Opening Moves

Leaving the vehicle and would-be mechanics to the job, she decided to go for a walk, as this was the first time she had stretched her legs since leaving the military hospital at Kirchgellersen where she had interrogated a severely wounded British Intelligence Colonel. Pekunin’s decision to send her personally had been the correct one as the man had died this very evening, but not before Tatiana had garnered some interesting and important information.

As she walked, Nazarbayeva watched the small unit of bridging engineers who had already placed out barriers preventing anyone from using their bridge while they set to repairing the damage from the air attack.

Nazarbayeva paused to watch them at work, assessing the time they would take. Moving on, she walked past the stubs of a larger wooden bridge that had been knocked down during the fighting a few days beforehand.

All around her the detritus of war was still randomly spread, plainly marking the location as one on which blood had been prodigiously spilt.

Rough graves interring Soviet soldiers lay close to those where the enemy were obviously buried, all committed near to where they fell.

A blackened hull of a destroyed T-34 tank stood silent guarding the watercourse, a ruined burnt-out jeep pushed into the nearby bushes.

The other side of the river stood a number of large trucks, smashed and rent, each with its own crop of markers depicting the unfortunates who had died.

All around the site the ground had been scarred by high-explosives, the fields seemingly despoiled by the work of huge moles.

Tatiana walked along the bank of the river, walking around the shell holes, trying to read the battlefield.

She followed the bend around, finding ammunition, belts and helmets in large quantities.

In a large shell hole were the obvious signs of a temporary aid post, with blood stained bandages and torn clothing in thick piles.

A shattered rifle, obviously American, lay sundered on the rim.

She followed the river round to where the visible indications of multiple grenade bursts covered the ground.

A very obvious corpse lay in the bushes on the other side, a cloud of flies rising and descending, feeding on the decaying flesh. The uniform was that of the Red Army. She promised herself that she would order the engineers to remedy the situation and bury this unknown hero of the Motherland once back to the bridge.

She stopped and looked around her, recognising the shallow depressions as filled-in trenches and foxholes. She concluded that this was an American defensive position, and decided to walk it with a professional eye.

As she strode past the first foxhole, her good foot connected with a stone in the grass. She bent down to pick it up, intending to send it into the water.

However, this ‘stone’ was manufactured in the US of A, as it was a Mk II Fragmentation grenade, placed ready for use beside the foxhole by the former American occupant.

Inspecting the grenade, Tatiana could see no problems with it and slipped it into her pocket as a deadly souvenir.

She continued her walk, professionally assessing the signs of intense combat, interpreting the marks of violence, imagining a rush of feet here and a last stand there until her reverie was broken by shouting from her security officer, beckoning her to return to the vehicle.

Pausing only to commend the Mladshy Leytenant for his speedy repair and apprise him of the unrecovered remains, she mounted the GAZ and continued the journey back to GRU Headquarters.

1807 hrs Sunday 12th August 1945, Headquarters of SHAEF, Trianon Hotel, Versailles, France.

Eisenhower was worried, or more accurately, concerned because he wasn’t worried as much as had been the case the past week. Across the whole front Russian attacks had now stopped, with the sole exception of Hamburg. Report after report from frontline units spoke of enemy units halting, as if exhausted. All except Hamburg. The situation was unclear and a report from McCreery was due at any time.

The plan to bomb the potential enemy reserve sites had been put together well and received Ike’s wholehearted endorsement, although Soviet night fighters had been in the air in large numbers the previous night and the British had sustained unusually heavy losses, damaging the intended operations for that evening. None the less, the brave crews would go out again, bolstered by bomber training squadrons and every night fighter unit in the Allied inventory.

The arrival of more operation ground-attack assets was another fillip to a General under great pressure.

However, as always, there was a balance. A Soviet submarine had sunk another troop carrier off the south coast of Eire with great loss of life. She was the Empire Windrush, formerly known as the Monte Rosa of the Hamburg-Sud Company, carrying over two thousand young replacement troops to the British and Canadian armies in the field.