Polar Bear Blues

by Stephen Wishnevsky

  We got to the Airfield, Hodges was waiting, with the pilot. He had a few words for me; “Sorry to take you away from your important job, but the situation is about to go critical. All I want you to do, Miles, is to fly out there, take a look, smell the air, taste the wind, as it were, and get back to me as fast as you can. Can do?”

  “Yes, sir. I will do my best. But why me?”

  “Because you see things others do not. You have been a dough, I know what you went through. Second Amiens, what the French called the Fourth Battle of Picardy. Spring and summer of ’20?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Commander Epstein mentioned that you called that ‘an almost excessive amount of fun.’ I agree. I was just a few miles south of there. You have seen the elephant, as the old timers used to say. So, don’t get in trouble, don’t dawdle, just take a look and hurry back. I have some papers for you that will grant you co-operation from all levels.”

  “All levels”

  “Up to and including General Bradley himself.” His aide offered me a leather messenger bag of papers. I took it.

  “Sir.” I saluted, he deserved it, mufti or no. The pilot stuck out her hand, I shook it. No doubt of her femininity, she was a fireplug of a woman, topped with carrot curls. A Mick.

  “Captain Kapusta.”

  “Miles.”

  “I’m Lieutenant Brendan. Maeve Brendan. At your service.” It sounded like Mabe to me, but I figured out what she meant. “Ready to roll?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant. As ready as I will ever be.”

  “Take a piss, whatever you need to do, we won’t be coming down except for fuel and oil.”

  “Yes…” What to call her? Mam? “…Lieutenant.” Fuck it. Play nice to people who have your life in their hands. The plane was warming up already, it looked like another of those Curtiss Falcons, but had two seats. Maeve looked me over, top to bottom, handed me a ushanka hat, one of those furry earflap jobs. I tried it on, it was oversize even for my big head. I looked a question. “It’s May, you know.”

  “We will be flying as high as we can, and we don’t have an earphone cap in your size. This trainer is equipped with an intercom, so you can speak to me, tell me where to go, if you need to take closer look at something.”

  We reached the plane by that point, I walked behind a convenient fuel truck, emptied my bladder as ordered. They had a step ladder leaned up against the fuselage, I clambered up, found my seat. It did not look comfortable enough for a ten hour flight, but war is hell. She followed me up, showed me how to fasten the web belt that was supposed to hold me inside the plane, plugged in the headset, adjusted my microphone, and waited until I settled my ushanka on, and tied the straps before gracefully slipping into her cockpit in front of me.

  She checked her controls, moving the stick to see if the elevators and rudder worked freely before waving the wheel chocks away, and pushing the throttle all the way forward. Fuck, it was loud. It didn’t seem to want to get off the ground, blame my fat ass, I do weigh more than three hundred pounds, but it picked up speed, bounced a few times on the rough pavers, and we were airborne. We lifted up a thousand feet or so, it smoothed out a lot, and she cut the engine down to a mere bellow. She headed due north across that bay where we had found the tugs, and it got to seem like fun, sort of. I don’t get sea sick, and this seemed much the same. One thing for sure, the view was incredible. I also noticed a few simple instruments in the dashboard in from of me. A barometer calibrated in feet, a compass, a clock, and a speedometer.

  Under there was a rack with an oversized clipboard filled with maps sealed in thick clear celluloid. Just as I absorbed all that, Maeve’s voice came over the intercom. “You are navigator. Which heading to the railroad?”

  “You don’t have a whaddy-call-it? A flight plan?”

  “Seat of the pants. They said find the TSRR, and follow that out. USA bases every hundred miles or so.”

  Mutter mumble…”You need to get to this place called Chita. A thousand miles. Northwest. Got enough gas? Otherwise due north. We would have to back track to get to Khabarovsk, and it might be Red Russian.”

  “”We can do that. There are no airports?”

  “These maps are more than…” Read the fine print. “More than twenty years old. No airports in 1910 in fucking Mongolia.”

  “Due north it is.”

  “This mission shows a certain lack of planning.”

