Winter Warriors

by Stuart Slade

  He’d washed out his mess kit; with all this snow around, water wasn’t in short supply. He was making his way forward to his gun when the alarms went off. That was a measure of just how much the weather had improved. When the storm had been at its height, the radars around the artillery battalion had been useless. This time, they’d picked up the inbound artillery fire. The crews were already trying to locate the guns that were firing. They had to be Schwere Dora, the German 11 inch railway guns. To the west, they were known to the American crews as Petrograd Pete. Long ranged and deadly accurate, they made up for their smaller shells with precision. Perdue dropped all other thoughts and sprinted through the carriages towards the fire control center. He knew he wouldn’t make it, he could hear the express train roar of the inbound shells through the steel of the carriages.

  “INBOUND!” The warning yells were all around him. People struggling to get the three guns of the 5th into firing position. To Perdue’s relief, the shells passed overhead. Their explosions were muffled by the ridge behind him. The train shook slightly with the distant impacts, then violently as the locomotive started to move them forward. By the time he reached the fire control center, Curly was moving into its fire position. The tracking radars had already come up with a crude position for the enemy guns. The fire control team had plotted the circle on a map and compared it with the known railway lines in the area. Not many, unless the Germans had built more sidings.

  “What have we got?” Perdue snapped the question out.

  “Two shells, Sir. They hit somewhere behind us. The Germans overshot us by miles. Two shells, two guns. Petrograd Pete has arrived, no doubt about it.”

  Perdue looked at the map and tapped a portion of railway line with his finger. “Here? Range and angle is right?”

  “That’s our guess Sir.” The telephone rang and Perdue answered it. “Battalion agrees as well. Hit it.”

  Perdue felt the train creak slightly as men alongside the wheels made tiny adjustments in position. There were more creaks and groans as the traverse of the gun was finely adjusted. In the fire control center, Perdue couldn’t hear the crashing as one of the great shells was pushed forward followed by the bags of powder. This would be a supercharge shot, no doubt about it; Curly could only just match Petrograd Pete for range. The way the train lurched back on the rails confirmed that impression. A split second after the concussion of Curly’s shot; Larry and Moe added their shells to the return fire.

  The sirens on the trains went off again; five minutes after the first pair of shells had arrived. The German gunners were getting better; Perdue braced himself for the impact, only to hear the train like roar, again passing safely overhead. It hadn’t faded before it was drown out by the crash and shock of Curly firing. The German Army gunners might have improved but they still had a lot to learn from the American Navy artillerymen. Then, the telephone rang and Perdue took down another string of numbers. The tracking radar had backtracked the last pair of shells and provided a new set of coordinates and error circle. He transferred the figures to the plot. The new circle mostly overlapped the old but not quite. There was an area common to both and that area was significantly smaller than the circles on their own. The suspect rail line was right in the middle of the shared area.

  “Same again.” Ten minutes after the alarm signal, Curly hurled its third shell towards the German lines. The train had hardly returned to its original position when the alarms sounded for the next pair of German shells. Another set of overs. To Perdue’s practiced ear it sounded as if they were heading over on an almost identical trajectory. That worried him. The German railway gunners were good, it wasn’t like them to make mistakes like that.

  “Error in positioning?” Warrant Officer Phillips was obviously thinking the same thing. A positioning error was the great fear of all railway gunners. It didn’t take much to throw the aim hopelessly off. Perdue was saved from answering by the telephone. Another string of numbers; another fix; another circle. This one made a cloverleaf with the first pair and the shared area was much smaller. There was only a single candidate railway stretch in it, not the one they had been firing on. Perdue telephoned in the change. It was confirmed and that meant Curly had to be moved slightly.

  “We can fire at will.” Perdue passed the order through.

  “Why, whatever did Will do to us?” An old joke; but the fire control center laughed anyway. Underneath their feet the train shifted forward to make the firing correction. The fine adjustment crews swung the barrel a little further. Then, there was another crash and lurch as Curly hurled a projectile at the new target area. Once again, the responding German shells hurtled overhead to explode somewhere in the hills behind the American guns.

