Red Inferno

CHAPTER 30

Lieutenant David Singer simply showed up that evening at Logan’s bunker. He looked a little pale, but had regained some lost weight and seemed otherwise healthy. He leaned his cane against the wall and grinned infectiously, like a kid who had just put something over on a teacher.

“David,” said Logan as the others looked on, “aren’t you supposed to be in the hospital?”

“Hospitals are for sick people. Tell me, do I look sick?”

“Let me rephrase the question. Did the hospital release you, or did you just take off?”

“What does it matter? I’m here, aren’t I?”

Sergeant Bailey offered Singer a cup of coffee. “I think Lieutenant Logan is concerned because he is in so much deep shit with the captain for breaking rules that he doesn’t want to get in any deeper.”

Singer took a swallow and made a face. “This really tastes like hell. All right, I took off and Dimitri doesn’t know I’m here. So what?”

Logan took a deep breath. “Why, David?”

“Guys, I wasn’t joking when I said that hospitals are for sick people. There’s a battle coming, and they don’t need me moping around and getting in the way just because I lost twenty pounds the hard way. Besides, unless I’ve missed something, I’m still an officer in this man’s army and I am reporting for duty. And I’m not going to tell the captain. I should also be honest and tell you I’ve been thinking it may be safer right here with you guys. The hospitals are marked with red crosses, but that hasn’t stopped the Reds from shelling them.”

“Why not tell Dimitri you’re here, sir?” asked Bailey. “You afraid he’ll send you back?”

“Because rumor has it he’s so pissed at young Lieutenant Logan that he’d replace him with me, one arm or not. After all, I am senior to him in date of rank. Worse, there’s the possibility that Dimitri would make me stay with him so as to keep me out of trouble, and that’s not why I’m here.”

“Okay,” said Logan resignedly, “you’re our little secret and just one more reason for Dimitri to crucify me. Now, what use can you be to us?”

At that moment, the thundering Russian barrage began again. For a second, Singer looked like he wanted to change his mind and return to the hospital, but he quickly settled down. “Maybe I can help with the radio. If nothing else, I can praise the Lord and pass the ammunition,” he answered, mimicking the song that had been popular after Pearl Harbor.

“Hallelujah,” said Logan, and he winced as a shell landed near. “Then get on the radio and find out what the hell is happening at the outposts. And David”-he grinned evilly-“don’t drop it.”

As darkness fell, they got word that the Russians were advancing and that there was a lot of armor headed in their direction. Shortly after, the men from the outposts snaked their way back through the trenches and tunnels, passing through on their way to the rear.

An engineer captain was the last to appear. He was stringing wire and had a detonator, and explained that an earlier line had been cut by the Russian artillery.

“Are all the men out, Captain?” Logan asked. He knew a lot of those people in the outposts.

“All that’s coming out, buddy.” With that, he twisted the detonator. A second later, the earth a half mile out in front of them lifted in a shower of dirt, destroying the now abandoned outposts. “Well, that’s that. I can only hope there were some Commies in there when we blew it.”

Logan agreed, but he also hoped there weren’t any Americans alive in that hell.

He quickly stopped worrying about others and focused on himself and the bunker. The Russians were indeed coming. American artillery began firing back with everything they had, aiming for the roads the enemy armor had to use. There was no reason for either side to save anything for a tomorrow that might never come. American mortars soon began landing on presighted targets where the Russians had been observed. Soviet artillery picked up the pace and the explosions became deafening, with the vibrations shaking the ground and sucking the air out of the bunker. Worst were the rockets, the Katyushas, the Stalin Organs, which the Russians had not used on them in a while. Shrieking like banshees, the shells came down in hosts, having been launched dozens at a time. Wildly inaccurate, they were, however, devastating psychologically and saturated the area on which they impacted. Worse, they lit up the sky and announced that the main attack was coming.

