James Rouch: Death March

“I do not want to know about risks, I want to know about results. Elements of our advance troops are within a kilometre of the river. There are military police units virtually whipping them forward. Momentum, that is what is needed. I want my troops jumping that river without pause. I don’t care if they have to strip off and swim it. I want the whole of the city, not half of it. We have to keep moving forward, you understand? If we cannot keep shells raining down on the enemy then they will turn about and form a series of defensive positions that will slow us down, giving them time to blow the bridges. If they establish a solid river defence line it will take weeks or even months to crack He whirled around to confront an officer who held a rolled map. “You, show me where our convoys are right now.”

“Here Comrade General, at Sulzbach and on the road between there and Nurnberg. Until they can move I have ordered most of them dispersed and concealed. I understand we have lost two of our allotted Ilyushin transports to enemy action but the air force is still managing to fly in sufficient ammunition to meet requirements, to an improvised air-strip.”

“Yes, and from there the convoys crawl like snails through country lanes because motorway bridges are down, cuttings are filled with landslips and embankments have been collapsed.” He snapped at a Colonel of Engineers. “What about repairs, how soon can we get back on to the main routes?”

“Another twenty-four hours Comrade General. We have had to use all the bridging sections and pontoons in the Divisional reserves. I shall have to request components from Army reserve. The men have been without sleep for two days already.”

Even as he said it the Colonel knew he had made a mistake, shown a weakness by appearing to be more concerned for his troops than their task, but the anticipated blast did not come.

Instead the General ground his forefinger into a map location on the edge of the city. “At least here is one potential bottleneck the fools at NATO Head-Quarters have not thought to do anything about. If they were to bring down this complex of flyovers and block their underpasses we will be faced with a mountain of giant rubble, then it will be back to threading our way through side roads. If I can see it I don’t understand why they have not. Is action being taken to prevent sabotage of the bridges? As I ordered.”

“We are pushing in to that sector as fast as we can, mounting guards along the route as we go.” Almost smug in his anticipation of praise, a Staff Captain made his first contribution to the one sided conference.

“A couple of elderly reserve unit sentries every five hundred metres is no deterrent. It’s damned pathetic. I will give you two battalions of half reasonable infantry and some anti-tank units. Use them to cover every approach to the area. I don’t want to hear that NATO have launched a counter attack and retaken that junction. The road must stay open. Now get out, the lot of you.”

Alone, the General carefully studied the map. The sites where the NATO forces had employed nuclear devices were ringed in red. He would not have worried about pushing his troops through contaminated territory but the devices had inflicted physical damage on the supply lines. A dusting of radioactive material was of no consequence, it was the destruction of autobahns and railway lines, where they passed through difficult country, that was of real consequence.

He looked again at the location he had drawn attention to so harshly. Even when the other sites were repaired, this was still a danger point, lose it and his long lines of impressed civilian trucks would be slowed to a crawl once again.

They had NATO forces on the run. He was almost surprised at the results himself, considering what a hopeless lot of over-age, unfit, ill-disciplined infantry he had been given to work with. And the punishment battalions were the worst of all, only fighting and going forward out of a greater fear of the military police behind them.

His sledgehammer tactics were pushing the scanty NATO forces back relentlessly. They had never anticipated an assault in this sector. They had been allowed to correctly identify the inferior quality of the units facing the city. That knowledge had lulled them into complacency.

Storming in to the city, blasting at everything without finesse, his men were preventing the NATO forces from building a coherent defence line, but the river was across their line of advance. If the NATO forces could hold there, if a shortage of ammunition meant his own men could not keep up the pressure…He could shout at, even terrify his officers but there were men above him who would be as ready to bellow at him. And there were other men, of his own rank, who would do the dirty on him, move heaven and earth to take his command from him. Like his second in command, that rat and political commissar General Lieutenant Gregori.

It was his baleful influence that Zucharnin detected behind the scenes to engineer the reduction in the scales of armour and helicopter gun-ships allotted to him for the attack. He had the influence to do that, and he’d hope to profit by it, take over the sector when the assault failed.

From his rank of General there was a long way to fall for Zucharnin. He still had some tricks left as yet though. As soon as the convoys were moving again he would reverse the flow of the refugees. So far he had employed the panicking masses to hamper the NATO preparations for defence. Soon he would find a new use for them.

His thoughts reverted to those convoy vehicles now scattered under improvised and probably inadequate camouflage across the countryside, so as not to provide a big target for the NATO air force. He thought of the pitiful reserves of ammunition remaining for his leading assault groups. It was some consolation to know from intelligence reports that the NATO defence was composed almost entirely of scratch units. Cooks, clerks and dismounted armoured troops waiting for their vehicles to be repaired or replaced comprised much of the NATO opposition. All of them had been hastily assembled in to platoons and rushed forward. Just as swiftly they had been forced back by the weight of fire unleashed against them. Another twenty-four hours and the roads would be repaired; the huge craters on the motorways filled, bridged or by-passed and then his convoys would be racing in to the city.

Just so long as that remaining bottleneck was not turned into a roadblock.

Flame, dust, smoke and screams filled the street. All were blotted out by a shrieking stream of liquid fire that soared across the road and with a sight-searing glare smacked in to the wall of the warehouse.

Gobs of blazing fuel bounced off the already scorched brickwork and rivulets of the same made bright fingers down the wall. Another spurt, another ear-splitting wail and a third discharge from the flame-thrower found an open window.

The massive structure seemed to swallow the screeching jet of fire and instantly converted it to roiling black fumes that belched from every opening, every shell hole and roof vent.

“Where are you going?” Sergeant Hyde’s dirt ingrained hand smacked down on the Simmons’ shoulder and arrested the second pace of his charge for the doorway.

“We can get in there while their heads are down.”

“No need.”

Even as he said it the NCO saw three blazing forms stagger out high on a buckled steel fire escape. Another toppled from the rooftop, cart-wheeling, a short-lived arc of white fire that thumping on to the debris littered road.

A brief crackle from a machine gun lanced towards the structure and made sparks and scabs of smouldering paint fly from the escape ladder. It reduced to a crumpled and indistinguishable heap the Russians who had sought to out-pace the flame that chased after and enveloped them.