  “I’m just the pilot, Miles, just the pilot.” I thought that all this reeked of desperate improvisation, but I kept that happy thought to myself. I could see the railroad to my right, that must have been the South Manchurian Line. Yep. Okay. Don’t cross that, look for airfields and try not to think about pissing.

  I found another sheet, hand drawn, that showed US Army bases scattered here and there, a few dots labeled “USAS.” Which I hoped meant US Air Services. There was a larger dot about half way called Xilin Gol. About halfway across Inner Mongolia, it had a grease pencil circle around it. A wink is as good as a nod to a blind horse. There was a scribble that might have been a river bed. The land below us was still green, seashore sloping up to good-sized mountains, then the hint of yellow-brown dry lands beyond. Go for it.

  The land below soon turned dry and sparse, grasslands thinning to desert. Nothing much visible, a few trains of camels or horses, flocks of sheep. Very occasional trucks left long streamers of dust in the air. Otherwise, it was still and reasonably warm, even at altitude. Noisy as shit. So much for the romance of flight. Boring and uncomfortable.

  One good thing was that the land was so dry that roads, sets of tire tracks, were clearly visible, looked like they lasted for years and years. I had never seen desert except on my train ride out west to catch the ship to Vlad. But they must be much the same. Dry.

  The printed maps showed a river, or at least a dry wash, from near this Xilit Gol place, that cut through the mountains and deltaed down into the bay behind Dalny. Once I found that, navigation was easy. Not like there were a lot of distractions.

  Five hours later, a little more, we found it, a blot on the desert with a lot of tracks leading to and from it, and a large whitewashed arrow on the rocks, pointing north. It had a letter “N” at the bottom, “US” on one side, and “AS” on the other. Xilit Gol was written across the top. A welcome sight. The airfield was clearly visible, northwest of the town, Maeve landed us deftly. One of the best feelings of my life, to be back on the ground again. A squad double-timed up to us, rifles at port arms, the lieutenant did not relax until he got a good look at the star and circle on our fuselage. He saluted Maeve’s bars, looked cross-eyed at me. “Captain Kapusta, Lieutenant. On an observation mission from General Hodges in Dalny.” I offered him the folder of papers I had been given, he waved them off. Good thing, I had never looked at them myself.

  He saluted again, said, “Your needs, sir?”

  “Fuel and whatever else Lieutenant Brendan wants. I need a bathroom, a good meal, and a canteen of tea or coffee. We are headed to Chita.”

  “Not a problem, sir. Lieutenant Brendan, there will be a short delay, we have to strain the gasoline through chamois to make sure it is clean and free of water. Check the oil? Any other problems?”

  “Check the plugs, I feel an intermittent misfire at full throttle. Otherwise, I need the same as the captain. Can we walk? I need to stretch my legs, for sure.”

  “Right that way. Duggins, show them the mess hall.” This place was five hundred miles past the end of the world. My recent life seemed to be going from bad to worse. Made me worry about what Chita would look like. Another worry. Bradley thought that this was going to be a one dimensional war, up and down the rail line, but sure as hell, there were no defensible natural barriers out here. And Mongolia had been cavalry country for centuries, right? Tanks would have a field day, to coin a phrase, on all this gently rolling land. And that made me think of the Silk Road. That was around here someplace, wasn’t it? This could be seriously fucked if we focused too tightly on the Lin
e. I knew that the Silk Road started in Persia, and that land was in a total mess, had been for years. The Brits had held the coast, and the Russians occupied the interior to keep the Ottomans out, and then it had all gone to hell in a lunch bucket. I made a note to find somebody that knew something and ask them.

  The Mess Hall was a sod building, a big hut, but they had food, and they had coffee, and they had benches to sit on, that were at least hard in different places than that airplane seat. Take what you can get. In this case it was bacon and beans and biscuits, I left the beans, didn’t need gas at altitude. Bread and bacon and coffee. Maeve ate quickly, ran back to supervise the maintenance on her precious plane, while I stretched out on a bench and shut my eyes for a few minutes. Back in the Army, take your rest when you can, you never get enough. A given.

