“Get out now! Quickly, boys! Move!”
His crew needed no second invitation and quickly evacuated the tank, seeking safety as far away as possible.
The Browning machine-gun started flinging lead into the air but, whether it was the increasing volume of snow in the air, nerves on the part of Hardegen, or good flying by the enemy pilot, no hits were apparent.
Two bombs dropped from the mounts, followed by two more a second later.
A bullet clipped his right arm, the enemy infantry bringing him under fire. They were champing at the bit to get at the Americans, once the aircraft had done their work.
The first bomb struck the road and deflected into the ruined artillery halftrack.
The second bomb hit dead centre of ‘Bismarck’s’ glacis plate.
Neither exploded.
Neither did the third or the fourth, although the final bomb did kill three GI’s as it wiped through their snowy redoubt like it wasn’t there.
The inexperienced ground crew had failed to remove the safeties from the weapons, and the pilot, the Regimental Commander, a Colonel with a fearsome reputation, promised retribution for the risks he had faced; all for no reward. That he should have checked too did not occur to him.
He banked away hard, avoiding the tracers rising from the American position, the snow obscuring critical data for the briefest of moments, but sufficiently long enough for his misjudgement, brought on by his anger, to condemn him.
A wing tip clipped the treetops on the hill and the Illyushin wobbled, dropping lower still.
The next tree top proved more of an obstacle and the impact knocked the aircraft into a nose dive, the Shturmovik instantly burying itself in the snow.
There would be no retribution for the ground staff back at his base. Neither would there be any aircraft for them to work on this day, as four Mustangs arrived and smashed the surviving Soviet aircraft from the sky, but only after he had added his own bomb load to the mess below.
The fragmentation bombs wreaked havoc amongst the armored infantry, but completely missed the ad hoc infantry force to the west.
The Soviet infantry charged forward.
“Urrah! Urrah!”
They were met with stiff fire, but it was much reduced, and the casualties they took did not deflect them from their purpose.
Close quarter fighting ensued and crept ever closer to ‘Bismarck’.
Hardegen did what he could with the MG, but the ammunition was soon gone.
Pausing only to slap his tank’s side as a farewell, he strode towards the position to his front.
DeMarco lay in the ruined entranceway, shivering in the cold, part of his stomach deposited on the ground beside him, the thin sheet a medic had thrown over the desperately wounded man already moved aside by the growing breeze.
Morphine coursed through his veins, more than was necessary for pain relief, the medic deciding that he could but ease the gunner’s suffering on his journey into the next life.
Shouting drew Hardegen’s gaze from the dying man, and he tried to focus his eyes on the men running at him.
‘Jesus!’
He brought up the Colt 1911A and put the leading Soviet engineer down hard. The second man had a flamethrower.
Hardegen’s second and third shots spun him round as he fired, and two of his comrades took the full force of the flames.
The screams were awful as three of the Soviet engineers were consumed by fire.
A burst of submachine gun fire, originating from the Soviet side, dropped all three to the snow and ended their suffering.
Hardegen saw friendlies off to his right and moved towards them, firing off another two rounds at indistinct movement near the burning corpses.
He dropped into a position and lay on the icy floorboards, gasping for breath,
The men around him, all armored infantrymen, except for an old German in a Pickelhaube, poured fire in all directions, as the isolated post fell under determined attack.
Whilst the old German cut a comical figure in a white fur coat and with the stereotypical pointed German helmet atop his head, he clearly had seen action before, and kept his rifle firing steadily.
At least one other flamethrower was closing in, the hiss as its flame melted snow bringing fear to those who could hear its malevolent approach.
The position’s commander slapped a Sergeant’s shoulder, directing the man’s attention to the threat.
The shot was clearly successful and the Captain moved away.
In a calculated fashion, the Sergeant took two more shots, the last of which sent a fireball through the attacking enemy engineers as it exploded the dead man’s flame thrower tanks.
Hardegen was noticed and the Captain moved quickly over to his side.
“You ok, Major?”
His minor wounds had transformed his tanker’s uniform into a mass of red spots, misleading the Captain into thinking that Hardegen was badly wounded.
“Fine, Captain. Are we secure here?”
“No Sir. They’re all over us like a nasty fucking rash. I have a man checking out a route so as we can bug out. ‘Til then, we gotta hold, Major.”
“Ok. I could use another weapon. Whatcha got for me?”
“Plenty, Sir. They’re lying around everywhere here. Help yourself. I recommend their wooden submachine gun with the round mag. Fucking lethal thing.”
“OK, Captain. My tank’s still running if we can get back to it. I can drive and we can ride rather than walk.”
“Sounds like a plan, Major. But the commies may have their own ideas.”
The officer rolled away and then scrabbled to his feet, moving off towards the farthest part of his defence.
Hardegen returned the nod from the Sergeant as he went in search of weapons.
He found them in the adjacent space; US weapons stacked on one side, Soviet weapons the other.
He took the Garand instead of the recommended PPSh, and selected ammo for both the familiar rifle and his Colt.
Against his wishes, he forced himself to pick up a bayonet and clipped it to the Garand.
Returning to the first room, he found the sergeant lying flat on his back in a pool of blood and the position now occupied solely by the comical German.
The Sergeant had no face, and the bloody mess on display grinned with bared teeth exposed where the soft tissue had been stripped away by the impact of something very solid.
The bubbles of blood showed that the horribly wounded man still lived.
Shouting something in German, the old man gestured at Hardegen, bringing him into the adjacent firing position.
Grinning as he selected a target amongst the attacking Soviet soldiers, Hardegen spoke in the old man’s language.
“Ja, ich kann es ertrangen, alten Manne!”
The old soldier laughed.
He had ribbed the American officer in German, asking him if he could bear it as he brought him up into a firing position.
“Yes, I can bear it, old man,” had been Hardegen’s response.
The two stood side by side and shot down enemy after enemy, despite a close bullet dislodging the ridiculous Pickelhaube from the veteran’s head.
The German language conversation continued, almost isolating the two from the events around them.
“Where’d you learn your soldiering then, Grandad?”
“Tannenberg, boy. My first battle. Now those Russians could fight. Then the British. Hard men, they were too. This lot are easy.”
As if to mark his words, the Mauser spat another bullet into the body of a crawling Russian.
“Mind you, boy, there are a fucking lot of them!”
And then he was dead.
Neither of them had seen or heard the grenade that exploded behind them, leaving one man untouched, except for ringing in his ears, the other peppered with death-dealing shrapnel.