Soldiers and Marines Saga, page 54
The locomotive is pushing a flatbed car with a crane and a number of what appear to be sleeping cars and flatbeds carrying big concrete pipes and lumber. The crane is in the front of the train at the opposite end from the locomotive pushing it.
The Germans watched in fascination as the train stops where the track ends and the crane swings around to pick up one of the pipes and put it in place. Repairs to the culvert are obviously underway.
“How did they get here so quickly,” Jacob mused out loud? Then he answered his own question. Oh no.
“There must be no one between us and the railroad repair depot,” he suggests mildly to Karl as he his head forward to look through the dull brown Leica spotting scope. Then he jumped.
“Here. Take a look. I think there are women down there.”
“Nein. Impossible.” ….. “Mein Gott, you’re right.”
******
An hour of careful watching and Karl and Jacob are fairly certain there are no armed guards or soldiers at the site, just workers leaning on shovels and watching the crane as it moves pieces of concrete pipe and tracks into place. The only workers who do any work while they watch are the six women. They spent the entire hour carrying new rails and thick timbers, one at a time, from a flatcar half way down the train and laying them on the ground for the crane to pick up. At the moment they too are standing and watching.
Karl and Jacob’s initial plan had been to find a spot where they can ambush the repair train that is almost certain to sooner or later arrive. But they’d been delayed by the need to move their camps and the repairs have already started.
“We could just shoot holes in the locomotive’s engine with the fifty,” muses Karl. “But then they’ll just pull it out of the way and know we are here. Or we could wait until tonight and use some of the explosives or that old panzerfaust bazooka thing from the Americans.”
“Tonight sounds safer,” said Jacob, “but let’s use the bazooka and save as much of the plastic as possible. We may need it to re-shoot the bridge or culvert if the Ivans get it fixed.”
“Are you sure you know how to use the bazooka thing?”
“Ja Karl, of course. I read the instructions carefully. It is quite simple. Just shove it in the end until it clicks and attach the wire. Then point it and pull the trigger. Just don’t stand behind it when I do.”
******
Two hours later the two Germans, their faces darkened, carefully crept down the hill in the dark. They could easily see the train in front of them because of the flickering of the candles and lanterns lighting the sleeping cars. Their plans changed after it got dark when, to their surprise, they realized the Ivans do not have floodlights and cannot work at night. In any event, they’d already decided to go for both the locomotive and the crane while the getting is good in the sense that there are no armed guards about. No lights would make it a lot easier.
Karl moved carefully as he walked down the hillside to the train carrying the plastic explosives and the sniper rifle. His job is to put a pound or so of plastic and a two hour timer on the crane. While Karl is getting into position Jacob is to creep down to the other end of the train and set up close to the locomotive with the SAM, the bazooka, and three bazooka rounds.
Once he gets the bazooka loaded, Jacob will wait one hour for Karl to place plastic explosive on the crane and get clear. Then he will kill the locomotive with a bazooka round into its engine. After they finish they will return independently to camp without wasting time trying to find each other in the dark. Jacob was carrying the SAM and the extra bazooka rounds so they wouldn’t be lost in the darkness when they run.
And that is the plan until about fifteen minutes after Jacob hunkered down in the dark behind a big bush alongside the railroad track bed. He was only about 50 feet from the locomotive. He carefully loaded his bazooka and laid it on the ground next to him. Suddenly there was a lot of shouting and commotion at the other end of the train. “Gott in himmel. Karl’s been spotted.”
Jacob didn’t hesitate. He picked up the loaded bazooka, pushes it through the bush he was hiding behind, and firesd. The distraction might help Karl get away. There was a whoosh, a huge flame roared out of the back of the bazooka, and a big explosion virtually deafened Jacob and knocked him over backwards as the nearby locomotive exploded.
He recovered quickly, used his left hand to grab the carrying straps of the SAM and the canvas carrying case for the two remaining rounds, and lumbered back up the hill as fast as he could run in the dark. It wasn’t very fast what with his machine pistol slung across his back and carrying the bazooka under his right arm and an extra round in his left. He’ll reload when he stops running to rest.
In fact, Karl hadn’t been spotted at all. He’d barely reached the crane and put down his load when he heard footsteps crunching on rail bed gravel. He instantly froze. Within seconds a man and woman come silently along the train and turned off into the trees. A few minutes later there was more crunching and two more men walked down the track bed and also turned off into the trees. Within minutes there was a big row with lots of shouting and commotion.
Karl was stunned when the explosion occurs at the other end of the train a few seconds later—and the Russians rushed out of the woods and ran towards it. But he isn’t dumb; he instantly realized that everyone will be moving and looking in that direction. So he desperately dug into the explosives carrying case and ripped a big chunk of putty off one of the blocks without even taking off the paper.
Moving quickly, he climbed up on the flatcar, slapped the plastic dough on the crane’s exposed engine block, and stuck in and activated the two hour detonator he fished out of his pocket. Then he jumped off the flatbed to escape—and seriously sprained or broke his ankle when he landed on a railroad tie.
