As far as I could see east, there were fieldworks and trenches, more being dug as I watched. Looked like every big ass tractor in the wheat belt was out there moving dirt. I had looked it up, three hundred miles to Saskatoon, and the krauts were going to fight for every foot of it. There were expanding rail yards west and south, I didn’t have to wonder where all those missing armored trains were any more. The air base was just north of the city, and was even more bustling than Bellingham. We had to play follow the leader to land, the sheer number of AA emplacements was very impressive. The Pursuits had another base with two runways north of us. There was another strip farther away, but I could not make out what was going on there.
We bumped to a stop, another staff car was there for Walker, they dropped me off a BOQ, “An aide will have your orders and authorizations for you in a couple hours. Best grab some supper, it is liable to get hectic in the morning.”
“Yes, sir. I hear you. Thanks.” He just waved, told the driver to go. He went.
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The BOQ might have been a stock barn, some kind of agricultural building, but it was good enough for summer. The big dining room was packed with edgy officers, you could smell the tension in the air, the scotch flowed freely. Scotch may have been the official tipple of the Canadian and now the Vancouver Army, but the men slopping it down were an assorted lot. All colors, all accents, but all ready to fight. Nobody sane wants to fight, not the second time, but you have to do some things to keep the world spinning.
These were all infantry and transport guys, the lower-class louts that win the damn wars, not the tankers and airmen with the scarves around their necks. Nobody knew, or wanted to say what was going to happen in the morning, but we all knew it was going to happen. The teasing was a little too sharp, the laughter a little too brittle, the drinks a little too strong. I didn’t know any of these men, and nobody wants to make new friends before you see them killed. It’s just the way people are. All of us locked in with our private fears, but having to be social animals so the team doesn’t get let down. The team must not be let down.
My bullshit rank of major entitled me to a private room, and I took it without a trace of guilt. It was knocked together out of raw lumber, but I rated. Fuck the team, I would just as soon lie in bed, pretending to sleep. If I drank enough to pass out, it might cost me enough of my edge in the morning to get me hurt. Or else I was just getting old. I planned and hoped to continue to get older. With or without luck.
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I sort of got a few hours of sleep, then an aide rousted me before reveille, or whatever they call it up here. “Major Kapusta? My name is Thomas, I have been assigned to you by Captain Quist, the information officer. We have a car laid on, I will be your driver. The operation begins at Zed Six-hundred hours. That is in…” He checked his watch. “Twenty-seven minutes, Major.”
“Thomas? First, last, or middle?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Name. First, last, or middle.”
“Last, sir. First name Sidney, sir.”
“Don’t make me into a sir sandwich, Sidney, this is a courtesy title, and from Dalny Free Port anyway.” He absorbed that information without comment. He was young, even for a corporal, but looked like he had done hard work in his day. A towheaded farm boy from somewhere near here? "Breakfast?”
“Right this way, sir.”
Egg sandwiches and brutal coffee. Good. The car was nicer than expected, a Lincoln Estate Wagon, liberated from some local farmer, no doubt. Lots of room for all the junk I didn’t have. They had provided a portable Royal and a few maps and books, which was a kind thought. I threw my duffel in the back seat, made sure my camera was loaded, and asked, “Where to, Sidney?”
“The plan is to send a mixed force forward to attract response from the enemy, sir. I suggest discretion is the better part of valor. Perhaps a mile or so behind the spearhead?”
“Two is a nice round number, Sidney.”
“Two miles it is, sir.”
