Battle Group SS 1.Last Stand by Eric Meyer

Author:Eric Meyer [Eric Meyer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Swordworks
Published: 2021-09-11T23:00:00+00:00

* * *

Walter Drosselmeyer could scarcely believe they’d made it back. In truth, he’d believed them lost, and all he had in his mind was how to buy time before the juggernaut arrived. Time to evacuate the wounded and the vulnerable, although he had no illusions about what awaited the rest of them. The message he’d just received was clear. They’d seen the Russians arrive and establish a position on the east side of the bridge, facing away from the town. Which meant Speer’s squad had hurt them badly, and they were determined on revenge. They’d slaughter them to a man, like swatting a fly.

He had to assume they’d achieved their objective and sent the Russians into a white-hot fury after they’d destroyed the Sturmoviks, but in the end, it would count for little. The town needed time to get the sick, the wounded, and the vulnerable away to the west, and he had few illusions about what they had left to fight with. Obersturmfuhrer Manfred Bauer had already shown himself as a coward, Burgomaster Heinrich Boll ready to surrender to the Russians, and they’d have no chance of gaining the time they so desperately needed.

He descended the long, spiral stone staircase to the base of the tower and walked out into the street. A squad of Volkssturm was waiting for him, perhaps hoping he would present them with a miracle, but he shook his head.

“There’re no miracles this day. We know Oberleutnant Speer’s men survived, but they’re trapped on the other side of the bridge.”

Horst Jansen, a silver-haired man, approaching sixty and with a lined and wrinkled face, grimaced. He’d been the town dentist, and he walked with a pronounced stoop as a result of constantly bending to attend to his patients’ teeth. His own were perfect, which was no surprise. “Then they’re dead. There’s no way they’ll get past them.”

“Not unless we help.” They looked shocked as he spelled out what Speer had signaled, an attack using panzerfausts and machine guns, supported by as many men as they could persuade to join. “If we do nothing, they’ll die.”

Jansen shrugged. “We’re all going to die anyway when the Russians arrive.”

“Horst, they’re brave men, trying to buy time for defenseless civilians to get away. We owe them something.”

He didn’t like it, none of them liked it, but they agreed to talk to the soldiers positioned near the bridge and see if they agreed. If they didn’t, they were wasting their time. Manfred Bauer was still holed up in the command basement beneath the town hall, and as Drosselmeyer had guessed, he dismissed the idea out of hand. He didn’t waste any more time, and he left, meeting Heinrich Boll out on the street, heading back. Boll agreed. “Waste of time. We’d be throwing men’s lives away.”

He didn’t argue with him. He needed to talk with soldiers, not jumped up Nazi officials who’d run at the first sound of a shot. He led his Volkssturm to the soldiers encamped near the bridge and found the man the Wehrmacht troopers looked to as their leader.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.