“Idiot man!” yelled the tank commander. “Wait until the tank stops before you fire. What a waste.”
He looked again at the target his gunner had engaged, a single American soldier, rolling around, clearly dazed and confused by the near miss.
“Driver, forward.”
He looked at the small group of Americans running into the village and decided they were worth a shell.
“Driver, halt. Gunner engage infantry to front, high-explosive, range eight hundred.”
“Ready.”
“Fire.”
The commander stuck his head out to better observe the carnage.
The huge 122mm lashed out another high-explosive shell, this time better aimed and it arrived where it was intended.
The two leading figures in the American group disappeared, vaporised in the explosion. Four other were tossed like rag dolls, smashed and broken by the blast.
A bazooka shell reached out from a position close on the left and exploded on the side of the turret just below the commander’s cupola.
The gunner screamed in horror as a headless corpse flopped into the tank, spraying the insides with copious amounts of blood.
Self-preservation took over and he rotated the turret, flaying the bazooka operator even as he struggled to reload his weapon.
A group of infantry beyond caught the crazed gunner’s attention and he called for H.E. The loader, completely rattled by the death of his commander had dropped one part of the shell on the turret floor and was trying to retrieve it.
The machine-gun spoke again and bowled two of the group over with impacts. A BA-64 armoured car swept past the IS-II, aiming bursts into the survivors and scoring hits in turn.
The gunner looked around for more enemies and saw again the stunned American, now on his knees.
“Driver, forward.”
Chekov had escaped without further injury, but how he didn’t know. Another eight of his men were dead and two wounded, all but one a head shot.
He took in the demise of the American rush with satisfaction, and turned his attention to the forlorn figure of the stunned American officer to his front.
Checking that the other group of Americans had been beaten down by the armoured car, he rose from his position and beckoned his men into loose line behind him.
The SVT was nearly out of ammo so, he took up a PPS sub-machine from one of his dead engineers, grabbing two more magazines and stuffing them in his tunic pocket.
As he walked forward, he determined to shoot the American out of hand.
He waved casually at the approaching heavy tank, before its true purpose was clear.
That moment of realisation converted him back from an avenger into a reasonable and honourable man, and he rushed forward in an attempt to save the unknown enemy.
His wounded leg gave way, partially through its own weakness from the calf wound and partially through a grass clump that Chekov clipped hard.
He fell headfirst, bringing him to the same level as the glassy eyed American.
From about twenty yards distance, Chekov screamed at man and tank in turn, until the unforgiving tracks pressed across the back of the American’s thighs, reducing them to a bloody pulp.
The engineer blazed away at the still living, screaming rag doll, its flesh and bone inextricably joined with the metal tracks. He missed and the submachine gun fell silent. In horror, Chekov fumbled with a spare magazine as the awful apparition was lifted up at the back of the tank and fed into the top running gear legs first.
The track dragged the squealing American through the gap between itself and the hull, carving, peeling and snapping unrelentingly. Chekov fired the whole magazine and bullets struck home, the suffering mercifully ended, the mangled remains falling away at the front of the tank.
The IS-II drove on, heading for the Americans who had charged the village.
He watched as five of his men ran forward waving their arms, the distinctively tall Iska amongst them waving just the one good arm. They were trying to obstruct the leviathan’s progress, risking their lives to turn it aside to save the petrified wounded men on the ground.
It did turn, heading off down the road it had come up earlier that morning.
Chekov recovered his feet and reloaded. He could not take his eyes off the gory remains of the officer destroyed by the IS-II.
Nothing he had ever seen was more awful.
His men moved on, checking every body.
One of them stood over a shallow depression and started calling his comrades, slipping more rounds into his rifle as he shouted.
Chekov called for him to wait and he painfully hobbled over to where his man had found a survivor.
The large bald-headed American soldier was clearly in excruciating pain, his right leg snapped at mid-calf and virtually at right angles to its proper position, sharp bone protruding from the open wound.
Other obvious injuries included the upper right arm and a superficial but messy chest wound.
The IS-II’s HE shell had done the extra work on Collins.
Chekov looked down at the man and decided that there had been enough killing for today.
More soldiers arrived to assist in the fight, and a medical unit was called over, the American being placed in their hands.
As the wounded man was lifted carefully onto a stretcher, he turned his head to Chekov.
“Spassiba Comrade.”
Chekov smiled. ‘Close enough Amerikan, close enough.’
“Dosvidanya Amerikan.”
Chekov stumbled and limped over to the village, where he noted Iska and the ancient truck driver in animated conversation about the battle, occasionally interrupted by the medics at work. The former was receiving medical attention from a male doctor and his companion seemed to be relishing having his head bandaged by a wonderfully attractive young nurse.
Their laughter was infectious and by the time Chekov got to them, he was smiling for no reason whatsoever.
Clearly the two had acquired a bond somewhere along the line and he would enquire later, but for now, he had to look after his men.
Iska formally introduced him to the old soldier and dismissed Chekov’s concern at his wound. Making sure both Pavel Iska and Pyotr Harunin were fine, for that was the old man’s name apparently, the commander did the rounds of his battered troops.
‘13th Guards Rifle Division? Who would have thought that?’
Silence fell across the valley and the gutter fight that had been the Battle of Trendelburg came to a final close.
Chapter 52 – THE FRENCH
Deception, in order to be fully effective, must be practised upon friend and enemy in equal measure.
Eisenhower had been awake for some time, woken from his light slumber by an agitated orderly summoning him to a crisis in the making.
Without shaving or washing, he had responded and discovered that his enemy had not slept and had used the worst thunderstorms in a hundred years to mask assaults along a broad front.
The phone lines were humming as his senior commanders called in with situation reports, more often than not negative reports describing enemy progress and allied units being pushed back.
Now, as morning really took hold, there seemed to be a surreal pause in operations. Almost as if the enemy were collectively taking a breather and gathering themselves for another effort.
Up to the lull, there had been little good news and a lot of bad. The recently confirmed loss of Trendelburg meant that the American units on the Weser had only one route to escape by, and Eisenhower confirmed with both Bradley and Tedder that this route would be preserved and defended at all costs.