  Perdue reflected that the duel between railway guns was a slow-motion affair. The exchanges of blows took so long they almost seemed like separate events. The American gun crews were tiring; their rate of fire had dropped to four minutes between rounds, then to five. The German gunners seemed to be holding theirs at one pair of rounds every six minutes; their shots still screamed far overhead, into the hills. After nearly an hour, the German salvoes dropped to single rounds. Had one of their guns been hit? Or malfunctioned? Their 15th salvo was the last. After it had roared overhead, there was silence. The three American guns fired a last salvo and then they too fell quiet.

  Warrant Officer Phillips added up the figures on the log. “27 rounds inbound Sir. 12 double salvoes and three single rounds. We fired 21 rounds Sir.” Perdue nodded and telephoned in the information. “Larry fired 20 and Moe 18, making it 59 rounds total went out. I wonder if we got Petrograd Pete?”

  Perdue shook his head. “Doubt it. Long range duel like that, we’d have to be damned lucky to get him.”

  The telephone rang again and Perdue picked it up. He listened for a few minutes then put the receiver down. “That was the battalion command. We’ve got a problem. Those rounds we thought were overs? Well, they’ve smashed up the railway line and a bridge behind us. The Russians are getting a work team on the tracks right away but the bridge is looking pretty sick. They doubt if it can take the weight of the trains, not without a lot of work. So, we’re cut off for the time being.”

  Phillips shrugged. “It’s not as if we’re going anywhere, Sir. And we’re well stocked up with food. A supply train brought in a load just a few days ago. Mostly canned beef stew but that isn’t so bad.”

  Phillips paused and looked at his officer. Just for a moment he’d thought Commander Perdue had whimpered.

  1st Platoon, Ski Group, 78th Siberian Infantry Division, First Kola Front

  “The fascists are moving already, Tovarish Lieutenant?” Sergeant Batov sounded doubtful. The storm had lessened greatly and was now no more that a minor background irritation for the Siberians but the Germans weren’t so used to the wind and snow. Even now, going into their fifth winter in the Rodina, the Germans had still not adapted to the rigors of the Russian weather. Yet, this time they were moving before the storm had cleared.

  The firefight had been brief and vicious. Neither side had been expecting to make contact. The Germans weren’t expecting to find a Russian unit so far behind their nominal front line while the Russians hadn’t anticipated that the Germans would be on the move so soon. It had been a classic meeting engagement. The two groups of skiers had emerged from the snow; for a moment, both had been frozen, partly with disbelief at the meeting, partly with confusion. Who were these people? Friend or enemy? They all wore white uniforms, had skis, carried guns. It was the sight picture that had done it. The curved magazines on the German rifles were just that bit more recognizable than the Russian rifles and submachine guns.

  That had given the Russians the tiniest edge, an almost invisible edge in the pause that had lasted for brief seconds before the fastest-reacting soldiers on either side had opened fire. When using automatic weapons at point-blank range, even an advantage so small it couldn’t be measured was enough to make a vital difference. All four Germans and two R
ussians had gone down in the brief blast of gunfire. The PPS-45s had scored again; their phenomenal rate of fire literally cutting the Germans in half. It had been over so fast that the men carrying SKS rifles hadn’t had a chance to open fire.

  One of the four Drags that had been brought by the transport earlier had carried a PPS-45. He’d emptied a 71-round drum at the Germans and now wore the blood-marks of a Brat on his forehead and cheeks. Two of the four looked at him with envy. They were carrying SKS rifles and had missed their chance. The last of them had also carried an SKS but hadn’t missed his chance. He’d been killed in the savage exchange of fire. His body was already being stripped of weapons and identification. The ski group couldn’t bring his remains back, so they had to make sure they held nothing of value. Other members of the group were stripping the German bodies.

  “Bratishka?” Stanislav Knyaginichev had been looking at his map and trying to work out what was going on.

  “The fascists, Tovarish Lieutenant. It is very early for them to be moving.”

