Opening Moves

Whilst Zhukov was not overly concerned with Montgomery’s limited skills as a commander, he welcomed the confusion and disruption the death would bring to the British, Free and Commonwealth forces.

In actual fact, the report was at error and Montgomery was not dead but was severely wounded. However, the net effect was the same and 21st Army Group was temporarily leaderless.

“Very well Major Yassin. We will move to the operations room now.”

Zhukov and Malinin walked briskly from the salon as the clock moved remorselessly to 0530.

0531 hrs Monday, 6th August 1945, Sterninghofen Bridge, US Occupied Lower Austria.

The message sent by General Clark had reached many ears in the all too short time between its sending and the Soviet attack. Unfortunately, some ears remained deaf to its message and many a young allied soldier died at his post for no other reason than his superior did not believe the report or refused to act in a precipitous fashion.

Along the European divide, allied soldiers tumbled from their slumber as the Soviet attack rolled in close, often not preceded by artillery in order to permit the infantry to get close without warning. Once contact ensued then Soviet artillery was mainly used on rear-line and artillery positions.

Nothing the allied soldiers had experienced in their war with the Germans had prepared them for the intensity and ferocity of what the Soviet artillery could bring down upon them.

In some areas, American and British tanks received under the lend-lease scheme and marked up appropriately led the Soviet advance in an attempt to get through the first-line and onto an important second or rear-line location.

The tanks that had been seen by Uhlmann and Braun in the Persenbeug sidings were M-10 Tank Destroyers marked as 1st US Armored Division, but which were actually crewed by experienced tankers from a company of 63rd Cavalry Division, 5th Guards Cavalry Corps.

They ground down the road from their staging area west of Seitenstetten, heading west on the road to Steyr with all lights blazing and American-speaking personnel to talk their way through any roadblocks.

At the Sterninghofen Bridge over the Enns River, their self-propelled guns were waved through a checkpoint manned by American soldiers of 305th Combat Engineer Battalion, 80th US Infantry Division. Four Studebaker 6x6 trucks followed closely.

With perfect timing, the sky lit up as Soviet artillery commenced firing at its targets elsewhere. All awake American eyes were drawn to the display and none noticed the four trucks disgorge their malicious contents.

The assignment of this ill-fated platoon of the 305th had been to destroy the bridge on receipt of orders, or under the initiative of the Officer in charge as necessary.

That same Officer in charge was slumbering in his tent oblivious, and only woke up briefly as a strong hand clamped over his mouth and a blade ripped his throat open.

As the tanks took up their defensive positions, the Soviet Cossacks moved swiftly on foot through the area, dispatching the sleeping men in a wide variety of ways whose only common factor was silence. The sound of artillery was now rousing the slumberers but none offered any resistance and all were butchered where they lay.

Private First class Jan F. Podolski, one of the sentries on the prowl, had disappeared for a call of nature and so was missed by the systematic destruction of the engineer platoon. Emerging from behind a thick bush, he saw swiftly moving silent shapes. Despite his youth and lack of experience, he immediately grasped what was going on and pulled his weapon off his shoulder. With remarkably steady hands, he took rough aim at the nearest figure, which was crouched down, back towards him. Podolski got off an eight round clip from his Garand before he was cut down by a hail of bullets from PPSH sub-machine guns. He had dropped Yefreytor Alexey Passov to the ground where he bled his life out quickly, shot through the neck, groin, and thigh.

Both were only nineteen years of age.

In the perverse way that history does these things, the 80th US Infantry Division had been credited with firing the final shot of the Second World War in Europe and it had now probably fired the first shot of the new ground war.

The bridge was inspected for explosives and the experienced Captain in charge ordered a second and third inspection before he accepted that none had been laid.

The discovery of a cache of explosives in the rear of one of the American trucks evidenced the omission.

With the bridge intact, the follow-up forces of 32nd Rifle Corps and 220th Independent Tank Brigade could drive straight into and through Steyr.

All along the thin lines the Soviet forces broke through, sometimes with no resistance, others fiercely contested.

Advances were made on every assault, of which there were a total of twenty-one independent main attacks from Sterninghofen in the south to Selmsdorf on the Baltic.