Karl was so pumped with excitement that he ran four or five steps before he realized he is hurt and fell to one knee. But he only stayed down for a second before he forced himself up and began to desperately hop and limp sideways, dragging his bad leg on the ground, towards the little pile of equipment and explosives he’d left behind when he climbed on the flatcar. When he reached them he grabbed them up by their carrying straps and began dragging them along as he crawled and hopped down the embankment and into the trees and bushes of the forest.
****** General Roberts
Operation Rosebud is taking shape. As soon as it became dark, to avoid satellite and other surveillance, American, German, British, and other NATO “paras” began moving to the airfields where the planes that will carry them to their unknown destinations are being assembled. What they would soon find out is that they’ll be spending the entire coming day hidden in the hangars and denied access to phones and communications equipment.
Immediately after the paras are unloaded, the trucks that brought them and their equipment will depart in order to return to their bases before dawn. Hopefully in the morning the Russian satellites will again see them wherever they had been previously parked. The orders are quite specific about that.
Tomorrow night will be a big night if all goes well: the ferries will unload, the paras jump, the northern bridges blow, the bridges still up over the Weser and Elbe will be attacked by the swimmers, and the armor hidden in the forest redoubt will begin moving. Also tomorrow night certain battalions of the two German divisions in front of Hamburg will begin moving towards the Hamburg docks. They will be loaded on the eight returning civilian ferries, and every other ship we can get our hands, and sent north to reinforce the initial landings.
It will be a Dunkirk in reverse with the battalions using the boats to go up the coast to reinforce the landings instead of using them to escape to safety.
Also tonight, as a result of the Rosebud order, a number of the navy LSTs and assault ships, and quite a few civilian ferry operators, immediately receive Dunkirk-like orders and charter inquiries from Admiral Peavy’s naval headquarters. Some are ordered to move as quickly as possible to Hamburg “to offload any equipment they might be carrying and assist in an evacuation of refugees;” others merely order their captains to “standby” to do so.
Such a widely announced evacuation can’t be kept quiet, of course, and by morning it was being covered by the news media all over the world. It causes consternation in the west, elation in Moscow and Magdeburg, and increased ratings for television channels everywhere as they interrupt their regular daytime programming so their news readers can consult “military experts” and show old news clips of the Dunkirk evacuation.
Chapter Fifteen
The German panzer troops aboard the Nordland are tense and so is the Nordland’s civilian crew and the two German navy officers on the bridge “assisting” them. At 2320 the ferry, with its lights extinguished, enters the Kiel Ship Canal, with the handheld SAMs of its passengers at the ready. They will spend the entire trip constantly scanning the sky for the telltale buzz and vibration of an intruder. Our own planes are being kept well away.
Only when the ferries are moving through the Kiel Canal and the details of their mission and the evacuation deception are explained to them will the troops finally understand what is happening and why. Until then they'll spent hours in a state of confusion as they listen to their portable radios and hear the semi-hysterical news reports about the dispatch of civilian ferries to begin the evacuation of Hamburg.
Nordland exited the canal’s northern end into the Baltic at 0613, seemingly alone on the Baltic Sea except for the slightly smaller and faster Anna Stollman—which will exit the canal an hour later so that both ferries arrive and begin unloading at the same time.
Nordland and Anna Stollman and the six ferries following behind them are not really alone in the hotly contested Baltic waters. Although the men on board the ferries don’t know it, they are being escorted by West German attack subs and two American AWACS radiating over West Germany can see them on their displays. The AWACS operators haven’t been told why, but their orders had been specific. They are to keep a careful watch and their priority is to keep the Warsaw Pact’s planes away from any ships moving north or east along the coast. But they’d all seen the television broadcasts while they waited for their mission to begin. They understand they are protecting the civilian ferries being sent to evacuate civilians from Hamburg.
Also, as will be the case throughout the next twenty-four hours, a squadron of German Eurofighter Typhoons, ostensibly waiting to join the air battle that periodically rages over the breakthrough, is orbiting south of Hamburg. Its job today is to insure any curiosity seekers will have short and exciting lives if they start heading towards the ferries. Other squadrons will rotate in and take their place until Operation Rosebud is complete.
We’re making a determined special effort, under Macefield’s direct personal control, to kill or distract or move any Russian AWACS or other planes that might be able spot the ferries.
Macefield is feeling proudly cagey and on edge. He and the members of his staff, who still don’t know why keeping Warsaw Pact planes and AWACS from reaching or seeing the East German coast has become their highest priority, are staging some of this morning’s NATO fighters over East Germany so they can sweep into the raging air battle over the breakthrough out of the rising sun. In so doing, they have the NATO fighters placed where they might prevent Warsaw Pact’s planes from seeing the ferries.
Macefield also has a squadron of navy F-14s with buddy stores on “runway standby” in Hamburg ready to go after any remaining Russian AWACS, if there are any left, that might get too close to the ferries and a second squadron standing by to quickly join them in the event that the Russians send up a second AWACS.