We had to wait our turn, but it was not just a procession down a road. The roads here were laid out in huge squares, like a giant fishnet or gridiron of unpaved roads. Some had gravel, most didn’t. But we were able to advance on a front too wide for me to see, especially after the tanks started kicking up the dust. We fell further behind, back with the lorries and the ambulances, truckloads of nurses to wave at. Us support troops stayed on 1A, which was also the line of the railroad tracks. Major Walker had provided a selection of maps, so I had some idea of where the hell we were going, southeast toward some place called Medicine Hat, which must have been some kind of Indian name. Saskatoon was northeast, another force was headed that way, but it was weaker, as if that was the feint, and this was the real push down towards Montana, the Dakotas and Minnesota, just like we were going to confront the right flank of the Mississippi Thrust, and attack Festung Kitchener. That dumb we weren’t. Nobody told me, of course, an honorary major ranked right below Officers Club orderly in need to know about strategy, but some things are obvious. All we had to do was bleed them, make them nervous and back them up a little. If we could take Saskatoon, well and good, if not, make them fight for it, waste time and men, and distract them from the south, from Texas, that was obviously something worth fighting for. Every German or Brit we could suck off from reinforcing Texas was a net gain. Texans talked tough, but there was no way they were the equals of the battle-hardened troops of the Reich. Those assholes had not only seen the fucking elephant, they had barbecued the son of a bitch, ate it, and looked around for more.
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We drove four hours, got all the way to some place called Brooks, there was a river there, before the dive bombers and the heavies found us. The first we knew of it was the crackle and flash of the rocket clusters way out in front of us, and the jackhammer of the AA, broken by the louder slams of the bombs hitting the column. Everybody stopped, the nurses and doctors ran for the ditches, everybody else grabbed their rifles, found what little cover there was and aimed at the sky. I hadn’t brought my long arm, but there were a couple Enfields in the back. Fine. You know the drill, fat boy. A dive bomber zoomed by, clawing for altitude, everybody fired, it would have taken a miracle to hit him, and we didn’t get one. It’s almost impossible to hit a plane with a rifle, all you can do is put up as many rounds as possible, and pray. Prayer works as well as the shooting, but ammo is cheap.
The tumult from the front of the column waned, we could see a few of those black pillars of smoke that are the tires burning, heard ammo cooking off, but not a disaster. Business as usual. We stayed in our ditches, a few minutes later a high flying zepp or Gotha confettied us with more of those one pound incendiaries, they got a few more vehicles, all in a day’s work. They are not much good against trained troops, did manage to set quite a bit of the landscape on fire. Nobody had cut the hay this year, so there was even more smoke hiding us from the air.
The word came down the line, push the wrecks to the side, mount up, and keep rolling. If the bombers got to us after four hours at a hundred miles per hour, then the tanks should be here before dark, and we could expect two more air attacks before they got here, depending on turn-around time. Press on.
A little while later, the armored trains started passing us, filling up what few sidings there were out here. They were literally covered with AA, dozens of rocket clusters, and even more interestingly, lots of those tiny Teal airplanes on catapult launchers. Instant air force. I realized that a whole lot of planning had been done, and that this was a bigger deal than they had let me think it was. Imagine that.
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The next attack came right on schedule, four hours later. There were more of them, and they pressed the attack harder. All dive bombers, they must have been a little faster than the big guys, a lot faster than the zepps. We all bailed out as the vees of dive bombers dropped their loads on the front of the column, and strafed all the way down the line of trucks. We were all in the ditches and out in
the fields by then, wasting rounds up into the air. The train to our right didn’t waste so many. The guns were fastest; the rocket clusters were a few seconds behind. The sky was filled with skyrockets trailing wires, exploding flashes from the rocket warheads and all sorts of shit going up and coming back down again.
From what little I could see, they had replaced the starbursts in the warheads with a few pounds of flash powder, and shortened the fuses, so they went off less than a hundred feet in the air, just the perfect height to blind or distract already intent pilots. It was a fucking mess. The pilots were completely focused on staying as low above the convoy as possible without crashing, keeping their sights right down the center of the line of trucks, and a few other details, checking airspeed, rounds expended, fuel consumption, watching for enemy pursuits and thinking about getting laid back at base. To have a ball of white flame bigger than your whole plane blow up in your face might prove a bit distracting.
