Chosen of the Valkyries

Chapter Fourteen

Near Warsaw, Germany Prime

13 September 1985

“It’s confirmed, sir. Bridge Seven has definitely fallen; Bridges Eight and Nine have come under heavy attack.”

Generalmajor Gunter Gath nodded, coolly. He’d never expected the bridges to hold out for more than a few minutes, although he had hoped that the defenders would be able to drop them into the water before it was too late. Trying to make a stand on the river bank would probably have cost him more than he cared to lose, in the opening hours of the war.

“Order the gunners to start pounding the crossing points,” he ordered, flatly.

“Jawohl.”

He scowled as he turned his attention to the map, silently contemplating the developing situation. The SS would start counter-battery fire at once, but if he was lucky his shellfire might slow the enemy down for a few additional hours. He’d badly underestimated the SS’s ability to cause trouble behind the lines, as well as their understanding of how his command network worked. They’d missed the command post, thankfully, but they’d sown enough chaos to make it harder for his forces to respond in a timely manner.

“The gunners have opened fire, Herr Generalmajor.”

“Very good,” Gunter said. “And the remaining aircraft?”

“On their way,” his aide assured him. “But their formations are a little ragged.”

Gunter nodded, irritated. Pilots were easier to replace than planes; hell, the Luftwaffe had enough pilots held in reserve to crew the entire air force twice over. But the reservists would still need to be mated with their planes before they could be thrown into battle. He’d expected air superiority over the battlefield, if not air supremacy, but right now even that had been thrown into doubt. The SS, by killing over a hundred pilots, had disrupted half of his contingency plans.

And their own aircraft will be on the prowl too, he thought, grimly. They do not have anything like as many supersonic jet aircraft, but that’s not what they need right now.

“Contact Berlin,” he ordered, tersely. “Give them a status report.”

He cursed under his breath as he sat back in his command chair. German officers – particularly middle-ranking officers – were meant to lead from the front, but there was no way he dared expose himself to enemy fire. The resignations and desertions had torn hundreds of holes in his formation, leaving very few high-ranking officers in position. He’d had to promote hundreds of junior officers to fill the gaps, officers who would have to learn on the job. And who knew how many of them could be trusted? A single officer working for the SS, in the right place at the right time, could do a hell of a lot of damage. Hell, a handful of workers had already done a great deal of damage.

And I’d sell my soul for an American battlespace command management system, he thought, morbidly. He’d laughed when he’d heard about the concept – it was a sign that the American faith in technology as a panacea to all ills had yet to fade – but right now he felt cut off and isolated, dependent upon his subordinates to push reports up the chain. His awareness of the battlefield – his fingertip awareness – was practically non-existent. Right now, I’d be happy with the prospect of micromanaging the men.

He pushed the thought aside, bitterly. There was no time for dwelling on pieces of equipment he’d probably never have, even if he truly wanted them. All he could do now was wait…

…And hope that the plan, thrown together in a flurry of desperate improvisation, would work.

Hauptmann Felix Malguth kept a wary eye on his radar screen, watching for potential threats, as the HE-477 raced towards the river. He knew he didn’t dare let himself get bounced and shot out of the sky, certainly not when there were so few friendly aircraft in the air. The SS would already be on the prowl, he knew, and while he felt the SS pilots couldn’t come up to the Luftwaffe’s standards he had to admit they were pretty good. And besides, there were Luftwaffe bases in the east. Their pilots had probably joined the SS without even being compelled.

He shook his head in grim amusement as he pushed the aircraft forward. He’d worked with the SS a time or two, back in South Africa, and he had to admit the Waffen-SS were good soldiers. They never broke, they never ran… and they were never unappreciative of their CAS aircraft, unlike countless others in the Reich. Indeed, Felix had spent far too much time bloodying his fists while defending the honour of his HE-477 to Luftwaffe jet fighter pilots who thought their ME-346s were shinier and sexier than his workhorse. Perhaps they were, he conceded ruefully, but it wasn’t them who came to the aide of troops cut off and facing annihilation on the ground. Their only role was defending the Reich from British and America intrusions…

Felix had been tempted to resign, when the officer commanding the unit had explained that anyone who didn’t want to fight their fellow Germans could go, with no hard feelings. He wasn’t quite sure why he’d stayed. On one hand, this was an opportunity to test his skills in a far more deadly field of combat – every pilot in his unit dreaded flying into the teeth of multiple SAM batteries – but on the other, the CO was right. They would be flying against their fellow Germans, even if they were easterners. He’d heard some of the pilots joking and laughing about finally showing the easterners what westerners were made of, but Felix knew that such differences hadn’t mattered in South Africa. East or west, Germans were Germans, the Volk united against the world.