  “I have been thinking the same thing. And such a small unit as well. When did we ever run into a detachment of just four men?”

  “Only when they were the flank guard for a larger unit. Oh.” Batov saw what the Lieutenant was driving at.

  “Exactly. I have been looking at the map. We are here, just under this ridgeline. It looks to me as if those four were paralleling the road down here. Perhaps looking for a patrol like ours. They left early to catch us before we could move in but forgot we are Siberians, not pampered Leningraders or soft, feeble Ukrainians. We caught them, not them us. So what is moving on this road that requires flank guards?”

  “A supply column?”

  “Perhaps, but I have a sense it is something more important. We should check that road, see what it has to tell us. I will take a group of four men down, you stay here with the rest of the men. Get ready to cover us if we need it.

  Knyaz picked his four men and skied down the hill to the road that lay half-buried in the fresh snow. Half-buried perhaps, but the tracks there told him everything he wanted to know. The area was still quiet when he rejoined the rest of his unit.

  “Bratischkas, we must move back quickly. There is information we must relay to our headquarters.

  “Not supplies than.” Batov’s observation was almost superfluous.

  “Not supplies. Tanks and armored infantry carriers. I would say in at least battalion strength. Half tracks certainly, the tanks are Panzer IVKs I think. With Ostketten.”

  Batov nodded. The fascist Panzer Vs, the Panthers, had the reputation but the Panzer IVs were still the backbone of the fascist tank units. Especially here on Kola, where the heavier tanks had grave difficulty moving. Fitted with the specially-designed Ostketten wide tracks, the IVKs were almost as agile as the T-34s, A lot more so than the heavier fascist tanks. Their interleaved suspension usually clogged with mud and snow, then froze solid. If German armor was on the move, that was something their headquarters needed to know fast.

  That was when Knyaz heard something he hadn’t for months. Not since Nikolay Dmitrevich Dyatlenko had been killed by a fascist sniper. Dyatlenko had not been a particularly good soldier but he’d had one unequalled virtue, an ability to emit sustained farts of unparalleled volume and duration. In one competition, the artillery had produced a worthy challenger; he’d been routed by Dyatlenko, who’d managed a remarkable 47 seconds. The artillery unit had offered a double or quits on whether Dyatlenko could beat a minute. He had, with five seconds to spare. It had been agreed afterwards that nobody should light a match in the dugout for at least 30 minutes.

  Only, this wasn’t the sound of a soldier passing gas. The noise came from high overhead, passing from the south on its way north. The rumbling growl grew as it neared, Knyaz mentally begged it not to stop until it was past his little unit. Everybody knew that when the engine on the fascist Fi-103 flying bomb stopped, the little unmanned aircraft was about to crash to earth. To his relief, the engine kept working. The flying bomb passed on its way to wherever it had been sent. In the silence that seemed to follow after its passing, Knyaz listened hard. He was rewarded, in the distance he could hear other flying bombs on their way north. This also was something that needed to be passed back soon, but he had a feeling that headquarters would find out about the flying bombs before he could tell them.

  Admiral Ernest King’s Office, Washington D. C.

  “Well, you were right Stuyvesant. We’ve had a brief message from Wild Bill. The German fleet is out, he’s exchanging strikes with it now. Next time you have plans for my fleet, tell me before telling the President. Understood?”

  “Yes, Sir. My apologies. The information we had came out of our economic and industrial espionage contacts and was relayed to President Dewey as such. It sort of grew from there. I should have raised the matter with you first.”

  King stared at Stuyvesant and grunted. At first, the man had headed a relatively small section of the great strategic planning apparatus of the U.S. military forces. In the early days, it had seemed unimportant; a group tasked with assessing German economic strengths and weaknesses. Then, the whole war had turned out to be a matter of economics, industrial strength and production. Soon, it had become apparent that enemy moves could be predicted by a study of their industrial production and how that production was allocated. What had been a small, insignificant operation had quietly grown into a very influential part of the whole strategic planning system. That had been helped by the demonstrated ability of Stuyvesant and his team to predict German strategic decisions months before they were carried out.

