The enemy soldier, his face a mask of fear and concentration, lunged again, but Schneider deflected the attack easily, pushing the weapon off to the left of his body, allowing him to jab his rifle butt forward in an attempt to knock the teeth out of his opponent’s ugly face.
The man ducked his head, and the metal butt plate clanged against the metal of the guardsman’s helmet.
They drew apart again, taking up a stance with their weapons to the fore, seeking an opportunity to attack.
In the corner of his eye, Schneider could see Keller throttling the life out of one enemy soldier, his MP-40 crushing the man’s windpipe, the soft skin split by both by the action of the rear sight and the man’s clawing nails.
Keller’s mouth emitted an animal-like snarling as humanity was brushed aside for the most basic of instincts; survival.
‘Scheisse!’
Schneider yelped as he realised his attention had wandered, albeit for the shortest of moments, and the Russian had seen the opportunity.
Instinctively, he sucked in his stomach and twisted, sensing the passage of metal the smallest of distances from his flesh.
The Russian overbalanced and stumbled forward.
Schneider jabbed opportunistically, and the muzzle of his weapon punched into the man’s chest.
Had his bayonet been fixed, he would have won the duel there and then, but, although winded, the Soviet infantryman was still in the fight.
Rolling away, the Russian lost his grip on his rifle, and desperately looked for a weapon.
Schneider worked the bolt of his rifle and blew the man’s throat into a bloody mess of shattered flesh.
Keller had finished disposing of his opponent, and took the time to put another clip in his SMG, before he dropped to one knee and sucked in as much air as he could.
“You alright, Stabs?”
Keller, panting like a greyhound, gave Schneider a baleful look.
“Think so…”
The NCO stood on shaky legs and tried hard to control his breathing.
Something he saw did it for him.
“Mein Gott! Quick!”
Schneider followed the suddenly sprinting NCO, and found himself at the nearby machine-gun position.
Trying not to stand on the moaning gunner, or in what was left of the loader, the signaller grabbed the ammo belt of the MG-34, ready to feed it through his fingers.
Keller pulled the trigger, aiming at the body of Russians he had seen charging into one of his platoon positions.
The weapon leapt into life, but most of the first burst went wildly overhead.
Leaning more into the butt and controlling his heavy breathing, Keller brought the gun back on target and swept the line of guardsmen with a veritable tempest of bullets.
Over half of the enemy were bowled over, buying time for Keller’s platoon to gather themselves and step forward.
Rifles and sub-machine guns fired virtually point-blank and, for good measure, a couple of stick grenades added to the slaughter.
Schneider added another belt to the length as his NCO looked around for further threats.
He had no need to look far, a full platoon of heavily armed guardsmen suddenly emerging from a defile to the right of his position.
“Gun right”, shouted Keller, as he dragged the weapon around.
The belt snagged and nearly parted the links, but Schneider reacted just in time.
Settling the bipod, Keller took aim and let rip.
The air above the Soviets filled with 7.92mm, missing every man.
“Scheisse!”
They had seen the machine-gun and dropped into cover immediately before the fire erupted from the machine-gun post.
“Need more ammo!”
“Then get it!”
Keller fired two to three bullet bursts down the slope, hitting nothing, but successfully pinning the enemy platoon in place.
Between each burst, he looked around the position, seeking more ammunition… and spotting…
‘Stielhandgranate!’
He sent the last of his bullets downrange and made a decision.
Schneider had already disappeared in search of more ammo belts, so Keller discarded the weapon and grabbed the grenades one by one, arming each with a simple tug on the cord, and sending them downhill to explode amongst the bushes and rocks where the enemy platoon had gone to ground.
The second one sent a man flying into the air, performing a lazy somersault, even in death.
All six flew through the air and landed in the general area of the enemy platoon.
Schneider, bleeding from a nasty ear wound, flew back into the position, and spilled the contents of one ammo box on the parapet.
Thrusting the tab through the receiver, he prepared the MG-34.
Having grabbed the dead loader’s rifle, the Stabsfeldwebel was firing at targets, real and imagined, hoping to keep their heads down for as long as possible.
The silence from the machine-gun emboldened the guardsmen and, under orders from their commander, they rose up and charged.
“Urrah! Urrah!”
Schneider clipped two belts together as his company CO grasped the gun and settled his cheek on the wood.
The gun burst into life, jerking and wagging from side to side, as Keller sought to put as many bullets on target as humanly possible.
The Soviet soldiers fell in numbers, but pressed hard, gaining ground, even in the face of the lethal storm Keller was creating.
“Barrel!”
The one in the gun glowed a dull red, and Keller made the instinctive decision to change it rather than jam the weapon.
He’d spotted a spare near the grenades, so grabbed it instantly, flicking the catch on the gun, and accepting the burns to the tips of his fingers.
The hot barrel dropped free as he manoeuvred the gun.
He inserted the new, all the time watching the enemy get closer, again enthused by the weapon’s silence.
Schneider clipped two more belts together, adding them to the belt already in.
“Go, go, go!”
Keller needed no second bidding and dropped the leading man with a burst that nearly decapitated the Soviet officer.
The guardsmen screamed in anger and their legs pumped hard, closing down the distance as quick as they could.
“Urrah!”
The MG-34 cut many of them down, but the others just kept coming.
Had he had the time to comment, Keller would have ventured that it was the bravest charge he had ever seen.
The gun jammed, Schneider’s inexperience finally coming home to roost as he twisted the feed.
Six Russians remained, full of fight, and with vengeance in their hearts.
Keller picked up the discarded MG barrel, feeling enough heat to know that he was damaging his fingers, and brought it down on the fingers of the first rifleman into the position, breaking bone and splitting flesh.
The man howled and dropped his weapon, whilst somehow also aiming a punch at his opponent’s face, a punch that missed as the hot barrel crashed into the side of his head, and the Guards Corporal lost further interest in the battle.
Schneider struggled to pull his Walther from its holster and only managed a single shot before he was bowled over by a flying Russian.
Keller tried to brain the next man, but lost his grip on the barrel, which flew away harmlessly.
He ducked under a flailing rifle butt and punched the man hard, almost bending him in two, as his solid fist combined with the soldier’s forward momentum to bring about a telling blow.
A glancing blow struck his wounded arm and felled the Stabsfeldwebel, as another enemy came at him from the side.
Keller and Schneider were now both down, and both on their backs in the gun pit with enemy soldiers gaining the advantage.