Opening Moves

Over breakfast the following Saturday he announced that the Major had been transferred from his combat division, with a loss of seniority, into a training battalion due to undertake strenuous retraining exercises.

Whilst that only elicited nodded responses from the ensemble, De Walle knew the news had the desired effect upon his present company.

As he ate his mountain of food, he was satisfied that the Parker problem had been properly addressed.

Unfortunately, an embittered Major Parker still had a part to play in the future of Symposium Biarritz.

Chapter 20 – THE RUSSIAN

Courage, above all things, is the first quality of a warrior.

Karl von Clauswitz

0655 hrs Monday, 23rd July 1945, Hotel Neese, B.O.Q. Building, Div HQ, ‘15^th’US Armored Division, Schlangen, US Occupied Germany.

He stood tall and looked in the mirror, and liked what he saw. By his own peoples standards he was handsome but that wasn’t it. Neither was it the muscle-bound frame, jet-black hair, and piercing green eyes. It was the uniform of Lieutenant Colonel in the Red Army tank troops and the medals upon it that gave him satisfaction, medals that reflected the years of hardship, blood, and loss that accompanied him from Poland in 1941 through to his final battle in the fatherland of his hated enemy. The rising sun played across his awards, twinkling off them with each breath he took.

His eyes fell upon the ‘Hero of the Soviet Union’ award that sat apart from and above the rest and, as always, his thoughts went to Alexei and his crew. On his neck above the medal was a scar of that encounter, showing how close the distance between life and death is really measured and, as was always the case, his hand rose to seek out the blemish.

The doctor had told him that, in this case, the distance between life and death was about three millimetres, for that was how far the small shard of metal had been from his jugular.

There were other scars and stories to go with them of course, but none brought back so many ghosts as that one.

He had been Captain Yarishlov at that time, and his position had been fallen upon by Hausser’s SS at Bilashi on the northern edge of Kharkov. Little had been said of it in the Motherland, for it was a stinging defeat at a time of repeated victories, but Arkady knew the human cost of the affair only too well.

He had been ordered by Major Petrenko, dear, cowardly, spiteful bastard Major Petrenko, to hold the ridge created by the raised railway line in order to give time for the rest of the 2nd Guards Tank Corps to prepare a defensive position around Hoptivka to the north. With a handful of infantry, anti-tank gunners, mortar men, and his own T/34’s Arkady had resisted the SS for hours, throwing back attacks from tanks, panzer-grenadiers, and assault guns.

During the course of the action, Yarishlov received a bullet nick to his calf, a small but heavily bleeding wound that made him hobble. He received his second wound when he ran at full tilt and threw himself into a trench to avoid incoming mortar rounds. The wound this time was a cracked rib from accidentally landing on a wooden ammo box, the corner of which penetrated the skin and hurt like hell.

The memento at his throat was picked up from a bursting 105mm high-explosive shell that destroyed the last Zis-3 anti-tank gun and put its brave crew beyond burial. It had stung for sure and bled like hell but had not incapacitated him. He ordered the last smoke shells laid down from his mortars to cover the withdrawal of his scratch force as the runner reported their Corps regrouped at Zhuravlevka.

The three surviving senior NCO’s moved out and relayed the order to fall back, which order was obeyed immediately of course,but not without casualties, as the shells continued to fall all around the position.

Senior Lieutenant Alexei Gurundov, commanding the last surviving tank, passed the orders to his crew, and the scarred T-34 disappeared further into the wood in which it had been positioned.

Alexei had taken a final look back, which was fortunate for Yarishlov, as it coincided with the blood loss finally taking its toll and his collapse on the reverse slope of the small hillock on which his command post had been situated. A swift order to halt and Alexei was out of the tank, running for all he was worth towards the prone form of his commander. Both men had been together since the first bloody days of 11th Mechanised Corps and had been drawn closer by shared hardships and loss, as had many comrades of all nations in those difficult years. Fortunately, the lee of the hillock isolated Gurundov from observation but the shells were still a problem.