Chapter 118:
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Chapter 118
The old general stroked the mane of his horse.
“Rojina, you’re getting old too.”
White hairs were mixed among the mane.
Rojina snorted and pawed the ground, as if understanding his words. Budenny chuckled.
I’m old, and you’re old. But the world is still so vast.
“Come on, let’s go!”
“Ura! Ura! Long live the Red Army!”
He spurred his horse and shouted, and his men followed suit.
Long live! Long live! Let’s shout until our chests burst. Long live the Red Army!
The roar of the engines and the neighing of the horses filled the plain.
The fighter planes flew in the sky, casting shadows on the ground, as if blessing the brave warriors of the cavalry.
But the general who led them, Budenny, was not at ease.
He had received medals and high ranks, and was praised as a ‘success’, but he had already lost many of his men for dubious reasons.
They were either demoted or dragged away somewhere.
‘Beria, that bastard…’
He had the instinct of a warrior, and he knew who his enemy was.
He knew who wanted to tighten the leash on the cavalry.
Beria was a competent spy, but a competent spy always challenged the generals who wielded power.
He whispered incessantly in the ear of the secretary, slandering and worrying.
The Red Army’s cavalry, especially the elite First Guards Cavalry Army, had already been pushed to the brink of purge by the NKVD’s operation.
They had turned over everyone from the high-ranking officers to the low-ranking soldiers, accusing them of mutiny, embezzlement, and other charges.
Budenny himself had barely escaped from being kidnapped by the NKVD agents.
‘He tried to privatize the Red Army of the workers and peasants.’
He later found out that he was charged with such a crime.
Damn, Budenny gritted his teeth. Privatize the cavalry? Isn’t the NKVD someone’s private property?
After the war started, Budenny ran away to the front again. He thought that if he fought with his life on the line at the front, they wouldn’t touch him. He had that idea in mind.
He enjoyed living in the battle, breathing the air of the battlefield.
It suited his nature as a born cavalryman. More than the political struggle and intrigue in the Kremlin.
The horse was a loyal and faithful creature. He felt sorry to compare it to humans.
“Hee-haw!”
“Come on, you missed the plain too, didn’t you? Hahaha!”
Rojina lifted his front legs and stretched them towards the sky as he ran. Budenny laughed heartily. The air of the battlefield, mixed with gunpowder, filled his chest and shook his lungs.
Now the NKVD and the Politburo had adopted a different way to restrain him and the military. A more cunning and sophisticated way.
***
“Come on! Let’s dance!!”
“…Hee! Ho! Hee! Ho!”
Under the direction of the NKVD, he had to dance a ridiculous nomad dance in a ridiculous nomad costume for the ‘propaganda film’.
They said it was good for him to do that because the German soldiers were afraid of the cavalry.
As if he was dancing a traditional Kazakh dance, he jumped and spun around, singing a strange song, while several cameras captured everything.
‘Beria, you son of a bitch…’
It was completely different from when he danced for fun at the secretary’s dacha. Instead of laughter and joy, there was clear mockery in the eyes of the NKVD agents.
Beria said that it was a special operation ordered by the secretary himself.
He didn’t know what benefit it would bring to spread Budenny’s ridiculous antics to the world, but Beria emphasized that it was a ‘command’.
‘Is this a sign of purge?’
They had lifted him up to restrain the young and talented newcomer Zhukov, and then dropped him down again. As a result, there was no single big shot in the military.
On top of that, the NKVD was picking off his loyal men one by one within the cavalry.
They had disappeared one by one, with various dubious charges and slanders.
His chief of staff, who was the most honest and upright, was arrested for embezzlement of military supplies.
His deputy commander, who was loyal to the Soviet Union more than anyone, was taken away for spying.
Budenny felt Beria’s sinister touch.
He was worried.
‘What should I do?’
The propaganda was supposed to link the general who was most feared by the Germans to Mongolia, who they feared as well, and scare them.
But who would be scared by such ridiculous antics?
He wondered if it was the secretary’s ‘special favor’.
The secretary seemed to have set his course to trust and protect the generals, but he couldn’t be sure when he saw his sword, Beria.
If he was framed and purged and sent to the gulag… His family wouldn’t be safe either. They would probably be executed with him or sent to Siberia.
The exile system was almost abolished, and the treatment of the prisoners had improved, but it was still no different from a death sentence.
On the other hand, if he died in battle, he would at least leave some honor. His family would be better off too.
The dead have no voice.
They wouldn’t threaten the regime with their favors, so they were thorough with their treatment of the dead.
Especially, if a general like him died bravely in battle… They would leave his family alone.
His grandchildren, who seemed too precious to even put in his eyes. At least for them…
‘No Siberia!’
***
“So… You’re saying that the comrade general is running around like this?”
“That’s right! We were skeptical when we first got this information, but there were quite a lot of testimonies. Can you believe it?”
The man with a large body that filled the sofa he sat on scratched his cheek as he looked at the piles of documents. He had a hideous scar on his left cheek that twisted his face.
He was the most dangerous man in Europe, the phantom of Gibraltar, the secret weapon of the Führer.
