should never have turned a good Germanic town into a strongpoint. Its devastation was firmly on their head.
A house exploded with surprising force, throwing a hail of wood and stone debris in all directions. Hennecke ducked low, frowning in puzzlement. The grenades were designed for clearing houses – they contained more explosive than standard grenades – but the house shouldn’t have exploded like that. It had to have been an ammunitions dump, he decided, or an IED. A second house exploded moments later, catching two of his men in the blast. The bastards hadn’t just set a trap, they’d rigged a number of houses to blow!
“Call in fire support,” he ordered, tersely. The town was deserted – and marked for destruction. There was no point in risking his men clearing the town when it would be easier just to have the aircraft smash it to rubble. “Tell them we want this town gone!”
Kurt had been told – by Konrad – that SS stormtroopers were good, but he’d never really believed it until now. The stormtroopers had recovered from their shock, called in an effective air strike and then thrust forward once again, slamming into the eastern side of the town with staggering force. He’d hoped the IEDs would kill or wound a handful of the bastards, but it looked as though he was out of luck. The stormtroopers were flowing forward with practiced ease, some of them providing covering fire while the others slipped up to houses and threw grenades through the windows. They were systematically destroying the entire town.
Damn them, he thought.
He cursed under his breath as he heard aircraft approaching, then dived for cover as a flight of HE-477s passed overhead, dropping a hail of bombs on the town. The ground shuddered violently; he swore, cursing savagely, as he looked up and saw just how much devastation had been inflicted on the remainder of the town. Flames were rising rapidly, sweeping from house to house. The bombs had to have been more than mere high explosives, he told himself. He’d heard stories about the SS dropping napalm and poison gas to clear towns and villages in Russia, where no one gave a damn what happened to Untermenschen, but he wouldn’t have thought they’d use such methods in Germany.
But you wouldn’t have thought they’d fire on German citizens too, he reminded himself. And you were there when they did just that.
“They’re pushing infantry around the town,” Loeb warned. “We have to go.”
“Sound the retreat,” Kurt ordered. If the SS managed to seal off their escape route, they’d be in deep trouble. “And call in a strike.”
“Jawohl,” Loeb said.
Kurt took one last look at the burning town, then followed his men as they hurried westwards, leaving nine of their number behind. He hoped, desperately, that their bodies would receive a proper burial, if there was anything left of them to bury. But if the SS was prepared to burn a German town to the ground, they might just be equally willing to dump bodies in ditches or mass graves.
At least we hurt them, he told himself, savagely. He glanced up as he heard the sound of shells, whistling down towards the town. The gunners had orders to fire only a couple of rounds and then shift position, before the SS started trying to silence their fire, but they should give the stormtroopers a few nasty moments. And if we keep hurting them, maybe we can make the bastards stop.
“Incoming shells!”
Hennecke cursed under his breath as he hit the ground, trying to dig himself into the soil. A moment later, the first round of shells crashed down on the town, smashing what remained of it into rubble. He hoped that was the end of it, but a second barrage slammed down moments later. Aircraft roared overhead, heading west; he hoped, grimly, that they caught the gunners before they could shift position. The mobile gunners were causing problems up and down the line.
He stood, suddenly feeling very tired. The town had been devastated from end to end; there wasn’t a single building that wasn’t anything more than a blackened ruin. Even the church – which had looked old enough to predate Adolf Hitler – was a pile of debris. He had no qualms about destroying a town that had housed insurgents, but this… this was Germany.
Traitors, he reminded himself. They deserve to lose everything.
He lit a cigarette as he took stock of the situation. He’d lost nineteen men in all, not counting the panzer crews. Crushing the town had cost him badly, too badly. It was far too much… he wondered, absently, if he would be relieved for it. The upper ranks would be looking for a scapegoat and the panzer commander, the one who had driven right into the trap, was probably dead. Unfortunately, he’d probably had a chance to breed first…
“Orders from HQ,” the radio operator said. “They want us to hold the town until they get reinforcements up to us.”