Logan’s bunker was one of a number that were placed at angles to provide enfilading and overlapping fire on an attacking force. As before, there was a pattern of tank traps in front of them and a number of lines of barbed wire; however, there wasn’t enough wire. Getting quantities of it into Potsdam had proven a major problem. The area in front was mined as well, but, again, not enough mines had been flown in to really saturate the area and many of those had been destroyed by the artillery. The idea of dynamite had been General Miller’s, and it did appear to have slowed the Russians down a little.

By now, the smoke and dust blown into the air obscured their night vision and limited their line of sight to an indistinct couple of hundred yards. American antitank guns and dug-in Shermans had opened fire, but on what? The air outside was filled with flying metal and other objects, and it was inevitable that some would find their way in through the bunker’s firing slits, causing cuts and bruises.

“Aw, crap,” muttered Bailey, “look what’s happening to the tank traps.”

Blood was trickling down Logan’s face, and he plucked a small piece of metal out of his cheek. He tucked it into a pocket, insanely thinking it would be a nice souvenir. Trying to keep as small as possible, he looked out and quickly understood his sergeant’s dismay. The dirt walls of the tank traps were collapsing. They had all been afraid of that possibility. Almost surrounded as they were by the river and the lakes, the water table was very close to the surface; thus, when the earth was damp and muddy, it became very unstable. The shelling had loosened the walls of the traps, and now they were falling in and filling the ditches. Could a tank get through? They would soon find out.

“Tank,” yelled Crawford. “Jesus Christ, what the fuck is that?”

An iron monster emerged from the smoke and darkness. It seemed twice the size of any tank they had ever seen before. Logan watched in shock as it moved slowly forward. Infantry huddled around it, but they were quickly swept away by the storm of metal. The tank crept closer. The main gun looked larger than anything Logan had ever seen in his life. A Stalin tank, he thought. It had to be a Josef Stalin model, as if that was important. An antitank shell hit the tank’s turret and bounced off. The Stalin was impervious to them.

Like an animal, the tank was testing the ground. The collapsing trap had it confused. The turret turned and seemed to see the bunker only fifty yards away. It fired and the bunker shook from the impact. Someone screamed. Logan picked himself up and took another look at the tank. It fired again. This time, the shell hit the edge of a firing slit and blew it apart, sending debris flying around inside. Now the slit was an open window and there was screaming from inside the bunker.

The tank moved forward. It felt for the slope of the collapsed trap. Slowly, it lowered its bulk into the hole and almost disappeared.

“Get me a bazooka,” Logan screamed. The tank would be on them in a minute if it was able to climb out of the hole.

Bailey handed him a panzerfaust, the single-shot German antitank rocket weapon. It wasn’t a bazooka, but he had heard it was better, and there were a number of them in the bunker. The tank’s turret was now plainly visible as it slowly emerged. Logan laid the tube on his shoulder, aimed, fired, and watched as the rocket’s shell hit the front armor of the tank and bounced off. He yelled and asked for another, but Bailey was down. The side of his head was open and he could see the sergeant’s brains. Logan wanted to gag, but there wasn’t time. The tank was out of the hole and beginning to climb over the bunker. They were going to be squashed like bugs and buried alive.

“Here,” said Singer with surprising calmness as he handed Logan another panzerfaust. “Try for a belly shot.”

The ruined firing slit was almost all blocked by the bulk of the Russian tank as it began to churn its way onto the top of the bunker. Did its crew think everyone inside the bunker was dead? Perhaps they hadn’t even felt the first rocket when it glanced off.

Logan backed away from the slit. The tank was actually too close for him to fire safely. Tough shit. He closed his eyes and squeezed the trigger. The rocket roared forward and pierced the less heavily armored belly of the Stalin and exploded inside it. The ammunition inside the tank began to detonate and hot metal shrieked into the bunker while the force of the explosions threw men about.

The tank still had enough impetus, or perhaps the driver was yet alive, so that it actually made it to the roof of the bunker, which began to settle under its immense weight.

Logan was on the floor. His arm hurt like it was on fire and his leg was bent at an impossible angle with bone sticking out from his thigh. There was a sticky wetness on his face and he knew it was his own blood. There was little pain from his leg and he realized he was going into shock.

