“Shit, Walter. Rest easy now. Medic! Medic!”
There wasn’t one, but it made Barkmann feel better yelling it, and probably Ford for hearing it.
One of the men put a dressing on Ford’s right upper arm, where the exit wound was spilling blood in dangerous spurts.
“Look after him. Walter, I’m gonna get you outta here.”
Barkmann looked at the options and cursed the fact that his radio was now on the other side of the wall.
“What the fuck!”
Something landed so close that the shock sent his helmet flying away and tossed one of his men skywards.
‘Mortars… for fuck’s sake… mortars…’
A moment of panic seized him, a cold and warm wave of fuzziness spread through his brain as his stomach turned to iced water.
‘No… no… not now… not ever…’
He fought the nerves and indecision and won, albeit by the narrowest of margins.
‘Gotta move.’
“Move back!”
He gestured towards the corner of the wall, in the direction of the rest of his company.
Ensuring that two men gathered up Ford, and that the other two badly wounded were looked after, Barkmann decided to stand and watch their backs.
The man alongside him grinned with madness in his eyes.
“Just you and me and Betty then, Captain.”
Heliopolous patted the Winchester M-12 shotgun with undisguised love, the carbine on his back rejected for the pump-action’s hitting power.
More mortar shells arrived, off target and nowhere near Barkmann or his retreating Rangers.
A rifle cracked, bringing a yelp of pain from closer to Barkmann than he cared.
Irlam had also stayed put and picked off an advancing Soviet soldier, part of a group pushed forward by officers eager to retake the fountain.
The sniper’s rifle spoke again, ending the life of the leader of the counter-attack.
None the less, his men pushed forward as the mortar barrage walked southwards.
Irlam picked off another two before they identified where he was hiding and a DP started to pepper his position.
He dropped off the wall and jogged round to the statues to see if he could work from there.
Meanwhile, the Russians took advantage of the respite and surged.
A running man flew over some sandbags and Barkmann, by instinct alone, fired from the prone position, catching the man in mid-air and throwing him backwards, life extinct.
Screaming in her fear and anger, a woman NCO followed, her SKS sporting a bayonet aimed for the officer’s belly.
A twelve gauge destroyed her chest and she followed her comrade backwards.
Two more soldiers charged forward and each time the sound of a shotgun being pumped was followed by a spread of shot that took a life.
More Russians, wiser this time, came at the position from more than one direction.
The Greek Ranger missed with his shot and could only jerk the butt into the face of his nearest enemy.
Heliopolous’ blow collapsed an eye socket and the screaming man clawed at him in desperation.
A head butt added to the man’s injury and he recoiled away, giving Heliopolous time to put his final shot into the soldier’s face.
He discarded ‘Betty’ as he had no time to reload.
To his right, Barkmann wounded a bearded NCO before his Thompson jammed.
Two soldiers rushed him unseen and Heliopolous’ warning saved him from injury as he rolled to one side, the rifle shots and bayonet thrusts missing him completely.
With his M1911 in his hand, he dropped both men before they could work the stiff bolts of their Mosins.
Heliopolous brought up his carbine only for it to be knocked from his hands by the impact of a bullet.
His hand was numb from the impact and the Ranger simply couldn’t get it to work enough to free his pistol before his enemy was on top of him.
The Russian soldier pulled the trigger but nothing happened.
Screaming a curse, he plunged the weapon forward and the bayonet took Heliopolous in the upper thigh, protruding through the flesh at the back.
Screaming in pain, he lashed out at the man who instinctively ducked his head.
The feeling returned to Heliopolous’ hand as he smashed a number of bones on the man’s helmet.
The bayonet slid out and the merciless soldier slammed it hard and low into the Greek’s body, where its progress was halted by the Ranger’s belt buckle.
None the less, the impact was enough to double Heliopolous over, and the swinging butt knocked him to the ground unconscious.
Delaying the coup-de-grace, the soldier decided to cock his weapon again, which gave Barkmann enough time and opportunity to put bullets through his back and head, the latter of which blew the soldier’s face across the pond.
The pistol had been emptied and the Ranger sensed he had no time to reload and dove towards the first weapon he could see.
With no time to make an error, he remembered what he had seen previously and pulled back on the charging handle and brought the large weapon up to horizontal.
He staggered as the recoil took him off-balance, unprepared as he was for what the weapon would offer.
He put four men and women down in short order, three of which moaned and writhed as blood seeped from numerous wounds.
Something fell against his leg and he saw a grenade waiting to spread its shrapnel in all directions.
He dived over a tree trunk, but the blast caught his legs and rolled him over.
A few pieces of metal and some bits from the pond floor struck his legs and ankles, but none sufficiently to stop him from scurrying away, should a second grenade follow.
The strange weapon had dropped from his hands and he moved to pick it up.
A scream made him realise he had lost the race, and he rolled away as another female soldier pulled the trigger on her SKS rifle.
She was out of ammunition.
In fact, many of the defenders were out of ammunition, as high expenditures and Allied air and artillery strikes took great toll on stocks.
Barkmann, winded by the evasion and fall, moved only slowly and the woman saw her moment and rushed forward, bayonet ready.
Her scream of triumph turned to one of sheer agony as her shoulder disappeared in the passage of a bullet from Irlam’s Springfield.
The kinetic energy knocked her backwards and on to a tree trunk, the short but perfectly placed branch punched through her spine and exited her stomach, bringing untold agonies.
There were very few engaged in the awful fighting in and around the fountain that didn’t hear her piteous cries.
Irlam made the decision not to end her grief, reasoning that it would affect her comrades more than his.
Barkmann had no such rational thoughts, as his mind started to come apart, the screams and squeals the final straw in his mental breakdown.
He came apart mentally, his own screams joining with, but not overriding those of the dying woman.
Irlam, his first thought that his leader was wounded, moved out from behind the statue of the half-naked female adjacent to Neptune himself.
A single bullet struck him in the throat and sent him backwards into the pile of dead Russian bodies below.
Within a minute, Irlam had bled to death.
In the Roman Ruin, Corporal Baschuk, once of the NKVD, but now of the 5th Guards Airborne Division’s Sniper company, worked the precise action of his Kar98k and looked for more targets.
He smoothed his hand down the superbly efficient German rifle, muttering his normal congratulations to her.
‘Ahh Elvira… zolotse Elvira.’
Named for his mother, long since dead of hunger during the siege of Leningrad, he worshipped the weapon, as once had another.