“Right. I want that in a full briefing document that I can present to the President. I want it here, tomorrow morning… 0830, General. Give your presentation again to some other officers so they can come onside with the plan… the plan… what you have in mind? We need a name.”
Rossiter hadn’t given it a moment’s thought and was caught on the hop, but his mind met the challenge.
“In… take everything… kill everything,,, out again, leave nothing but destruction in your wake… gotta be Viking, Sir.”
Patton’s unforced laugh sealed the deal.
“Viking it is, Sam. Now, get to it.”
“Yes, Sir!”
“Oh and Sam… pretty soon we’re gonna be all over these suckers. We’re stepping up the pressure big time… all across the front. I don’t want anything interfering with my ticker tape parade back home. Get on top of this shit and stay on top of this shit.”
“I heard the buzz, Sir.”
“It’s gonna be a lot louder than that, General.”
Across Allied Europe, a few officers pondered new orders, unspecific directions that implied a difficult operation ahead.
In airbases and barracks, men worked to put together a plan to fit the requirements issued by Brigadier General Rossiter.
Enquiries made with higher commands were passed on until they met the cascade coming down from Patton’s headquarters.
Those who questioned Rossiter’s authority were left in no doubt that the plan would require their full cooperation, or the NATO commander would take an unhealthy interest in their future career path.
Back in Horberg Masslau, the two disparate groups of soldiers came together to plan the operation that would probably kill them all.
They had questions, but they also had orders and both Shandruk and Crisp had no uncertainty that the mission, whatever it was, was as vital and important as they came.
When Brigadier General Rossiter returned to the camp the following evening, he briefed them on the precise nature of their mission, and the special tasks that would need to be performed.
Rossiter, with mission security as his prime concern, forbade the cascading of information to the troops.
Both Crisp and Shandruk railed against that, but the General was adamant.
The impasse was broken when the two officers conceded the point, with the proviso that, before the men left they would be told the true nature of the site and the equipment they were there to photograph, steal, or destroy.
As both Crisp and Shandruk put it, ‘men who are about to risk everything deserve to know what they’re gonna be dying for!’
It was the first real moment of unity between the two officers, and, as consummate leaders, they both decided to build on it, for the benefit of their men and the mission.
Chapter 196 – THE HUSBAND
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
0615 hrs, Tuesday, 25th March 1947, with the Polish Army, Lithuania.
To the second, the guns of the Polish Army fired together and sent a stream of high explosive washing over the Soviet front and second line positions.
The bombardment was organised with great precision, the Polish attack only part of the huge offensive that Patton had planned.
As usual, the counter-battery units waited on accurate information and took out a large number of the Red Army artillery that sought to hit back.
Patton’s initial efforts to strike back had floundered, as much for the Allied lack of readiness as for the Soviet sternness in defence.
Only in the German and Polish zones had there been any recognisable success in terms of ground made, although the success in killing Soviet soldiers and destroying their means to fight was notable along the entire front line, particularly as the Allied air forces held sway over the battlefield, both by day and by night.
This time, George Patton had taken his time to set everything up properly, and his forces were attacking from the shores of the Baltic to the border with Yugoslavia to the south.
He knew what was coming to Europe, kept safely in the bowels of the USS Guam, and he knew that President Truman now had the will to use them, so George Patton was determined that he would remove the imperative and cover himself in glory at the same time.
The 1st Polish Armoured Division’s lead units watched and waited as second hands clicked round to 0645, the time of the scheduled advance.
Their artillery would not stop, but it would advance slowly at a fixed rate, timed to move away from the advancing line of armoured vehicles, both tanks and APCs.
Leading the way were the reconnaissance troops of the 10th Mounted Rifles, their Coventry and Boarhound armoured cars surging from cover to cover ahead of the main advance, whose axis was on a broad front out of, and either side of, the ruins of Avižieniai, the main body of which was to roll over and through the villages of Mikabaliai and Paserninkai, before enveloping the waters of the Seirijis and forming a corridor all the way to the Neman River southeast of Dubravai, where the Corps’ engineers would throw bridges across the obstacle, with a view to delivering part of an envelopment of the Soviet forces that would then become trapped in the Neman River bend, centred on the village of Vilkiautinis.
The southern element would repeat the Neman crossing at Druskininkai, where there were still viable crossing points, although more bridging assets were available, should they be required.
North of the main thrust was a secondary effort based around two squadrons of tanks from the 1st Armoured Regiment, supported by men of the 1st Highland Battalion, spearheaded by the Light Tank Troop of the 1st Armoured Regiment’s Headquarters Squadron.
Their mission was to strike down Route 132, straight through to the junctions with Routes 180 and 181, where they were to take and hold the pile of rubble that was once Seirijai and ensure no interference from the Soviet forces to the north and northwest.
In peacetime, Route 132 had wound its way through lush forest, a landscape that now only lived in the memory, as high explosive and napalm had converted the countryside into a barren wasteland, bereft of anything but Soviet fortifications and bunkers.
0700 hrs, Tuesday, 25th March 1947, Bagdononys, Lithuania.
The second hand clicked into place and Czernin’s commander gave the order to advance.
He spoke in a normal voice and ordered his driver to move forward.
The path of their advance had already been agreed, partly from examination of the terrain through binoculars, and partly from looking for hours at the aerial photographs that had been used to form the full plan of attack.
The terrain itself made the whole affair perilous, with the undulations and folds capable of hiding many things that could kill their M24 Chaffee tank, and hiding in such a way as to spring the surprise presence of a killer enemy at the last possible second.
Ahead of the advancing Light Tank Troop and men from the Highland battalion, the artillery had done grim work amongst the Soviet defenders, but there were enough left to bring despair and death to the attacking force.
Czernin had spent months in hospital after his near-fatal encounter with a mine, and parts of him were still somewhere on the battlefield of Nottersdorf.