And now that unity has been shattered, he thought, as his radar bleeped a warning. And now we’re going to war.

He braced himself, his finger pressing lightly against the firing switch. He was coming up on the bridge… and a number of enemy radars, all far too close to the crossing. If the SS followed doctrine – and he had no reason to assume they would do anything else – there would be at least one or two mobile missile launchers stationed at each side of the bridge, ready to engage any aircraft brave or foolish enough to fly into their sights. They couldn’t afford to lose the bridge, after all. It would make it harder for them to deploy their forces into the west. Maybe they could drive their panzers across the riverbed – some tanks were practically amphibious – but getting the men across in fighting trim would be a great deal harder.

His heart started to race as the bridge came into view. It was a solid structure, built in the days when the Reich had thrust its network of autobahns further and further eastwards. The bridge had probably been designed to take panzers, even though everyone knew that driving a panzer division down an autobahn would rapidly render the road unusable. But the SS didn’t seem to care. An endless line of panzers were crossing the massive bridge, while field engineers worked like demons to extend a network of pontoon bridges across the water; Felix couldn’t help noticing that five of the pontoon bridges were already crammed with troops, advancing westwards. He hoped – prayed – that the men on the ground were ready for the nightmare coming their way.

He jammed his finger down on the trigger, firing a solid stream of cannon shells towards his targets. It was hard to say what his shells would do to the bridge – it was a very solid structure – but he had the satisfaction of watching one of the panzers explode into a fireball as he closed in on his target. That would delay them, at least as long as it took for one of the other panzers to push the wreckage over the side and into the water. And he knew from bitter experience that even the slightest delays could have significant knock-on effects.

His threat receiver screamed a warning as a missile flew into the air, launched by one of the mobile SAM batteries. Felix threw his aircraft to one side, hoping and praying that the launchers hadn’t had time to lock onto his aircraft. Luck was with him. The missile flew past harmlessly and raced into the distance. He sprayed cannon fire over the forces gathered at one end of the bridge – a SAM unit exploded with staggering force – and then altered course, flying away as soon as his cannon was empty. Another missile rose up behind him, but fell back to the ground as he threw his aircraft through a series of evasive manoeuvres. The Reich’s antiaircraft missiles had never been quite as good as the Stingers the Americans had produced and sent to South Africa. Felix knew pilots who had been blown out of the sky by the damned American missiles.

We could do with a few of them now, he thought. The Americans will probably sell them to us, if we offer our firstborn children in exchange.

He gritted his teeth as he headed back to the airbase, keeping a wary eye on the sky behind him. The SS would be sending jet fighters after him, now they knew there was at least one HE-477 in the sky. They wouldn’t underestimate the danger he posed, not when they’d turned CAS into an art form. But intercepting a tiny – and slow – HE-477 with a jet aircraft was nowhere near as easy as it looked. He could fly through a forest road, barely above the ground, while a jet pilot who tried would wind up dead.

But there was no sign of enemy aircraft in the air, even when he approached the airbase and landed quickly. The fires he’d seen when he took off – set by a pair of SS commandos who’d killed nearly twenty men before they’d been stopped – had been put out, while four more aircraft were taking off from the runway. Felix allowed himself a moment of relief as the fuel and ammunition trucks raced towards his plane, then took advantage of the opportunity to relax. There was no point in unhooking himself from the seat and leaving the plane, even to piss. He’d wait until his plane was refuelled and rearmed, then he’d take off…

…And then he’d do it all over again.

“Pawn to king four,” the radio squawked. “I say again, pawn to king four.”

Major Jordan Beschnidt nodded once as he waited, trapped inside his panzer. The SS was on the march – and heading right towards his position. He hadn’t been expecting to go to war, certainly not against the SS, but there was a part of him that relished the challenge. The Waffen-SS bragged of being the best panzer drivers in the Reich and Jordan would enjoy the chance to show them that wasn’t the case, even if it did come with the very real possibility of getting blown up, burned to death or being captured and thrown into a concentration camp.

“No reply,” he ordered. “We wait.”

He felt sweat trickling down his back as the seconds slipped by, one by one. It had been sheer luck that he and his men had been anywhere near the east, particularly as no one had expected to have to fight a civil war in the middle of the Reich. If he hadn’t been stationed at the Panzer Lehr training camp… he smirked at the thought, then peered through his scope as the first SS panzer came into view. They would think – and not without reason – that the defenders had no panzers closer than Occupied France. And they were in for a terrible surprise.

“They’re advancing fast,” the driver muttered, as three more panzers appeared. “And they’re alone.”

