Officers called in contact reports, some calm and collected, others clearly panicking, as the prospect of encirclement and annihilation reared its ugly head.
Seven more rockets were released, causing the Hungarian officer to seek out the eighth launcher and quickly finding it on its side and surrounded by inert forms.
The MACE launchers were now all mounted on GAZ jeeps for swiftness of redeployment, and his crews needed no orders to get them moving to alternate positions.
Once they were relocated, their crews swiftly reamed the launchers with more rockets, ready to take on whatever else might come down the road.
Of the RDCA’s headquarters, only two vehicles had escaped unscathed, the rest, tanks and personnel carriers, lay smashed and broken on Route 79.
Less than 30% of the Legion engineer company escaped out of gun range, and even then, Soviet mortars pursued them off the battlefield.
The rest of Uhlmann’s assault group was cornered and unable to move back.
0546 hrs, Tuesday. 1st April 1947, Szewce, Poland.
“Fire!”
The 88mm gun rocked back hard on its mount and sent a killing shot down the road, one that took the turret clean off one of the pursuing T34s.
“Good kill!”
Even though he only had half an eye on the battle, Braun was impressed with the gunner’s skill, and not for the first time this day.
The sounds of distress on the radio were growing, and he left his crew to fight the immediate battle while he consulted his map.
From garbled cries for help, calm reports, and a veteran’s intuition, Braun constructed an understanding of the situation.
‘Hurensohn!’
His mind was made up in an instant and the radio crackled as he made contact with the AT commander.
The Captain thought Braun mad but went no further, other than to agree to the plan and wish him luck.
Durand went further, and dispatched two halftracks to accompany Braun on the crazy mission.
The five Schwarzpanthers and two M5 halftracks turned off Route 79 and charged straight towards the small bridge to the southeast, catching the defenders off-guard.
Expecting the Legionnaires to simply follow Route 79, the company of 116th Guardsmen and their AT support were swiftly overrun, and Braun led his small force on the first part of the four-kilometre drive to save the trapped force at Sośniczany.
0546 hrs, Tuesday. 1st April 1946, Route 79, Poland.
It was a surprise to everyone, Soviet and Legionnaire alike, that the first aircraft to appear over the battlefield bore a Red Star.
A ground attack unit of the Red Air Force arrived as directed by Rybalko’s air commander, and attacked the Allied forces becoming bottled-up between Sośniczany and Szewce.
A mixture of cluster bombs and high explosive tumbled out of the sky and inflicted casualties upon the relatively helpless men below.
Relatively, as one of the Ilyushins was chopped from the sky by a Legion M-17 quad AA mount.
Returning for a second run, the ground attack aircraft exacted revenge for their lost comrades by destroying the surviving AA weapon before quitting the field as USAAF F-82 twin Mustangs hunted them down.
The long-range interceptors were not best suited for low-level operations, but still put three of the Soviet aircraft into the ground and chased the remaining Ilyushins away.
Elsewhere, men of Deniken’s 169th Guards Rifle Regiment were visited by Skyraiders who brought their normal recipe of death to the battlefield: rockets, bullets, and napalm.
Further north, above the German battlefield, Soviet Yak-15 turbojets clashed with DRL Me-262s at higher altitude as, underneath them, the ground attack aircraft fought yet more desperate battles between themselves, and with the enemy AA defences.
Durand was bringing up the rear of the assault force, performing a brilliant fighting withdrawal, but finding his units becoming concentrated and vulnerable.
Once the aircraft had plied their trade, Soviet artillery again took up the baton, and casualties mounted once more.
Alma could not yet mount any relief back up Route 79, as enemy flame throwing tanks and infantry were penetrating their lines and causing considerable problems, but two battalions and tank support were being prepared for an attempt in the near future.
Efforts to push to the northwest had failed, so everything depended on the Alma relief attempt or on Braun and his hare-brained scheme.
Braun, knowing the time was vital, did not stop to immolate a Soviet supply column he found at Skotniki; he simply drove straight over the top of as much as he could, squashing carts, men, and horses, and firing as he went.
His luck held as he also crashed through a few small engineer-infantry units without loss.
‘Wir kommen, Kameraden, Wir kommen!’
Even as Braun’s as hoc group smashed into another reserve engineer platoon sat waiting to be called forward, Alma’s under pressure front cracked, and St.Clair could only divert his relief force to try and patch up the hole, leaving the trapped assault force on their own again.
The lead elements of the Legion Corps D’Assaut reserve had arrived and were already shaking out into position with the 4e RACE, the X7 anti-tank rocket troops, moved straight into the front defensive line, whilst the hotch-potch of heavy tanks belonging to the 1er BCL and two companies of the 7e RTA occupied areas to the north of the position, the former within sight of the divisional command position.
Inside it, the reports were flowing thick and fast and one in particular caused great consternation, although Knocke received the news with stoicism, at least outwardly.
On the Russian Front particularly, he had been in some tight spots, but this was rapidly becoming the worst he had ever encountered, and it still had the capacity to get a lot worse.
The full failure of Grossdeutschland had become apparent when Emmercy’s force came under heavy attack from the north and northeast, assaulted by a superior-sized enemy group of the latest T-54 tanks and motorised infantry.
Only a fanatical and costly stand by two companies, one of the AT battalion and one of the engineer, had stopped the Soviets from splitting Emmercy in half and leaving the road to the south open.
The Grossdeutschland Kampfgruppe had also done its part by driving into the enemy’s right flank, calling away some assets to deal with the danger just in the nick of time.
Replete with markings, both current and historical, the situation map reflected the chaos of the battlefield, and needed close inspection to fully understand.
By the latest reports, the breach in Haefali’s line was being closed just as Knocke examined the possibilities of the incursion, noting with no surprise that the thrusts through Haefali and Emmercy both potentially would have arrived at the ground upon which he was standing, something he had instinctively understood, and the reason why he had placed all that he possessed at Sulisɫawice.
The latest reports were wrong and the situation was more critical than Knocke could have imagined.
The absence of communication from the recon elements of the 7e RTA was worrying, and no amount of effort by the signallers could raise anyone from the unit. The air support commander urgently requested a recon flight to cover the area, but the air space over the battlefield was incredibly hostile and any photo mission would need escorts, escorts that were presently tasked elsewhere.
Emmercy’s group was already split in two and the Frenchman was presently lying unconscious in his battle headquarters surrounded by men with hands on heads, waiting to know their fate at the hands of their captors.