Read Online Cauldron of Blood by Leo Kessler - Free Book Online Page B

sweetly as the day it had been built. As the Cossacks began to rein in their sweating mounts, firing angrily at the rapidly disappearing tractor, its tracks throwing up a huge wild wake of white, Matz turned, his face greasy with sweat, and winked at a pale-faced Schulze.
    ‘ That kept yer heart in yer pants, I bet, you big arsehole, eh?’
    ‘ It’s not my heart I can feel trickling into my boot,’ was all that Sergeant Schulze was able to reply....

 
    EIGHT
     
      ‘Damn this snow! Damn this whole country!’ Peiper growled, but the howling gale drowned his curses and bore them away into nothingness.
    Visibility was now barely twenty paces and the Arctic blizzard which was whipping across the steppe turned the half-light of the winter day into an icy inferno. Standing upright, vainly trying to penetrate the flying gloom, the young colonel could feel the freezing particles sting his skin, blind his eyes and invade his nostrils and mouth. It almost felt as if the damned things were going right through to his brain, turning it to ice too so that it was impossible to think.
    But Jochen Peiper knew he must think and he must think hard. Not only must he out-think the enemy, with very little information from Intelligence at his disposal — save where their front line positions were and that they had patrols everywhere within the Kessel — but he had also to attempt to guess what a bunch of hard-arsed veterans from SS Wotan might do with the situation in which they found themselves.
    Now, as the little convoy of armoured vehicles edged its way at a snail’s pace through the blinding snowstorm, heading for the junction of Lake Ileman and the River Redya, Peiper wondered what he would do, if he were in their place. First, he guessed, being SS, they would avoid any contact with the ordinary stubble-hoppers of the Wehrmacht . The latter had a chance of surviving if they surrendered to the Reds in time — the SS didn’t. Hence they would attempt to make their way westwards. Second, he knew that they were familiar with the terrain. After all, the SS Corps had fought its way right across it from the three rivers to beyond Demyansk. So, he guessed they would be heading towards the three rivers.
    Now the question remained, whether they would attempt to make for one of three towns within the Kessel, which according to Intelligence were still believed to be in friendly hands. In weather like this, it would be the predictable thing for exhausted, hungry men to do. But would the Wotan troopers do the expected? They knew as well as he did that it was asking for trouble to park your arse in a town defended by unwilling troops, who were only too ready to surrender the first time a Red farted.
    Mentally he visualized the map of the Kessel; it was one of the abilities which had made him such a tremendous tactician — he had a photographic memory for topography and terrain. There were three towns, running from south-east to north-west, Demyansk, Federovka and Romushevo. The first, he reasoned, would be definitely out for the missing Wotan men. It would be the first place the Reds would attack, once they entered the Kessel in force. He dismissed Federovka and told himself that if they headed for any place it would be Romushevo. By the time they reached it, they would be completely exhausted and in desperate need of information on the lie of the land between it and the Russian perimeter....
    ‘ Obersturm .’
    The gunner ‘s voice crackled over the intercom and broke into his reverie.
    He pressed his throatmike. ‘Yes?’
    ‘ Man ahead, Obersturm .’
    Peiper raised his head over the edge of the Panther’s turret and peered through the swirling white flakes.
    A heavily-swathed sentry emerged from the gloom like a ghost, waving his signal lamp. He was a German all right. A Red would not have stood up in front of the column like that. Below him the driver must have thought the same, because he started to ease on the brakes gently, in