Men ran around, consumed in fire, screaming and crying, until the flames won the one-sided battle.
Others, hideously burned, lay screaming beside more fortunate silent comrades, their flesh bubbled and spilt, blisters weeping the fluid so necessary for life.
A few, a handful, survived with enough mental faculty to get themselves out of the affected area; some even paused long enough to grab a damaged body and drag it to some sort of safety.
The hillside was on fire; vegetation, bunkers, clothing, leather, flesh, all added their flavoured smoke.
One shattered P-38 had smashed into the ground a few metres short of the Tönsberg, downed by defensive AA fire, the only casualty of all the aircraft in the DRL assault.
It is said that quality troops can stand when others will fall back, and the 14th Engineers were quality troops.
But fire is a great leveller, and it equally held that the flamethrower will take the heart of even the bravest.
Many men of the 14th panicked and started to break.
A few started to move back, walking, sliding, crouching, before breaking into a blind run to safety.
Chekov had to act, and act quickly. He fired in the air.
“Stop! Stop, for fuck’s sake, stop!”
The first man went down as the Colonel shot him in the leg.
“You idiots! Stop! Go the other way! The other way! Over the hill top… quick as you can.”
One or two men heard and heeded, reversing their intended route, inspiring yet more to follow suit.
But many still plunged down the slope to the illusion of safety ahead.
Gasping for breath, Chekov flung himself into a small hollow on the enemy side of the ridge, just as the 11th Jagdstaffel arrived to finish the job.
The whoosh as the Napalm consumed the air around it was intense, the wind of replacement air sweeping up and over the prone soldiers gathered around their Colonel.
Screams, awful screams, rose above the other sounds of battle, as the immolation on the Tönsberg was repeated.
To the rear, the Soviet mortar positions were swept with 20mm and .50cal, as the German pilots, many of them veteran pilots who once went to war in the ME-110, returned to expend some ammunition on targets of opportunity lying outside the smoking attack area.
The mortars had a hard time of it, as did the few flak positions that exposed themselves to drive the Lightnings off.
At the bottom of the slope, German eyes watched second hands tick into the vertical as 0835 arrived, and with it, the attack.
“Back, Comrades, move back… quickly… make ready… the green toads will be coming!”
Men rose up on his command, barely believing that they had survived, knowing full well that many a comrade had perished in those few minutes.
The internal battle between elation and sadness was writ large on every soldier’s face.
The surviving engineers moved quickly back to barely recognisable positions, staffed by barely recognisable human forms, and surrounded by barely recognisable bodies bent by the extremes of temperature and pain.
Around thirty or so men had stayed put, and none had survived.
Radio communication was out.
Telephone cables were out.
Selecting two men as runners, Chekov sent them in either direction to obtain reports from any surviving leadership.
“Comrade Polkovnik.”
Balyan saluted with a red raw hand, his uniform still smoking.
“Good to see you, Comrade. Report.”
“Thirty-two men under my command. Two light machine guns. Now back in reserve position, Comrade Polkovnik.”
Chekov’s mouth refused to close.
“How did you manage that, Balyan?”
He turned and pointed at the distant recently constructed bunker containing reserve ammunition.
“On my orders, when the Amerikanski started to drop their bombs, I sent my boys to take cover. I thought the enemy wouldn’t know it was there as we only built it two days ago, Comrade Polkovnik.”
Chekov toyed with the concept of taking cover in company with the battalion’s reserve ammunition and HE stock as he composed his answer.
“Well done, Starshy Serzhant, well done.”
The younger man soaked up the praise,
“Now, send twelve of your men to me, all with spare ammunition, and return to your troops. I’ll be down when I’ve sorted this mess out.”
Balyan was already moving.
The dozen men were sent to flesh out the frontline, but in no way made up for the losses.
Iska’s positions had taken a beating, the HE turning the organised trenches and bunkers into a moonscape, albeit a defendable one.
“Our orders, Comrade Polkovnik?”
“Our orders are to hold, and we’ll hold, Pavel. The enemy seem to want this bit of Germany, so we must hold it for as long as possible.”
Chekov looked towards the south.
“If the 1st cracks, we’re in the shit. Orders or not, if they fold, we’ll retreat immediately. We’ll still sit on Route 751… so, if we have to run, Asemissen will be the rally point. Clear, Pavel?”
“Asemissen. Understood, Comrade Polkovnik.”
Chekov slapped Isla’s shoulder.
“Look after yourself, Pavel.”
Iska stared after the running shape.
‘You too, Gennadi.’
First Battalion had already stepped off, moving through the woods and up the gently rising slope.
No battle formation or line abreast.
Squads moving through the smoke with stealth, using trees as cover, clumps of undergrowth as a base of fire, inexorably moving upwards.
There was no shooting.
Nothing except the fading sounds of agony and terror ahead.
A large explosion broke the calm, closely followed by the screams of the wounded.
A single shattered trunk swept downwards, severed by an explosive charge, triggered by a careless step.
Another man was crushed as the heavy lump of timber crashed to earth.
“Achtung! Trip wires!”
The fruits of the ‘gardener’s’ labours were about to be realised.
Too late the warning, as another crump rang through the woods.
Then two more, as a falling tree set off other charges nearby.
The First Battalion commander urged his men to advance with care, knowing the delay in bringing up the pionieres would allow the Russians too much time.
He yelled at the radioman who relayed the leading company commander’s request for engineer support.
“Tell him no! No! No! He must push on quickly and press the enemy before they recover.”
First Battalion moved on.
A sharp crack marked the ignition of an anti-personnel mine, the cries of bloodied men marked its efficiency.
More and more mines exploded, occasionally accompanied by the heavier sound of an HE charge, and the resulting fall of a tree.
A few enemy mortars started to lob shells into the area, adding to the growing confusion.
Officers and NCOs tried to regain order and push their men forward, with some success, but some groups floundered, and a few decided to go no further.
Those squads and platoons that carried forward found more mines, and a high proportion of the leadership fell, dead or wounded, victims of the anonymous killers.
The leading grenadiers reached the top and found the small clearing cleared by the defenders.
The gunfire exchange started, as the remaining German leadership worked to find a suitable way to assault across the deadly space.
Two fallen trees suggested the place, and Second Company immediately launched an attack, using the smoke and debris as cover.
The defending engineers had also realised the significance of the fallen trees, and the concentration of firepower they had built up stopped Second Company halfway across.