Infantry from the 10th Rifle Brigade, anti-tank guns, including some of the deadly Archer SP vehicles, and artillery from 152nd Field Regiment provided support.
Other units were en route to make up the numbers, not the least of which was an Italian infantry battalion that had formed from men not willing to cede their country to the Communists.
It was, on paper, a formidable force and it had formed a strong defensive position across the Gail River valley, the expected prime route into Northern Italy for the Red Army forces of 1st Alpine Front.
Peaks up to fourteen hundred metres formed the southern side of the Gail valley, those to the north achieved two thousand metres in places, confining the combatants to the valley floor.
Unfortunately, some would say inexcusably, there were few maps available to the defenders, and some were even forced to use local tourist maps from before the 1939 war, or even school geography books.
That, combined with the fact that the Brigadier commanding refused to acknowledge that he was suffering from concussion, brought together all the ingredients for a disaster in the making.
All eyes faced eastwards, when only one pair firmly fixed upon on the west might have saved countless lives.
The tankers were surly, that was for sure.
Stood at attention, or at least what counted for attention in this wayward group from 142nd RAC, they all remained staring ahead, declining to answer the question put to them by a very angry Lancer officer.
The 17th/21st Captain, in receipt of a complaint and damming information from angry locals, had discovered the totality of the local church’s altar display secreted in one of the RAC’s service vehicles, something that exercised him greatly.
As far as Ambrose Force was concerned, the men of the 142nd were already top of everyone’s shit list, as it was pretty obvious they had intended to sit out the war until their peace was interrupted by the arrival of the lead Lancer units.
Looting the church was inexcusable in any case, but the general mood meant that the 142nd troopers were in big trouble.
Captain Charles Stokes-Herbst was gathering momentum, his eyes taking in the shoddy state of the nearest of the five Churchills parked nearby.
That it belonged to the RAC’s Sergeant and highest ranker was just too much.
“You, Sergeant, your vehicle’s a bloody disgrace, man!”
“Sah.”
The unit insignia, bridge weight indicator, and all other markings were either faded by the weather or covered with muck. The rough tarpaulin shelters that the RAC troops had thrown up prevented snow from adding to the problem, but also ensured that the issue was noticeable, unlike Stokes-Herbst’s tanks, whose pristine markings were concealed beneath a thick white layer from the previous night’s downfall.
No one failed to recognise the sound of incoming rounds and the arrival of Soviet high-explosive shells released the RAC troopers from the Lancers’ wrath.
“Get them mounted up, Sergeant. We’ll sort this out later.”
No sooner had his backside hit the passenger seat than his driver had the jeep leaping forward, anxious to get himself inside thick steel protection as soon as possible.
Elsewhere, the dying had already started.
The screams were awful, but they reflected the suffering of the poor man whose entrails had been flung far from his body as shrapnel disembowelled him in an instant.
A shocked medic from the Rifle Brigade did not even know where to start so, unusually for the experienced man, he didn’t, his mind constantly rejecting a course of action, which caused him to remain static.
Others tried but the man, the Major commanding 17th/21st, died a painful death as a few hardy souls tried to gather up the pieces in the hope that medical science could make him whole.
Other lancers were down, mercifully killed instantly by the large calibre shell. A Corporal lay in soft repose, almost unmarked, save for a bloody eye cavity, marking where a modest piece of metal had entered and taken his life. Next to him, laid precisely parallel, was the corpse of the WO1, the senior soldier in the 17th/21st, who had first picked up a lance before the end of the Great War and whose extended career had been the very model example for any NCO.
Other shells were falling, the first arrival having been a premature discharge, for which the gun commander was already receiving a roasting. That the shell had arrived in the centre of an orders group was unknown to the Russians, but it had robbed the two Lancer units of much of their ‘leadership talent’ in one bitter blow.
Captain Haines found himself upside down against a stone wall. He rolled, mentally checking the continued presence of his limbs and vital organs, dragged himself upright, and shook his head to try to clear the ringing. Like everyone who had been stood in the circle, he had not heard the shell, either on its way or even the explosion.
All the same, his ears seemed to be the only parts that bothered to inform him that they were suffering.
Groggily, he rose to his feet and surveyed the scene. He saw mouths moving and saw activity but all that assailed him was the constant ringing.
“Bollocks!”
Leastways, that is what he thought he said.
He spotted the dead 17th/21st Major and, fighting back the natural revulsion, realised that he had just become the senior man and, by default, the armoured commander of Ambrose Force.
‘Oh bloody hell!’
“Driver… advance!”
The idling engine took on a deeper note and the tank lurched forward into whatever the whiteness held in store.
Major Emilian’s objections had been brushed aside and the Armoured Group’s commander, keen to impress his Soviet peers with the communist zeal and commitment of his force, insisted that the attack went ahead as scheduled, virtually nil visibility being seen as an equal factor for attackers and defenders.
Which, in some ways, it was, although being in a tank advancing into a roiling white wall of snow, knowing that the unseen battlefield ahead holds men with guns who do not have your best interests at heart was, and will always be, a daunting prospect.
Emilian’s force was not the only armour in the attack. Nine heavy ISU-152’s from 680th AT Artillery Regiment were moving behind the Romanian vehicles, ready to focus their energies on swatting aside any resistance.
Enemy artillery had started to respond but, as expected, could not be properly directed and clearly resorted to falling on pre-determined locations, places that the hasty Soviet attack plan had deliberately avoided. As a result, few men fell and the wave of tanks and infantry closed on the Allied positions virtually unhindered.
The Lancers were drawn up behind the first infantry positions, just to the east of Erlendorf and Riegersdorf.
The concept had been simple at the time, as the hull down positions they occupied provided reasonable fields of fire.
The snow reduced vision so much that the first Romanian tank was virtually on top of the infantry’s trenches before it was spotted.
The enemy tank, a Panzer IV, the Lancer gunner noted automatically, took a hit on the turret without harm, its own machine guns lashing the positions in which the Rifle Brigade stood, causing casualties amongst the men who waited to beat back the accompanying infantry.
Then, all hell broke loose.
“Fire!”