“We can render a great service to such units by helping to establish contact for them with their regiments or divisions,” Voss suggested.
“Should the opportunity arise, yes. I understand your desire to aid your Kameraden under these conditions, but we cannot attempt actions that, although admirable, are ultimately futile. We are a small force, lieutenant, and I won’t risk annihilation on empty gestures.”
“So then, how do we characterize these rear guards and lost men? As bait?”
“The best fishing is where the great fish feed,” was Falkenstein’s reply.
Voss considered the analogy loathsome but did not dare speak or show his revulsion.
“Look here, Lieutenant, if we meet Red Vengeance head on and destroy it—soon—then you can all return to your units and pursue your regular duties. No one wants this business over with more than I do.”
“And if not?”
“Then we persevere until the task is completed. Red Vengeance must be stopped before it reaches the other side of the Dniepr. If it isn’t…if it should cross, then all hope is lost.”
The obsessive nature of the captain’s words worried Voss. He heard something in the voice that was left unspoken. He didn’t want the men to get wind of this. The river had become their ultimate salvation; for some it was a reality and for others a mirage, but it held out the hope of survival. Making the attempt was worth all the risks they faced. It relaxed the grip of death that had kept them in its clutches for so long.
Falkenstein returned the map to the case and turned over the leather portfolio to the lieutenant. “This is the dossier on Red Vengeance and related issues. I suggest you familiarize yourself with all it contains.”
Voss opened the portfolio and thumbed through several of the hundred-odd pages of typed and hand written reports. “I’m sure I’ll find it helpful, sir.”
“It’s about time I briefed the crew,” Falkenstein said, and walked over to the armored personnel carrier. He stepped into the crew compartment and looked down upon them all, as a priest would do from a pulpit, with love and fury. “Gather ’round, men.”
Dutifully, the grenadiers obeyed and stood in a semicircle at the back end of the vehicle. Falkenstein eyed each man as though sizing him up. There was complete silence as they observed the captain with expectation and a little fear.
“What do you do when you see a T-34 bearing straight for you? Corporal?”
The captain was looking directly at Angst, waiting for a reply. Caught off guard at being singled out, he thought quickly. “I’d want a panzerfaust, sir, and as soon as it was within range, let loose.”
Falkenstein nodded. “And should a panzerfaust not be in you possession, what then?”
Schmidt volunteered an answer. “Remain in your slit trench, and after it passes by, plant a magnetic charge on the hull.”
“What else? You know, don’t you Corporal Schroeder?”
Schroeder answered the call. “Like Schmidt said, get out of your hole as soon as it passes. Stay close. Hug the machine. The crew inside is blind at close quarters. Grab a hold of the tow hook and haul yourself onto the deck. If you’re lucky, you’ve got a Teller mine. Wedge it in the seam between the turret and deck plating. Maybe all you have is some petrol. Pour it down the grill over the diesel plant, light it, and jump clear.”
“What if the deck sprouts a forest of barbed wire strung with antipersonnel mines? What then?” The crew was silent. “You couldn’t easily climb on its back then, could you, Corporal?”
“No, sir” Schroeder answered, quietly.
Braun called out. “Knock out its track. Once immobilized…”
“True,” Falkenstein agreed, “Once the tank loses the ability to maneuver there are a few options left. Come on men, forget the manual and think of everything you have learned or carried out on your own.”
“Blind it with a flamethrower,” Detwiler shouted. “And cook all the meat inside.” Everyone shook heads in agreement. Falkenstein smiled. “Yes, that as well. Now listen to me, grenadiers. Our mission is very clear. We are after one T-34, and you know the one I mean. It has murdered your Kameraden and filled you with a terror beyond anything you have yet to experience in this war, but you have survived that horror, all the stronger, to fight another day. And that day has come. I did not choose you; fate has chosen you, for any man who has walked away from the jaws of that beast is destined to destroy it. Now, say its name, men.”
“Red Vengeance… Red Vengeance,” they all muttered.
“Red Vengeance. A satanic factory was where the hull was forged, the blast furnace fired by the flames of hell, and the schematics penned by Lucifer’s own hand. There is much to give cause for wonder about this machine. There’s not a panzer crew or rifle squad who’s not heard of it or dares to speak its name without praying it will not bear down on him. Some say Red Vengeance is a myth born in the imaginations of troops weary from defeat. I can tell you, it’s no myth. As I lay close to death amid the destruction of my command, it passed this close,” and Falkenstein held thumb and forefinger a centimeter apart, “crushing dead and wounded alike. The sound of its engine filled my head with brain numbing clatter. And the smell! I lay there, drowning in the odor of death. The flesh and blood of the fallen clung to its hull and tracks, thick as mud. We were beaten, finished, and still Red Vengeance continued to churn and defile the dead with cold, brutal method. There was no earthly reason for it, I tell you. And I swore an oath then and there, should I survive this meaningless slaughter, I will avenge the deaths of those good men and spare others the same fate. For as long as I continue to draw breath, my task is to put down that steel beast. If I must give chase to as far as the arctic reaches of the Finnish Gulf or across the blazing steppes to the Sea of Azov, I will hunt it down. I will remain on this side of the Dniepr until its severed hydraulics bleed and black diesel fuel gushes from its mauled, smoking hull. This is what I have sworn. Are you with me, grenadiers?” Falkenstein cried out in a voice firm and resonant as his one good eye stared wildly at the assembly.
“We are with you, Captain,” they shouted back.
“Do you swear death and destruction upon Red Vengeance?” Falkenstein roared.
They swore. “Death to Red Vengeance, death to Red Vengeance,” was the collective battle cry. Each man tried to outdo the other in bellowing the chant. Weapons were taken in hand and thrust skyward. Voss shrank back. The display was worse than the hysterical enthusiasm generated at a party rally, behavior he detested and always tried to avoid. Even Reinhardt and Hartmann had become caught up in the madness. This was more than men letting off steam. It was possession. Schmidt, whose first impression led Voss to consider the grenadier mild and introspective by nature, had become as bloodthirsty as Schroeder and Detwiler. Voss stepped further away from the crowd as they worked themselves into such a frenzied state, it appeared as though they were afflicted with Saint Vitus’s dance. He was stunned by the antics and hysteria, but more so by the pleasure Falkenstein took in the exhibition he helped to motivate. So this is our lord and master, whose will we must all yield to, Voss thought. In this vast, disconsolate country, it is not God who will decide if a single one of us will remain standing at the close of this reckless adventure, but Falkenstein, Mad Falkenstein. Never in his life had he felt this alone, stranded, among his own kind.
As if a summer storm had swept through with thunder and hail and then, just as swiftly, the sky turned clear again, the fever among the crew suddenly broke. Without needing to be ordered, the grenadiers returned to the last of their chores and made ready to depart. Voss collared Angst. “Come with me, Corporal.” They went back into the farmhouse. He was tempted to ask the corporal how he felt after that display of zealotry. He wanted to slap Angst and the entire crew for taking part in such an obscene performance. Instead, he merely ordered the corporal to select the best lengths of floorboards that he had pulled up and secure them to the mud guard of the personnel carrier. “It might be of some use,” he added. Angst began to form a stack of the least splintered pieces, careful not to catch his hand on the nails that remained in the wood.