It got crazy fast. Planes were veering wildly, some colliding and crashing into the convoy, an ammo lorry not far enough away from us went up in a tremendous blast that took out another dive bomber. The wires from the spent cluster rockets were drifting down, getting wadded up and wrapped around propellers, all sorts of crazy shit, the AA hammering away like a million Wagner operas at once. Then just when it couldn’t get any crazier, the train crews launched the Teals.
They were so light, the steam catapults shot them almost straight up, they had flying speed instantly, and no place to go but up. The crews launched them away from the road, only the explosive hissing from the steam made me look over my shoulder to see the action. The Teals ripped up and away from the battle chaos, looped around to catch the dive bombers as they fled to regroup and head back to their base. They certainly were not expecting anything like that. They thought they were home free, and got jumped just as they were relaxing.
The Teals had only one machine gun in the nose, but they had replaced the one big rocket I had seen before with a cluster of smaller ones that spread out erratically and detonated on impact. Most of them missed, but the ones that didn’t miss were deadly. They probably only had a few pounds of explosive each, but airplanes are flimsy, and once they get a few big holes in the fabric, they get real hard to hold stable. And they burn very easy.
It didn’t look like a real good day in the dive bomber business. And it was getting worse fast. I did see one of the Teals go up in a burst of flame, one rocket misfired and set off all the others, at a guess. Nothing bigger than a suitcase fell out of that blast. But there was a lot more action everywhere. A melee in fact.
The Germans became aware of the new enemy, clawed away up into clean air, and regrouped as much as they could. They had more power, were faster, especially in a dive, but were a lot less maneuverable. They had to get back hundreds of miles to their bases, all the Teals had to do was to line up, take one shot, and circle back to land on their skids in the softest fields they could find. An uneven battle that could only end one way. The dive bombers fled, the Teals buzzed the column in triumph, landed on their skids, were serviced and loaded back on their catapults. Have a drink, boys, you earned it.
We had lots of work of our own, tending to the casualties, moving the wreckage off the road, putting out such fires as could be put out. A few locals magically showed up to lend hands, bring horse teams to drag dead vehicles off the right of way, and incidentally, scout for salvage. All in a day’s work. Them and us both.
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Boots and saddles. Mount up and go. We had a few more hours of daylight, the big question was whether the dive bombers could get back before dark, or would we have to wait for the Zeppelins tonight? Both and neither. No attacks by nightfall, we kept rolling. They had a system of refueling on the go for the front line, the tanks and armored cars, the rest of us fell out at fuel depots dropped off alongside the railroad tracks so we could keep rolling too. We had covered our head and tail lights with tin foil with just pin holes to let the light out. We could keep going, but it was nerve-wracking as hell. The zepps came by a few hours after dark, they dropped lots of bombs, but there was nothing they could aim at. They set some more uncut hay on fire, giving us enough light to keep driving, but hiding us in the smoke. About midnight, a roar from behind woke us all up out of our twenty mile an hour stupor, and a few hundred motorcycles raced up between our lines of trucks and on the shoulders, headed for trouble. They had their lights full on, and obviously could give a shit. I couldn’t see who they were, but they were not decked out as barbarously as Hodak’s Mongols, who were supposed to be a thousand miles south of here anyway. But there was no lack of crazy people who were pissed off at the Germans. One guess was as good as the other. Alaskans or even French Canadiens.
Obviously, they were hell for leather for Medicine Hat, which could not be that far away now. Best as I could figure from my civilian maps, we should be there well before dawn, in a couple of hours at most.
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I figured right. Unfortunately, the kraut-heads got there the same time we did. That was a bit of an exaggeration; the two spearhead tank forces stormed into Medicine Hat at the same time, we were back with the support troops, a couple miles back, even out of field artillery range. Too bad for the Anglo-Germans, they were well in range of the five and eight inch guns on the armored trains. We all bailed out, grabbed shovels and started digging foxholes. It was no time for heroes. A motorcycle rider came by and changed our minds for us; “Clear the road! Head that way, toward the river and dig in there in the Heights. Burnside Heights! Go!” They might have been heights to somebody from the plains, but they were just rolling hills to us easterners. We bumped across the railroad tracks, west and south, and found spots to park and dig into somebody’s wheat fields. We barely got situated, the artillery increasing all the time back in the town, when some of the trains started pumping up star shells, and we could see what the fuck.
