‘Iwaniska?’
Consulting the map, he found the small village and measured the distance to the position he wanted the covering force to be, judging that it would be there quicker than the French infantry, although in smaller numbers.
The DRH’s 101 Korps’ commander, the parent unit for the Grossdeutschland Division, had allocated a powerful mobile force to plug the potential gap, mainly out of contrition for his premier unit’s failure.
An all-arms Kampfgruppe was already en route from Iwaniska, which addressed part of Knocke’s problems.
He felt his orders would address most of the other issues, but above all, Camerone was exposed and short of information on enemy deployments and numbers.
The DRH paratroopers had, quite rightly, been called back, as their operation would have simply resulted in their total destruction.
0457 hrs, Tuesday. 1st April 1947, five hundred metres south of Wólka Gieraszowska, Poland.
Uhlmann’s death had been confirmed.
A matter of fact message had arrived stating that the commander of the 1er RCDA had fallen, sent by its highest remaining rank and, by default, commander of the regiment.
The man was an ex-Hauptsturmführer from Hohenstaufen and a steady, if unspectacular commander.
It was not until after the battle that Knocke found out how Uhlmann had lost his last battle, and how the old soldier’s headless body had been brought back in a badly damaged Panther with only two living crewmembers.
The loss of experienced longstanding comrades like Uhlmann was keenly felt, not the least by Braun, who understood the silent radio for what it was, and who cried inside and out as he slugged it out with his tank on the banks of the Koprzywianka.
His tears were as silent as his rage, but he fought his tank like a demon and nothing with a Red Star on could live within range of his guns.
For now, the right flank of the assault group was secure.
Not that it mattered any more.
Knocke had already decided that Uhlmann’s group, he couldn’t think of it in other terms yet, would have to be pulled all the way back, given the increasing pressure upon Haefali’s lines to the north and northwest, and the inroads being made into the main positions on Route 79.
No matter what he had tried, Camerone was being pushed back and better he pull back in an organised fashion than be beaten back in chaos.
The order went out to perform a fighting withdrawal all the way to Route 9, down the main routes leading to safety and the hastily prepared defensive line.
Haefali assumed command of the two combined forces and started one of the most difficult of military operations; a fighting withdrawal under pressure from a superior enemy whilst maintaining a constant and impenetrable defensive line.
For the most part the action was brilliantly conducted, except at Beszyce, where superior Soviet firepower blasted a way through the legionnaires and opened the way to the junction of Floriańska and Route 9…. at Sulisɫawice.
0458 hrs, Tuesday. 1st April 1947, Koprzywnica, Poland.
“Speed it up, Comrades. We must get back in the fight. Come on! Come on!”
Grabbing the offered propellant charge, Stelmakh hefted it and raised it up to the waiting hands of his gunner, Ferensky.
The IS-III had exhausted its supply of shells and managed to rendezvous with the supply train in the recently occupied Polish town.
“Dawai! Dawai!”
Unlike many officers, certainly regimental commanders, Stelmakh was sweating and grunting with his men, undertaking the heavy task of replenishing the tank’s twenty-eight heavy shells and grabbing as much machine-gun ammunition as possible.
Stelmakh himself had expended every 12.7mm bullet from his roof-mounted weapon, and the tank had pulled into the replenishment point with one 122mm HE shell and seventeen 7.62mm to her name.
Over as quickly as it had begun, the tank was rearmed, and Stepanov moved her to the bowsers to top off the greedy tanks with as much fuel as he could cram aboard.
All told, the 6th Guards had come off extremely lightly so far, especially given the high-tempo of the fighting so far.
Two of the IS-IVs and one IS-VII had been lost, the latter to an enemy artillery shell that caused the heavy tank to come apart in spectacular fashion.
Even adding in the loss of the other IS-III and another IS-IV to mechanical failure, Stelmakh was still in command of a powerful mixed force of thirteen heavy tanks and an SMG company.
Following a change of orders, the 6th moved off down the Floriańska towards the breach in the Legion line.
0520 hrs, Tuesday. 1st April 1947, west of Kamieniec. Poland.
Chekov was inspired by the news that his 2nd Battalion had opened up a portion of the enemy’s line, permitting the uncommitted units of 91st Tank Battalion to flood through and into the disorganised legion interior.
On his right flank, the 116th Guards Division’s 359th Guards Rifle Regiment, temporarily under his direct command following its organised retreat, held firm against efforts from two directions, where they held a small bridge over the Koprzywnica just under three hundred metres away from the main escape route of the furthest advanced enemy group.
He had ordered forward the rest of his brigade’s anti-tank weapons, as well as the Hungarian Mace group, intent on making the road a killing zone.
To his front, his men were now moving through the area hammered by the Katyusha of 272nd Guards Mortar regiment and, according to reports, the enemy soldiers had been slaughtered in their droves as they tried to withdraw.
Indeed, St.Clair’s 3e RdM had suffered nearly 30% casualties since it started its advance and was short of everything a soldier needs in battle… save courage.
His joy turned to anger as new reports from the advance spoke of burning T34s and a fanatical resistance that started to eat up his two lead battalions; the 2nd and 3rd.
Chekov ordered his old but effective OT-34s to relocate and mentally dared the enemy soldiers to stand before their awful weapons.
Flamethrowers had the capacity to deprive even the bravest of souls of any will to fight.
The leadership of his Third Battalion had already changed twice during the battle, and the latest report placed the unit in the hands of the one-eyed woman; namely Viktoriya Vladimira Fedorensky-Batavska.
She had once been a staff officer within the Main Administration for Military Engineers, and served with great distinction during the battles in and around Stalingrad, firstly on the cutters and launches that plied their desperate trade back and forth across the icy water, and subsequently as a frontline soldier alongside Rotmistrov’s guardsmen on the Mamayev Kurgan and in the rubble of the Red October factory, in which place she left behind her right eye, two fingers from her left hand, and a considerable portion of her left buttock.
Behind her back she was known as ‘Pirat’; to her face she was simply Captain Batavska, and she was greatly feared.
Not the least of which reasons was because she was wholly mad.
None the less, Chekov ordered her to continue to push forward, promising reinforcements to maintain her advance towards her first objective; cutting Route 758 northwest of Tarnobrzeg.
He was confident she would do it, and returned his attention to the anti-tank gun position that was increasingly becoming a hornet’s nest.
“Lev!”
His second in command was quickly by his side.
“I’m going forward to assess the river bridge defence. I’ll take a platoon of the SMG company with me for security. Keep pressing forward here and here. Comrade General Rybalko’ll be placing more troops under our command shortly. Use them as you see fit, but keep the rest of our headquarters units, and the reserve company of the 91st Tanks uncommitted, just in case I need them at the bridge.”