Valery and the Commissar have rarely argued, but this is a unique situation--the war is nearly over, Valery wants to finish it and the Commissar is behaving with an uncharacteristic caution. Hmmm....what could this mean for Bad Frostberg?
Beestens,
~D, the EviL
Death is lighter than a Feather, Duty is heavier than a Mountain....
With an indelible arrogance, the formation of airplanes turned slightly South of Bad Frostberg and continued on, unmolested, towards the Northwest.
By this time, Rosselsprung was standing in the center square of the town, his hands knotted together behind him in a frustrated white embrace behind his back and his head turned skywards.
“Four-engined bombers—British I believe.” His IA, Gruber, said.
In that moment of mutual epiphany, both men realized that the war and every hope, every dream they had for the Reich, was lost.
A Russian tank corps supported by a British air-strike?! The mere thought was incredible, almost beyond their imagination, had they not witnessed it themselves.
Gruber handed Rosselsprung a note and saluted. “Congratulations, Herr General!”
At that very moment they were enveloped by a drifting cloud of smoke from the burning town. The bombs had chewed out the guts of Bad Frostberg, shattering water mains under cobbled streets, collapsing centuries-old houses and obliterating the few firehouses and fire engines. Those parts of the town hit by the bombing simply blazed merrily away, unattended and beyond any mortal help.
Rosselsprung read about his promotion in this choking cloud of grey-black smoke, while soldiers and civilians scrambled frantically back and forth in front of him, attempting to dig the dead and the wounded out of the rubble. He threw his head back and laughed, loudly.
Gruber grasped at his arm, fearing that the laughter would somehow turn form maniacal cynicism to simple madness.
“If I were the Russkies”, Gruber reminded him, “I would attack--now!”
Rosselsprung threw the radio message away. It reminded him too much of Paulus’ promotion to Feldmarschall at Stalingrad and, at the same time, that his remaining family were still within the clutches of the Nazi regime and answerable for any questionable actions on his part.
Despair grasped at him, just as Gruber’s grip tightened on his sleeve.
A mixed group of armored personnel carriers and armored vehicles rolled into the town square from the North. Their sudden and unexpected arrival jolted Rosselsprung out of his thoughts and back into equally hard reality.
There was nothing else for it, he told himself, except to make his stand in this battered, burning “Festung” and hold on until all of the civilians were evacuated to Danzig. Nothing else for it, he thought bleakly, as all of the discipline he had learned as a soldier straightened his back and his strengthened his faltering resolve.
Death is lighter than a Feather, Duty is heavier than a Mountain....
For their part, W.F., Hansen and Arajs had huddled in their shallow holes during the bombardment and then pulled themselves and the other troops back into the town once it was over.
The Volkssturm, who had shared their position on the outskirts of the town over-looking the anti-tank ditch, did largely the same—except that many of them ran off into the town, to look after their family and friends in the destruction caused by the bombing. Nothing could have stopped them; an air bombardment of this type was simply unknown in this part of Prussia. The only folk who had endured such a thing were those few who had fled back to Bad Frostberg after giving up jobs and positions in Berlin and points further West. Neither the threats of their officers, mostly veterans of the Great War, nor the proximity of the Russians could hold the civilian volunteers in the battle line while their families suffered.
Gradually, new troops, either S.S. Polizei or elements of arriving units replaced them. But no one re-occupied the exposed positions outside of the town. Everyone, combat veteran, trainee or Volkssturm realized instinctively that a hiding place in pile of heaped up bombed bricks that had once been a house, was preferable to snow-swept foxhole on flat, exposed ground.
Rosselsprung and Gruber arrived during this disordered and generally chaotic retreat. With god-like patience they stationed each individual platoon, each individual soldier, plotting out MG fire zones, panzerfaust traps, mortar barrages and fortified centers of infantry resistance.
To either his credit or disgrace, Rosselsprung didn’t give much thought to the men who had run off. After all, there was no place for them to go and the not so gentle hands of the chain-dogs and Gestapo would snare them soon enough and put them back in line.
The only thing that mattered was immediately erecting a wall of reliable men to face a certain Russian tank assault.
Like Jan-Handrik’s Jagdpanther, he ordered that the few Hetzers available to him take up positions in houses just short of the interior of Bad Frostberg. One of these was, of all things, a Flammpanzer, commanded by Leutnant Tomasz P. Michalik. How it got to Prussia was an enduring mystery, as so few of these devices were made and most were committed to the Western Front. But Rosselsprung saw it as the perfect toy for use against the inevitable tank-riders and indomitable Red Army infantry.
Still, he steadfastly ordered it and all of his armored assets, including Jan-Hendrick’s Jagdpanther and Phylo’s Panthers to hold their fire until the enemy had entered the town’s narrow streets. If the fight he expected did come, he was determined that it would be held on his terms.
“You are absolutely mad!” The Stationmaster huffed at Leutnant zur See Joachim Ribbentrop. “That train hasn’t been used since 1940!”
Ribbentrop had six men armed with submachine guns behind him, so he wasn’t exactly worried that his commands would be ignored by a mere Reich Stationmaster.
The grey-haired old man read Ribbentrop’s orders again. “This is foolishness! Even assuming we could get her engines started—she still burns wood—what would you do with her?”
“Oh, I intend to sally back and forth through the town—moving target, you know.” Ribbentrop responded politely.
“But she’s an antique!” The Stationmaster burst out.
“Antique or not, she still has four 88mms, two 20mm flak, a 37mm flaK and, if I’m not mistaken, two gun turrets removed from Czech tanks.”
The Stationmaster simply sighed in exasperation. The British bombers had largely missed his domain, either purposefully or not, so why had they managed to expose poor Erika to this young and arrogant popinjay?
