It was also reported that most of the protecting AA battalion from 1701st AA Regiment had also been ravaged.
Valuable assets that had been equipped with the highly effective German 20mm Quad weapons mounted on trucks, one of the few German weapons that had not disappeared so completely and strangely from the Soviet order of battle in Europe that summer.
Mikhail Gordeevich Sakhno sat down on a fallen tree and ran his hands through his hair, or more accurately where his hair had once been, the balding patch emphasised by the bushier growths on either side of his crown.
As he sat, Davydov strode up muttering oath after oath.
Sakhno indicted a space on the fallen trunk next to him.
“Let us sit and take stock Nikanor Karpovich. I must think how best to present this disaster to Savelev or the pair of us will be counting trees.”
Davydov looked at his superior surprised.
“The Army Commander is aware of the situation Comrade General. His Supplies section is working on how to get us moving again as we speak.”
It was Sakhno’s turn to look at his companion with surprise.
Indicating a truck drawn up on the edge of the devastated zone, the NKVD officer spat smoky oily phlegm and rummaged for his cigarettes to freshen his mouth.
“Our valiant Comrade Colonel Rassov from Army Command with a radio truck, reporting back as we speak Mikhail Gordeevich.”
Both men spat on cue for the same reason, a disgust and fear of Rassov both shared.
Polkovnik Rassov was an asshole but, unfortunately a powerful one who had the Army Commander’s ear. Throughout the Red Army he was known as the weasel.
Both men lit up and inhaled, coinciding with the first drops of rain dropping on the General’s balding pate.
“Well that’s just fucking great. Now it simply can’t get any worse,” chuckling in the way that people who have had a sense of humour failure chuckle in the face of great adversity.
“There is more Comrade.”
Reluctantly Davydov drew his commander’s attention to a previously anonymous set of wrecks lined up on a woodland path, deliberately parked close together and hidden from aerial view, until such time as the fireballs consumed vehicles, occupants, and protective forest canopy.
“According to Rassov, that is apparently the illustrious 2nd Battalion of the 8th Pontoon Brigade, sent here last night to fuel up before moving forward behind the attack we have just failed to make because of our lack of fuel.”
Sakhno screwed his face up, concentrating on the numerous wrecks that were now apparent to his gaze, making out the remains of vital bridging equipment as he moved his eyes up and down the charred lines.
“Well that’s just fucking great.”
Davydov could do no more than nod at that. Going through the options in his mind, the General was unaware of the approaching figure until his companion stiffened at his side.
Casting a swift look, he saw the diminutive figure of Rassov marching with purpose in their direction.
The two comrades exchanged a knowing look.
As the NKVD officer stood, he leaned naturally, allowing him to whisper in his general’s ear.
“I’d love to shoot the little bastard but I think it would only make matters worse my friend.”
Sakhno, remaining seated, spoke his thought rather more openly.
“Well if it looks like going bad for us, the fucking weasel will be the first to bite a bullet.”
Davydov gestured to the approaching Rassov and spoke with a lightness he did not feel.
“Comrade Colonel Rassov. Please join us.”
Rassov had insisted on accompanying Sakhno back to his mobile headquarters at Starzhausen, just over a mile north of Wolnzach.
The five-vehicle convoy was led by a BA64 armoured car as advance screen, with the security section in an American Studebaker truck leading the main group of the 10th Tank Corps Commander’s GAZ staff car, Rassov’s Jeep and finally with the Signal vehicle from which Rassov had sent his damning reports bringing up the rear.
The BA64 driver, anxious to be back to his unit by mealtime, moved his vehicle forward above the agreed speed, his vehicle commander failing to notice the error as he examined in detail some interesting photos liberated from a ladies salon in Straubling.
Quite often in life, where there exists one error, another arrives to make matters worse.
The driver of the security section vehicle, having lost sight of the armoured car made an assumption and, instead of carrying on down the same road, turned his lorry left just past Ainau, heading down a woodland track to nowhere.
The three senior officers deep in conversation in the GAZ behind noticed nothing, the last two vehicle’s drivers would not have recognised the error in any case.
One large lorry, a signal truck, and two staff 4x4’s make quite a lot of noise, especially when driven in the Russian style down unmade roads.
Without that warning, things might have been different.
However, the racket the four vehicles made ensured that the matter was never in doubt, as the Ainauwald contained nothing but a swift death for anything with a Red Star.
Davydov had just finished remonstrating against Rassov’s accusation about the possible effects on his health of the obvious deviation from standard procedures regarding positioning of battle fuel stocks. Angry, he turned away and slowly became aware of his surroundings. He started to question the driver, an extremely average looking leviathan called Anasimova, picked for her driving ability and nothing else.
The security lorry disappeared in a wall of flame as it drove straight over a teller mine chain, three devices exploding virtually in unison.
The radio truck and crew lasted less than three seconds more as two panzerfausts arrowed in, one from each side, obliterating the cab.
The rattle of small arms fire suddenly exceeded the screams from the dying and the air was filled with deadly metal insects, each capable of taking a life.
Three, fired from an ST44 assault rifle, took Olga Anasimova in the chest, stopping her heart in an instant.
The vehicle continued forward, losing momentum and coming to a halt by bumping into the rear of the burning Studebaker.
The front seat passenger, Colonel Rassov, was hit by the same burst that killed Anasimova. Eyes wide open in shock and horror, he was conscious but unable to move, his spine severed by one strike, his arms broken and chest penetrated by the five others. Rassov’s death was noisy, protracted and excruciating as the flames advanced.
Davydov and Sakhno had bailed out, each already hit and bleeding, firing with their pistols at imagined shapes in the undergrowth.
Nodding at a thicker clump of bushes to their rear, the two gathered themselves for a superhuman effort.
They burst from behind their cover and made for relative safety behind them, from where emerged a middle-aged man wearing an SS camouflage smock.
“Sieg Heil!”
Instead of attacking that morning and exploiting the break in the line caused by the collapse of the French division, 10th Tank Corps was paralysed by the loss of its allocated fuel supply and the loss of its two key senior commanders.
Commander of 5th Guards Tank Army, Lieutenant-General Mikhail Ivanovich Savelev stepped in, reorganising the hierarchy of the 10th, mourning the loss of two competent veteran officers, and spared no thought whatsoever for the weasel he had despised.
The hiding place of Kommando Lenz had been well and truly blown and the armed group, led by the former SS Hauptsturmfuhrer of Fallschirmjager, had long disappeared.