Winter Warriors

by Stuart Slade

  At that moment, the red telephone on The Seer’s desk rang and he listened to the voice on the other end for a minute or so, no more. Then, he went out to where his assistant was sitting. “Lillith, round up the gang and spread the word. We’ve just had a message from Wild Bill. Message reads, and I quote. ‘Sighted German Navy. Sank Same.’“

  CHAPTER SIX: WHITEOUT

  Headquarters, 3rd Canadian Infantry Division, Kola Peninsula, Russia

  “So, Sir, we are operating in the standard two up one back formation. We have 7th and 8th Infantry Brigades on the line; the 9th is held in reserve. Most of it anyway. C Company of the Cameron Highlanders are parceled out to the various rear area elements of the division. Those Vickers guns are marvelous defensive tools, especially in this climate. The Nova Scotia Highlanders are in deep reserve; they’re getting much needed R&R. That means our real, accessible reserves are the Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlanders and the Highland Light Infantry of Canada.

  “Two battalions in reserve for the whole Division?” General John M. Rockingham wasn’t impressed. “That’s very thin.”

  “I know, John.” General George Rodgers sounded defensive even though he knew he had no reason to be. Rockingham was new to the Kola Front and had little understanding of the peculiar problems inherent in trying to fight a war up here. That’s why he had come in advance of his 6th Infantry division and was doing “The Grand Tour” as it was derisively known. It was the standard practice for a newly-arriving General Officer; send him on a visit to the units in place. Save him from having to re-invent the wheel. “And the front we’re covering is much too long for the number of troops we have available. We need at least three full corps here, not two. Guess how much chance we have of getting that third corps. Look, the front is like a great L. The Russians are holding the bottom horizontal where most of the enemy forces are concentrated. We’re holding the long vertical. Too much front, too few troops.”

  “Can’t the Russians help? Take over a section of the front.”

  “They’re tapped out. It’s all they can do to hold the southern end. Petrograd is a hell of a force commitment and they’ve got every warm body they can find either holding the city or working the munitions factories down there. You know they’ve got women in their combat units?”

  Rockingham nodded, shuddering slightly at the thought.

  “There’s a political angle to this as well of course. I guess you’ve had that explained to you? Well, from this end of the spectrum, it means we don’t push too hard and the Finns don’t either. It’s ‘All Quiet On The Western Front,’ I guess. Only the Finns have the Germans pushing them as well, demanding activity. So they go in a lot for rear area raiding and attacks on service units. At first, that hurt us. Those troops weren’t too well trained for combat and I guess that meant Finnish casualties were pretty light. They’re hurting for manpower just like everybody else. Anyway, after we lost a few units to those raids, we concentrated them into cantonments, trained guard units for them and gave them some Vickers guns for security. Once our rear echelon people could shoot back, the Finnish raids dropped right off. Guarding against them is still draining our front-line strength though. We could use those machine guns on the front line. One Vickers gun in the right place is worth a company of infantry.”

  “We’ll be the southernmost division of II Corps.” Rockingham spoke quietly, absorbing the data he’d been given. “Our northern flank will be your southern. That’ll compress your frontage a little. Any chance of some of your people briefing mine on what to expect and how to defend against it? I guess the Finns will see a new unit and guess we have the same lessons to learn as you did. Some advance training will save a few lives.”

  “That we can arrange.” Rodgers was more than slightly relieved. Rockingham had a good reputation, but all too often ‘a good reputation’ meant an over-inflated ego that wouldn’t listen to advice from anybody else. Obviously not the case here. “John, if I might give you some advice, take advantage of the positions of the lakes and rivers. They can cut the length of front you have to cover quite drastically.

  Rockingham paused. There was something wrong there but he didn’t quite know what. His train of thought was interrupted by a dull rumbling sound that reminded him of an old motorboat. The thought had only just begun to form in his mind when the air raid sirens went off.

