Impasse (The Red Gambit Series) (21 page)

Seconds later, he dropped back inside, his cheeks blowing out as he finished battling with his fear.

“
Good work, Killer.”

Whilst the loader had been outside, both Haines and Nellie had checked the firing mechanism and quickly came to the conclusion that the fault lay with the shell, not the gun.

“OK lads, drama over for now. Load up HVAP and be quick about it.”

The high-velocity armour-piercing shell was the best available to the Sherman crew when it came to killing other tanks.

“Target Sp to front... on!”

Nellie had decided that the big ones would go first.

“Fire!”

The Sherman rocked and another Soviet vehicle was hit.

“Over to you now, Nellie.”

Haines returned to his planning, surveying the positions taken by his Lancers and finding himself generally satisfied.

One tank seemed more forward than the others and certainly more exposed, its machine-guns hammering out in an effort to protect the retreating infantry.

A quick look through his binoculars confirmed which vehicle call sign it was.

‘Banshee.’

Switching to the squadron net, he keyed the mike.

The sudden huge fireball stopped him in his tracks, his mouth wide open, as the Sherman was literally torn apart by something huge and unforgiving.

A 152mm shell had simply demolished the vehicle.

His own tank jerked again, as Nellie replied in kind.

The target, another of the huge ISU-152s, stopped immediately and exhibited no signs of life.
No hatches were opened followed, no urgent scramble for survival apparent. No fire or smoke came from it. The leviathan was knocked out, its crew not dead, but all badly wounded, and definitely out of the fight.

Soviet
supporting mortar fire was being adjusted expertly and shells started to drop amongst the British infantry as they neared their second line positions.

Binoculars again pressed to his eyes, Haines swept the advancing enemy for some sign of the controllers. As the
snow continued to peter out, spotting the enemy vehicle proved to be easier than he had expected.

“
Nellie, see that halftrack with the antennas... two o’clock... tucked in behind that bush. HE and take it out.”

“
Still got aitch-vap in, Biffo. Next shot.”

Haines let it go.

Biffo was a nickname he had acquired because of his legendary capacity to get into scraps, normally with Allied contingents, and normally managing to drag his mates into matters against their will. Despite the frequent use of his fists to settle disputes over matters of signal insignificance between parties generally too ‘oiled’ to remember what started the fight, Haines’ combat and leadership qualities secured him promotion from the ranks and eventual command of a troop in, and then leadership of, B Squadron, 16th/5th Royal Lancers.

Oliphant
decided to aim the shell rather than just get rid of it.

A small enemy SP had come onto view
behind the halftrack and he put his shell into the superstructure, causing the vehicle to manoeuvre erratically, whilst seeking cover behind a farm building.

Killer slotted an HE shell home and it was quickly on its way for a fatal rendezvous with
the observer vehicle from the Soviet 10th Mountain Mortar Regiment.

The British infantry still lost men to the mortars but they remained unadjusted for some time, enough to ensure that the Rifle Brigade could get organised for phase two.

A Sherman disappeared in a huge fireball as another of the ISU’s made a hit.

“
Cassino 6, all Cassino elements. Concentrate on the big SP’s. Take ‘em out of the fight now.”

Four had already been savaged, two by Oliphant, much to the gunner
’s merriment.

The Lancers focussed their ma
in guns on the ISU’s and the heavy SP’s suffered badly, the two surviving commanders finding excellent reasons to withdraw to positions out of direct sight.

Lt Ionescu
was crying and screaming.

He was the only casualty in the Hetzer, the small S
P that Haines’ tank had put a shell into a few minutes beforehand.

With the damaged vehicle now s
afely tucked away behind an old storage building, his crew were trying hard to get the wounded officer out of the vehicle and away for medical treatment as soon as possible.

Any movement they tried
, and each breath he took, tortured Ionescu’s shattered body, producing extremes of pain.

One moment he had been encouraging his men to advance, the next the whole vehicle sme
lt of burnt metal and flesh. Lieutenant Tudor Ionescu had been ripped open, exposing both lungs and liver to the appalled gaze of his crew.

The 25pdrs of the British Sextons rocked the small SP, the pitter
-patter as shrapnel struck the metal sides began to unnerve the men, as did the screams of their officer.

The senior man, a Corporal and the vehicle
’s gunner, took a lump shrapnel in the back, killing him instantly.

The remaining two
crew members lost their nerve and ran, leaving Ionescu in the snow to die alone.

Major Emilian was crying and screaming, his command in tatters and half his crew dead around him.

Although untouched himself, the Rumanian was covered with blood, the products of his gunner and loader, both killed by the inexorable passage of an armour-piercing shell on its way through the turret.

The radio was silent, despite him screaming orders at his men; silent for two reasons.

Firstly, there was no one left to hear his calls, the only vehicle undamaged being the Zrynyi II, its engine having given up the battle shortly after the advance through Müllnern, five kilometres to the east.

Secondly, his radio had been destroyed by the same shell that had claimed his turret crew.

Another shell struck the front of the tank and Emilian found himself sprayed with the detritus of the driver, whose body lay directly in the path of another AP shell.

Almost dreaming, Emilian slowly wiped the bits and
pieces from his face, and hands, and arms, and chest, and...

