the Valhalla Exchange (v5) by Jack Higgins

Author:Jack Higgins
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-03-20T22:00:23+00:00

The Finns were encamped at a farm just off the main road about ten miles west of Arnheim. There were thirty-eight of them under the command of a Hauptsturmfuhrer named Erik Sorsa.

The 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking was the first, and without a doubt the best, foreign division of the Waffen-SS, composed mainly of Dutch, Flemings, Danes and Norwegians. The Finns had joined in 1941, providing skitroop expertise so essential in the Russian campaign.

The losses on the Eastern Front by January 1945 had been so colossal that it was decided to raise a new regiment, a joint Germanic-Finnish affair. The project had foundered when the few dozen Finnish survivors, with Sorsa as their senior officer, had made it clear that they would not renew their contracts with the German government after May 1. So, from Divisional Headquarters in Klagenfurt, had come the order which had sent them to the farm at Oberfeld to await further instructions, which was what they had been doing for precisely three weeks now.

Sorsa was a handsome, fair-haired young man of twenty-seven. His mountain cap was identical to that of the army in cut, the edelweiss on the left-hand side, the usual SS death's head at the front. His cuff title read 'Finnisches Freiwilligen Bataillon der Waffen-SS' in two lines, and his armshield was black with a white lion. He wore two Iron Crosses, the wound badge in silver and the Winter War ribbon.

He stood at the door of the farm, smoking a cigarette, watching half a dozen of his men ski-ing down through the trees on the hillside above, led by the unit's senior sergeant-major, Matti Gestrin. Gestrin soared over the wall by the barn, jumping superbly, and they followed him one by one with rhythmic precision, tough, competent-looking men in reversible winter war uniforms, white on one side, autumn-pattern camouflage on the other.

'Did you see anything?' Sorsa inquired.

'Were we supposed to?' Gestrin grinned. 'I thought we were just out for the exercise. Still no word from headquarters?'

'No, I think they've forgotten about us.'

Gestrin, in the act of lighting a cigarette, stopped smiling, looking beyond Sorsa's shoulder. 'From the looks of things, I'd say they've just found us again.'

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.