Free Guns At Cassino by Leo Kessler Page A

caught sight of their enemy for the first time, white camouflaged helmets and thin dark perforated Machine-gun barrels which quivered with heat and scorched the snow. Then they charged into the pitiless fire.
    But they were no match for the veterans of the Wotan, whose vicious hail of fire poured into their ever thinning ranks, cutting them down into small scattered groups, then into individuals, each man suddenly alone in the confused noise and smoke, doubling blindly forward to his death.
    The boy from Georgia was stopped at a low stone wall. His friend, the high yellow with the flag, was mown down a second later. Someone else grabbed it. He stumbled forward with the few who were left, his face upturned to the peak in agony, hands clawing at the wall. He was shot just as he had managed to swing his leg over it. As he fell, a helmetless Black Jack seized it, without even a glance at him or the rest of the dead littering the wall all around him:
    `Forward the old Ninety-Third,' he croaked crazily. 'Forward! '
    A bullet struck him in the shoulder. He staggered but kept on advancing. The ones who were still on their feet now followed. They scaled the wall and plunged through the snow after him, stumbling towards the machine-guns, as if they were eager to die. Only a half a dozen of them reached the perimeter; and within a matter of minutes they were all dead, their Colonel in their midst, his bloody hands still gripping the flag. Behind, the regiment he had trained so lovingly lay sprawled dead or dying on the snow-covered slope of Peak 555 stark against its white surface, while the handful of wounded survivors hobbled painfully and silently like sleep walkers down the way they had come. The 93rd Infantry Regiment (Coloured) existed no more.
    Four hours later, von Dodenburg, accompanied by Schulze as a bodyguard against the Italian partisans who were beginning to make a nuisance of themselves on Route Nine, was heading north in the Battle Group's Volkswagen jeep. His orders from the Vulture were simple - in part. He was to take the captured banner and present it to the Reichsführer SS personally.
    `Herr Himmler likes such trappings of military grandeur,' the Vulture had remarked cynically. 'Perhaps he will hang it with the rest of the mumbo-jumbo in that crypt he has built himself in the Wewelsburg, (2) what?'
    In return he was to ask the Reichsführer SS for an immediate delivery of the recoilless rifles which were still on the secret list, but which, Geier knew, were being delivered to all airborne units, including the SS Parachute Battalion.
    But that had not been the Vulture's only order. As they had walked across the plateau towards the mules, which were to take him and Schulze down to the valley and the Battle Group's rear echelon, he had gripped von Dodenburg's arm just short of the place where the sweating SS troopers were throwing the Americans' stiffening bodies into a communal grave.
    `Von Dodenburg, a word in your ear.'
    He had indicated with a nod that the Creeper should move away and had waited till he was out of earshot. Then he had whispered:
    `Von Dodenburg, I know that you believe in the National Socialist cause implicitly, but you are also a simple soldier like myself, one who believes in Germany's destiny. Am I right, my friend?'
    The young Major had mumbled something and waited, bewildered by the sudden mystery, for what was to come.
    `When you have seen that fool of a Reichsführer, I want you to see Group Leader Schellenberg.'
    `The head of the SD?'
    `Yes.'
    `And what shall I say, sir?'
    `Nothing. Just tell him you come from the - er - Vulture,' he grinned faintly. 'He, knowing Schellenberg, will do the talking, believe me.'
    Thus mystified, von Dodenburg swept north towards Rome's airport where they would catch the military courier plane for Berlin and Himmler's HQ. But if von Dodenburg was glum and silent, Schulze, Schmeisser cradled ready for the Italian partisans should they have the audacity to