  >>>>>>>

  We were back in the air in an hour, before two, but obviously we were not going to make two more legs today, and we had three or more to go. One to Chita, then at least two more to Irkutsk. There was someplace called Verkhneudinsk on the Line, that might be a halfway point, maybe more, if the weather held good. Even at almost two hundred miles per hour, distances were immense out here.

  More of the same, lots of nothing, only the last hour or so showed any green, the land was setting up a little, still pretty flat. A few lakes, rimmed with white, that meant salt or worse. Hell on the half shell. Nothing defensible. I scribbled a few notes on the back of that hand-drawn map. I was sure Bradley knew all of this, but they told me to go take a look, therefore. One thing for shit sure. If Patton wanted to play with his tanks, this was the perfect place.

  The forests, once we got to them were pretty scrubby, pines and birches, nice and green, but fairly sparse. Nothing to slow down a mechanized army. Bradley was going to get flanked to the south, he had nothing but flanks, all the way to the Himalayas. Supply was going to be the whole ball game. And all we had was one port, one very long supply line. No. It did not look like anybody expected us to win this war. My butt got even sorer thinking of the reaming it was going to get. And I inventoried a complete lack of butt grease anywhere in sight.

  >>>>>

  Chita was better than Xilin Gol, it was almost up to the small city level. The airfield was next to the Line, the station was more of a depot, but the red paint was fairly new, nothing had been bombed. They had no accommodations for a female pilot, the idea seemed to distress them to certain extent. The Major’s wife came to the rescue, I was sent to BOQ, which was a little better than a barracks, a dormitory from some deceased school. But they had whiskey, and they had beef stew. Close enough to civilization for me. We talked of little around the mess table, avoiding the war by tacit agreement, they talked of personalities, none of whom I knew, so I just played desultory penny ante poker with a few lower ranks and went to bed early, with enough of a buzz to put out the aches and pains from being vibrated for almost twelve solid hours.

  They were still there at reveille, but that’s the Army biz. Bacon, eggs, half a cup of coffee, and in the air again. This time we had the Line to follow, the woods got a little more impressive, we passed over train after long train, all headed west. The land soon became mountainous, and heavily wooded, pines, it looked like. We began to pass lakes, some of good size, and a real river. The map called it the Uda River. The map also showed a huge lake, Lake Baikal, which memory told me was the largest lake on earth, or the deepest, or some damn thing. Big enough to extend off the edge of the map, anyway.

  Verkhneudinsk was on the Uda River, at last, something like a city, if a tired one. The airfield was well marked, and there were a couple of squadrons of pursuit planes neatly lined up to one side. Maeve swooped down, waggled her wings for the troops on the ground. Somebody popped a smoke grenade to show wind direction, I suppose, and we landed without fanfare.

  Even better, we were in time for dinner. They must have had a Russian cook, we had boiled everything, perogi, potatoes, cabbage, and beef. Home cooking. And there was lots of it. Farther down the long table, an overage captain was expounding on the history of the area, to a bored collection of lieutenants, who had to pretend interest, of course. “The Russkies had a hell of a time between 1896 and 1902, building the Trans-Siberian. They called it a scenic railroad, but it was the main line. It required two hundred bridges and thirty three tunnels. The serfs died like flies. Until they completed the Line, they had a train ferry to transport the railcars across the lake from Port Baikal to Mysovaya for years and years. They tried to lay rails on the ice in the dead of winter, but that didn’t always work.

  “The Czech Legion and the Reds fought back forth over the lake all through the end of 1918. They even tried to fight on the ice in the winter. Deepest lake in the world, it never freezes really solid, currents well up from the bottom. It’s what they call a Rift Valley, there is volcanic activity down there, someplace. If you don’t fall through, the frostbite and hypothermia from the cold wind will get you anyway. If it scares the Russkies, you better be plenty scared. In the winter of 1920, what they call the Great Siberian Ice March happened, the Whites were fleeing over the frozen Lake Baikal. The wind on the exposed lake was so cold, a lot of the soldiers and their camp followers froze right in place until the spring thaw. A hell of a place.”

  I spoke up; “So, Captain, all those tunnels make this highly defensible?”

  “You bet your ass. Nobody is getting through here. They might take Irkutsk, but they will never get to Verkhneudinsk. Bet on it.”

