Left behind to both worry the defenders and provide advance warning of any aggressive moves, the tired enemy legionnaires initially proved easy meat.
The Mosin rifle kicked into his shoulder for a third time and he was rewarded with a spray of red as his target fell from sight.
To Orsov’s left, another shot rang out, then two more in quick order, clearly from Palininski, whose weapon of choice was a prime SVT-40 automatic rifle with a ten round magazine, a surprising choice as it was far heavier than the Mosin, and Yelena Palininski was such a slight girl.
A figure moved and he fired instinctively.
‘Missed!’
He risked another shot at the disappearing soldier and, although the man made cover, Orsov knew he had hit him.
‘Time to move.’
He tensed, knowing his life was forfeit, and that the barely detectable sound was a footfall close behind him.
“If I was one of those SS bastards, you’d be well fucked, Comrade Orsov.”
Orlov let out a huge breath of relief.
“I’m moving so don’t get in my way, Comrade Serzhant.”
The other man had been transiting the derelict shop and hadn’t known Orlov was there until he fired.
“No problem. I’m off to the old church, Leonid. Better to see what the fuckers are up to.”
A bullet pinged off the brickwork near David Uranovski, the sergeant commanding the sniper team attached to 167th Guards Rifle Regiment.
The two men hugged the floorboards and wormed their way towards the rear of the building.
A solid sound announced the arrival of a grenade, which skittered along the floor and dropped next to Uranovski.
He pulled it into his arms and under his chest… and tensed.
The HG337r as it was known in the Wehrmacht, was a Soviet RGD-33 grenade from stocks likely captured in 1942-43, and this one bore a fragmentation jacket, which increased its deadly radius and killing power.
Uranovski’s arms, chest, and head disintegrated in the blast, and the remnants of his body were thrown back across the floor.
Pieces of the grenade, eleven in all, struck Orlov and robbed him of his sight and ability to move.
He screamed in pain, until he screamed no more, a burst from a tirailleur’s ST-45 terminating his suffering.
Relieved to have erased the snipers for only a few men lost, the legionnaires missed something vital, possibly in their tiredness, possibly in their haste to be away from the awfulness of the damage to both enemy soldiers.
Neither man used an SVT-40.
“Snipers are down, Oberführer. Two of them. The tirailleurs sorted the bastards out.”
“Excellent work. That mustn’t happen again. We mu…”
The bullet arrived before the sound and hit Jorgensen in the back of neck before exiting his upper chest and finding more soft flesh beyond.
A second bullet struck Hässelbach, even as he was reacting to the spray of blood from the Blindé’s commander.
A third bullet passed through the air between him and the falling Knocke, finding nothing but the road beyond.
Two more bullets were fired.
Another burst through Hässelbach’s arm as he bent over to stop Knocke from landing hard.
The final shot from Yelena Palininski’s weapon went far over the group, but still took a life, striking down a legionnaire beyond.
Shouts rang out all around the square and men again scuttled for cover.
Five shots in just over three seconds, and she had seen three hits, possibly a fourth.
The weapon had jammed and she dropped into cover to free it.
In the square, all was chaos.
Jorgensen was clearly dead, his glazed eyes carrying indignation, surprise, and pain in equal measure.
Hässelbach’s strength seeped from him as his wounds leaked blood, but he pushed himself across the ground to his commander’s side.
Knocke was sat on the ground, his face grey and ashen, with his hands on his stomach, almost on the verge of unconsciousness.
The sound of his pain invaded every ear, as the old soldier squealed in agony.
“Sani! Sani!”
He pressed Knocke’s hands to the stomach wound.
The screaming stopped as Knocke started to lose consciousness.
“Press here, Oberführer… wake up, man… stay awake, for fuck’s sake!”
Fiedler dropped to his knees next to his stricken leader and ripped away at a shirt he had grabbed from somewhere on his path.
The pain returned and Knocke started to scream hideously, the high-pitched sound causing ears to crackle, so loud and piercing was it.
Fiedler fashioned a bandage and added his voice to that of Hässelbach.
“Sani! Sani!”
Bending Knocke slightly to one side, Fiedler pushed the bandage around his back and into Hässelbach’s waiting hand.
It emerged soaked in blood.
He ran his hand round to the small of Knocke’s back and discovered a huge exit wound.
“Oh fuck! Sani!”
Knocke fell silent again.
Fiedler made a pack of more of the shirt and pushed it hard against the large wound.
Knocke moaned at the pressure and coughed up a little blood.
“Oberführer… lie still now… we’ll soon have you back on your feet… but just lie still for now, eh?”
Knocke laughed and coughed some more, bringing another surge of blood from his lips.
“You always were a bad liar, Otto.”
Hässelbach could not bring himself to say more.
The sani arrived and started working, although he was low on anything that a medical orderly could normally be expected to carry.
“He needs a doctor, Obersturmführer… this is bad… very very bad…”
There was no doctor and hadn’t been since the Soviet artillery killed both men some hours beforehand.
Hässelbach looked away from the desperate medic, and saw that a crowd had gathered round the desperately wounded Knocke.
Through a gap, he saw Köster in his turret, aware that something important was happening and keen to get a look at whatever it was.
The sight triggered a memory deep in Hässelbach’s mind.
“Linus! Köster! Get your gunner Linus here now! All of you… find medical supplies… in vehicles… on enemy soldiers… anything you can…move!”
Despite the occasion sound of battle or the explosion of a shell, his voice carried loud enough for all to hear, and carried with it urgency and authority and was acted on immediately.
Linus Wildenauer arrived in company with Köster.
“You were a vet… close enough to a doctor… do something, Wildenauer.”
The young man’s mouth was wide open and he stood frozen.
“Do something!”
Knocke’s coughing and moans of pain broke Wildenauer out of his trance and he dropped to the ground, searching his mind for information.
A hand grabbed Hässelbach’s tunic in a vice-like grip and pulled him down closer to the wounded man’s level.
“Otto… Otto…”
“Yes, Oberführer?”
“You know what to tell my wife… Greta and Magda… quick and painless. Tell my girls… tell them I love them… and Anne-Marie… just tell her I love her and our new child so very muc…”
A clot of blood shot from Knocke’s mouth.
Men started to arrive holding out pieces of medical kit, from scissors to one ampoule of pain-relieving morphine.
It was immediately administered and Knocke passed into merciful darkness.
Palininski got off two more shots, both at close range, as she tried to stop the hunters overwhelming her.
She failed and went down under a flurry of kicks and punches.
The clothes were ripped from her and the legionnaires took their pleasures, more by way of revenge than for personal satisfaction.