by Stuart Slade
“Well, that’s it.” Perdue was as sad as he sounded. It was a hard thing to blow that gun up.
“Not quite.” The demolition engineer had a nasty grin on his face. When Perdue thought about it, he realized that all demolition men had nasty grins, most of the time. “We left a few surprises for the Nazis.”
Perdue nodded. Anything to buy time. Then he turned to the AST AC major. “We head east, for Murmansk?”
“I would recommend not Tovarish Commander. The fascists are coming through that way, a right flanking move. They will cut the line soon. We should go west. We can go that way, then pick up a spur line that will take us to the northern trunk line.”
“There isn’t a spur line on this map.”
Major Boldin grinned. This day was his. The bridge had held for the two vital trains, he’d got his people out with all the paperwork to justify it and now he knew something the American did not. “Of course not, Tovarish Commander. To put all our railway lines on a map the fascists may capture? I think not. There are some lines that are not shown on these maps and some that are shown do not exist. That is why we always have guides on trains that are heading off the main routes.”
“Very well. West it is.” Perdue turned around; he just couldn’t resist the chance. He waved his arm like an old-fashioned wagon train guide and gave the time-honored order, “Wagons West!”
Mechanized Column, 71st Infantry Division, Kola Peninsula
The huge pyre of smoke rolled over the trees a few seconds before the rumbling crash of the explosion rocked the column. Colonel Asbach cursed; fluently and with great imagination. The devastating blast had come from the site of the railway guns he was supposed to be seizing. A coup de main wasn’t much use if there was no coup to put in the main. His monologue, to which his men listened with great, if discrete, glee, was brought to a halt by another rippling crash of explosions. That would be the rest of the rolling stock at the site being blown up, he thought bitterly.
“Right, follow me, We’ll see if the Amis have left anything for us to salvage.” Not that there was likely to be. The Russians were the skilled ones at destroying things with minimum use of explosives, the Americans just stuffed everything with every type of explosive they could find and blew the whole lot up. The Amis were like little boys sometimes, obsessed with creating bigger and better explosions.
“Sir, where are the Ivans?” Captain Lang spoke tentatively. Since shooting down the Grizzly he had gained a little respect and he didn’t want to risk it by asking foolish questions.
“First thing Lang. Out here, no salutes and we don’t use the word Sir. The Russian snipers are too damned good and there’s no point in marking their targets out for them. Secondly, the Ivans?” Asbach waved his hand around and the snow-covered fields and the trees. “They’re out there, probably all around us. Regular troops, ski units, partisans; one or all of those is watching us right now.”
Lang looked dubious. While serving as an adjutant to OKH, he’d heard of defeatism and poor morale being prevalent and a deep concern. This seemed bordering on paranoia though. He couldn’t see anybody out there. Then he reflected on his first disastrous days here on the front. Those days made him cringe every time he thought of them. He reflected grimly that, since that time, he had learned just enough to realize that he knew less than nothing about the realities of soldiering on the Russian Front. On the other hand, Asbach was a veteran of the siege of Moscow and had taken part in the almost legendary Operation Barbarossa.
“It’s that bad?” Lang hoped that would be an acceptable phrasing of the question.
“Worse. We live and fight in a goldfish bowl. Everybody knows what we do before we do it. I said there’s partisans out there; well, you can take that for granted. They’re always there. Once winter comes down, ski troops as well.” Asbach glanced at the Captain beside him. The man seemed incredulous and suspicious, but was also listening intensely. “Lang, if we go off the roads, how fast can we move.”
Lang was about to say 52.5 kilometers per hour, the book maximum speed of the 251 when the incredible stupidity of the comment surged through his mind. He nearly bit his tongue stopping himself. It was the sort of thing Captain Still would say. He looked at the deep snow either side of the cleared road and pictured a 251 trying to force its way through. The wheels would break the crust at the top and the tracks would dig their way in. He pictured the vehicles floundering, digging themselves in deeper every minute.
“We can’t move at all, S......Asbach.”
“Very good, Lang. We’re roadbound. Trapped on this road. The partisans live here; they know where to go and what to do. They can go where they want. The ski troops are even worse. You know what division we face here?”