These were all the words that described him. Otto Skorzeny, the colonel of the SS commando unit, looked at the secret plan to assassinate the Soviet general with indifference.
“Hmm… I’m sorry, but I have a new order from the Führer himself. I’ll send some volunteers from my men.”
“Really? Thank you! Thank you very much!”
The army general got up first and shook Skorzeny’s huge hand. He couldn’t be rude to a mere colonel, but Skorzeny was special.
He had infiltrated Gibraltar and blown up the base, destroying the British fleet.
He had also hunted down dozens of rebel leaders when a plot to overthrow the Führer was uncovered.
He had no equal in his achievements, and he had the Führer’s trust. How could a ‘mere’ general be disrespectful to him? To him who carried out secret missions with the Führer’s orders?
The Führer’s authority was soaring in the sky. The general knew the winds of Berlin well, and he chose to be humble.
“I hope you can grant the requests of our soldiers as much as possible. They are all… not normal, you see.”
“Of course! I’ll do my best within my authority.”
Skorzeny scratched his cheek and smirked. It was a smile that made the viewer’s spine chill.
Skorzeny himself meant it as a sincere thanks, but people couldn’t take his kindness at face value because of his appearance.
“Heh, thank you.”
***
“It’s a mission! You damn bastards! And there are two of them!”
Skorzeny kicked open the barracks door and shouted at his men.
Some cheered and some frowned.
Neither was a proper attitude to show to their commander.
Of course, neither Skorzeny nor his men cared about that.
They either transferred to other special units, or died in the mission.
The Friedenthal commando unit only had the craziest bastards in the Third Reich.
“Captain! So who are we killing?”
“Yeah! Just tell us that!”
One of his men who was drinking vodka from the bottle shouted.
The others agreed with him. Skorzeny chuckled and shook the orders.
“Yeah, you guys must be curious. Well, one of them is…”
“Who?”
“The enemy general! The red cavalry leader Budenny!”
Whiiiiik! The commandos whistled and exclaimed. Yeah, that’s more like it! They had no interest in trivial targets.
“You crazy bastards, can’t you tell where you’re going to die? Hahahaha!”
“Die? Who’s going to die?”
One of his men who was playing poker with wide eyes turned around when he heard the word ‘die’. He looked like he didn’t care what anyone said.
There were two types of people in the Friedenthal commando unit.
One was those who were addicted to the thrill of the dangerous missions.
The insane ones who would fight and shoot until they crawled into their graves.
They were plenty in the commando unit.
“Is this so dangerous? Just this much?”
“Hey, if it really looks like we’re going to die, our captain wouldn’t do it.”
Those guys would run into the most dangerous and deadly places with their own feet, as long as it was more dangerous.
They were discussing how dangerous the mission would be while looking at the orders.
“Crazy bastards…”
And there were those who looked relatively normal.
“What? You’re the craziest one. Honestly.”
“Hehehe, crazy bastards fighting each other for real.”
Of course, there was not a single sane person in the Friedenthal commando unit. They were either addicted to the thrill of danger, or hopeless criminals. Rape, murder, arson.
There were few commandos who didn’t have one of these in their resumes. Maybe it would be different if they had all three.
“Anyway, we’re leaving tomorrow, so get ready if you want to volunteer. Stop drinking.”
Skorzeny kicked the back of the man who was drinking vodka from the bottle and snatched the bottle from him.
He didn’t care where he got it from, or that there was blood on the bottle.
He felt a burning sensation in his throat.
“There are more than one bastards to kill, so take care of yourselves.”
“Yes~!”
***
Budenny’s offensive was a deception to divert the German’s attention from the main force concentrated in the north.
Well, he also had the goal of crushing the German 9th Army in Smolensk.
The First Guards Cavalry Army was more of a symbolic unit.
It was a proud cavalry with a long history as the elite of the Red Army.
It was less effective than the armored units armed with tanks and self-propelled guns, but it was more eye-catching.
The war propaganda broadcasts every day boasted that the cavalry had won here and chased away the enemy there.
They hid what the real Soviet main force, the armored units, were doing and where.
The media information that the Germans received was thoroughly manipulated for the Soviet’s purpose.
“The cavalry led by General Budenny will launch an offensive in the south of Smolensk. The right wing of the north is hiding the main attack, so they are exposing themselves to the media as much as possible.”
“We have obtained information that the Savoy Cavalry Regiment of the Italian Army is deployed in the south of the German 9th Army.”
“Oh, is it a cavalry versus cavalry battle?”
In fact, the Soviet cavalry units were more like mechanized units that relied more on armored cars and infantry fighting vehicles than horses.
Horses were just auxiliary means of transportation for the troops.
On the other hand, the Savoy Cavalry Regiment of Italy was… the last ‘real cavalry’ left on the modern battlefield.
They rode horses and swung sabers, real cavalry.
Of course, their main weapon was firearms, but they were the last cavalry unit that fought in the 20th century battlefield.
They would fade away in front of the waves of history… But it wouldn’t be bad to burn brightly in their last battlefield.
“Good. Let’s deploy as many military photographers as possible. This, this could be a movie material, right? Hahahaha!”
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