Opening Moves

Chekov winced at the memory of the gun firing and his men being mown down, not knowing that the 37mm carried by the Stuart could fire a canister round that acted like a high powered shotgun, carving swathes through the defenders on both sides of the river.

More friendly forces were now arriving on both sides of the bridge, and even a platoon of his own engineers rushed in, looking for their comrades.

Their relief at finding some alive turned to shock and anger at the number of their comrades that had been killed and wounded.

Fighting was still going on to the east and to the west but Trendelburg itself had fallen silent.

Medical orderlies started to bring relief to the wounded. Chekov waved away one who approached him, deciding to go in search of survivors on the east bank.

He walked the bridge as best he could, sharp pains in his hip and with a stiffening leg, and looked down seeking the living amongst the piles of dead and finding none.

There was Leytenant Munin, laid open by canister shot, the man who had received news of becoming a father on the night of the great attack.

As if the corpse could hear him, Chekov gave him his promise.

‘Your son will hear of the man that was his father Andrey. Thank you.’

His engineers lay everywhere he looked and it was more than he could bear.

Moving to the south edge of the bridge to avoid the scrutiny of the medics working amongst his dead, his watery eyes found the body of Neltsin.

‘Not you too Mikhail my old comrade?’

He literally sagged onto the side of the bridge, his sight filled with the horrible vision of his senior non-com and fighting comrade of many battles lying disembowelled on the bank.

He became aware of a presence and turned to see a smoke-blackened Serzhant standing next to him, taking in the same vision as he.

“Is there anyone left Comrade Lieutenant Colonel?”

Chekov turned again to the man, eyebrows wrinkled in concentration.

“Iska? Serzhant Iska?”

“Yes Comrade Lieutenant Colonel, it is me, minus a bit here and there.”

Chekov now noted the new bandages in place.

“Can you walk Pavel Stefanovich?”

Even after everything that had happened since they reached the bridge, Iska was taken aback by his commander’s use of his names.

“Yes Comrade Lieutenant Colonel, I can walk.”

With one last look at the remains of Neltsin, Chekov turned and headed east.

“Come Iska, let us see what mischief our Comrade Smina visited upon the Amerikanisti.”

The two walked silently, both suffering from leg wounds, and by the time they had reached the US mortar positions six more east-bank engineer survivors had joined them.

With professional eyes, they looked at the work of Smina and his assault force.

It was Iska who found the body, features unrecognisable, rank markings and bodily size alone giving voice to the identity.

Chekov and the others were attracted to the animal like sound that was escaping Iska’s mouth.

“What’s this, what’s this?”

Chekov was stunned.

Iska had fallen silent.

“You saw him captured you said, you saw him taken alive you said.”

It was not an accusation even though it sounded like one. It was a man avoiding the bitter truth crafted by his own eyes.

“They fucking killed him, fucking executed him!” howled Iska, “Bastards!”

The Lieutenant Colonel, not for the first time that day, drew deeply on the sodden smoky air and took hold of himself.

“No Comrade Serzhant Iska.”

He pointed sharply at the river behind him.

“THAT…. back there….that was killing, THAT was execution. THIS…” he turned back and swept his hand over the corpse of his best officer, “THIS was murder!”

Moving forward to where a dead enemy officer lay, still with pistol in hand, Chekov grabbed the man’s jacket and rolled the corpse over, the badly damaged left arm flopping grotesquely, shattered bone protruding through the material of his jacket.

Chekov produced a knife and pulled on the divisional insignia, tainted with the dead man’s blood.

He separated it from the jacket with a few twists of his blade.

“Comrades, each of you take one of these. There are plenty about here. We will meet these men again and when we do, there will be a bloody vengeance for our comrades.”

He looked more closely at the black triangular patch, with a strange pattern of golden orange straight lines and circles, and spat on it with real venom and malice.

It was to the bloody inanimate patch he spoke as far as an observer could see, but in his mind he spoke to Kapitan Smina and Leytenant Munin, his dead engineers at the bridge and to Starshina Mikhail Neltsin, his friend.

“We will meet again and there will be a reckoning.”

0620 hrs Saturday, 11th August 1945, Stammen Heights, Germany.

The American defenders of Trendelburg had melted away, helped in their escape by a renewed downpour.

That same surge in rainfall prematurely concluded the exchange between the Sherman’s on the rise at Deiselberg and the IS-II’s’s and ISU-152’s on the east bank of the Diemel.