As consciousness faded, he was dimly aware of a couple of things. First, that the explosions outside had reached a new crescendo, as if that were even possible, and second, that the earthen roof above him was collapsing and would soon crush him.

Last, as he felt someone pulling on him, he heard the sound of someone else screaming in terror for his mother. As darkness overcame him, he recognized the voice as his.

Bazarian took the reports of the assault on Potsdam in stride. He had expected heavy casualties and he was not disappointed. While he had hoped that the Stalin tanks would penetrate the defenses of Potsdam, the fact that they had failed did not deter him. The sudden appearance of the American bombers had stopped the assault as the B-25s, flying at nearly treetop level, dropped their loads on the battle below. In some cases, they went so far as to bomb their own lines in order to stop the Red armor. It had worked. Almost all the Russian tanks had been destroyed, along with that obnoxious pig of a Russian who led them. Then, bombs gone, the bombers returned to strafe the Russian positions with their machine guns, again from absurdly low altitude.

However, it was the napalm that had really halted the attack. When the bombers departed, the fighters arrived in swarms and dropped scores of liquid-fire bombs that burned the Russian infantry and incinerated the crews of the remaining tanks. He had heard of the existence of the weapon, but had never expected to see it.

Even so, he was confident that the next attack would succeed. The Americans had nothing left with regard to physical defenses. They had all been blown to pieces by the combination of artillery, Russian tanks, and American bombs. He would use his infantry in waves to overwhelm what was left. By assiduously collecting stray units as he had done with the armor, he still had a force of nearly fifty thousand men. While many were inferior soldiers and virtually all were reluctant warriors, they would still go forward on his orders, which he had told their officers came directly from Moscow. Stalin wanted Potsdam eliminated. Would you deny that to Stalin? None would. Potsdam would fall.

Of more concern to him were the confused stories he was hearing about the battles to the west. While it was common knowledge that Zhukov had been stalled in his campaign to take Antwerp, some catastrophe had apparently befallen his armies. Some idiotic rumors even said that entire Soviet armies had been destroyed, wiped out, and that both Zhukov and Chuikov were missing. Impossible.

Yet something had definitely gone horribly, terribly wrong in that area by the Weser. Thus, it would be best if he eliminated the problem of Potsdam and prepared his army to assist in what was rapidly becoming a general retreat.

There was a knock on the door to the room he was using as an office. “Yes.”

A nervous orderly told him he had a visitor. A visitor? Bazarian paled when he saw that it was a captain from the NKVD, a short, stocky, swarthy man with an angry expression and a briefcase. Despite the difference in their ranks, Bazarian knew real fear. What did the NKVD want of him? He stood to greet his “visitor” while the orderly closed the door to give them privacy.

“Bazarian?” the man said. He had a strange accent and pronounced the name with difficulty.

“Da,” Bazarian responded. Yes.

The officer smiled and reached into the briefcase. When his hand emerged, there was a pistol in it and he fired twice at point-blank range. The bullets struck Bazarian in the chest, lifted him up and back over his chair. He crumpled on the floor and lay still.

The NKVD officer replaced his pistol and calmly walked out of the room. Outside, he ignored the looks of shock and dismay on the faces of Bazarian’s staff. What, they wondered, had their general done? Why had he been executed? Would they be next? As soon as he passed, they all bolted and ran away. Nobody checked on the general.

The stolen jeep with the Russian unit markings painted over with crude NKVD insignia waited a few yards away. Two uniformed Russian soldiers sat in the front. Tony the Toad climbed into the backseat and sat straight, looking forward. The driver started up and they drove down the road.

When they were out of sight, Tony began to shake. “Jesus Christ, Jesus, Jesus.”

“Quit praying,” said Vaslov. “Did you get him?”

“Twice in the chest. Jesus, I didn’t think I could do it. I don’t speak any fucking Russian. All I did was act like that shit who killed the Jew boys, and ask for Bazarian. I snapped my fingers, and they almost shit themselves showing me where he was. It was like I had the plague and they wanted to get rid of me.”

