There was no time for sensitivity and so Brennan prompted the man.
“Go on Caesar?”
They sensed that Collins was composing himself, which made the three officers very wary indeed.
“Two boys from 3rd Platoon just blundered past and we pulled them in quick. Seems they have a story to tell Major.”
This time no one interrupted the man.
“The bastards killed the boys who surrendered, torched them up in a building with a flamethrower, every last man of them. Over forty from 1st and 3rd so these two say.”
Brennan and Finch had no words.
“Mother of God, that has to be a mistake Collins!”
The tough non-com shook his head.
“No mistake Lieutenant. These two are steady doughs, good soldiers who bugged out and didn’t surrender. They know what they saw.”
Brennan took an audible deep breath.
“OK, this changes nothing but we sure as shit ain’t gonna surrender no matter what.”
He got no argument on that score.
“Let’s go with what we have, pick up what we can equipment wise as we travel and use this damn rain to our advantage while we can.”
A chorus of ‘yes sir’s’ marked an end to the group and they split up to get their troops moving.
At Trendelburg Bridge, the end was in sight.
The west bank had held, but only just. This time the attack was broken up with small arms and phosphorous grenades, and the smell of roasted flesh was all-pervading as Chekov scurried amongst his men, checking their wounds and encouraging them to one final effort.
Even though this last attack had been pressed home hard, it seemed to falter more quickly than the others and Chekov used that as a sign to his exhausted men that relief was close at hand.
He surveyed the scene in front of his positions, risking attracting fire in order to assess the situation.
Despite the downpour, two bodies were burning fiercely, probably Americans, both victims of the same phosphorous grenade. They were lying in an X shape, one on the other.
As he ripped his gaze away from the awful sight, a grenade on one exploded and caused further indignity to the dead men.
There seemed no sign of any of the covering infantry force in the buildings, and in fact no sign of any life whatsoever in Trendelburg itself.
Detailing a reliable old engineer to keep watch, he sat down and stared across at the east bank.
Unfortunately for his beloved engineers, there was no sign of life there either.
Involved in his own battle for survival, he had only managed occasional glimpses of what had happened to the east, but it had been horrible enough as it was.
A group of A Sqdn 125th Cavalry had struck hard into his men.
He remembered a quick vision of the American light tanks being stalked by the Kaporal who had swum the river.
When he looked around again one of the tanks was burning fiercely but of the Kaporal there was no sign.
“I must find out about him,” he vocalised the thought in his weariness, knowing full well the man was dead.
The other M5 Stuart had got through to the bank, its track marks not yet fully washed away by the rain.
Driving up and down, it had either run over the sheltering engineers, forced them into the river or up and over the edge of their safe haven.
Its silent hulk was partially in the water adjacent to the bridge, where a Siberian rifleman with a liberated panzerfaust had stopped it, but not before it had wrought havoc on his engineers.
Chekov winced at the memory of the gun firing and his men being mown down, not knowing that the 37mm carried by the Stuart could fire a canister round that acted like a high powered shotgun, carving swathes through the defenders on both sides of the river.
More friendly forces were now arriving on both sides of the bridge, and even a platoon of his own engineers rushed in, looking for their comrades.
Their relief at finding some alive turned to shock and anger at the number of their comrades that had been killed and wounded.
Fighting was still going on to the east and to the west but Trendelburg itself had fallen silent.
Medical orderlies started to bring relief to the wounded. Chekov waved away one who approached him, deciding to go in search of survivors on the east bank.
He walked the bridge as best he could, sharp pains in his hip and with a stiffening leg, and looked down seeking the living amongst the piles of dead and finding none.
There was Leytenant Munin, laid open by canister shot, the man who had received news of becoming a father on the night of the great attack.
As if the corpse could hear him, Chekov gave him his promise.
‘Your son will hear of the man that was his father Andrey. Thank you.’
His engineers lay everywhere he looked and it was more than he could bear.
Moving to the south edge of the bridge to avoid the scrutiny of the medics working amongst his dead, his watery eyes found the body of Neltsin.
‘Not you too Mikhail my old comrade?’
He literally sagged onto the side of the bridge, his sight filled with the horrible vision of his senior non-com and fighting comrade of many battles lying disembowelled on the bank.
He became aware of a presence and turned to see a smoke-blackened Serzhant standing next to him, taking in the same vision as he.
“Is there anyone left Comrade Lieutenant Colonel?”
Chekov turned again to the man, eyebrows wrinkled in concentration.
“Iska? Serzhant Iska?”
“Yes Comrade Lieutenant Colonel, it is me, minus a bit here and there.”
Chekov now noted the new bandages in place.
“Can you walk Pavel Stefanovich?”
Even after everything that had happened since they reached the bridge, Iska was taken aback by his commander’s use of his names.
“Yes Comrade Lieutenant Colonel, I can walk.”
With one last look at the remains of Neltsin, Chekov turned and headed east.
“Come Iska, let us see what mischief our Comrade Smina visited upon the Amerikanisti.”
The two walked silently, both suffering from leg wounds, and by the time they had reached the US mortar positions six more east-bank engineer survivors had joined them.
With professional eyes, they looked at the work of Smina and his assault force.
It was Iska who found the body, features unrecognisable, rank markings and bodily size alone giving voice to the identity.
Chekov and the others were attracted to the animal like sound that was escaping Iska’s mouth.
“What’s this, what’s this?”
Chekov was stunned.
Iska had fallen silent.
“You saw him captured you said, you saw him taken alive you said.”
It was not an accusation even though it sounded like one. It was a man avoiding the bitter truth crafted by his own eyes.
“They fucking killed him, fucking executed him!” howled Iska, “Bastards!”
The Lieutenant Colonel, not for the first time that day, drew deeply on the sodden smoky air and took hold of himself.
“No Comrade Serzhant Iska.”
He pointed sharply at the river behind him.
“THAT…. back there….that was killing, THAT was execution. THIS…” he turned back and swept his hand over the corpse of his best officer, “THIS was murder!”
Moving forward to where a dead enemy officer lay, still with pistol in hand, Chekov grabbed the man’s jacket and rolled the corpse over, the badly damaged left arm flopping grotesquely, shattered bone protruding through the material of his jacket.
Chekov produced a knife and pulled on the divisional insignia, tainted with the dead man’s blood.
He separated it from the jacket with a few twists of his blade.