Opening Moves

The man next to O’Malley’s right side grunted and slithered down lifelessly into his foxhole as a bullet effortlessly blew the back of his head off and sent his helmet careening off to the rear.

The smoke closed in again just as the Soviets reached the water’s edge but there was no respite in the fire from the defenders, firing blind, killing and wounding the unseen enemy to their front.

O’Malley saw the flare reach its zenith before the smoke, moved by another breeze, engulfed his position completely.

Deniken grimaced as he ran, noting the bad luck as the smoke parted. His men were going down under accurate fire and there was little he could do except press forward with them.

Pausing to shoulder his rifle, he fired a shot and was rewarded with a helmet flipping away and the enemy dropping into his hole.

Deniken was an officer and, as such, should not carry a rifle, but he was an excellent marksman and his skills had sent many a German to his grave.

Encouraging his second wave forward, he sprinted for the water, snatching an empty petrol can from the dead fingers of a Russian soldier lying at the water’s edge.

He looked south towards the spot where Grabin was concealed and was rewarded immediately by the sight of a green flare lazily floating back to earth.

Try as he might, he could not hear the roar of tank engines and uttered a silent prayer to his mother’s god that the unknown tankers were competent after all.

As he dove into the water, he heard the crack of 85mm guns and knew they had joined the battle.

With rifle slung across his shoulders and using the petrol can as a buoyancy aid, he doggy paddled as best he could for the far bank, all the while bullets whipped like wasps around the struggling men.

He heard a distinct plop in the water beside him before his world went white and he was tossed skywards.

As the smoke concealed the attackers once more, O’Malley shouted at his men to throw grenades.

These flew from hands and dropped, some in the water and some on the banks.

One trooper was shot in the act of throwing, a random bullet emerging from the smoke and wrecking his wrist. The grenade dropped from useless fingers into the foxhole he shared with his buddy, neither of whom could escape before both died bloodily in a storm of shrapnel.

Screams could be heard as Soviet infantry endured similar deaths and mutilations in the smoke.

The wind started to gather strength and the smoke screen, no longer added to by mortars shells, moved at a walking pace to the northeast. Unfortunately for the defenders and attackers alike, the smoke from the blazing watermill now engulfed them, adding its acrid toxic fumes to those generated by the discharge of weapons and high explosives.

A bullet fanned past O’Malley’s head, kissing the helmet lightly.

He turned slightly left and saw an indistinct figure that he almost cut in half with a burst of .30 cal, the body immediately jerking backwards under the impacts, and was immediately replaced by another struggling shape that received the same treatment.

His eyes streaming from the mill smoke, O’Malley sensed rather than saw the grenade land adjacent to his foxhole and ducked as fast as he could. The man to his left did not hear his shout and was tossed against the side of his foxhole by the force of the explosion, surprisingly unscathed except for a ruptured eardrum.

The young trooper calmly changed magazines on his carbine, launching more bullets into the shapes in the smoke, rewarded with the occasional scream.

As O’Malley emerged from his hole in time to see the young trooper’s death. He was amazed to see him alive but his shout of congratulations was strangled as a stream of sub-machine gun bullets reached indiscriminately out of the smoke and destroyed the man’s face and neck.

Sprayed with blood, the Corporal continued his killing like an automaton, noting his dwindling supply of ammunition.

Deniken came to staring at the grass, front teeth missing, lips split and nose bleeding from the impact as he came to earth face first, neatly scalped and leaking blood from where a lump of the grenade had come very close to ending his life.

The rest of his body was still in the water, bleeding from a number of small shrapnel wounds and bruised from the energy blow of the water displaced by high explosive.

Looking around he saw others on the bank, lying low or firing back, depending on the bravery of the individual.

Behind him others were struggling across the water as best they could, and yet others were still, never to move again.

He had no weapon, his rifle probably consigned to the bottom of the river.

Looking around he saw the remains of a Soviet soldier still clutching a Mosin-Nagant rifle with bayonet attached. Moving sluggishly to his left, he acquired the weapon and pocketed some ammunition, not bothering to wipe the detritus of death from it.