The late Joe Baker would have been proud. They had no idea what impact the shooting of Bazarian would have on the battle for Potsdam, but he had the feeling they had accomplished something really good.

“Enough,” said Anton. “Now let’s find a place to hide these uniforms.”

Tolliver’s first impression of the nightmare land was that it was some kind of hideous modern landscape painting by some psychotic artist in which everything was done in black. The trees were black, the grass was black, the vehicles were black, and worse, the bodies were all blackened and shriveled. Maybe it was more like some medieval painting of hell he’d seen in a college art class.

His jeep was the third in the column that drove slowly toward where the atomic bomb-they now knew its name-had been detonated. The first jeep contained a couple of scientists with a machine called a Geiger counter that supposedly told them it was safe to go on. Safe from what? Radiation, whatever the hell that was. The second jeep carried some mid-level brass from Ike’s headquarters, and Tolliver and his men in the following jeeps were along to provide security. He had been told that a number of other columns were going to try to penetrate the area and might need protection.

They didn’t. The only Russians remaining were vast numbers of the dead and the dying. Those who could still move and who hadn’t already surrendered had fled to the east, leaving behind a scene of catastrophe unparalleled in scope. Tolliver had never seen so many dead bodies and so many ruined vehicles in one area before. He now realized that it was true-an entire Russian army had indeed been destroyed by this atomic bomb. Someday, he might feel truly sorry for them, but not now. He thought of dead Holmes and so many others whose lives were wasted by a war that, in his opinion, hadn’t had to happen.

A scientist in the lead jeep signaled a right turn, and the column obediently followed. Tolliver saw that they were skirting the actual center of the blast, now referred to as “ground zero.” If the bodies strewn about were any measure of the danger they were avoiding by detouring around ground zero, it was okay by him. This was yet another sight he would never forget and never be able to describe. Black death, black fire, black earth, and now the black stench of ruined bodies rotting in the summer sun. He noticed that birds were eating the dead. What effect would radiation have on them?

Someone in the second jeep yelled out that Zhukov was probably in there, in the center of this mess. If he was, thought Tolliver, he wasn’t going to be found and he sure as hell wasn’t coming out.

As they slowly circled ground zero they began to encounter survivors. Many of those trapped between ground zero and the American lines had already surrendered, while these pitiful remnants had been trying to make it east to supposed safety. The only thing was, they weren’t going to make it. Their wounds and burns were ghastly. The flesh had been destroyed, and some of the things crawling on the ground could scarcely be recognized as human.

The column did find signs of attempted mercy. Some few Russian doctors had set up hospitals, which had been overrun by the numbers of wounded.

Tolliver saw a light colonel named Burke leave his jeep and talk to a Russian doctor. The colonel then got on the radio and delivered an emphatic message. Tolliver caught only a few words but he got the gist of it: send help fast. Tolliver also noted that this Burke looked quite shaken.

They drove on a little farther. They stopped when they saw a handful of men who appeared to be relatively unharmed. A scientist got out and waved his magic wand over them and said they were safe to approach but not to touch. The brass got out and Tolliver tagged along.

The Russians were pale and covered with sores. Their eyes looked at the Americans with utter helplessness. The Americans might have been the enemy, but the Russians were in no shape to fight-or to surrender. They just sat or lay there. Tolliver leaned down to see if one of them was alive or dead. His face was all burned up and the skin had peeled off in gobs.

“Don’t touch,” said the scientist, and Tolliver withdrew his hand like a shot. “Radiation sickness. Don’t take a chance.”

A few feet away, Burke leaned over and said something in Russian to a soldier who tried to focus on them. The soldier managed to mutter a response, and then began coughing.

“What’d he say, sir?” Tolliver asked.

“He said his friend died an hour ago and he will die soon as well. He said his name is Suslov and we should pray for him.”

With that, Burke began to shake and tears ran down his face. It was just too awful to even begin to comprehend.

Tolliver tried to be helpful. He walked over and, instinctively and in total disregard of the difference in their ranks, put his hand on the other man’s shoulder. “Hey, Colonel, don’t take it so hard. It’s not as if this was your fault or something.”

