Lennart Svensson - Burning Magnesium

That was it. The nearest enemy outpost consisted of a sentry post on a slope, plus a bivouac in a forest nearby. The sentry post was an MG emplacement and the bivouac was equal to “the rest of the deployment”.

“This is it,” Arno continued. “We’re a close-knit unit, I dare say. I have come here to lead this elite platoon. I have led it for four months now, through smoke and fire. I have also put my stamp on it. We are in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, everyone here knows it, and this awareness gives us our edge. So, in short: I trust you. We are the elite, we can handle this! ‘Victory rides on our helmets!’”

All that was left was to leave. The platoon formed single file and started the march out of the farm complex. It passed the last outpost of their own line. Glances of understanding were exchanged with the sentry in his pit, reinforced with sandbags. This sentinel belonged to the Battle Group local protection unit, intended to guard HQs and the like.

The platoon moved quietly out into the combat zone, the frontline. The terrain was wooded and mostly flat. There was snow on the ground and snow on the trees, fir and pine, rough coniferous trees. The temperature was a few centigrade below zero.

The unit Arno headed was a Panzer Grenadier Platoon. They were Panzer Followers, enabling the advance of tanks. Now, in the initial stage of the operation, they fought dismounted. The SPW’s would arrive later, when they had eliminated the outposts and would be in reserve. Then each squad had its own Hanomag SdKfz 251 halftrack.

With his radio Arno could contact the Company Commander. This radio was a novelty, a very fashionable thing; only select units like Battalion Wolf had such. The head of the 8 thCompany, Captain Wistinghausen, for his part would advance with the Company’s 1 stPlatoon this night. 1 stand 2 ndPlatoon would advance parallel to 3 rd, on its right hand, along a northern path. Otherwise they could be allocated to support other Companies of the Advance Battalion, or to support Arno’s Platoon. But this, Arno, hoped, would probably not be needed. At least not for the first outpost.

The Platoon walked slowly in single file at the side of a forest road. As usual on the European continent, far from the moist air of the Atlantic, the snow layer wasn’t so deep. A kilometre was logged through forested terrain, here and there with small, open fields or meadows. Everything was basking in the pale shimmer of the artificial moonlight, Scheinwerfer illuminating the clouds’ undersides.

This was the battle zone. It was 3 kilometres to the enemy’s main line. But first, the enemy outpost was close by. The whole thing was to surprise them. Everything must go quickly and quietly and radio silence must be maintained as far as possible. If for example the neutralizing of post No 1 went well then you didn’t have to report this upwards. You just had to keep going along the allotted road and destroy any possible resistance on this side of the main line, supporting other friendly units if needs be.

They walked beside the road, one of the four roads the Battalion would clear, the southernmost road of the whole breakout. At a certain point Arno divided his strength. As the ground began to slope upwards Bauer got half the Platoon to take swinging off to the left to attack the bivouac. Arno and ten men moved straight ahead to the top of the hill. From there they crawled over the ground to the forest edge.

They were on a small crest. The road they had followed ran down a slope covered with young forest. Then the way reached a dry river bed, crossing it on an embedded culvert. This offered good protection as a place to make a short halt before the capture of the defensive position proper. This modus operandi had been planned long ago, Arno had led reconnaissance patrols here over the last week.

The road continued up a small slope, the opposite river bank. Then it went across a field towards the edge of another wood. On the left side of the road, just where it levelled out in the field after the bank, was an MG emplacement reinforced with sandbags. A enemy soldier stood in the pit. The artificial, “Ersatz” moonlight illuminated his position quite well. Beyond the strongpoint ran a connecting corridor, a slit trench to the bivouac in the woods: Point X, the grouping Bauer would attack. Everything would be done at the same time, H Hour, which was at 0440. Fifteen minutes to go.

Nothing happened. Everything was still. Only the Russian soldier in the machine gun nest moved every now and then, peering out over the terrain, seemingly unsuspecting. Moreover, the searchlights moved across the sky and illuminated the clouds’ undersides, creating a ghostly landscape.

Then it began to snow. Only lightly at first, but then it came in increasingly bigger flakes. Good, Arno thought, this provides some cover.

Arno had MG men and riflemen under his command, ten in all. They lay quietly in the copse on the hill. Here it might be asked: how, actually, is leadership of military units executed?

How did Arno lead at this very moment? – Answer: he didn’t lead by performing specific actions in each and every moment. Instead he let his spirit be projected over the unit, over the nearest surrounding soldiers and, with “spiritual remote effect,” over Bauer’s group in the vicinity. Arno let his Memento Mori philosophy characterise the platoon. Remember that you are mortal, know that you are in the Valley of the Shadow of Death…! This is primarily an unpleasant but with time a reassuring revelation: I am a man, I might die, my physical body has a limited lifespan. And with this lesson Arno had all of his soldiers pulling themselves together, dedicating themselves to the task, acting at every moment in the spirit of the mission at hand.

Arno’s whole being put his stamp on the platoon; Arno’s example stimulated each soldier’s ability for internal management, in German, Innere Führung . Each soldier was schooled to become his own boss. Arno himself had, on his own, by summing up his Will, become his own boss when he came to the Front in 1942. Now he fostered this spirit in his men too.

They were on the ridge, waiting. They were a collection of dark shadows in a forest, in a neighbourhood lit by artificial moonlight. Arno now decided to leave the MG Team on the crest. He then took the five riflemen and crawled away with them, down the slope, along the road’s right-hand ditch. The snow, some spare trees and their white camouflage smocks would give them concealment, he hoped.

At long last they reached the dried-out river bed. Not much of a river, little more than a brook, whose banks overgrown with dense thickets of shrubs. They got down into the culvert and rested. Six men with their nerves on edge. In addition to the leaders, Arno and Karnow, it was Wagner, Gans, Hackel and Lenoir.

Arno told the crew to wait while he and Lenoir left the stream bed and crawled up the bank just short of the crest. Here the slope overhang obscured the view of the sentry. Arno lay on his back, wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked at the way they had come: the slope, the woods with their dark conifers and the road that disappeared like a tunnel between them.

The enemy, that is, the sentry, was now no more than a few steps away from Arno and Lenoir. The slightest noise would reveal themselves where they lay – a sneeze, a broken twig.

Arno and Lenoir were on the road’s left side. Arno sought eye contact with the other man. He raised his head and made the “all well” sign.

Somewhere out on the left flank, a few hundred metres away, the second half of the Platoon under Bauer moved along in order to penetrate to the rear. Their route was hidden from the guard by the trees.