On Desperate Ground (5 page)

“Well, Mack, I appreciate you telling me all this, but I’m sorry to say your injuries are not bad enough to send you home, especially since SHAEF has called twice already to see when you can be released. Otherwise it might be a close call, but with Priority Personnel, it’s SHAEF’s call. They’re sending a car for you in a couple of days. Take it easy until then.”
 

Doc gestured helplessly and left the room. Mack felt the shudder go through his body again, the icy cold of the Ardennes hard against his backbone.
 

What are you worrying about,
he thought, trying to calm himself.
The war’s almost over, what could happen now?

CHAPTER THREE

6 January 1945

Outside Breslau, Poland

30 Kilometers east of the Oder River

Howling winds reached over 30 kilometers per hour on the frigid Polish flatlands, plunging the temperature far below freezing. Winds drifted snow into rows of banks higher than a man, a frozen death awaiting anyone who gave into the intense desire to lie down, rest or sleep. The remnants of the once-formidable Brandenburg Division were staggering westward in retreat, hoping to take up positions behind the Oder River before Russian tanks caught up with them. The long-awaited Russian offensive was pushing the Germans back into their own territory, closing in for the kill. The Brandenburgers had been assigned rear-guard duty, to allow as many German units as possible to escape. Now it was their turn to pull out and make for relative safety across the river. The only difference was that they had no one between them and the advancing Soviet armor. They had to get to the river, or die on this frozen plain.

After marching for fifteen hours, the men had to sleep. There was no shelter on the open landscape, nothing but hard frozen ground and snow banks drifting into long lines as if opposing the march of the division. Spreading out, the men formed into small groups of six or eight, huddled together in a circle, and leaned inward until their helmets touched. Leaning on their rifles in the snow, they soon fell asleep standing up, supported by their weapons and each other. The combined breath of the group of weary men provided a small pocket of warmer air, a small, pathetic oasis of life in a wintry hell.

The wind swirled around them, coating their backs with pelts of snow. The ground on either side of the road, visible only through the tracks in the snow, looked like a farmer’s field in early winter, with human haystacks stretched as far as the eye could see in the dark night. The feeble reflected light of the full moon, blurred by gusts of snow, showed occasional and agonized movement as men stirred, awoke, or fell to the ground dead asleep.
 

First light slipped over the horizon.
Hauptmann
(Captain) Dieter Neukirk stumbled as the man next to him collapsed forward. He reached out and steadied himself, at the same time pulling up the fallen soldier.

“Jost, get up you clod! Get the men ready.”
 

Dieter shook the snow from his back, reeling back and forth on unsteady legs.

“Sir…it’s not Jost…he was wounded a month ago, remember?”
 

Hans von Schierke took his commander’s hand and pulled himself up. He looked into Neukirk’s eyes and whispered, “Dieter, are you all right? Pull yourself together!”

Dieter had no idea if he was asleep or awake. Images swam in front of his eyes and he saw Jost Brunner, his faithful and sturdy sergeant who could always be depended upon to get the men moving, even in the worst circumstances. Slowly, the memory of Jost’s wound and evacuation weeks ago came back to him, as he wiped his gloved hand against his face. The feel of the hard cold cloth brought him back to the present, and he saw his friend Hans looking at him with concern as the snow blew between them.

“Hans…yes, I…I know.”

He broke contact and turned away toward his men. He knew. He knew how desperate the situation was. The Oder River was their goal, and he was not sure they could make it. Pages from his father’s history books swam in front of his eyes, the tattered legions of Napoleon’s army making this same retreat in the last century, a trail of frozen corpses in their wake. This time, the Russian cavalry pursuing and nipping at their heels would be Soviet T-34 tanks, not far behind them to the east. To the west, the Oder River provided a line of defense at the German border. Dieter wondered if a French officer had stood on this very spot, listening for the hoof beats of the Czar’s cavalry. He shook off the thought as he churned through the snow, moving from group to group, urging the men to form up and get moving westward. He spoke to them in both German and Russian, since many Hiwis now filled the ranks of the Brandenburgers.
 

Hiwi—
Hilfswillige—
were Russian volunteers serving with the Wehrmacht. Hiwis came mainly from the vast pool of Russian prisoners of war, some actual volunteers, many drafted from POW camps to serve as auxiliary laborers and support personnel. As German losses mounted, Hiwis began to be used as combat replacements. In some cases, they were motivated by genuine anti-Communist beliefs. Others fought because they were told to, or for food. But most fought well. All Hiwis were bound by a similar fate if captured by the Soviets. Instant execution.
 

Groans and the sound of clanking gear hoisted over shoulders accompanied the soldiers as they moved toward the road. Still forms in the snow dotted the landscape, men whose last ounce of energy had been spent marching to this point and who would march no farther. By the time they were back on the road, drifting snow had buried those left behind and nothing could be seen except a receding line of defeat heading west, away from the rising sun, coming up blood red in the winter sky.

* * *

As the sun rose into the thin, cold air, the winds calmed and the bitter snow lessened. By mid morning the gray heavy clouds had rolled to the north and a brilliant blue sky revealed itself slowly, hesitantly, until the new white snow sparkled. Dieter turned to the east and shielded his eyes against the harsh, bright glare.
 

“Hans, can you see anything?” he asked.
 

Hans von Schierke pulled his Zeiss field glasses from his case and handed his rifle to a nearby soldier. There was a small ridge along the road and he scrambled up it, plowing through a snow bank. The little rise gave him a vantage point from which to scan the flat terrain as he slowly and methodically studied the land along a 180-degree arc to their rear.
 