We didn’t have enough elevation to get a clear view, but the smoke columns and shell bursts gave us an idea. I was supposed to be reporting on this mess, so I climbed up on the top of a furniture van and gained a slightly better look. The center of Medicine Hat was taking a pounding; I could see a long double column of German heavy tanks back down the road into the gloom. There were a lot more of our armored trains than I had thought, and they were laying down the fire on the enemy. Our tanks had to turn left off the road and into the streets of the town, it was all pretty damn obscure. Then they started launching the Teals, and shit got serious.
About half of them headed east, right down 1A, launching those big missiles at the super-heavies, while the rest of the planes clawed for altitude and were soon lost in the darkness. I could see the highway to the east, the land rose a little from the river the town was centered on, and there were bright bursts and flames as far as I could see that way. I had remembered to bring binoculars this time, and could catch quick glimpses of the motorcyclists weaving in and out between the tanks and trucks, spraying lead at any soldier slow enough to be exposed.
That area was soon a smoking junkyard, the main highway blocked with flaming metal, but there was another bridge a couple miles north, that was where our tanks were headed. The eastern sky was showing a little brightness, dawn coming, so I could make out more of the battle. I happened to look up, and picked out the shapes of a dozen Zeppelins, illuminated by the sun, which was still below the horizon. They had learned from their mistakes last night and waited until daylight for their bombing runs. They hadn’t learned enough. The Teals were clawing to intercept, which was bad enough, but the Pacifica Air Service was on the job. A flight of Tri Gunships was waiting for them, and pounced like tigers.
I couldn’t see if they used rockets or just incendiaries in the 37mm, but whatever it was, was deadly. Five of the big bitches went up in flames on the first pass, the others jettisoned their bombs and headed for the stratosphere as fast as they could go. The bombs fell well to our east, I took a split-second to hope they landed on the kraut
s, before the Gunships nailed it and climbed to catch the last seven zepps. The dirigibles didn’t have a chance. They had been lower than usual for more accuracy in their bombing, and buoyancy is slower than screaming radials, and a fuck of a lot slower than 37mm shells. They were soon blazing down out of the sky, and the Gunships joined the strafing of the highway.
The sun came up, and the dive bombers were right behind it. A lot fewer than in the attack yesterday afternoon. They got mouse-trapped for their trouble, the Teals smashed them down in flames everywhere. I don’t think any of the dive bombers even made it to their bombing runs. Dead meat. I began to realize that all of this was a feint, a diversion to suck the bastards into the jaws of death, while the northern column drove hell for leather for Saskatoon and the Zeppelin base up there. There was no way to hide troop movements on these plains, not from the air, but we had the railroad down here, could make a lot more noise, and look like a bigger threat. And after this morning’s work, we were going to look like a hell of a threat.
I just hoped we were not sacrificial pawns in the game, but there was nothing I could do about that, one way or another.
The battle, or at least the mopping up went on until noon, then we got the word to stand down, the nurses went down the highway helping anybody alive enough to be helped. I tagged along with my camera, that being my job. It was a fucking mess, much worse than the cleanup after the First Battle of Jiu-quan, a year ago. This was more concentrated, there had been no armor there, and this mess had been plastered over and over with artillery, strafing, bombs, those shaped-charge rockets, and had suffered more secondary explosions from the ammo they had been carrying. The technical term is “shit everywhere.”
The good news, if you want to call it that, was that this had burned hotter and longer, and the poor assholes trapped in the wreckage were mostly all dead. Most of them didn’t even have enough meat left to interest the buzzards and ravens that had flocked in from everywhere. You wonder how they know, but they do know. Must smell the carrion or something. Fine. I shot a couple rolls of film, then went back to our Lincoln to type up the story, and try to relax. A cuppa would not hurt either.
Brown Bear Blues Page 17