The artillery resumed, albeit lighter than before.
“Yes, Sir, I agree. Yessir.”
Two men looked at two wristwatches two miles apart.
‘1220.’
“Soon as, Colonel. Yessir, 1240.”
Again, he tossed the handset down.
“Tell all company commanders. We will go with our straight assault option, commencing 1240. Get the message out now.”
His staff scurried in all directions.
Towers grabbed his binoculars and quickly surveyed the carnage to the front of his battalion, before switching to view the almost bare hilltop that was Height 444.
Bell had ordered that 3rd Battalion make the assault as soon as possible, to make the most of the shock and disorientation of the failed assault.
As he watched, US artillery started to put a mix of high explosive and airburst on the positions that he intended to occupy shortly.
“Let’s go! Move your goddamned arses!”
Third Battalion’s L Company rose up with great energy, buoyed by their recent success, and rushed forward.
Some spared a glance at their grisly handiwork, where bloody groups of Russians lay in lines or clusters, slaughtered by a combination of the machine-guns and the volume of fire from the new Garands.
Third Battalion’s own mortars started putting down fire on Height 403, a lower promontory to the northwest of 444, the target for Love Company, who led off first.
The other two companies, King and Mike, would push straight at Height 444 itself, leaving Item Company and a reinforced platoon of 315th Combat Engineers to fill the trench line behind them.
First Sergeant Micco, commanding the leading platoon, pushed his men hard, despite the light resistance so far encountered.
The Soviet mortar fire seemed so much less effective than normal, even though they were used to the much lower enemy fire volumes by now.
Towers, despite the fact that a battalion commander shouldn’t really be up the sharp end, brought his small command group with him, and trailed along behind the soldiers of Love, his former company.
Occasionally, he would see a wounded man or a corpse, and know the man’s name, remember the man’s voice, or what brand of cigarette the man smoked.
A groan caught his attention, and a pair of legs came into view as he moved towards it.
‘Oh my God!’
“Medic! Medic!”
The wounded man had been struck in the abdomen by something capable of opening him up like a butcher’s knife.
The bloody entrails were wrapped around his legs where he had thrashed around in extreme pain, at first caused by the wound, and subsequently from the additional damage his own actions inflicted.
Pain and blood loss had reduced the man… boy… to a whimpering wreck, and Towers knew he was not long for this world.
He knew the boy well.
He knelt beside Private Jacob Means, son of Mr and Mrs Randolph Means of Gillette, Wyoming, and held the dying eighteen year old’s hand as Dressman, one of his old hands, administered morphine in battlefield fashion, straight into the thigh of the casualty.
“Fuck.”
Means’ eyes glassed over and he was gone.
Arranging the boy’s hands appropriately, Towers stood and picked up the discarded Garand, placing it in the ground barrel first, so as to mark the location of the body.
“Just a boy, Major… they’re always just boys.”
Towers slapped Corporal August Dressman on the shoulder gently, understanding that the old veteran had seen more violence in his life than most.
“Move on out… let’s catch up with the company!”
A gap had opened up between Towers’ group and the hindmost of Love’s soldiers.
Which gap ensured his immediate survival.
“Comrade Mayor, if I fire now, I’ll waste much of my salvo. I recommend waiting.”
The rifle battalion’s Major was living on his nerves, and the combination of enemy artillery, mortars, and the approaching infantry were bringing him to the edge of his endurance.
“Comrade Starshy Leytenant, I order you to fire your fucking weapons now… right now… at the enemy… right there!”
The shaking pistol indicated the men moving towards the northern peak of Height 444, where the rifle battalion commander had placed his most junior and inexperienced company.
“Comrade Mayor, there’s movement in the other enemy positions. Look…”
“Give the fire order, Tobulov, give the fucking fire order!”
Ignoring the proximity of the Tokarev’s muzzle, and the wild eyes of the critically stressed man, the Guards artillery officer spoke calmly into the telephone, changing the fire order to one that brought down the deadly rain upon the troops advancing on Height 403 instead, out of nothing more than self-preservation.
“Drug-one-one, this is Druzhok-five-two, execute plan dva, execute plan dva, over.”
“Druzhok-five-two, Drug-one-one, two minutes, repeat, two minutes. Out.”
The Major was rapidly coming apart, and failed to notice the change in his fire order.
“Two minutes? Two fucking minutes? Tell the lazy bastards to fire now… the enemy are moving forward!”
“For the Rodina’s sake, will you shut up and let me do my job, Mayor!”
The artillery officer produced a flare pistol ready to fire the agreed signal, and he waved it threateningly at the man who had started to cry.
The Major dropped to his knees and came apart mentally, helped by a near miss from an American mortar round.
A single red flare rose into the sky above the Soviet frontline, sparking frantic activity amongst the defenders.
The attacker US infantry, fearing the nature of the signal, advanced quicker.
Dropping back inside the battalion command post, Starshy Leytenant Tobulov ensured that the men tending to the gibbering officer had fitted the man’s equipment properly, following the instructions that the engineer colonel had given that very morning.
Satisfied that all was in order, he donned his own kit and turned to watch the arrival of the deadly barrage.
“Cover!”
The cries went up as men recognised the sound of Katyusha rockets about to arrive in their vicinity.
Over six hundred were in the air and the noise was terrific in volume and terrifying in its intensity.
The rockets started to explode, covering an area between Allmus and Height 403.
The light smoke filled the ground over which the Soviets had attacked, and that was now occupied by US troops going in the opposite direction.
The failed attack had been expected to fail, albeit not so bloodily, and had been designed to provoke a response from the US forces that they believed were gathering for an assault.
That response charged straight into a killing ground from another world.
In February 1945, Soviet forces had stumbled across Dyhernfurth in Lower Silesia. GeneralMaior Max Sachsenheimer, led a German counter-attack and spoiling mission, protecting the Anorgama Gmbh facility, part of the huge I G Farben empire, whilst its deadly product was dumped into the Oder River. Eventually Sachsenheimer’s force was driven back, and the Soviets claimed the facility.