The verbal report given by the departed Gurundov and corroboration by the Starshina of the Mortar Company and Kapitan of the anti-tank unit were enough to ensure Arkady received one of his country’s most meaningful bravery awards.
Gurundov’s death was not known to Yarishlov until the day Major Petrenko visited him in hospital to inform him of his award. Had it been done more sensitively then perhaps, just possibly, Yarishlov would have taken it better but Petrenko threw the titbit of information at Arkady as he started to leave, turning the pride at the recognition of his actions into the abyss of sadness associated with the loss of a close comrade. Petrenko was never one to endear himself to those around him and under him but he excelled himself that day, and would have paled had he read Arkady’s mind as he walked out of the hospital.
One week later to the hour, Captain Yarishlov was presented with his award by no lesser person than the Bryansk Front Commander, General Maks Andreevich Reiter. He was one of a number of soldiers honoured at the ceremony, some front line swine like himself, others rear-echelon personnel who got their piece of metal for who they knew, not what they had achieved. That was and is the same in armies all over the world and will never change.
Of Arkady’s rearguard force, only four men were left alive. Himself and the Starshina of mortars who would never fight again, leastways not until the Rodina needed one legged-soldiers desperately. The gunner’s Kapitan and one seventeen year old anti-tank soldier were also on the line of recipients.
The Latvian Starshina, Artur Gaudins, got his in hospital just outside Belgorod and he felt it was a fair exchange all said and done. His leg for a shiny award and the promise of continued life with his family away from the horrors of the front.
Anti-tank gunner Kapitan Yuri Lapanski proudly received his award from his Corps Commander and posed for Pravda photographs looking every bit the Soviet Model soldier the day before he coughed his life out, struck in both lungs by fragments from a short round fired by friendly artillery.
The younger man, one Boris Orlov, revelled in his award and the celebrity status which accompanied it, for few anti-tank gunners survived after killing a German tank or two, and certainly a gunner who had been the sole server of his weapon and still managed to slay seven armoured vehicles was unheard of. He rode his luck for most of the war, strangely failing to destroy another enemy vehicle despite being in numerous actions, and died impaled on the bayonet of a teenage paratrooper during a vigorous German counter attack in East Prussia in ‘45.
Arkady mused; all those thoughts inspired by the simplest gaze at a piece of treasured metal.
So, many dead comrades later, Arkady and his troops now rested on the quiet outskirts of sleepy Springe in Lower Saxony, directly opposite their erstwhile American allies, enjoying their occupation duties in the homeland of those that had done so much harm on their own native soil.
And so now he stood ready for his meeting with those same Americans. He was to be shown the manoeuvrings of a US armored division and, as his American hosts would hope, be impressed with the projection of power it represented, and, as his commanders would hope, gather useful information on unit strengths, personnel capabilities and tactical weaknesses.
Perversely, Arkady had first-hand knowledge of the Americans tanks from lend-lease. Britain, Canada and the United States had provided his country with tanks and vehicles in order to carry the fight to the Germans whilst the Western Allies did little by way of direct action. He had had a Sherman knocked out from underneath him by a panzerfaust, so he was painfully aware of their weaknesses, not as painfully as the members of his crew who would bear the scars and torture of their burns until their final day. Generally, American tanks burned very well.
Before more memories flooded over him, Arkady left his room and walked to the waiting staff car for the drive to Paderborn.
Chapter 21 – THE HERO
He was the genuine article.
Major John Ramsey VC, DSO and 2 bars, MC and bar was a real gold-plated military hero, much loved by his country and his men. His country loved him from the first moment he had come to their attention.
Leading his Scottish infantry in the Western Desert in a desperate yet successful defence of a forward position at El Alamein against counter-attacking Italians, he earned his first Military Cross for leadership and personal bravery a hundred times over. It was followed swiftly by his first Distinguished Service Order, awarded for the successful repulsing of German infantry assaults at Wadi Akarit. His men loved him because he was a superb leader, genuinely concerned for each and every soldier under his command and keen to bring every one back home in one piece, whilst knowing that he would never do so. He asked his boys to do nothing he wouldn’t do himself and more than one of his jocks owed their life to him, whether they were dragged back wounded from exposed positions or preserved by a timely intervention in the heat of combat.
A bar to his MC arrived in the mountains of Sicily, the second award of a DSO during the night attack at the Gerbini railway station* in Sicily and his third award of DSO for actions under fire during the action at Hives during the Battle of the Bulge.
There was a school of thought amongst his peers that Ramsey should have been the first triple holder of the VC, but that award fell to him only once, earned superbly at the cost of a quartet of minor wounds in the gutter fighting that was the Reichswald assault. He destroyed two MG42 positions with grenades and killed the three surviving gunners with nothing more than a commando knife as his Sten gun had been smashed by a round when he charged forward. He would have gladly traded that award and all the others for the lives of the nine young men of his command that those machine-guns had claimed that February afternoon at Hekkens.
His solid and athletic twenty-five year old frame had sustained a score of wounds on battlefields from Europe to Africa, through the Mediterranean and back to Europe, both before and after the French occupation.
When the dark cloud of war fell over Europe in 1939 he was a young officer newly arrived with his unit, and it was not long before he took them off to fight in France. Since then, and the miracle escape from that conquered land, Ramsey had been constantly in action in theatres across the spectrum of combat and had received more wounds and injuries than most could cope with and he cared to remember, but he always healed fast so he was soon back in the thick of it all.
His final knock was at the hands of a fourteen year old Bund Deutsche Madel sniper on the road to Bremerhaven, whose efforts rewarded Ramsey with a wound that bled like a hosepipe along with a cracked collarbone, and brought the fanatical German girl an instant and violent Valhalla in the shape of vengeful Scottish bayonets.
Since that last action in Nordenham, Ramsey had been on the mend and his unit withdrawn from serious action, facing only minor skirmishes with remnants of hardcore Germans. Skirmishes still deadly enough to put two of his good friends in early graves for no great purpose.
Now he was to return to his unit in sufficient time to be reacquainted with his boys, prior to their returning home to Blighty for garrison duties in Edinburgh and possible subsequent redeployment to Palestine or Greece.