The perfect gentle easterly ensured that the Soviets could hardly see their hand in front of their face.
Nervous Red Army soldiers, sat astride Route 3223, started firing at nothing but a waft of smoke, convinced that the devil incarnate was upon them.
At 1530, soldiers and gunners from Camerone fired back, aiming blind into the smoke, but with the advantage of having marked many targets before the smoke engulfed the battlefield.
The plan moved ahead like clockwork, as elements of the 7e Regiment du Marche launched a noisy diversionary attack against Fuldatal, to the south of the main defensive positions around Route 3233.
Centrally, a battalion of the 7e RdM, supported by some of Uhlmann’s tanks, kept up a steady fire through the smoke screen, which was ably topped up by the smoke generators and indirect fire from support weapons.
Their job was to pin the defenders in place, suggesting a further advance, but actually keeping their heads down in the hasty positions they had assumed.
It was the attack of 1er Regiment du Marche, supported by a hard wedge of the 1er Chars D’Assaut, both units from Camerone Division, which had the task of breaching the enemy defensive positions.
Moving fast and light, two battalions of Camerone’s 1st Regiment du Marche pushed into the woods to the west of Holzhausen, negotiating the brooks and streams that were commonplace, running between the roots of the tall trees.
With them came the Wolves and Hyenas, the converted tanks ready to knock down any heavier support that the assaulting foot soldiers might encounter.
Close behind the lead elements came the reserve 3e Bataillon and themajority of the 1er Régiment Étranger de Cavalerie, Camerone’s small reconnaissance unit.
The flank attack slammed into modest Soviet positions in the woods northwest of Wilhelmshausen and quickly overran the distracted defenders.
In the handful of hand-to-hand combats that occurred, the Soviet defenders were quickly overwhelmed, their continued physical decline a huge contributory factor to the one-sided close quarter fighting.
The 1er REC and the reserve battalion, the 3e/1er RdM, quickly followed through and led off, striking northeast towards the bridge at Wilhelmshausen, seeking to capture it intact.
2e/1er wheeled to the south and drove into the rear of the main line defences, supported by half of the Wolves of 1er Regiment Char D’Assaut, who quickly scored successes when they overran a redeploying company of 100mm anti-tank guns.
1er/1er mopped up and secured the area, suffering a few casualties rooting out diehard Soviet soldiers.
7e RdM reported unexpected success in their diversionary attack, so Knocke, not one to miss an opportunity, ordered them to drive on through Fuldatal and seal off any escape by the Soviet forces to his front.
Bittrich had already placed the 1er Bataillon Amphibie Spéciale at the disposal of the Normandie commander, and the unit was swiftly dispatched to cross the river at Fuldatal and drive up to Wilhemshausen, thus taking the bridge from both ends.
A map reading error brought the 1er BAS into the column of units destined to move through Knickhagen, some kilometres north of where Bittrich had intended them to be.
The disaster of the first action was quickly washed away by the success of the second, and the mood was lifted throughout Camerone and the rest of Normandie.
The main Soviet defences crumbled and the reports quickly filtered back to the command post.
The Soviets were running.
Knocke ordered the smoke generators stopped, the artillery and mortars were called off, and his main force was prepped for an immediate advance, pending confirmations that he had already asked for.
Such was the euphoria of the moment that no one noticed his pale features, the sweat running down his face, and the controlled breathing of a man in pain.
He sat down heavily, holding his stomach, finally attracting attention.
“Mon Dieu! Ernst!”
“Ernst! Mein Gott!”
De Walle moved swiftly for a big man, Bittrich similarly for a man not wholly well, but neither was quick enough to stop the now unconscious tank officer topple off the chair, face first into the leg of the table, adding a nasty facial wound to the ruptured stomach that Maillard had inflicted with his butt.
Bile and blood passed Knocke’s lips.
The shouts of alarm summoned the security detail, whose commander immediately dispatched four men in search of medical assistance.
Bittrich wobbled on his feet, as his recent illness declared itself again, and was assisted to a chair to await the medics’ arrival
For a sometime to come, the collective eye was off the ball.
The Legion units were backing up as they tried to flood down Route 3233, and some enterprising commanders sought to bring their men to the field by alternate routes, ones outside their orders but that offered the promise of speed of advance.
The commander of the 1er Légion Étrangère Batallione de Chars Lourds informed headquarters of his intent by radio, but the message was one of those that was somehow lost in the kerfuffle of Knocke’s collapse.
The heavy tanks of the 1er BCL drove forward, complete with their infantry escort company, and leading the 4e Légion Étrangère Roquette Anti-char Équipe, taking the track that would link up with the minor Route 40, allowing the entire force to move through the valley and on towards the river plain and the main road north.
Backed up behind them were the amphibious transports of the 1er Bataillon Amphibie Spéciale, miles away from where they were supposed to be.
95th Rifle Division had had a bad war, and, despite receiving reinforcements at the end of the cold winter, the formation was a division in name only.
None the less, it had still performed well against the advancing Allies soldiers, so well that the Third Army commander had, uncharacteristically, pulled it out of the line for some rest in a quieter area… on the Fulda.
At least, it had been quiet until the legionnaires of Normandie arrived.
The men of the 90th Rifle Regiment were presently being driven from the field to the north of Knickhagen.
Part of the 161st Rifle Regiment, the most savaged of the division’s main combat units, was fleeing northwards in front of the advancing 7th RdM, apparently aware that their only route to safety lay in Wilhelmshausen.
However, part of that same unit, Combat Group Stalia, was still in position within Knickhagen and its commander, the eponymous Major Stalia, had very specific orders on two matters; namely holding his position at all costs, and his responsibility towards the special unit under his protection.
In essence, the attached ATPAU, Army Tank Prototype Assessment Unit, field tested new vehicle designs under combat conditions, a risky but worthwhile venture, at least to Soviet eyes.
However, its presence in Knickhagen was an error, and the unit found itself in dangerous surroundings, too far forward and in danger of being cut off.
None the less, the experimental weapons were there to fight and prove themselves, so preparations were made to do just that.
Under no circumstances were the ATPAU vehicles to fall into enemy hands, something that Stalia understood both from his colonel, who had informed him his life hung on successfully discharging that order, and from the straight-forward statements by one of the heavy tanks’ commanders, a no-nonsense senior NCO called Kon.
His particular vehicle was an IS-IV with a difference, upgunned to deal with the new Allied tanks that were expected to make an appearance in the summer of ’46.