  “Doodlebugs!” The call went up from several points in the camp. Then the sirens cut off. There was an eerie silence as the troops on the ground listened to the uneven rumble as the missiles approached. Rockingham found himself willing them to keep going, to pass on to another target. Suddenly the sound cut out at the worst possible time, when the missile was almost directly overhead. “Everybody down!” The cry was universal as the entire base camp took cover. Rockingham was counting seconds until impact. One thousand and ten, one thousand and eleven, one thousand and twelve, one thousand and thirteen, one thousand and fourteen, one thousand an.......

  The explosion was devastating. The early Doodlebugs had used a cheap explosive that lacked shattering power but the newer ones didn’t. The missiles hit the ground in a shallow dive so that the warheads exploded above ground level. That maximized the area covered by the blast and fragments. Shattered glass from windows scythed across rooms. As always, the blast from the first explosion took strange and unpredictable paths that would leave one set untouched while the one beside it shattered into a silver rain. Even as the echoes of the first explosion faded, another took over. It rolled across the cantonment and the troops inside it. A third followed, then a fourth. Rockingham was prone on the floor of Rodger’s office, waiting for the explosions to cease. A fifth went off, then a sixth and he started to relax. Then he heard gunfire from the cantonment perimeter. Whatever was happening, the doodlebugs had been just the start. Rockingham thought grimly that he was about to get a much closer introduction to warfare on the Kola Peninsula than he had realized.

  Machine Gun Pit Baker, C Company of the Cameron Highlanders, Kola Peninsula

  Sergeant Andrew Burns Currie shook his head to try and clear the cotton wool that seemed to have covered him. His Vickers gun was mounted in a solidly-constructed bunker made of pine logs set in an earthen embankment that was also reinforced with pine logs. Thank God, wood was one item that wasn‘t in short supply on Kola, for it had been the stout pine logs, old timber as hard as iron, that had absorbed the blast from the six Doodlebug explosions. Most of it, anyway. There had been enough force in the nearest one to stun him and his gun crew. Currie blinked, shook his head, and stared out of the narrow firing slot of the bunker. Sure enough, white-clad figures had already erupted out of the treeline and covered the distance towards him with terrifying speed.

  The machine gun. I have to open fire. He was tempted to sit back and debate the beauties of that idea but the rational part of his mind was recovering from the shock of the Doodlebug blasts. It overcame the sluggish, unwilling part of his mind. The twin handles of the Vickers gun felt comforting. Currie squeezed the trigger, sending the first rounds of a long, long burst in the direction of the Finnish infantry. He sensed his number two man feeding the belt into the gun while number three and four were loading belts and supplying number two. Number five was making sure the water tank was full of snow, condensing the steam from the water jacket and making sure the barrel was cool.

  Currie saw his first rounds go wild, overhead, scattered into the greenery of the forests. He was still seeing slightly double but the comforting, familiar hammering of the Vickers gun was curing him faster than anything else could have done. It was a sovereign remedy for blast-shock, doing something so familiar that the brain didn’t have to think about it. He corrected his aim and walked the stream of machine gun fire into the group of skiers. They tumbled and fell, tangled in a heap as the steady burst chewed into them. The flat of his hand was beating lightly on the machine gun receiver, sending the barrel in a steady arc that raked the burst across the men who had been frantically trying t
o get to his position before the deadly tattoo could start. Then, he reached the end of his arc of fire and started back again, the same slow, steady, 450 rounds per minute, beat that crucified infantry in the open.

  The attack wilted in front of him. There was a special art required of a medium machine gunner, a combination of skill, patience and determination. The Vickers gunners were a breed apart, recognized by a special combat badge and by the less desirable compliment of being the hated target of the enemy. A Vickers gunner had to have the fortitude to ignore what was happening in front of him, to resist the effort to concentrate his fire on threats. Instead, he had to sweep the line of bullets backwards and forwards across his beaten zone at a steady, specified rate. If he did so, then it would be impossible for an enemy to advance through that beaten zone. They would try, and they would die, cut down by the remorseless beat of the Vickers Gun. But, if the gunner was not resolute, if he started to try and fire on the advancing threats individually, tried to use his judgment in shooting down the most pressing threats first, then the deadly web of fire would be broken and the enemy could advance into the beaten zone and survive.

