Шон Хатсон: Sabres in the Snow

Namarov grunted as his horse was hit. The animal went down in an untidy heap, pinning him beneath it. He tried to drag himself out, aware that the same sniper who had killed his mount was now drawing a bead on him. But, somewhat excited, the sniper clambered up onto a pile of sandbags to get a better shot at the major and, as his finger tightened on the trigger, Kuragin swept past and slashed open the man’s stomach. He fell back, his intestines bursting forth like bloodied party streamers. Kuragin then turned his horse and, with the help of Vinkov, succeeded in rolling the dead horse from on top of Namarov. Vinkov was about to remount when a burst of machine-gun fire cut down both him and his horse.

Kuragin and Namarov threw themselves down as more bullets carved a path through the air above them but, as they watched, Mig hurled a grenade into the dug-out from which the fire was coming and, amidst a thunderous roar, three bodies were catapulted from their hiding place.

All three men now remounted and rode on, wading through the badly depleted Germans, using lance, sabre and sub-gun.

Boniak chased two Germans onto the parapet of the bridge itself, drew his horse up between them and, striking swiftly to right and left, felled them both. Indeed, it was the youngster who noticed that several Germans were fleeing across the bridge.

On the far bank, however, the Russian tanks and infantry had finally got the upper hand and were driving their enemies back. Close range fire sliced men in two, tanks rolled over wounded and dead alike, grinding bodies to sticky mush beneath the tracks.

With the cossacks on one side and the regular troops on the other, the Germans were pinned down and many began to throw down their weapons, only too pleased to surrender to the regular army. Those who tried to surrender to the cossacks weren’t so lucky. Some got away, leaping into the krupps which were parked close-by. But a team of gunners, trying to harness their 75 to one of the lorries, were cut down by half-a-dozen cossacks. The gun was turned over, the truck demolished with two grenades. Orange fire leapt and danced in the snowy air and more smoke rose mournfully to the sky.

Only sporadic gunfire filled the air now and the cossacks, in particular, turned to the more important task of patching up their horses and their wounded. Namarov looked out across the frozen river and saw a dozen or more men and horses lying still on the shiny surface. He sent two other men to check on them and they returned with one injured cossack who had been crushed when his horse went down.

The Russian infantry, meantime, had ushered the captured Germans across the bridge and lined them up. They were roughly searched, any valuables handed over to officers or kept, dependent on who did the searching. Some, those who could speak a little Russian were taken aside for questioning.

Namarov led his men back across the corpse-strewn bridge, past the still burning wreck of the T–34.

Boniak looked down at the bodies as he rode by, the groans of the wounded drowned out by the metallic clattering of hundreds of horses hooves on the metal of the bridge. It sounded like a thousand blacksmiths at work. He saw Colonel Gornik waiting at the far end of the bridge, hands planted firmly on his hips, his face red.

“Why the hell didn’t you attack when I told you to?” he roared at Namarov.

“My men are horsemen, not suicide troops,” the major told him. “I did not intend letting them ride into a deathtrap.”

“But I gave you an order.”

“And I told you, I’m not in your fucking army. My men take orders from me. No-one else. And I take orders from nobody. Clear?”

“I could have you shot for that.”

“Try it and your head would be rolling in the snow before you could count to three.”

Gornik reached for his pistol and, as if to reinforce Namarov’s words, the six cossacks closest to him whipped their sabres free, some were still stained with blood.

The colonel swallowed hard and lowered the pistol.

“You are an insolent bastard,” he said, vehemently.

Namarov smiled.

“I want to speak with some of your prisoners,” he said. “They may know where there are other Germans.”

“What does it matter to you?” Gornik demanded.

“I like hunting,” said the major and rode past the red-faced officer.

The German prisoners were sitting crosslegged in the snow when Namarov and a dozen of his men approached them. The major went to the first of them, a sergeant who was bleeding from a head wound.

“Are there any other German troops in this area?” asked the cossack.

“Do you honestly expect him to tell you?” said Rostov.

Namarov didn’t answer.

The sergeant regarded him warily for a moment then shook his head.

The major nodded slowly and moved to the next man, repeating his question. Then the next and the next. The fourth man was a corporal. A pale, thin individual with cold sores on his bottom lip.

“Are there any other German troops in this area?” Namarov asked him.

“Yes,” said the German in a low, rasping voice.

Rostov looked round in surprise.

Boniak too stepped forward.

“Where are they?” asked the major.

The corporal coughed.

“There’s an SS unit about five miles North of here in a village called Ridanski,” he said.

Boniak knelt beside the man and pulled his face around until they were looking into each other’s eyes.

“Do you know the name of the officer in command of the unit?” he demanded.

The corporal nodded.

“His name is Kleiser.”

There was fire in Boniak’s eyes when he looked up at Namarov and something like a smile on his lips.

No-one saw Kuragin wince as if in pain as the name of the village was repeated.

“Ridanski,” the German told them. “Kleiser is in Ridanski.”

Kuragin walked away, feeling as if someone had just tied a lead weight around his neck.

The village of Ridanski lay at the bottom of a gentle slope, bounded on its far side by a narrow stream which had been reduced to a frozen strip cutting through the snow. There were three bridges across the frozen stream, all made from the wood of the trees which grew thickly on the Northern side of the village.

“The slope will favour our attack,” said Rostov, puffing away at his pipe and gazing closely at the map spread out before him.

“There’s quite a bit of open ground before we actually reach the village itself,” Namarov observed, stroking his beard. He squinted in the gloom. The cossacks had not lit camp fires in case the German troops in Ridanski saw them. So, the other men sat around talking quietly, eating what scraps they could find or trying to snatch some sleep, beneath the dull white glow of a watery moon. Cossack sentries rode slowly back and forth on the outermost perimeter of the camp, eyes turned toward the crest of the ridge beyond which they knew lay their objective.

“They won’t be expecting an attack,” said Rostov. “And besides,” he pointed to the open ground which Namarov had indicated. “What is it? Two, three hundred yards? We can cover that fast enough.”

Namarov was still uneasy.

“What do you think, Kuragin?” he said.

The big man shrugged, disinterestedly.

“There’ll be casualties however we go in,” he said. “What does it matter?”

Rostov looked suspiciously at his colleague and continued puffing on his pipe.

“I say we take them from the front,” he said.

Namarov nodded.

“Yes, I think you might be right. There’s no point in splitting the force to outflank them.” He ran his finger over the map once more, tracing the route which the cossacks would take. He glanced at his watch. “It’s twelve-thirty now.” Rostov checked his watch and nodded.