Six went down swiftly, but the others dropped to the floor and started to fight back, scoring hits amongst the defending engineers immediately.
Keller swapped his magazine and let rip for a second time, seeing another defender disappear in a red mist as a reward.
“Now, menschen!”
He rose up and charged the ten metres to the tree trunk, not bothering to see if the rest of his group were with him.
They were.
A man with one of the new weapons shot at him, sending his helmet flying as a round clipped the metal. Another round hit his MP-40, knocking it from his grasp.
Unarmed, he threw himself over the trunk and onto a soldier grappling with reloading a DP-28.
Grabbing the engineer’s head, he propelled it into the trunk, driving a branch stub through the soldier’s right ear.
Iska used a short arm jab to smash the jaw of a German soldier, driving the butt of his SKS hard into the man’s face a second time, just to silence the gurgling screams.
Pausing to quickly unfold the attached bayonet, he suddenly found himself airborne, as a grenade exploded behind him.
Propelled back over the trunk, Iska clattered into two German soldiers.
Recovering the quickest, he snatched off his helmet and used a roundhouse motion to smack it into the head of one of his adversaries.
The other lanced his bayonet across Iska’s thigh, causing him to bellow with pain.
He swung the helmet again, missing, unbalancing himself and dropped to the earth.
The German rifleman’s satisfaction turned to despair, as two bullets robbed his lungs of air.
Dead before he hit the ground, the Kar98k dropped virtually right at Iska’s feet.
Behind him, on the other side of the tree, Keller had snatched up a solid lump of wood and had already succeeded in braining one Russian soldier.
More Germans arrived, the first running straight into a complete fighting lunatic.
Iska worked the bolt, but the weapon jammed, so he drove the bayonet point towards his enemy.
The combination of thrust and the speed of the attacker drove the screaming German soldier up to the muzzle of the rifle, the bayonet protruding from his back by at least four inches.
A German officer pointed at Iska, and immediately he felt the impact of bullets.
Robbed of his strength, he dropped to one knee.
Meanwhile, Keller had taken up a dropped PPSh and used it to sweep the area that a handful of Russians had swarmed from a moment before.
Greeted by wails and screams, he contented himself with emptying the magazine into the undergrowth that clearly contained hidden troops.
A bullet struck his shoulder, sending him flying back against the tree.
German soldiers surged over and round him, as Von Scharf pushed Seventh Company along the Soviet line.
Two men dragged Keller around the tree and into safety, where the Sani started to work on his messy wound.
“Fucking hell, Unterroffizier! You’ve already got the fucking cross. You after another one?”
Keller’s reply was cut short as the medic probed the wound, causing lancing pain.
“Reckon that’s your shoulder blade gone. Sit still now.”
The medic quickly bandaged the wound and packed it to prevent more bleeding.
He lit a cigarette and stuck it between Keller’s lips, then moved to another German soldier, face smashed in by a rifle butt. After a few cursory checks, he pulled open the soldier’s tunic and split the tag, taking half so that the man’s death could be properly recorded.
“What about him, Sani?”
Keller nodded towards the bleeding Russian officer.
The medical orderly looked at the sitting man, and saw the look of defiance and hatred.
“What about him, Unteroffizier?”
“He’s wounded.”
“So fucking what? The bastard did for a few of our boys. He can take his chances with the fucking fairies, far as I’m concerned.”
Keller started to protest, but a coughing fit wracked his body. He yelped in pain as the grating bones caused mayhem inside.
“For God’s sake, Unteroffizier, will you calm down and rest.”
The medic pushed one of his few remaining morphine ampoules into Keller’s thigh.
Keller started to feel drowsy, imagining whistles and shouts, gunfire and grenades, until merciful darkness ended his pain.
Chekov and Balyan, blowing their whistles as hard as the climb would allow, led the small reserve force into the flank of Seventh Company, driving it back on itself with ease.
Only the direct intervention of Von Scharf stopped the German flank from being turned.
The two sides drew back from each other, almost as if by mutual consent, recovering their breath and regaining strength for what would come next.
A runner dropped at Chekov’s feet, panting, red faced, the effort of his mission almost too much for the wounded engineer.
“Comrade Polkov… nik… message… from Polkovnik… Nagan…”
Chekov, keeping half an eye in the direction of the enemy, quickly read the order.
“You’ve got to be fucking joking,” he said, to no one in particular.
Showing the order to Balyan, he waited for the younger man’s reaction.
“They’ve got to be fucking joking, really they have, Comrade Polkovnik!”
Turning back to the exhausted man, Chekov gave him his orders.
“Can you manage to get back to Polkovnik Nagan?”
The man nodded wearily, especially as the alternative was to stay in this hellhole.
“No time for writing, so tell Polkovnik Nagan, orders received and understood. Off with you, and good luck, Comrade.”
The man beat a hasty retreat, much faster than his exhausted condition would have seemed to allow.
The reply would never reach Colonel Nagan of the 1st Guards Mechanised Engineer Sapper Brigade. Not because the messenger failed in his duty, but because the Colonel was already dead by his own hand.
“Right, Starshy Serzhant, get the men ready to move on my order.”
“But…”
“No buts, Comrade Balyan, no buts. Orders are orders.”
Some metres away, Von Scharf listened to the repeated order.
‘You’ve got to be fucking joking!’
“Received, Herr Oberstleutnant, but I think it’s a bad idea. Why don’t…”
The other set went to transmit, crashing the system.
Von Scharf stopped talking.
“…bey your orders or you’ll be relieved. Implement by 0930. Ende.”
Von Scharf focussed on the handset he held, his anger directed at the inanimate lump from which this most stupid of orders had come.
Controlling himself, he passed it back to Schneider.
‘0930… less than an hour gone… My God.’
Regaining his composure, Von Scharf pointed at the wounded men.
“Sani! Get them away down the hill now. Take whoever you need to help. Get moving now!”
The medic immediately started to organise the evacuation of the wounded.
Scharf could see no officer or NCO of note in sight.
He knew that Rieke and Gruber had both fallen, and Keller was amongst those broken bodies being taken back down the slope.
He checked the magazine in his Gewehr.
Hauptfeldwebel Riedler stumbled into view, his ripped trouser leg exposing blood and dirt on his left calf.
“Are you well, Hauptfeldwebel?”
“Just a few wood splinters in the leg, Herr Hauptmann.”
Indicating that they should crouch, Von Scharf listened to Riedler’s report.
It was awful listening.
The two companies that had been attacked by the Ilyushin now consisted of eighty-three shattered men, survivors of the two hundred and seventeen soldiers who had led the second wave. In Riedler’s opinion, the stunned men were incapable of doing much for the foreseeable future.