“Quartermaster from Broadsword Blue Leader. Enemy armoured force, approximately two miles northeast of Barnstorf, straddling Route five-one. Strength approximately two divisions, advancing south-west at speed, over.”
A number of ears had heard the message, so no repeat was required.
“Roger Broadsword Blue leader…”
Hall’s world went white in an instant.
A Soviet 85mm AA gun had fired a single speculative shot, the shell set to explode at a greater height.
None the less, the lump of metal passed straight through the aircraft, touching only one thing of significance; the radio’s wiring.
Unable to contact ‘Broadsword’, or his flight, Hall waggled his wings and used hand gestures to pass on his orders.
The four aircraft formed line astern, Hall in the lead, and they dived upon the large Soviet force, the weather noticeably closing in once more.
Selecting the head of the column, Hall thumbed the button, sending eight RP3 rockets into the massed target.
Each rocket took lives and smashed vehicles, so concentrated were the lead echelons of the 3rd Guards Mechanised Corps.
Wallace followed on a slightly different line, diving lower still and adding his RP3’s to the destruction. A secondary explosion, brought about by one of Hall’s rockets, threw the Typhoon off track, and the Flight Sergeant caught a horrified, yet fascinating, glimpse as the body of one of the enemy soldiers flew high into the air, almost matching his height above the battlefield.
Full power and a rising stick took the Typhoon away from the sight, turning to port after his leader, the pitter-patter sounds of metal on metal showing that the lighter AA weapons were wide-awake and focussed.
Next in was Blue Three. McKenzie, the boy wonder, placed his rockets in the centre of the lead elements, wasting not one ounce of HE, flicking up and away to starboard to confuse the enemy gunners.
Blue Four, newly arrived with 182, an experienced Polish flyer, whose name was virtually unpronounceable, attacked and fired off his own rockets, even as the 37mm ZSU’s caught him in a cone of fire.
The Typhoon kept on diving, adding Pilot Officer Jan Siesztrzewitowski and his aircraft to the destruction on the ground.
McKenzie and Siesztrzewitowski had made a huge contribution to the Allied defence, the dead and dying they left in their wake belonging to the irreplaceable 77th Engineer Brigade.
Hall elected to make a second pass before the weather closed in all together, and lined up his aircraft for another run.
Yarishlov’s request for additional AA weapons had brought much of the 3rd Guards Mechanised’s self-propelled mounts forward, and Hall paid the price of the increased firepower, his aircraft struck numerous times by the proliferation of ZSU-37’s in the Soviet force.
Breaking off the attack, he could feel the difference in his aircraft, the normally powerful Sabre engine leaden, the manoeuvring worrying solid.
Hall screamed, first in terror, then in pain.
Two 37mm cannon shells struck his aircraft, immediately behind his seat, one passing through, the second exploding behind his seat, sending pieces of metal into his exposed side. The agony in his side suddenly secondary, as a heavy machine-gun bullet punched through the canopy and clipped his head.
Losing consciousness for a few seconds, he was unaware of other strikes on his aircraft. Although none was fatal, the Typhoon was a flying wreck.
Coming round and orienting himself, Hall knew he was badly hurt. Even though his vision was obscured by blood, the impairment did not stop him from seeing the gauges screaming their bad news, nor did it stop him from seeing or smelling the light blue smoke that began to fill the cockpit.
Thankful for the intact compass, the wounded pilot turned for home, hoping that his men would follow.
Wallace was already out of the fight, his aircraft clawed from the sky even as he lined it up for a second pass, his parachute opening just in time to prevent serious injury.
The Typhoon crashed into a small lake adjacent to the Am Sandhügel road, no trace of its presence left, save a few floating dead fish.
McKenzie, as ever the aggressive pilot, rapidly dropped lower, the streams of tracers missing by nearly a hundred feet above, the fuselage of the ground attack aircraft barely fifty feet above the ground. He fired, the Hispano cannons lashing out, chewing up men and vehicles, occasionally rewarded with a spectacular fiery display as something reacted badly to the stream of shells.
Pulling away, a single heavy-machine gun bullet struck his propeller, the change in note and handling instant and worrying.
Behind, McKenzie had left two of the ZSU’s in flames, and eighty infantry and their transports out of the fight.
Turning for home, the young pilot, concerned by the weather closing in rapidly, increased his revs.
The damaged propeller protested, and he throttled back once more, losing height again, as he swept back towards Barnstorf.
In the strange light, the situation was clear, and obviously desperate.
The Soviet spearhead was approaching a huge hole, some three hundred or so yards from the rail bridge.
A cursory look at the river line showed McKenzie that the other bridges in the area were down, and that the Soviets were focussing on the rail bridge.
His eyes focussed on that bridge, straining to understand the nature of the pile on the centre. That understanding came in an instant, and he made his decision just as quickly, pulling back on the stick, rising rapidly, before side slipping to port and turning for the attack.
Yarishlov and Deniken had made their way over the bridge to the east bank, pausing for a moment to watch the engineer officer at work, delicately ensuring that no booby-traps were present, whilst painfully aware that the 3rd Guards Mechanised and 22nd Guards Rifle Corps were waiting on his best efforts.
Realising that their presence was placing increased pressure on the man, the two senior officers moved on.
Both men had seen combat in all its horrible manifestations, but what confronted them at the mound exceeded their experience.
The defenders had been overwhelmed after a bloody fight, a bestial affair that had left dead and dying men everywhere.
After receiving a report from an exhausted Starshina, the two followed the shocked man around the positions, seeing men locked in rigid positions, dead, and yet seeming still fighting each other.
Occasionally, a blackened pile transformed in the beholder’s imagination, the mass suddenly identifiable as men burned beyond recognition.
The smoke was sweet and sickly, and had a smell that clung to verything it touched.
The Starshina stopped, feeling the need to identify one such abomination.
“That is my Major, Comrades. He was assisting these two wounded men when the flamethrower tank exploded.”
There was no sign of the flamethrower tank in question, not that either officer dwelt to look for it.
The group of three burned men was more than awful enough to distract them, and they moved silently away.
A thudding sound caught their attention; regular, worrying, awful.
A Soviet soldier holding his spade continued to smash the skull of the cadaver he was kneeling on, the heavy blade now cutting into the shoulders, having destroyed everything down to that point.
The Scotsman’s rifle was still in his hand, its bayonet through the throat of the Guardsman’s brother, whose sightless eyes bore witness to the terrible indignations being visited on his killer’s corpse.
Deniken gently took hold of the man’s wrist, the wild eyes challenging him for an instant, until the moment drained from him, and he collapsed in tears.
Leaving the Starshina to get the man moving, the two moved on.