Opening Moves

Prior to moving forward into the valley, Yartsov surveyed the ground. His route of advance took him between two heights, with the River Feldaist running down the eastern flank, and a few small brooks running off it towards the western heights. His prime route headed south-west, over two small bridges.

The ground was undulating with hollows and raised areas in equal measure.

What troubled Yartsov was the scant cover available and he quickly decided to get through the potential killing zone as quickly as possible.

Mounting his men back into their vehicles, he summoned the recon force commander and gave him his orders.

He received the news of the Shturmoviks attack on the allied tanks with mixed feelings. If the air force had killed them all as they claimed then that would be just fine with him, but he knew how excitable fliers could get so he expected tanks in his way very soon. However, more air support should be available to cater for that if necessary and the large column of smoke coming from behind the hills could even mean that the claims were correct although it seemed closer than the location given by his regimental commander. In their joy, the airmen had falsely stated that the destruction of the American tank regiment had been to the south-west of Gallneukirchen.

That error contributed much to what then came to pass, especially as Yartsov, unusually and fatally seeing what he wanted to see, wrongly attributed the presence of track marks on the road to the destroyed company withdrawing ahead of his advance. A view he supported with information gained from an Austrian police officer in Lasberg, regarding the swift movement south of a group of American tanks, and by observing the hastily abandoned and churned up site where the 11th’s troops had laagered overnight.

Sat in his Gaz67 4x4, he moved slowly along behind his lead elements as they pressed forward, taking the south-west road out of Kefermarkt.

His soldiers, preceded by a hastily designed artillery barrage, moved forward slowly in their hotchpotch of vehicles. American lorries and halftracks were mixed in with their own Gaz and Zis vehicles.

Two SU-57 halftracks mounted 57mm anti-tank guns, and these were both immediately behind him where he could more easily direct them.

As they moved further south, he was pleased to see that the barrage had not knocked out any of the bridges on his route of advance. He indicated to his driver to pull over at a junction just in before the second of these bridges and surveyed the heights to his right and left.

His lead recon element was halted at the Wittinghof road junction, the young officer standing bold and proud in the turret of his BA64 armoured car. A second element was on the east road, level with the same road junction.

A perfect place for an ambush for sure but air had reported nothing, except for the tanks and infantry they had savaged south of Gallneukirchen. The commanding general had been satisfied with that and refused permission for Yartsov to wait for armoured support just in case the Americans still had fight, especially as Gallneukirchen was nearly ten kilometres away.

Like most general officers Adam had met in the last few weeks, his own commander was contemptuous of the Americans ability to fight. As a frontline soldier, he decided he would wait until the experience had come and gone before judging.

Still, orders were orders, and so he did not halt his battalion as it advanced, despite his misgivings, although he did harry the new young officer and ordered the recon platoon on a surge forward, instructing the commanders to pay close attention to the silent heights on either side and the woods to their front.

Preparing to give the order to move forward behind his two SP halftracks, Yartsov took one final sweep and almost missed a small movement on the corner of his vision as he ended looking east. Focussing his binoculars immediately on that spot, he saw nothing except a cleared area of woods and fallen tree trunks. As his eyes bored in on the spot he saw another movement and he knew what was about to come.

He had no time to shout before the sound of an explosion rose above the sound of vehicle engines, and all eyes were drawn to the BA-64 armoured car of the recon officer burning fiercely on the edge of the woods ahead. The second BA-64 was already reversing as fast as it could go, before finding a small area of dead ground to conceal itself in. Mortars found it in an instant and made it a victim of the previous night’s preparations, for the American weapons were all nicely zeroed in on numerous points throughout the valley floor.

Machine guns started hammering from the direction of Wittinghof and the nearby woods, and his men started to go down. More mortars started to land to the east side of his strung out convoy whereas the heights to his west stayed silent.

The east side recon element was not moving, thin wisps of smoke escaping the lend-lease scout car, betraying its fate.