But Ribbentrop, despite the Stationmaster's misgivings, now had his "Fortress Artillery" in the form of an ancient armored train of dubious reliability and limited mobility. Under the circumstances, it was more than he could have hoped to find in Bad Frostberg....
In the meantime, more and more German units were filtering into the Festung, either under orders, or simply under the unrelenting pressure of the Red Army advance. General Rosselsprung and his ever-vigilant subordinate, Gruber, fed them into the lines and their extremely weak perimeter as they arrived and despite their state upon arrival.
Unfortunately for all of them, it would soon become apparent that each small addition to their forces would be over-matched by a larger demand upon Bad Frostberg's defenses.
Last edited by Commissar D, the Evil on Sat Aug 18, 2007 8:45 pm, edited 4 times in total.
Death is lighter than a Feather, Duty is heavier than a Mountain....
Commissar D, the EviL and Colonel Valery Sonofavich argued the rest of the day and well into the night about tactics, strategy and the uncertain origin of the vodka they drank. Around midnight, the first infantry of the Guard’s tank Corps arrived, stuffed into Studebaker trucks and deeply regretting not having a meal since that morning.
Their arrival, the Commissar noted, delayed the equally anticipated arrival of his Corps’ artillery, as one could only fit so many vehicles on a single road.
But, succumbing to Valery’s insistence that time was of the essence—a notion that for this once during the long years of war, the Commissar didn’t agree with—he ordered his still-hungry and tired infantry into the fight. Each battalion would be accompanied by a tank troop, of course, and his obvious intent was to encircle Bad Frostberg. So the newly arrived and still unfed infantry and their “tank packs” drove off at daylight in wide arcs towards the Eastern and Western flanks of the town.
After the infantry had set off on their new tasks, he authorized a probe, again at Valery’s urging, towards the heart of Bad Frostberg.
The Commissar was not in the best of moods, as the painful mist of a hangover and the long, somewhat insubordinate argument with Valery clung to his head. But, the war seemed to be winding down in their favor and he was willing to take certain chances as long as he could keep his tank corps intact and undefeated. The mere sight of the burning and seemingly broken town also comforted him as to the risks he took.
"You don't want to see this", W.F. declared, staring with obvious horror through the telescopic sights of his rifle, whose black barrel poked out of the empty framework of an empty home's kitchen window.
Arajs and Hansen dropped to their knees and crawled over to the box of panzerfausts sitting underneath the table of the same kitchen before even bothering to take a look....
A single line of JS-2 clanked slowly and serenely towards them, followed at several hundred yards by a number of equally imposing wedges of T-34s grinding their way easily through the white snow.
Death is lighter than a Feather, Duty is heavier than a Mountain....
The JS-2s slid to a halt a thousand meters before the edge of Bad Frostberg and fired their cannon. This was quite a safe distance for them. While their 122.mm guns fired a high explosive round that weighed 22.5 Kg. and was fired at an initial rate of 800 meters per second while battle experience had proved that their armor was capable of shrugging off the standard German 75 mm L/48 round at under 5oo meters. Only a Panther’s long 75 or a Jagdpanther’s 88 could kill them at 1,000 meters and Rosselsprung’s very few tanks had been ordered to not to fire at such ranges in order to conserve ammunition.
So, like the British bombers the day before, the Stalin tanks pounded the German town with impunity. A single 122mm round, landing a few meters from a house, was enough to bring down that house’s brick walls. A concentration of 122mm shells was more than enough to blow away lightly entrenched infantry—and the JS-2s fired with a slow determination, intent upon uprooting any possible nest of resistance.
A shell from one uprooted W.F., Arajs and Hansen, collapsing the kitchen walls and spilling them from their shelter. After that hit, the three of them saw no more than glimpses of each other as they split up and each sought his own shelter.
Jan-Hendrik was mortified by the order to hold his fire, but he kept by it, however reluctantly and although he judged that his Jagdpanther had enough rounds to fight out this particular battle. Phylo was only interested in keeping his Panthers intact and operational. As any Panther commander facing a JS-2 would tell you, he had no personal urge to expose his tanks to their assault.
Shivering in the ruins of what once had been a hotel, Max Hansen reflected on the absurdity of sweating in the ice cold air. He cuddled up to the freezing steel of his panzerfaust while great drops of sweat dripped from his brow. The anticipation of battle, the strain of his past efforts in the last few days and simple fear itself produced the remarkable contradiction of his sweating through his uniform in sub-zero weather.
A few hundred yards away, Arajs fell into a trench occupied by his own Latvian S.S. troops. Like him, they had strapped their personal weapons to their backs and placed their faith in panzerfausts. It slightly overwhelmed him that their united expressions upon seeing him drop into their hole was one of honest relief. Until that instant, when all their eyes locked on him, he had never allowed himself to believe that he, himself, would be an object of inspiration.
W.F. found a new position, an insignificant one, alone in a pile of rubble. Enough for a sniper, but no one else. He concentrated on the T-34 tank-riders which were still long out of his range. One lesson he had learned in all of his years of killing, was that each tank-rider possessed a certain individuality. The foolish ones stood on the back deck of their tanks, believing themselves invincible—easy targets. The scared ones crouched behind the tank turret, hoping to shoot their attackers before they could shoot them. But the wise ones, well, they lay on the engine decks, pointing their weapons forward. In the end, W.F. didn’t care about such distinctions, except as their distinctions being a vague concept. His job, as he understood it, was simply to kill Russians--the foolish ones, the cowardly ones and, the smart ones. In other words, whomever came first into his sights.
Death is lighter than a Feather, Duty is heavier than a Mountain....
![:[]](./images/smilies/icon_study.gif "Study"){kind=icon}
