The supporting T-34’s enjoyed a period of immunity, pumping shell after shell into the British positions and receiving no reply of note.
An engineer Lieutenant pushed his men forward, bringing them in a rush to the edge of the Guards positions, before he fell and the charge wilted. The badly wounded officer was carried back by willing hands, very happy to be moving away from the field of horrors.
Fires were burning everywhere now, grenades and the growing arrival of mortar shells from both sides, creating a desolate environment of destruction, often masked by smoke.
Occasionally, the screams of a wounded man reached by the spreading fires, assaulted the ears of men who could do no more than block the sound, and hope that whoever it was died quickly.
Lieutenant Colonel Arsevin had ridden out from Langwedel, determined to observe the secondary assault, ready to order his main force into the attack.
His binoculars revealed a hellish scene, as the hillock and surrounding woods blazed, his eyes fixed on a moving figure, uniform streaming flame as he ran from the field, unrecognisable as friend or foe, so involved in fire was the screaming man.
Arsevin watched as tracers from both sides swept the ground on a mission of mercy, seeking the man out, finding him, and ending his misery.
Closer to his position, the Penal Company was having a hard time, their numbers thinned by machine guns and mortars, their tank support obviously in trouble against enemy guns of some power, judging by the ease with which the T-34’s were being killed.
For a moment, he considered calling off the diversion, the waste of men and vehicles appalling him.
The thought vanished as he dived into his scout car seeking safety, bullets striking his armoured vehicle, as a sharp-eyed enemy soldier saw an opportunity from the small hill to his left.
Another man, armed solely with a revolver, also saw the camouflaged scout car secrete itself behind a small farm building.
Consulting his map, he spoke into his radio. Receiving an acknowledgement, he returned to his observations to await the results.
The British battery fired one full salvo. He had decided to range one gun would scare the Soviet General away, assuming it was the enemy commander he was shooting at.
The first shell to arrive struck the floor of the lend-lease scout car seven inches to the right of Arsevin, exploding on contact.
Lieutenant Poulter, formerly of 662 AOP Sqdn, grunted in self-congratulation, as the enemy vehicle flew in all directions, the 4.5” shell dismantling it totally, and in the most brutal fashion.
Payback for his beloved Auster aircraft, long since smashed down by Soviet fighters. He had been lucky to escape that action, but was almost enjoying his time on the ground as an artillery observation officer attached to 153rd Field Regiment.
The five surviving 4.5” guns of the virtually destroyed 79th Medium Regiment RA had found a home with the 153rd, becoming an additional battery, and the one to which he had given the task of engaging the enemy command element.
It was some time before Major Dubestnyi realised his colonel was dead, and that he had command.
When he found himself in charge he immediately ordered the Siberian battalion’s to assault down Muhlenstraβe.
The artillery observers had more targets than guns with which to fire.
Poulter’s fellow officer called in a savage barrage, smashing into the enemy infantry that suddenly emerged from the woods to his south, stopping them in their tracks, as high-explosive dismembered and destroyed frail bodies.
Poulter himself selected an area in which he had seen enemy armour on the move, dropping his 4.5” shells on the northern outskirts of Langwedel.
Close by, a Vickers of the Independent Machine Gun Company opened up, its barrel streaming unwelcomed tracers, attracting attention on itself.
Disgusted with the stupidity of the infantry, the artillery OP team stripped down their radios and prepared to move away.
Captain Ganzin, commanding the mortars of the 67th, selected his own target and ordered a swift barrage, before moving his mortars to another position.
Soviet 81mm mortars dropped their lethal shells over a small area, silencing two of the IMGC’s heavy weapons and killing their crews.
Relocating, Ganzin spared time to look through his binoculars and saw nothing but the dead.
On the hillock, Poulter struggled to get upright, his clearing vision informing him that his fellow officer was dead, decapitated, and eviscerated by high explosives.
The radios were smashed, the two operators beyond help.
The RA Bombardier who had kept all their spirits up with his jokes and lewd stories, was gently coughing his last few moments away, his lower jaw destroyed, and his throat laid open by shrapnel.
Surveying his own body, he counted his legs and came up one short.
“I say, that’s rotten luck.”
His comment was to no one in particular, the bombardier having crossed over into permanent darkness.
His battledress was blown open, revealing patches of disfigured flesh below, trophies of another dice with death.
Beyond the shrivelled old wounds, he saw a steady pulsing of blood coming from his crotch, indicating a severe bleed.
Momentarily panicking, he tried to reach in order to feel his treasured possession, realising that the act was beyond him.
A further check of his arms revealed his left hand all but severed, hanging by a few strips of skin and sinew.
His right arm seemed to be there, and seemed intact. It was just unresponsive, broken by the impact of his fellow officers binoculars, propelled by the explosion that claimed the man’s head.
“Blast it. Well, that’s bloody unfortunate, I must say.”
Poulter bled to death within a minute.
The experienced Siberians of the 2nd Battalion had gone head first into hell.
Their task was to cut a diagonal route, hitting the modest ridge above the main road, securing the flank for the 3rd Battalion to concentrate all its efforts on securing the small crossing.
The Allied artillery had wiped away many a veteran of years of fighting, pieces of men flying in all directions, as the unit attacked on a narrow front.
Urged on by the surviving officers, the soldiers of the 2nd Battalion charged forward, pressing closer to the defenders, where the artillery would fear to touch them.
Their opponents, the German 58th Grenadieres, launched everything they had at the easy targets, dropping men to the ground with a mixture of modern MG42’s to vintage Maxim’s, taken from the Red Army in 1941.
Major Dubestnyi, slowly realising that he was out of his depth, ordered the Battalion commanders deputy to drive his men forward, failing to understand that another of the regiment’s experienced officers had fallen.
Clearing his mind, he thought back to the plan, reliving the simple presentation.
The mortars.
‘Yes of course’.
Then the tanks.
‘Yes, Yes.’
Ordering his Gaz jeep to move off, he bore down on the OP of the mortar unit, intent on wiping the enemy off the ridge to his front.
The artillery that had claimed his commander had also dealt roughly with the observation team, his arrival unnoticed as the two bloodied survivors worked on the damaged radio.
Extracting his map, he spoke quickly with the senior survivor, a Lieutenant whose eardrums had been shattered by a close shell.
Writing out his orders for the deaf man, he succeeded in getting his message across.