The man had something he needed to say.
“Sorry, Herr Oberstleutnant.”
Pressing a field dressing to the probably fatal wound, Von der Heydte shrugged his shoulders.
“It is done, Oberfeldwebel. It should not have been,” he grunted with the effort of tying off the ends, “But it is done.”
“My brothers. Both of them. Executed by those red bastards,” the pain started to affect the wounded man’s speech.
“I am sorry, Oberfeldwebel. Now, stay still. I’ll be back when I can.”
Touching the NCO on the shoulder, Von der Heydte emerged from the shell hole, straight into the blast from a stick grenade, dispatched from the hand of one of his own.
The blast knocked the Fallschirmjager commander unconscious, and he was carried from the field on the shoulders of the horrified grenadier.
Bosicki lay in the hole, unseen, and unmissed.
The British rearguard moved out of Stein, leaving behind a vacuum swiftly filled by Soviet troops.
The surviving Engineers from the 25th emerged from their hiding places, their company shattered by the joint efforts of the British Shermans, the Vampir soldiers, and the Fallschirmjager.
One shocked Soviet Corporal stood over a shell hole, its single occupant wearing the uniform of the enemy that had just killed both his cousin and best friend.
He locked eyes with the wounded German, understanding the man’s fear.
The corporal lit his cigarette, rough cut Russian tobacco rolled in the page of a book he had ‘liberated’ some days ago, flicking open his lighter, also liberated, this time from the dead body of a US paratrooper.
The flame remained, the petrol lighter steady in the hands of a man resolved to revenge.
Lighting the Molotov cocktail, he enjoyed the look of panic on the German’s face, and grinned as the man tried to move out of the hole.
He tossed the bottle, and was rewarded with the sound of breaking glass, immediately followed by animal-like screaming.
Standing on the edge of the hole, he watched, enjoying the immolation of the German soldier, taking it all in, as if he was watching a silent movie in the theatre.
Except it wasn’t silent, the hideous screaming rising above every sound of battle.
The petrol burned away, leaving small flames where a piece of clothing had yet to totally yield, or where flesh was still capable of sustaining fire.
Yet the man still lived, and the screams went on.
On and on.
The Corporal watched as the sounds of suffering started to curtail and shock set in. He felt satisfied that the man had paid for the deaths of his cousin and friend.
The Engineer company regrouped and moved away.
Bosicki was dead before the rats started to gnaw on his burnt flesh.
At approximately the same time that Colonel Danskin, late of the 25th Guards Mechanised Brigade, was shot by the NKVD, a group of weary officers assembled in a large tent on the outskirts of Dilsen, Belgium.
Even Von der Heydte was there, groggy, and sporting his own black eyes, brought on by his contact with the road when he was felled by the grenade.
He and Higgins went together like bookends, and the pair earned more than one grin from their comrades.
Crisp and Harper were holding their own miniature de-briefing, both poring over the map of their last battles, trying to find out what could have been done better, or been done differently.
It would be some time before the full situation was clarified, but it seemed likely that the 101st had less than 50% of its manpower on the right side of the Maas, and that officially put the division out of the war for some time to come.
Maxwell-Taylor was on the phone, dealing with the plethora of matters that accompany such a defeat, or, as some called it, a victory.
‘That will be left to the historians to sort out.’
The Corps commander’s lips curled at that thought, safe in the knowledge that his men had done all they could, regardless of what history would reflect from the comfort of its armchair when the firing had stopped.
The last man to arrive, did so with a flourish, two SDKFZ 251 halftrack’s rattling up at full speed and sliding to a halt, adjacent to the tent.
Von Hardegen, his face like thunder, alighted, followed by a group of men who were with him for a very specific purpose.
Maxwell-Taylor had rehearsed the moment in his mind, but was beaten to it by the swift movement of Higgins, who reached out for the hand of the Panzer officer.
“Lieutenant Colonel Von Hardegen, thank you, from myself, and my men. Without you, we would have been lost. Thank you, Sir.”
Von Hardegen could not deny that it was true, but was tactful enough to not confirm it.
“We were all lucky, Herr General, and we all played our part today.”
That was undoubtedly true.
The others pressed forward, slapping shoulders, shaking hands, relieved to still be alive, and attributing it all to this man and his tankers.
Modest as ever, Von Hardegen just shrugged and smiled through the barrage of praise. As it subsided, he interrupted, for he had an important matter to address.
“Now, meine Herren, I have some business to attend to, and ask if you will be my witnesses.”
He turned on his heel and walked out.
Off to the left, a German panzer NCO stood, his hands tied behind his back, placed against a tree on the edge of a cinder track.
In front of him stood a line of his peers, grim-faced men, there to perform a duty and salvage some pride for their unit.
The eight men, all members of Europa’s 3rd Kompagnie, stood ready, Kar98k rifles held in the attention position.
To one side stood the 3rd’s commanding Captain, his face still like thunder, the way it had set ever since the destruction of the Berg Bridge.
Turning to the Allied officers behind him, Von Hardegen enlightened them, their eyes narrowing, focussing on the prisoner before them.
Turning back to face his men again, Von Hardegen clicked to attention.
“Proceed, Herr Hauptmann.”
Out of the corner of his eye, the ‘Europa’ commander watched as two men painfully exited the second halftrack.
The first, a heavily bandaged German, the gunner of JagdPanther 414, had been blown out through the rear hatch, his survival unseen by Jablinski. The second man was an American, with both arms in plaster, because Garand bullets had smashed his bones. He was the 4th US Infantry NCO, who had stumbled upon the scene in the sandbagged position.
Their evidence had been damning and unequivocal.
Jablinski had been confident enough to try to slip back into the unit, as if nothing had happened, and, for the most part, had been successful. That is until a burned and angry Panzerkanonier spoke to the 3rd Kompagnie commander.
The same officer now spoke, listing the charges, and the verdict of the field courts-martial, as chaired by Von Hardegen.
There were no frills attached, no last words, or final cigarette.
With a nod from Von Hardegen, the firing squad commander got on with business, the time from first order to weapon discharge just under seven seconds.
Despite the obvious demise of the man, the Panzer Hauptmann still added to the injuries suffered by the Russian spy. He put a bullet in the corpse’s brain, solely for his own satisfaction, rather than ensuring life was extinct.
Petrov finished his briefing, the headquarters of 2nd Red Banner so quiet, that the sound of a circling aircraft almost filled the room.
Apart from the destruction wrought upon the 5th Guards Mechanised Corps and 34th Guards Rifle Corps, there was the not insignificant matter of the destruction of the 6th Pontoon Bridge Brigade.