The Undaunted (Book 2 of The Undesirables)

Chapter 13: The Correspondent

Jillian huddled on the tiny ledge of a two-story building. Like everywhere in Stalingrad, the building had been bombed. Its brick walls had been blown from the inside out. Yet its four corners, apparently more structurally sound than the flat walls, still stood. The effect was that it looked like a small castle, its four corners like four turret towers.

The roof and interior floors had been made of wood. They were completely burned away, all the way down to the cellar.

On each corner, however, a narrow ledge of wood planking had somehow survived the fires.

There were no stairs or other points of access to those narrow ledges, so Jillian had piled broken concrete into a mound of rubble large enough for her to stand on and reach a ledge with outstretched arms. She'd then hoisted herself and her pack up onto the wooden beams, burrowing her back into the right angle of the converging walls.

It had been a lot of work, but it was worth it. From this high vantage point Jillian could see several kilometers all the way to the tractor factory. Bright flashes, smoke, and the distant thunder of explosions signaled that fighting was still going on there. So long as the fighting continued, she knew the Germans had not yet taken that important industrial objective.

But that wasn't the only battle Jillian could monitor from her current vantage point. She could look straight into the Central Rail Station, only a few hundred yards to the southwest. It was one of three Stalingrad stations, this one mostly servicing passengers instead of industrial freight. Like most cities around the world, Stalingrad had built its station into a grand architectural monument of stone.

But now it was a ruin.

And, worse than a ruin, it was a slaughterhouse.

For some reason both the Wehrmacht and the Red Army had decided the rail station was worth fighting and dying for. Jillian didn't pretend to understand why. The tracks and trains had all been bombed to oblivion, so what purpose could the station possibly serve for either side?

But Jillian's job was not to reason why, it was to spy. And her masters at the Office of Strategic Services were as interested in the fate of the rail station, it seemed, as were the Wehrmacht and the Red Army.

So Jillian had left her hiding place and marched here. She'd found this perch where she had sat for hours, staring at the bloody battle through her binoculars, pausing long enough to write notes on how the battle seemed to be progressing. Her back ached and her legs cramped, but men from both sides still fought and died and so she watched.

The Germans had, at first, tried to break through with their tanks. Jillian recognized the vehicles as "Sturmgeschutz", better known to the allies as "Stug" assault guns. They were low, sleek and boxy tanks, turretless, with stubby howitzers poking like noses out of the front of their hulls. The purpose of those howitzers was to hurl 3" diameter high explosive shells into bunkers and other fortified positions, smashing defensive walls into dust.

But the Germans couldn't drive their tanks within range of the rail station. Their bombing campaign three weeks ago had already so destroyed the city that the streets were choked with rubble. The Stugs could hardly move. They couldn't get close enough to fire on the rail station, so they were useless. As a result, the Germans eventually gave up with their armored assault, and pulled the tanks back.

From that point forward, the battle became an infantry slog.

German soldiers didn't have much trouble gaining access to the train station. They positioned their MG-42's in neighboring buildings and just poured fire into the building. That forced the Russian defenders down and allowed German assault squads to cross the street right up next to the station. There they paused, their backs against the ornate stone façade, apparently waiting for a pre-determined moment. Then, their actions synchronized with their watches, they rushed the train station from three different entrances.