Opening Moves

Ordering the mortars to increase their rate of fire, Shvpaghin ensured that the artillery bathed the Horsdorf Bridge with smoke. 1015th were then ordered forward with the IS-II’s in close support.

A small trail of smoke reached out from a previously unseen position on the north bank adjacent to the bridge, touching the lead T-70 and transforming it in a hearse, the occupants killed instantly as the panzerfaust struck home.

The second light tank fired down the line of the smoke and was rewarded with obvious strikes on enemy soldiers as pieces of bodies flew backwards.

They were still firing as a second smoke trail terminated accurately on the front of their turret, killing the commander and gunner instantly.

The attack stalled once more.

In the centre, the 1015th fared much better. The mortars had beaten down much of the machine gun fire initially directed at them and the smoke barrage was very effective in masking them from enemy fire.

However, 25-pdr fragmentation rounds started to arrive and casualties mounted.

Shvpaghin’s joy disappeared as swiftly as it arrived when the report from his artillery officer stated that the smoke rounds would be consumed within three minutes.

He looked through his binoculars and weighed up the ground. It could be done.

“Order Banov to charge, full tilt. Smoke is nearly gone and he must close. He must close!”

The order was dispatched straight away and the Colonel saw a discernable increase in speed spread through the attacking lines of infantry. The heavy tanks put on a spurt and drew level with the rear of their infantry comrades.

Gripping his binoculars tightly, Shvpaghin watched as the first wave of infantry started to melt away, victims of desultory fire from the other bank. Enemy artillery was still killing but it was not as accurate as before.

It was working.

“Smoke expended Comrade Colonel,” came the report but he did not hear it, watching, and concentrating as his second wave ran over the first and reached the riverbank.

Checking his mortars were still giving the enemy machine-guns hell, he switched back at the time that the smoke first started to dissipate. Within a minute, the artillery was more accurately laid and a direct strike from a high-explosive shell wrecked the lead IS-II’s engine, starting a fire that produced oily black smoke to add to the fading smokescreen. The driver staggered out to be shot down by a grinning German youth wielding a Kar98k.

In the Colonel’s vision he could see the men of his second wave, dead and dying, struggling in the water, or hugging the earth in whatever scrape in the ground they found themselves. Grenades were being thrown back and forth, doing the grim reaper’s work without distinction.

Conscious of the fate of the two T-70’s, the heavy tankers were holding back.

He ordered the commander of 27th Tanks to press on regardless, to support his infantry, and close Malkendorf. The order was not acknowledged, causing him to turn and examine the burning IS-II more closely.

“B’lyad!” he shouted and spat with all his might after delivering his favourite expletive.

“Contact the tank regiment’s deputy. Get them fucking moving!”

The third and fourth waves were bunching up, repeating the error of the failed flank attack but this time little MG fire herded them and the artillery caused fewer casualties.

The HAC, positioned just North-west of Rohlsdorf had been spotted by Soviet air-reconnaissance and counter-battery fire was arriving, forcing both of the troops to relocate, and not without loss in men and guns.

The IS-II’s started forward again, first company deploying into formation ready to cross the bridge, the second company moving to the left to provide support if needed, with the third taking the right-hand position with the same brief.

Each of the companies had lost two tanks for various reasons en route to Malkendorf and so a total of fifteen 122mm guns prepared to destroy anything that opposed them.

Behind the lead company came the 2-I-C’s T-34, the rest of the regiments support troops remaining out of harm’s way.

Fairbairn-Banks wiped the blood from the lenses of his binoculars and tried not to look at the padre, whom the finger of his god had selected as the sole casualty of a short shell from the HAC’s guns. The pious man had been kneeling in prayer in the churchyard when a defective charge propelled a High Explosive round from a 25-pdr barrel less distance than intended, dropping it neatly in front of the padre just as the Lieutenant Colonel was moving position.

‘Barney’ could not help the wry thought.

‘Perhaps it was a miracle that there was enough of the man left to carry in a blanket.’

None the less, he had been a likeable man and a popular replacement for old Father O’Reilly whose heart had given out in Normandy.