Dieter had counted on Hans in many situations since he had joined the Brandenburgers. Friends before they joined the army, he was also one of the few people who knew Hans had dropped the “von” from his name on the transfer papers, hoping it would throw off the Gestapo as they went through their systematic investigations and purges of those suspected of anti-Nazi activities. Dozens of officers in the Brandenburg Division with aristocratic names had been arrested or transferred out to penal battalions after the unsuccessful plot to kill Hitler the previous July 20
^th
had shown that many of their class had been involved.
 

Though Dieter had not been involved in the plot against Hitler, he had been surprised at how many of his friends and classmates from the university had been. All had been good men, and it caused him some shame that they had not thought to trust him. Sheltering Hans was the least he could do. All he could do, he thought, since Hans for the only surviving conspirator from his circle.

Even though he was without rank, von Schierke’s natural leadership ability and bearing could not be hidden. The men accepted him as an equal, but as a very unusual equal, one who sometimes led them and other times faded into the line. Necks craned as men watched him scan the horizon. Even Dieter was impatient.

“Well, do you see anything? Damn it, man, tell us what you see!”

Hans continued to scan slowly, methodically, not responding to the demands from his captain. His motion stopped as he adjusted the binoculars, keeping them trained on the southeastern horizon.

“Armored cars,” he said tersely. “Six…no, eight moving slowly. Headed southeast.”
 

He returned to his careful scanning of the far horizon.
 

“Shit! More armored cars, on this road! BA-10s.”
 

The BA-10 was a fast but lightly armored Russian reconnaissance vehicle, well armed with a 45mm cannon and two machine guns.
 

“Get down,” Dieter said, signaling at the same time for everyone to flatten.
 

“Schmidt!” he called out to a group of nearby men, “Get your Hiwis up here!
Panzerfausts
forward!”
 

Sixteen men in white camouflage smocks, each carrying a
Panzerfaust
, a one-shot version of the American bazooka, pockets stuffed with grenades, ran up in a crouch.
Feldwebel
Schmidt knelt next to Neukirk and passively waited for orders.
 

“Schmidt, there’s a group of BA-10s coming down the road straight at us. They probably haven’t seen us yet, but they must know we’re close. There’s another group of them off to the east, probably to cut off our route to the Oder.”

Schmidt knew what was coming, but he was a veteran non-commissioned officer, and he never volunteered. Not even his opinion. He looked down the road and back to
Hauptmann
Neukirk.
 

Hans crawled over to them. “There are six coming at us. No infantry, no panzers. But they can’t be far behind,” he said.
 

“Right. We’ve got to take care of them, fast. Schmidt, take half of your Hiwis and place them in that drainage ditch we crossed about a hundred meters back. Hans, take the others behind this rise, along the road. You hit them as they cross the ditch,” he said, pointing at Schmidt. “Hans, hit them again here. I’ll come forward with the rest of HQ Company and finish them off.”

Schmidt spat into the snow. He shrugged and said, “Don’t forget us in that ditch after the Ivans cross over.”
 

Rising, he jogged down the road, signaling for half his men to follow. Hans and the remaining men hid themselves along the small ridge. Dieter pulled the rest of the unit back, telling the officers in charge of the other companies to continue double-time down the road. It was critical that the other armored cars not get across the road and block their retreat.
 

Dieter did not try to hide the men of Headquarters Company as they spread out in combat formation. He wanted the BA-10s to see them and be drawn to the bait.
 

Within five minutes Dieter heard the tracked vehicles coming up the road, their engines straining at a top speed of about 50 kilometers per hour. He knew they had been spotted. Kneeling with his Schmeisser MP40 submachine gun at the ready, he surveyed his men. All were in place. As he had many times before, he felt his heart racing in the last minutes before battle, when there was nothing left to do but wait, and think about this patch of ground as your final resting place.

Dieter watched the thin line along the ground that marked the drainage ditch and Schmidt’s hiding place. The lead armored car came within fifty meters of the ditch and pulled to the left. The next one followed, two more turned to the right, and the last two came up abreast in the middle on the road.
 

“Damn!” Dieter smashed his fist into the ground as the line of armored cars opened fire from their stationary position. He had miscalculated. The Russians were going to pound them from a distance with their cannon before closing in for the kill with their machine guns. Rounds began to explode in front of his exposed line of men, and he knew it would only be a matter of minutes before the shells burst among them.
 

Schmidt, hidden at the bottom of the ditch, had heard the vehicles spread out and halt just short of his position. As soon as he heard the first salvo, he knew the original plan was not going to work.
 

“Well, boys,” Schmidt said loudly above the din, “let’s take a long shot.”
 

Without speaking, each of the Hiwis nodded to Schmidt and readied themselves.

“Now!” bellowed Schmidt as he rose, placing his
Panzerfaust
on the edge of the ditch. In a split second he found his target, aimed, and pressed the trigger. The rocket blasted toward the right-hand car and hit it squarely on the turret. There was an explosion, followed by another as the ammunition blew up, ripping the lightly armored vehicle apart, spreading flame over the snow and black acrid smoke skyward.

There was a brief moment of silence as the BA-10 crews oriented themselves to this new, closer threat. The six Hiwis aimed their
Panzerfausts
. The air exploded with launching rockets, as the turrets turned with frantic mechanical whines, depressing their cannon, firing wildly at the forms rising up in front of them. Machine guns chattered, sending spouts of snow and dirt flying in every direction.
 

Two BA-10s exploded in bright flame. Another took a hit in the front right wheel. Two other
Panzerfaust
rounds exploded harmlessly beyond their targets. One Hiwi, hesitating to watch his round hit home, was slower than the others getting back under cover.