That morning a NATO spokesman, Admiral John Peavy of the United Kingdom, somberly confirmed to the news media covering the war from NATO’s Brussels headquarters that, because of what appears to be a successful Russian breakthrough in Northern Germany, the West German and other governments are considering the use of civilian ferries to evacuate civilians who might be cut off if the Warsaw Pact forces are able to reach the coast west of Hamburg.
“We know how to do evacuations,” he told them. Dunkirk and all that, you know.”
I agonized about sending destroyers and other surface ships to escort the ferries, I really did. But I finally decided against it because then it really would look like an invasion force. That’s why the destroyers and other NATO warships on their regular patrols will not change their regular routines and move towards the East German coast until the dark of the invasion night.
******
This morning, exactly as Shelepin would expect us to do in response to a breakthrough, NATO air, and particularly the Germans with their Eurofighter Typhoons and assault helicopters, launched another massive effort to stop the Warsaw Pact breakthrough. Shelepin is pleased and so is Moscow—the desperate NATO efforts to stop the breakthrough and the evacuation of Hamburg proves they are winning.
Sitting in our basement headquarters and listening to the constantly updated briefings and our AWACS’ periodic reports on the ferries’ positions, it quickly became apparent that this will be one of the war’s most intensive days of combat both on the ground and in the air. There is extensive air combat over the breakthrough as both the new Warsaw Pact commander of frontal air and the NATO air commanders and controllers throw everything they have into the fight.
It’s a costly fight. Our planes, skirmishers, and retreating troops are taking a tremendous toll of the Russian and East German troops, armor, and planes as the Warsaw Pact breaks out towards the northwest. The casualties are not one-sided.
******
Thousands and thousands of airborne troops, mainly American and German but also including French, Brits, Canadians, and a crack battalion of Australians, spent the day stuffed into airfield hangars all over West Germany. They’d arrived last night and as soon as they were securely locked in, officers they’d never seen before handed them their mission packets with the information they will need if their various missions are to be successful—such as the radio frequencies they can use to talk to the armor that will be moving overland to reinforce them.
Importantly, since most of them will be dropping on Warsaw Pact airfields, each mission packet contained a precise layout of the airfield and told them what to destroy in addition to all the enemy planes and helicopters. The detachment staff spent years developing the plans and constantly updating them.
Only one of the missions, the one to be undertaken by the members of Germany’s three crack FSK companies who are not already in Russia, doesn’t involve an airfield. They will drop on the Warsaw Pact military headquarters on the outskirts of Magdeburg. We are, as gamblers say, “going for broke.”
And, course, despite being isolated, the news of the evacuation of Hamburg quickly spreads among the waiting troops—depressing some and making others more determined.
******
Kapitan Rolf Mainer summed up the situation quite accurately as he told Gefreiter Hans Sandor and the ninety-seven other men of his Number Eight Company about their target, an airfield in East Germany near its border with the Czech Republic. Mainer had only received and read the company’s orders a few minutes previously.
“Our orders are to totally destroy every plane, helicopter, and vehicle. And to particularly destroy the control tower and all the underground and above ground fuel storage tanks and communications equipment. In other words, we are going to destroy everything we can destroy and then hold the field until our reinforcements arrive.” The communists may retake the field but, by God, if they do, it’s our job to see that it will be a long time before they can use it again.
Hans had been happy to accept the extra jump pay of the German airborne troops when he was drafted a year ago because he and Erike Boute, even though their families thought they were much too young, were saving together to get married and buy a car, perhaps a Volkswagen. Hans is quite unhappy about being in the hangar and so, he believes, are most of his comrades. His grandfather had been a German paratrooper in the forties and was last been heard from in 1943 when his father had been thirteen years old.
How can I get out of this madness? I don’t hate the East German communists enough to kill them. I don’t even know any of them.
******
Similar orders were also simultaneously being handed out at that moment to the West German junior officers and non-coms commanding more than a hundred Leopard tanks and their associated Milch Cows—the armored force that has been hidden in Chelsea Blue, the forest redoubt in central Germany, since before the war started. Later this evening it will be the job of the Chelsea Blue Leopards and Milch Cows to rush along specific road routes through the rear of the Warsaw Pact invasion force reaping death and destruction everywhere they go.
When they are finished tearing up the rear of the Warsaw Pact invasion force the Leopards and their Milch Cows will end up in positions either to relieve the airborne forces that will be simultaneously dropping on many of the Warsaw Pact airfields or to block the invader’s likely escape routes from Germany. Just as the Israelis did to the Egyptians in ’67 and again in ’73.
What the West German troops in Chelsea Blue don’t know yet is that more Leopards and Milch Cows will be coming ashore all along the Baltic coast and rushing south to assist them.
Each of the Leopard tanks will be accompanied by two Milch Cows, the machine gun and SAM equipped Milch Cows with two fifty-five gallon drums with hoses and hand pumps installed in place of their rear seats. The Milch Cows will pump fuel from damaged and abandoned military and civilian vehicles wherever they find them.
We anticipate the Russians and East Germans now in West Germany will, at some point, head towards the bridges they came in on in order to restore their supply lines or escape. But they can put pontoon bridges across in a lot of places so each of our Leopard teams have to be prepared to instantly move to wherever it is needed most.