  “Do that. I don’t appreciate being blindsided.” King glared at Stuyvesant. He seemed remarkably unfazed by the attention. That was another reason why King disliked the man. It just wasn’t natural the way he absorbed everything that was thrown in his direction. Stuyvesant was probably the coldest fish that King had ever met and that the Admiral did not like. King accepted that Stuyvesant was the right man for the whole United States Strategic Bombardment Commission business. He’d seen the film of the Trinity test at Alamogordo. If ever a job needed a man who was as cold as a dead fish, planning the use of those hideous things was it. That didn’t change the fact that Stuyvesant made his skin crawl.

  “Sir, is there any word on the progress of the battle?”

  “None. There won’t be until it’s over. Wild Bill has better things to do that keeping us informed of tactical minutia. Filling the airwaves with that rubbish is a German specialty. Thank God. Anyway, what did you want to see me about?”

  “Admiral, the President has advised you that we can expect to see the war continue until at least mid-1947?”

  “He has.” That was another thing Admiral King disliked. 18 months more, at least, of this futile slaughter. His carrier air groups were being battered by the losses incurred in the strikes on Western Europe. The factories were keeping pace with the attrition but there was little margin for the unexpected. If the battle in the North Atlantic butchered the Navy air groups badly, it might take months to recover.

  “Well, Sir, we need to put together the naval construction plans for that period. The 1940/41 and 42/43 production programs are well advanced. The last Essex class carriers are entering the fleet now, the second group of Gettysburg class ships are proceeding well. They won’t be finished by mid-47 though. The last Iowas are completing, the first of the Des Moines and Roanoke class cruisers should be entering service in ‘47. The question is, where do we go from there? Assuming Germany doesn’t exist anymore of course.”

  King leaned back and thought. The prospects of post-war naval construction hadn’t even occurred to him. He’d been 64 years old when the war had started but it already seemed as if it has lasted for his lifetime. Peace seemed a far-off and distant thing. Briefly, he thought of the round trip his railway pass his father, a railway mechanic, had given him when he’d been appointed to Annapolis. “In case he changed his mind” his father had said. King had neve
r used the return portion although he still had it. Suddenly, he felt tempted to make that return trip.

  “The new focus of our operations will be the Pacific, obviously. That’ll require a new fleet train.” King settled back in his seat and allowed his mind to run over the differences between the current war being thought in the Atlantic and a likely war against Japan in the Pacific. Slowly, he began to piece together how his Navy would have to change to meet the new environment. In the back of his mind, he still pictured the battering match going on somewhere south of Iceland.

  CHAPTER FIVE: THE BLIZZARD

  Admiral’s Bridge, USS Gettysburg CVB-43, Flagship Task Force 58

  “Sir, we have final loss figures from TG58.5. First wave was 64 FV-2s, 32 F4Us, 32 AD-1s. Losses including those that didn’t make it home or are too badly damaged to repair and were pushed over the side, 26 FV-2s, 12 F4Us, 11 AD-1s. Second wave, 32 F4Us, 64 AD-1s, 32 AM-1s. Losses: eight F-4Us, six AD-1s, nine AM-1s. Grand total, 72 aircraft lost out of 256. The pilots are claiming five carriers, three battleships, four cruisers and twenty destroyers.”

  Halsey snorted. “28 percent loss rate. How many pilots picked up? And what do the radar search planes say?”

  “We’ve got floatplanes and Mariners out of Iceland looking. They’ve reported a few pickups. As for the Germans? It’s a wipeout Sir. Intel says three carriers, and 12-15 support ships were in the Scouting Group. Whatever was there, it’s pretty much all gone. We’ve won that one Sir. As for Hunter-Killer Group Sitka, both carriers were hit. Stalingrad has minor damage and is operational. Moskva has had a serious fire, its out but she’s too chewed up to operate aircraft. Air losses were heavy; most of their fighters are gone, all of their ASW birds. Sir, the Corsairs we sent down? They screwed up, badly. Very badly. They hit the Bearcats and that let the divebombers through.”