Jordan nodded in agreement. There were no infantry, even though doctrine insisted that panzers should always be supported by infantry. But then, he knew – all too well – just how easy it was for the panzers to outrun their escorts. Getting through the defence line and into the rear had been part of German military doctrine for the last fifty years. The SS wouldn’t want to slow the advance long enough to give the westerners a chance to reshuffle their forces and block their thrust.

He picked up the telephone – using a radio so close to the enemy would pinpoint their position for any marauding aircraft – and muttered a command. There were only four panzers under his command, all pulled from the training school… normally, he would never have dared send instructors into combat. They were good at their jobs, very good; replacing them would be a nightmare. But there was a shortage of crew – and besides, they wanted to show the SS what they could do too.

“Choose your targets,” he ordered. Four more panzers were coming into view, bunching up as they made their way down the road. He’d have clouted any student who did that on exercise, although he was fair-minded enough to admit that combat rarely took place under ideal conditions. “And fire when we fire.”

“Weapons locked,” the gunner said. “They’re closing…”

Jordan nodded, bracing himself. The closer the enemy came, the greater the chance of scoring two or more hits. But, at the same time, the greater the chance of the enemy realising they had walked right into a trap. The crews had camouflaged the panzers as best as they could, but the SS crews had plenty of experience in South Africa. They’d know what to look for, as they watched for unpleasant surprises; they might just spot the panzers lying in wait before it was too late. And if they did, they might just manage to slam a shell or two into his panzer before he realised he was under attack. A quick-thinking enemy commander could turn the ambush into a disaster in a matter of seconds.

“Fire on my command,” he ordered. The enemy were coming closer… were their turrets starting to move? “Fire!”

The panzer jerked as it fired a shell into the leading enemy tank. At such close range, it was hard to miss; the shell punched through the heavy frontal armour and detonated inside the vehicle. It exploded into a fireball, the turret rising into the air as it was blown off. The crew, Jordan was sure, would have been killed instantly. He hoped, grimly, that they had been killed instantly. He’d seen enough men pulled from burning hulks, more dead than alive, to wish otherwise. No one, not even the worst of the SS, deserved such a fate.

“Pick the next target,” he snapped. “Fire!”

He took stock of the situation as the gunner engaged a second target. Four enemy panzers had been destroyed; three more were rapidly targeted and blown apart while he watched. But the enemy were returning fire, hurling shells at random into the foliage. They hadn’t got a solid lock on his panzers, he noted, but it hardly mattered. They’d score a lucky hit if they kept hurling so many shells in his direction.

“Move us,” he ordered.

The panzer lurched to life, racing backwards. Jordan hung on for dear life, watching as the gunner sighted the main gun on another advancing panzer and opened fire. The shell struck the panzer’s treads, disabling it; the crew hastily evacuated, seconds before another shell blew the panzer into flaming debris. The nasty part of Jordan’s mind was tempted to mow them down with the machine gun, just to make sure they couldn’t go back to the war, but he suppressed it firmly. Atrocities would only make the war more savage as both sides struggled to outdo the other in sheer beastliness. He’d heard too many horror stories from South Africa to take it lightly.

Where captured men are lucky if they’re only castrated, he thought, darkly. It wasn’t even the worst of the stories he’d heard. Savage tribesmen took delight in inflicting unspeakable wounds on their prisoners. We don’t want those atrocities here.

He cursed savagely as one of his escorting panzers was hit and ground to a halt, smoke pouring from its turret. The crew bailed out hastily, running westwards without looking back. They’d link up with the remainder of the unit at the RP, assuming anyone else survived. Jordan muttered a command as the panzers kept moving back; the gunner put a shell into the disabled vehicle, ensuring that nothing could be salvaged from the wreck. The Heer engineers were trained to break down a disabled vehicle, stripping everything useful from the remains; he dared not assume that the SS would be any less competent. Killing one of his own panzers – and probably one that could be repaired – did not sit well with him, but there was no choice.

“They’ve given up pursuit,” the gunner said. “We made it clear.”

Jordan shrugged. He doubted it. The SS had taken a bloody nose, which would slow them down for some time, but it wouldn’t stop them indefinitely. It was far more likely that they’d be calling for air support, demanding that a HE-477 plink his panzers from high overhead before they resumed the advance. It was what he would have done. Or maybe they’d be calling infantry and sending them on ahead to watch for a second ambush.

“Take us to the second firing position,” he ordered. He was surprised they’d have a chance to use it. Indeed, he doubted there was much prospect of them surviving the day, but they were still in place to deal out a second bloody nose. The SS would have been slowed down and that was all that mattered. “And keep a sharp eye out for enemy aircraft.”

“Jawohl,” the driver said.