“The 78th Infantry Division?”
“No, Lang, the 78th Siberian Infantry Division. The Siberians are born on skis. They grew up in weather than makes Kola seem like a summer resort. They can move cross-country on their skis faster than we can move in our vehicles.” Asbach’s face went blank for a minute, remembering. When he started speaking again, his voice was small. “We met them outside Moscow for the first time. They came through the forests like ghosts, they’d hit us and vanish into the snows again. We couldn’t hold. We had to retreat from Tula but they never stopped slashing at us. We called them the white wolves but no wolf was ever as deadly or as merciless as those Siberians. Any man who was on his own for more than a minute or two would be their prey. They’d slide out of the forest, cut him down and be gone before anybody could do anything about it. We’d find a defensive position, set up our forces and try to hold. Then we would find they were already behind us, hacking up our rear area troops. For two months they drove us back and nothing we could do could stop them. That’s the people we are fighting here, Lang. That’s why I know they are watching us.”
“So why don’t they attack?”
“Could be any number of reasons. They may be calling in artillery, or Ami jabos. They could be under orders to watch and report. They may be moving themselves. Just don’t ever delude yourself that they’re not watching us. They were bad enough before the Amis started giving radios to everybody. Now, they’re ten times worse. So, what do you think we should do?” Asbach looked at Lang sharply.
“If they could be calling in artillery, we should keep moving. The Amis will have things like crossroads and bridges pre-registered, we need to avoid them as much as possible.” Lang stopped with the realization he was being Captain Still again. “I’m sorry, that’s stupid. We’re trapped on the roads, we can’t avoid crossroads and bridges. We just have to move as fast as we can and hope to keep ahead of any artillery.”
“Good man. So, let’s get moving. And our first objective?”
“The railway gun site. See what’s left, what can be salvaged. Then, once we’ve fulfilled our primary order of seizing the site, we have a relatively free hand.”
“Very good. So we move out.” Asbach turned away, a small glow of hope burning inside him. He’d been right; there was a soldier inside Lang, trying to get out. It had been crushed, stifled, by too much work in the rear area, too much contact with the top brass who gave the orders without understanding what it was they were asking, but the spark was there. It just needed to be patiently coaxed into life.
The site that had once been the railway gun battalion was devastated. There was a great pile of steel scrap in to one side. A burst barrel forlornly pointed at the sky; a disemboweled breech had been hurled across the tracks. That had once been one of the guns he had been ordered to try and capture. The tracks had been torn up by other explosions. At the neck of the network of lines were the remains of two lines of carriages headed by diesel shunters. The carriages were burned-out skeletons; the diesel shunters hardly recognizable. The stench of burned wood and the bitter, acrid smell of explosives saturated the area. It was enough to make eyes water. Asbach surveyed the destruction and shook his head. When the Americans had first arrived in Russia, the material they discarde
d or abandoned when it wasn’t convenient to withdraw the stuff would keep a German unit in comfort for weeks. A bit of an exaggeration, perhaps, but the Germans had been stunned by the wealth the Americans couldn’t be bothered to save. Only, they’d learned the lessons taught by the Russians well. Now they blew up or burned even their garbage.
That thought perturbed Asbach and he turned around towards where a group of his men were starting towards the wreckage, looking for salvage. “Halt, right there. Nobody move until the area has been checked. Engineers, start looking for booby traps.”
It didn’t take long to find the first one. A pipe bomb buried beside a pathway that lead to what appeared to be a bunker. The bunker was just a shallow hole dug deep enough to give the impression of a tunnel in the snow. An explosive ordnance disposal man from the engineers quickly defused the pipe bomb and made it safe. Then the engineers started to check the site in detail. Asbach stopped them. There was nothing here worth keeping; all that was necessary was to clear a path through the site. That meant clearing out the main track, that was all.
It was there that they found the real surprise. A thin wire, buried under the snow, leading to a standard push-pull detonator. Only there wasn’t just one charge; there were half a dozen, spaced down each side of the main road through the site. If they had been tripped off, the whole column would have been immersed in explosions. It took the bomb disposal expert nearly an hour to defuse the intricate web of charges and detonators. Eventually he did so and stood up, stretching his back.