  Sergeant Andrew Burns Currie was a very resolute man. The stream of fire from his gun swept backwards and forwards across his assigned beaten zone. In front of him, the Finnish infantry died.

  The Finns, or those that had survived, had already gone to ground, trying to escape from the remorseless machine gun. They were firing rifles at the embankment, and particularly at the machine gun bunkers, Apple and Baker. There was no problem in spotting them. Each was marked by a little cloud of steam as the Vickers guns boiled off the water that kept the barrels cool. Water, in the form of snow, was another thing that was not in short supply during a winter on the Kola Peninsula. Currie saw a concentration of impacts around the biggest group of Finnish survivors and for a moment thought that Apple had broken its swing to fire on them. He quickly realized the thought was unworthy of him, Apple was raking its beaten zone just as methodically and systematically as Baker. The impacts were coming from rifle and Bren Gun fire.

  The streams of .303 bullets from the two Vickers guns and Currie could only guess how many rifles and Brens were suddenly augmented by explosions around the dip where the Finns were clustered. Currie grinned at the sight, even as his methodical sweeps ignored it. Somebody had EY rifles up on the embankment. A standard No.4 fitted with a grenade launcher cup. Drop a Mills Bomb in the cup, pin out of course, load a blank round in the breech, close the bolt and let fly. The Grenade would lose its hammer as it left the cup and could be thrown a good 300 yards or more. A good man with an EY rifle could drop a grenade in a man’s lap at 200 yards, toss it through a window at 300. With proper timing, the grenade could be made to air-burst over a foxhole. Company Sergeant Major Clitheroe was a very good man indeed. His grenade burst over the Finnish survivors and lashed them with fragments. A second and third followed and that left them silent.

  Time to switch targets. Currie elevated his barrel just a touch and now his stream of bullets was raking the treeline from which the Finnish skiers had debouched. Apple followed suit and now the two Vickers Guns were lacing the trees with their methodical patterns of fire. Neither gun stopped firing, anybody who knew the Vickers Gun also knew that they usually went wrong when starting a burst. Once they were working, they kept on working. The two steady, methodical 450 rounds per minute streams of fire never stopped. Now their interlocking patterns meant that nobody could get out of that treeline alive.

  Headquarters, 3rd Canadian Infantry Division, Kola Peninsula, Russia

  Rockingham lifted the wooden shoulder stock of his Capsten Gun to his shoulder and squeezed off a burst across the compound. That was an advantage the Canadian submachine gun had over the Russian and German models; its magazine loaded from the side. That made it possible for a man to fire from a fully-prone position or take cover beside a window and fire out. The Capsten had its critics, a bit of misplaced gaspipe with a magazine some called it, but it had its merits.

  Unfortunately, this one was a Mark III; an older model that used the original Russian 7.62 Tokarev round. His troops had the new Mark V with longer barrel and the hot Tokarev Magnum the Yanks had developed. Rockingham squeezed off another burst in the general direction of the Finnish infiltrators that were working their way through the base.

  “Watch it, John!” Rodger’s voice was urgent. Rockingham had been about to sneak a look out but the warning stopped him cold. “There’ll be snipers all over the shop. Those damned Finns can shoot the nuts off a mosquito.”

  To confirm his words, there was a crack and the wood beside Rockingham’s head exploded into fragments. The sniper must have guessed where he would be and tried a shot to see if it would penetrate the wood. It hadn’t, but the splinters spalling off the inside had been bad enough. Rockingham could feel his cheek wet. He tried another quick burst and changed the magazine. Bless that side mounted feed.

  “Friend!”

  The voice had come from inside. Rodgers drew his Browning Hi-Power. The double-stack magazine for 7.62 Tokarev made for a bulky pistol but it was fine when one got used to it. It gave the user a lot of firepower; much more than the older single-stack designs.

  “Enter!”

  Rodgers was covering the door and Rockingham swung round to add his Capsten. Even so, he nearly missed seeing the young Lieutenant who crawled in. The fear of the snipers was making everybody jumpy.