  “What if they swing south, through the desert, and get to Chita?”

  “Tanks don’t have the range, and anyway, we have the Air Service. Lots of planes, more on the way.” He peered through his glasses at me. “I didn’t get your name?”

  “Captain Kapusta. Miles Kapusta. I’m here on a fact-finding mission for General Hodges in Dalny. I run his printing operations, maps and a news bulletin. You are?”

  “Doyle. William Doyle. I’m AEFS unit historian. That means I get to bend these young sprouts’ ears at every opportunity.” He smiled and reached for his glass. Whiskey. An Irish drunk. Got it. “We are making history here, and I get to record it.”

  “A worthy task. I’m more like the reporter I was on civvie street.”

  “Nothing wrong with that, my boy, nothing at all.”

  “Keeps me in beans. I need to bend your ear, I suppose, if you are willing. Background is always important.”

  “No time like the present.” He tapped the bottle in front of him. “Shall we get another?”

  “You read my mind.” I turned to get permission from Maeve, just as an excited pilot ran in, right up to her.

  “Lieutenant Brendan! The Major requests your presence on the flight line, immediately. Sir. Mam.”

  She waved off his verbal confusion, as she rose to her feet. “What’s the problem?”

  “We have a report of an attack on Irkutsk. Tanks and troops. You have the only two-seater here. We need observation. Will do?”

  “Of course. How much more light to we have left?

  “ A couple hours.” She nodded and beckoned to me, in a proprietary manner. Shit. I would much rather be drinking and talking shit with Doyle, but… Rank has its little privileges, but it has its big obligations too.

  “How far is this Irkutsk place?”

  “A hundred miles, right over the lake. Due west.”

  No more words. Haul ass.

  >>>>>

  Even in an emergency, Maeve took the time to check every moving part on her airplane. She caught my impatience, said, “When you are in the biggest hurry is when you need to be the surest of your equipment. There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots…”

  “But there are no old, bold pilots. Got it.” We loaded up, the prop was thrown, and the ground fell away. I found myself enjoying the sense of anticipation, tempered with the familiar fear of imminent death. Somehow, war in the air reduced the paralyzing dread I always felt at the prospect of action. What an asshole. The half hour it took to ge
t over the lake was peaceful enough, Irkusk was a real city, no fighting there, it was on a good-sized river. My maps stopped a little north of there, but there were towns and factories, lumberyards and such strung out along that river northwest as far as I could see. The land was rougher, the forests a lot thicker. Bradley had chosen well, this was the cork in the bottleneck for sure.

  The last town on my map was Angarsk, an industrial suburb, rail yards and repair shops. There was an USAS base there, Maeve gave that a wide berth, it was buzzing with pursuit jobs, all shuttling back and forth to the northwest, along the rail line to the obvious smoky battle front ten miles or so farther up the Line. I didn’t have to speak to Maeve, she knew better than to get too close. I had never seen a battle from the top down before, but it was still a confused mess. Perspective did not add charm to carnage. She took us in a wide circle, five miles radius from the battle on the line, well over the hills that bounded the river valley. I tried to take notes, but there was very little to see. Bradley had been right, a one-dimensional war. She picked up altitude as we circled, but it was enough. I should have been looking up and back, the first I saw of the danger was pockmarks magically appearing in the fabric of our left wings. I yelled something useless, she found the danger and threw the Curtiss into a wild left bank. If I had been slack, she made the wrong move, rolled the Fury right into the streams of .30 caliber bullets from the Luftstreitkräfte Fokker. I had time to register the Balkenkreuz, square black cross, as it plunged by, then things got far too exciting for sightseeing. The engine coughed black smoke, seized up, and caught fire. Maeve pulled out of the swoop, turned east, headed for the mountains. I just sat there, too scared to even curse. The German was gone, nothing else in sight, we were setting down pretty fast. Maeve took a big risk, lifted the nose, stalled the plane. We hung there for a very long second, the fire sputtered and flickered out. “Just oil. Hang on,” she said over the intercom, her quiet tone very reassuring. As reassured as I could get thousands of feet above the ground with no engine. And enemies. And shit. Hang on. Right.