The Soviet forces had formed a defensive position between Schwobstein and Richtolsheim, centred on the Route 209 Bridge over the Rhone-Rhein Canal.
Over two hundred of the 7th RDM’s men had been killed or wounded overwhelming the position, along with the loss of two precious JagdPanzers and a Sturmgeschutz.
It was also here that the smiling and slightly mad Captain Friedrich Bäcker fell, a wayward mortar shell falling close enough to take his life with the smallest piece of metal.
Caught between two fires, 134th Rifle Corps was battered into submission, marking the largest surrender of Soviet manpower in the war thus far, some five and a half thousand men moving off into captivity.
132nd Rifle Corps was savaged, although some units, such as Major Din’s, made their way back northwards to more stable positions, None the less, the 132nd was finished as a formation.
The spearheads that launched themselves out of the Vosges sliced the 3rd Guards Tank Corps into manageable pieces, often catching units between two fires, and grinding the experienced Guards Corps into a mass of dead and wounded. A further harvest of prisoners brought the total to just less than ten thousand.
Support elements from 19th Army suffered horrendously, particularly at the hands of ‘Tannenberg’, and the roving ground attack squadrons, whose planes, tanks, and armoured infantry swept the Alsatian plain, destroying or capturing valuable supplies, killing rear-echelon troops, including overrunning the headquarters of 3rd Guards Tanks itself.
By mid-afternoon on the 26th, the Allied frontline was as far forward as Illkirch-Graffenstaden, the flight of 19th Army affecting others units that might have stood tall in defence. Only a need to rearm and refuel prevented the lead units from ‘Tannenberg’ entering the city.
Over two thousand legionnaires were casualties, over a third the sort that never rise again.
Five hundred and seventy-two casualties were sustained by the 16th Armored, a strangely high proportion of those were dead upon the field.
The Kommando Alsace had also suffered badly, over two hundred of its four hundred and forty men lost to wounds or worse.
However, the Red Army had suffered worse still. Counting prisoners, wounded and dead, over thirty-two thousand men had been lost, and whole formations removed from the Soviet order of battle.
Operation Thermopylae was a brilliant success.
Indeed, Operation Thermopylae was a brilliant success, but the price had been high.
A gathering of men, large in number, but nowhere near as many as would have liked to have been there, stood on the banks of the Apfelbach, on the Rue de Stade, next to a line of recently planted poplars.
Leading the group were the senior men of the Legion Corps, all save Molyneux, who was at French first Army headquarters, basking in the reflected glory, and busy ensuring he received as much credit as possible for the efforts of his legionnaires.
Lavalle, Knocke, Plummer, and Uhlmann stood in silence, the heaviness of the occasion given more weight by the steady trickle of light rain across the whole of the Alsace.
Behind the senior officers were others of varying status, such as Aloysius Fischer and Heinz-Sebastian Pöll, Ulrich Weiss and Oscar Durand, Haefeli and Rettlinger, bandaged arm and all, and even an old Irish legionnaire who remembered the man they were there to honour.
A grave had been prepared, fit for the nineteen men who were to be its permanent residents.
Nineteen men of the legion, but once of the Waffen-SS, all of whom had died in the ambush of a small column, leading a legion battalion in the rush to join the battles further north.
The names of the dead were read aloud, each receiving a small personal eulogy provided by a close comrade. Every man there stood at the attention, officers saluting smartly, arms rigid in remembrance of a friend or loyal comrade lost, listening to the soft tones of the speaker.
Faces were wet, and not all because of the rain, for old comrades were being laid to rest in the rich Alsatian soil.
The Legion Padre, perhaps a curious choice to talk over the graves of former SS members, arrived at the last name; a man he had met, and who had impressed him with his character, his knowledge of European history, and of life itself. A learned man, and someone greatly admired by his comrades, many of whom were here this day.
Pausing, the Padre gathered himself, suddenly finding it all very heavy going.
“And lastly, we place our good comrade and friend, Colonel Jurgen Fabian Von Arnesen, into the care of the Lord, and we give thanks that we were blessed to have him as our friend and comrade.”
The Padre swallowed noisily, gaining a moment to gather himself.
“Jurgen Von Arnesen was, by my own observations, and by all accounts, a man and a soldier of the finest quality. That being said, when one of his men has spoken to me about him, I must say that he was held in the highest regard by everyone who served with him,” he stole a look at the silent man to his left and detected the slightest of nods.
“And I know that he was so proud of his comradeship with all of you, and with those that went before and fell.”
Selecting some appropriate words to conclude the simple service, he gestured to the men who had volunteered to interr their dead comrades, and soon the only sounds were the working of spades and the constant rain and wind.
Many of the ensemble waited until the end, and some even helped the grave detail complete their task.
Some lingered long, but eventually all walked on into the future, leaving solely Ernst-August Knocke beside the newly turned soil.
The rain grew heavier, the sound of its drops rising with the wind that drove it.
And quietly, in his own way, Knocke said goodbye to the man who had been his best friend.
1st BALTIC FRONT – MARSHAL BAGRAMYAN
Chapter 97 – THE DIVERSION
All we know is that, at times, fighting the Russians, we had to remove the piles of enemy bodies from before our trenches, so as to get a clear field of fire against new waves of assault.
Marshal of the Soviet Union Hovhannes Bagramyan had the floor, the rest of the room quiet as he outlined the plan to punch through the Allied armies and enter Holland.
Bagramyan was not a fool. The silence from his senior officers was not just attentiveness; it was also concern that they and their men were to be pitched into further horrors.
The German War had its own special brand of violence, fought with a shared national hatred, and that inspiration had carried the soldiers of the Red Army through situations when they could easily have floundered.
Fighting the Western Allies was different, but no less bloody; in fact, with the air attacks that wrought havoc on a daily basis, many of his men thought the new war was worse.
‘Perhaps they need to hate again?’
The commander of the 1st Baltic Front halted for a moment, dealing with that thought.
He moved on quickly.
“With those diversions in place, it is my intention to launch a series of sequential attacks on this river line, the Hunte, moving progressively south.”
The Colonels and Majors now understood that this was where they would be employed.