“Kapuna-Seven-Six. Kapuna-Six-One, on the money. Two minute intervals, Acknowledge, over.”
“Kapuna-Six-One, Kapuna-Seven-Six, two minute intervals, understood. Over.”
Takeo tossed the walkie-talkie back to his corporal and decided on another hop forward.
Once every two minutes, the mortars would advance towards the summit by one hundred yards, and he needed to keep his men as tight as he dared to get the full benefit of his plan.
Again, he noticed that they were preferring cover to moving forward, so he took the decision to shout some more.
Emerging from his hole, he waved the Garand and hollered at any men he could see.
“C’mon you Buddaheads! Go for broke, One-Puka-Puka! Go for broke!”
One or two at first, and then the rest followed, driven upwards by a mixture of bravery, stupidity, peer pressure, and inspiration.
Above them, the sounds of growing resistance mingled with the crump of mortar shells, and men started to fall into the mud and puddles of height 570.
A head bobbed and Takeo acted instinctively, putting two shots close by and then rolling away as the enemy rifle grenade exploded.
He found a deep muddy puddle, and the cold water chilled him to the bone.
Takeo came up for air without his helmet, but decided against wasting time locating it.
He had missed his target, and the man rose again, this time dropping his grenade on the money and sending two of Takeo’s men flying in a mist of blood and other fluids.
Medics started to be outnumbered by calls upon their skills.
The rifle grenade position was in advance of the Cossack line and needed to be taken out, as Takeo could see it was already firing into the flank of some of the lead groups.
He reached for his grenade but found it had gone, probably dislodged during the climb or his accidental bath.
“Grenade that fucking position! Now!”
Two men launched explosives at the Soviet strongpoint and both missed although shrapnel did its work by keeping heads down.
“Follow me!”
Takeo was up and running, his feet somehow finding traction in the mud, traction that was denied to his men.
He arrived at the enemy position by himself.
The man with the rifle grenade was just popping up again and received a kick in the face that stove in his temple with the sharpest of cracks.
Another man, nose down in a box of grenades, neither saw nor felt the bayonet that rammed into the side of his neck.
He was dead before Takeo blasted the bayonet free.
One of the riflemen whirled and got off a snap shot that knocked the Garand from his hands.
As the Cossack struggled with the bolt of his Mosin, Takeo simply threw himself forward in the hope of getting to the soldier before the rifle bolt slid home.
Head met head in a sickening crash and both men recoiled and dropped, unable to grasp the moment as each was as disoriented as the other.
Takeo’s radioman struggled over the lip of the position and saw the dazed Cossack.
Five bullets later, the man’s head and neck were minced meat, the frightened Nisei soldier taking no chances and letting rip with the reminder of his clip.
The charger pinged clear and he grabbed another clip, only to be thrown back as a burst of submachine-gun fire ripped across his chest.
The newly arrived Cossack turned to Takeo and pulled the trigger.
The PPd fired two bullets before it closed on an empty chamber, both of which sailed past well away from the recovering Major.
He grabbed behind his back, trying to reach his sword before he remembered his pistol.
The Russian dropped his useless weapon and extracted a Nagant revolver.
Takeo rolled away and came up holding a Soviet rifle.
He fired from the lying position and hit the man in the throat.
However, he had inadvertently pickled up the rifle grenade and, whilst the heavy impact destroyed much vital for the sustenance of life, it did not immediately kill the man.
More to Takeo’s growing clarity of mind was the now primed grenade that bounced off flesh and landed eight feet from him.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
He rolled over a dead body and flattened himself as best he could.
It was enough to protect him and the grenade exploded, doing damage only to the dead and silencing the man with the ruined throat.
Coming more to his senses, he grabbed the Garand from his dead signaller, took another two clips of ammunition.
On examination, he decided that neither piece of the walkie-talkie was now fit for purpose.
In the interim, the mortar barrage had moved on and Able Company were in danger of falling too far behind.
He rose again, this time less steadily and, despite the thumping headache, rallied his men with more exhortations.
“Keep going, men! Keep going! Get close to them! Go for broke! Go for broke!”
He pressed forward, only to slip sideways and splash into one of the deeper man-made pools on the top of the slope.
Takeo came up gasping for air, but with a clearer mind, the icy waters having done the job of a hundred aspirin.
Rising up again, he realised that he had lost yet another weapon.
Rejecting a search as an unnecessary delay, he pulled out his Colt 1911 and waved it in the air.
“Charge! Charge! Charge!”
A bullet tugged at his wrist, ripping away a flap of skin and severed his watchstrap; another opened up the crotch of his trousers.
“Charge! Go for broke!”
The line seemed to accelerate and come together as one entity and, despite the loss of more men, it crashed into the Soviet positions.
1211 hrs, Tuesday, 18th March 1947, Saris Castle, Height 570, Veľký Šariš, Czechoslovakia.
“Hold the bastards! Hold them, Brothers! Fucking hold them!”
Kazakov was set back from the line and in a position to see without the distraction of having to fight for his life.
‘No good… no fucking good at all… Blyad!… Blyad!’
He turned around to where his men lay and turned back again, suddenly unsure from which group to summon more manpower.
After a moment’s hesitation, he went with his gut and decided upon Tarkovsky and he waved his arms before pointing down a certain line, indicating where he wanted the first reserve group to arrive.
To Tarkovsky’s credit, the counter-attack group was up and running in seconds and ploughed into the line right on time, and in precisely the place that Kazakov needed.
“Well done, Boris. Fucking well done, Brother!”
If all had been equal, the Cossack captain would have flung the rest of his men forward and pushed the Amerikanski all the way down the hill… but all things were not equal,
His men were tired.
There was little ammunition.
There were other threats.
His orders were to hold, not go ‘gallivanting off around the countryside’ as he put it to himself.
Plus, he wanted to preserve the lives of as many of his brother Cossacks as possible, and a counter-attack down the slope would only bring greater death and sacrifice with it.
He screamed in anger as he watched Tarkovsky go down under a barrage of rifle butts and kicks.
“Noooo!”
He drew breath and screamed louder.
“You fucking bastards!”
Turning to the rear again, he sent the other unit down the same line, seeing that Tarkovsky’s men had lost heart as their leader died.
He also waved across to Ryabkov, using both hands to send the first unit down one line and then indicating a direction change.
Again, the cavalrymen showed their mettle and were moving quickly.
Amongst the enemy to his front, Kazakov saw the enemy officer.