Five days after the massive assault on Potsdam, two battalions of the 82nd Airborne Division parachuted onto the runways of Berlin’s Gatow Airport and secured it. There was little resistance, only scattered sniper fire, which the airborne soldiers quickly eliminated. Additional drops were made and work began immediately on filling in the craters so that at least one runway would be ready for planes to take off and land. All this occurred while additional paratroops continued to descend from the sky. By nightfall, the entire division was on the ground and had linked up with the defenders of Potsdam, who had sent a strong patrol to Gatow.

Early the next morning, C-47 transports began to arrive with supplies, medical personnel, and additional soldiers to protect the expanding perimeter. One of the first planes carried General Omar Bradley and a handful of his staff.

Bradley had not announced that he was coming, so no one was waiting for him at Gatow. That neither surprised nor disturbed him. He was certain his men at Potsdam had more important things to do than arrange a ceremony for him. He and two of his staff hitched rides to Potsdam from an astonished young private.

“Shit,” said General Miller as he ran out to greet Bradley. “You could have warned me you were coming.” He snapped to attention and saluted. Bradley returned the salute. The two men then shook hands and, spontaneously, embraced warmly. “Good to see you anyhow, Brad,” Miller said.

“Good to see you too, Puff. What on earth have you done with this lovely little town?” he said half jokingly. “And what have you done to your head?” he added, commenting on the bandage on Miller’s scalp.

Inwardly, Bradley was appalled by the devastation. Few buildings still stood, and the ground was pocked with so many craters that it looked like a moonscape. Broken vehicles were everywhere, as were signs that showed where graves had been dug. Soldiers’ graves were marked by crude crosses with dog tags nailed to them, while civilians had been buried in mass graves that were now large mounds on the ground. Worse, almost everyone seemed to be at least slightly wounded.

“It was a helluva fight, Brad. I got off easy.”

Bradley took Miller by the elbow. “Let’s go take a look around and talk about it.”

Typically, the first thing Bradley wanted to see was the wounded. He toured the hospitals and talked to the men for several hours. He was gratified to see the fresh medical personnel moving in to take over from others who looked like they were dead on their feet. As always, he was sincerely moved, and they responded to him. He noticed German and American wounded were together while the Russians were separate. After all, they were still at war and they were still prisoners even though they didn’t look like they had any fight left in them. The Russians smiled and nodded at everyone who passed by.

It was much later before he had a chance to sit down with Miller and talk over the situation.

“I lost a third of my men dead and wounded in that last attack, Brad. I really thought they were going to smash their way in. They had those damned big tanks and there wasn’t anything we could do to stop them. Behind those tanks they had numbers equivalent to almost a whole field army. We would have killed a lot of them, but they might have killed all of us. When the air force came and started bombing from such low height, I knew the Reds were in for it.”

Bradley chuckled. “Some of the higher brass wanted to bomb from greater altitude for safety’s sake. The pilots and crews wouldn’t hear of it. Many of those boys who bombed the Reds were the same ones who dropped supplies to you during the siege. I think they kind of adopted you people and were angry at the thought of losing you.”

Miller nodded appreciatively. “Well, whatever the reason, it worked, even though they had to drop their bomb loads on our own lines and caused some casualties among our troops. It was war and it had to be done. And I have never seen anything as terrible as napalm.”

“Then,” said Bradley sadly, “you haven’t seen what the atomic bomb did.”

“I guess not.”

“Puff, it was as bad as anything I’ve ever dreamed. We will never know the total butcher’s bill for that first bomb, but it looks like about thirty thousand Russian dead and another eighty thousand wounded. Worse, there are at least a hundred thousand more suffering from various levels of radiation sickness. Many of them will die within the next few weeks and months and there’s nothing we can do to treat it. The second bomb, dropped on Koniev’s troops, was just about as bad.

“Even with precautions, we still had a couple of hundred of our boys killed or wounded by the bomb. Some were blinded by the flash, while others suffered broken bones from falls and crashes. Saddest were the handful of our soldiers who got too close afterward and got radiation poisoning. We also lost three brave OSS men who pinpointed Zhukov and died for their efforts.”