  “Sir, errr, Sirs.” the Lieutenant goggled slightly at the sight of two Generals in the little office. Both putting up a gallant stand if the number of expended cartridge cases was anything to go by. “We’ll have you out of here in a few minutes. We’ve got an anti-sniper team clearing the area.”

  “Another lesson for you, John. Make sure you’ve got specialized anti-sniper teams trained. You’ll need them. I doubt there’s more than half a dozen of the swine out there and they’ve got the whole headquarters pinned down. What’s the damage?” The last remark was directed at the Lieutenant.

  “Bad, Sir. The northern, western and eastern perimeters are all holding but the Finns ran right over us in the South. Came right on the heels of the Doodlebugs. Gutsy thing to do.”

  Rodgers nodded in agreement, the Doodlebugs were so inaccurate that following them in like that took guts indeed. But then, the Finns had never lacked for courage or skill. It was just they were such a miserable bunch of paranoid lunatics. On reflection, the paranoia was justified, most of the world was out to get them. But did they have to be so gloomy about it? Five minutes talking to a Finn could drive a man to drink.

  “Anyway Sir, sirs, we lost the Motor Pool for a while. We’ve got it back now; the Redcaps took it back pretty quick. Can’t move the vehicles though. The Finns were in there for at least twenty minutes. Probably booby-trapped every vehicle in the place. Radio section and comms have gone, blown up. The fuel dump held but...” The Lieutenant hesitated, “... .they got the RCAMC post.”

  “How many?” Rodger’s voice was terse. “And why weren’t they evacuated?”

  “A dozen patients Sir. Three more who were ambulatory escaped as the Finns came in. There were two doctors and five nurses on duty. Wouldn’t leave the wounded. Finns killed them all. Think so anyway; the men who escaped heard the gunfire. We won’t know for sure until we recapture the place but isn’t that what they always do?”

  Rockingham looked shocked. Even in a war that was spiraling brutally out of control, some things just weren’t done. The Germans were as hard as nails but even they never shot medical staff, not in field hospitals anyway. They’d just put the staff to work caring for their own wounded. There was a story that did the rounds that related how they’d overrun a Canadian field hospital and done just that. When German Army pay day came around, the Canadian staff found they were included, paid at full German Army rates for their work. After the Swedes had arranged an exchange, they’d come back with their pockets full of unspendable Reichmarks.

  On the floor across
the office, Rodgers was weighing up the situation. With half the camp disputed, comms and radio gone, transport gone and everybody pinned down by snipers, the Divisional HQ wouldn’t be commanding anything for hours. That left the front line brigades of the division hanging in the breeze.

  Airbase Muyezersky-5, Karelia, Kola Peninsula

  “Still socked in solid.”

  Captain John Marosy wasn’t entirely displeased to hear that. A day snowed in meant another day not having to face German Flak. There were too many quad-twenties, too many twin-thirties and even the twin-engined, armored Grizzlies suffered. The single-engined birds were even worse off; their losses were worryingly high. Lieutenant Zelinsky settled down in a convenient chair and leaned back.

  “I’ve been having a word around. The weather’s clearing but it’ll be tomorrow before we can fly again. The Russians down at Three are still grounded, they’re to the east of us and the storm’s clearing from the west. The Canuck Williwaws at Six reckon it’ll take all night to get the runways clear. Way it is out there, we couldn’t even find the fight line, let alone get anybody off it.”

  “Winter’s setting in early, that’s for sure.” Marosy finished off his coffee. It was cold but coffee came in by convoy and was not to be wasted. “We never had a storm this bad this early before.” This was his second winter in Russia. He’d spent the first one flying A-20s.

  “Heard a rumor about some of those big bases, you know, the ones up in Maine. Some say they’ve got tunnels underground, joining all the buildings. Why can’t we have those?”

  “Keep it buttoned, Lieutenant.” Marosy’s voice was cold. “The sign up on the wall isn’t a joke. You hear a rumor and repeat it then the wrong ears pick it up. Well the rumors may be wrong, that one almost certainly is, but who knows what the Krauts will make out of it. Careless talk does cost lives.”