Seven
seconds after the last impact, Major Anton Emilian mind collapsed and he suffered a total psychological breakdown.

He
shouted loudly into his microphone, cursing Hitler, Antonescu, Stalin and King Michael equally, commanding his officers to press home the attack, squealed at anything he could see for stealing his mother’s apples and, finally, screaming an order for coffee as he imagined himself in his favourite watering hole in Constanta.

His screaming turned to maniacal laughter as he noticed the severed handset. He threw it at the dead gun crew, cursing them for their silence and pushed himself up out of the turret with the flags that were on hand to replace the radio.

He made patterns with the two flags, none of which would have been recognised as proper orders by anyone, even if he had been seen.

Actually, h
e was seen, but not by his own side.

“
Look at ‘im, the stupid bugger!”

The hull machine gun fired a short burst, knocking the man off the tank turret and onto the snow below.

“Jesus Christ but he’s still going!”

Haines took time to focus on the single man who was behaving so erratically.

Clearly, some bullets had hit the man as he now only waved the one flag, his right arm dangling uncontrolled at his side.

None
the less, he continued to make his signals in the direction of anyone and anything that he could spot.

“
Let him be, lads. He’s had enough.”

Emilian had dropped to the ground, exhausted by his
exertions, drained of energy, and weakened by his blood loss.

The flag still jerked feebly as the dying man kept up his efforts.

Sparing his enemy a final look, Haines turned back to managing his defence.

“
Let him be.”

A moment beforehand,
some miles behind the lines, a Sexton had fired a shell that would prove less forgiving.

It arrived
about two feet to the left of the Romanian officer and transformed him into pieces no larger than a matchbox.

The Soviet attack had been driven off at a cost. The infantry losses were more than made up for by the arrival of an Italian Battalion, with two more en route.

However, the
16th/5th Lancers needed to pull in the tanks of the 17th/21st to make up their own numbers; exactly half of their starting vehicles were either knocked out or so badly damaged as to be of no further use. Part of the reserve B Sqdn moved up, taking up the middle of the line, in between the two ravaged lancer units.

Haines and Stokes-Herbst had consulted on the
position, given their head by the strangely disinterested Brigadier Ambrose. The senior officer had even given them his only decent map before returning to dictating orders to his staff regarding the required shaving routine in cold weather.

The two Lancer officers were too tied up in their own concerns to really understand that Ambrose was not fit to command. The
staff of Force Ambrose was, for the most part, too inexperienced to challenge a senior officer of proven credentials, and with such an immaculate record of accomplishment.

Outside, the two Captains broke out their cigarettes and spread the map on a dodgy trestle table. One look at it told Haines that the defence was vulnerable, possibly much more than that.

“Bollocks. We’ve got nothing here, Charlie. Didn’t even know this road was here.”

The failure in the maps was starkly revealed by the one decent bit of cartography in the unit,

Each man produced his own map, the one each had worked from until now.

Neither showed
what was obviously a reasonably sized route circumventing the Arnoldstein position, starting in Villach and ending in Nötsch, just over two miles west of the highly important position.

Stokes-Herbst
hissed in disgust.

“
Christ, we may already be outflanked, even surrounded! We best fall back, you’d say?”

Haines scratched his cheek.

“Not down to me, is it? I’d say not though. Let’s go and put it to the Brig and see what he has already planned.”

Spreading the map out before Ambrose, who set aside his irritation at having his dictation interrupted, Haines pointed out the possibilities, expecting the man to have made provisions and to have placed men there.

He had not, and the Lancer Captain now realised that the Brigadier was not fit to serve.

“
In which case, Sir, I suggest we move the RAC boys west... to sit in Nötsch... support them with a battalion of the Italians and reposition the Archer reserve... in case all hell breaks loose up the Gail Valley.”

Haines reasoned that if he could get agreement
to the reorganisation, he would set things in motion and tackle the Brigadier’s ability to command afterwards.

He
had not allowed for what actually happened.

“
Right ho, Captain. Now, you get it all organised. I’m off for a lie down before tiffin, brief me if the Germans look like being troublesome.”

Ambrose disappeared, heading off to his tent for a sleep
, leaving the two Lancers and the Force staff shocked and silent.

Haines suddenly realised that everyone was looking at him.

It is said that nature abhors a vacuum. The same applies to the military.

‘
Oh bollocks!’

“
Right, you heard the plan. Get them moving now and get them moving fast. Charlie,” he turned to the 17th/21st man, “With a battalion of Eyeties and the Rifle Brigade, you’ll have more infantry than you had before, by a country mile. Free me up three of your tanks from the Stossau reserve, the best mechanically, to act as a mobile group. Get them positioned here.” He tapped the map, indicating a track running from the main road just west of Pöckau.

“
Call sign... call sign will be...,” his mind went blank.

Stokes-Herbst ventured a suggestion.

“Robin?”

“
That’ll do, Charlie. Robin it is. Make sure you’re topped off and ammo’ed up. Have a chat with the munitions officer before you leave, but get my mobile group in position as soon as poss, ok?”

The radios in the command centre had already contacted the 142nd RAC and the Italian unit, both units acknowledging the new orders without question.