“What about Zhukov and Chuikov?”

“Not found and presumed dead, and Koniev is reported to be badly wounded. There are areas near the center of the explosion that we won’t be able to enter for a long time, and only then with protective clothing on. The net result is that the First Belorussian Army Front no longer exists, and Koniev’s First Ukrainian Front has been decimated. It’s as if my entire Twelfth Army Group had been destroyed.”

Miller shuddered. “It’s awful. But it’s ending the war, isn’t it?”

“It appears that way. Let me give you a rundown. The Germans and British in the Netherlands are now south of Hamburg and have linked up with the British airborne who retook Bremen. Alexander has Dempsey’s British troops moving south to meet Patton, who has crossed the Weser and is running free in the Russians’ rear. He’s approaching Brunswick if he hasn’t taken it already. There’s very little resistance. When our two armies do meet up, there will likely be a very empty bag, as so many of the Russians were either killed or wounded by the blasts or have already surrendered. The experts were right. Without their senior commanders, the Russians don’t know what to do.

“Rokossovsky is pulling his Second Belorussian Front back as quickly as he can.”

“Will we stop?”

Bradley grinned. “Did the Russians? No, we will continue on. There have been some political changes. Truman managed to inform the Soviets that we have other bombs and told them we wouldn’t hesitate to use them on any target we wanted, and that included Leningrad and Moscow. The air force thinks they are both out of reach and too dangerous, but the Russians don’t know that. According to overtures from Molotov, the Russians are willing to return to their prewar boundaries east of Poland if we’ll leave them to withdraw in peace. I think those terms will be accepted.”

“I think I may have fought my last campaign,” Miller said.

“I understand, Chris. Maybe I have too. I mentioned we’ve been talking with Molotov. Well, no one’s heard from Stalin for the last few days. There’s a rumor that there’s been a coup and he’s been toppled. He may even be dead.”

Miller chuckled. “That’d be nice.”

“You won’t get an argument from me, Chris. It also seems that the Japs may have gotten the message. They understand how much we hate them and have figured that if we’d use the bomb on white Europeans, we’d have no qualms about bombing their cities and their culture into ashes along with their yellow skins. They may be as racially bigoted as we are, but they’re not stupid. It may be too early, but we’ll see.”

Miller had mixed emotions about the Japanese. While he wanted no more war, he wondered if they, like the Germans, might get off too lightly considering the atrocities both nations had committed.

Bradley continued. “Where’s your German tank commander? I’d like to meet him.”

“Von Schumann left yesterday for Hamburg. Too many of the civilians he had been protecting were killed in the battle, and he was having a hard time dealing with it. That and the fact that the man is desperate to find his family.”

The thought saddened Bradley. He could barely imagine the torment of someone who had to search a ravaged continent for loved ones who might be dead. Silently, he wished von Schumann well.

“One more thing,” Bradley asked. “Are those three boys still under wraps?”

“The soldier and the two refugees who shot Bazarian? Sure, but why?”

Bradley shook his head. “For some reason, the higher-ups want it still believed that a Russian NKVD officer tried to kill an Armenian general. The OSS says that Bazarian will survive his wounds and has linked up with several thousand Armenian soldiers who are going crazy with anger at the Russians. The OSS likes that and thinks it might contribute to the further instability of the Soviet Union. Ours not to judge. Give our boy a medal and a promotion and order him not to talk. As to the two Poles, they can immigrate to the United States if they swear to keep what they did a secret.”

They turned as a couple of young men approached them and saluted. They wore the insignia of war correspondents.

“How’re you doing, boys?” asked Miller.

“We’re doing fine, General,” said the older of the two. “We’re gonna give this place and these boys the story they deserve.”

“That’s great.”

“But, sir. We’re puzzled. What happened to the guy who was here?”

“Oh,” said Miller, “you mean Ames. I understand he flew out about a week ago. You mean nobody’s heard from him?”

“Not a peep, sir. Damn, that’s a shame.”