Fire one shot, they know you are there. Fire two and they know where you are. The sniper, be he a partisan or a member of a ski patrol knew his - or her - job well. Lang heard only a single shot and saw the explosives disposal expert crumple with a terrible finality. He looked at the trees surrounding them and saw nothing. He finally understood what Asbach had been trying to tell him. They were being watched. All the time.
CHAPTER EIGHT: THE ENDLESS SNOW
Somewhere on the Kola Peninsula, Heading North.
“Well, now we have a problem.”
The sight before them would, under other circumstances, have been rather beautiful. A landscape covered with a pristine snowfall, unmarred by tracks or stains. Out of it poked small collections of pine trees, spotting the landscape as it dipped down into a shallow valley As the ground rose the other side, the patches of trees grew larger once more. Under these circumstances, the same vista was a depressing sight.
Captain John Marosy and Sergeant William Bressler had been moving through the trees for hours after Hammer Blow had been shot down. That made good sense. The snowfall had been too heavy to allow easy going anywhere except where the pine forests provided protection from the worst of the blizzard. Not that staying under the trees was actually easy; it was just less back-breakingly exhausting. Their current problem was a simple one; there were no more trees. It wasn’t even a question of backtracking and finding a new way around. The forest in this area was in the shape of a giant hand. They’d been moving down a steadily-narrowing finger of forest for some hours. Going back would virtually take them all the way to the wreck of Hammer Blow. Even then, they’d only be able to select a new finger and hope that it ended in a more favorable position.
“We could try and make our way down and across.” Bressler didn’t sound too happy about that. Marosy didn’t blame him.
“No way Bill. We’ll be floundering for hours down there. Stuck out in the open like a pair of plaster geese. The snow will have drifted in the valley. It’s not too bad up here, but it’ll be feet deep down there. And even if we do manage to make any distance, we’ll be leaving tracks a blind man could follow.”
“So what do we do, Boss? Wait here until somebody finds us, and hope it’s the partisans, not the Krauts?”
Marosy thought carefully. “In the short term, yes. We made good time under the trees. We’re well clear of the wreck. We’ll hole up here until dusk. Try and keep warm and rest. We’ve got two things running for us. One is that the boys know we’re down and they’ll be looking. If they find us, they’ll send a ski-equipped Dragon Rapide out to get us. The other is that we’re in the snap-back after the storm. Temperature is higher than normal for a few hours but it’ll drop like a stone tonight. By midnight, the snow will be freezing and crusting and we should be able to make better time if we do have to cross that valley.”
“Wouldn’t put too much faith in the boys looking for us Boss. We’ve lost what, twenty, thirty aircraft in the A-4 bombardment? And there’s a big Kraut push on. The rest of our boys will be working round the clock. They won’t have time to look for us. At best, they’ll keep their eyes open going out and coming back.”
He was right, of course and Marosy knew it. It was obvious that the German offensive had obviously been carefully planned. They had to have had this stashed away for months, waiting for the conditions to be right.
“There’s always the partisans. They’ll know a bird went down and they’ll be looking for us as well. When they find us, they’ll get a message out.”
“Provided the Krauts don’t get us first. What do we do then?”
Marosy was beginning to find Bressler’s pessimism a touch irritating. “We pick a nice strong tree to get hanged from; what do you think?”
Bressler nodded and started looking at the pine trees around them. “That one looks about right. Got a nice view across the valley as well. Especially of the German troops gathering to watch down there.”
“Not a funny joke, Sergeant.”
“Not a joke at all, Boss. Take a look.”
Marosy scanned the tracks at the foot of the valley. Sure enough, in the last few minutes, a group of trucks had pulled up and were disgorging white-clad infantry. He took out his binoculars and had a closer look. They were Germans all right; the banana-shaped magazines on their rifles were all too apparent. Even as he watched them milling round by their trucks, he saw some pointing up at the hills around them.
“Sorry Bill, you’re right. Krauts. We’d better get out of here. Back the way we came, we don’t have very much choice.”
They started edging back through the trees. Marosy paused for one last look. It seemed like most of the Germans were coming his way. Had they seen a flash of light from his binoculars? Perhaps they were making a shrewd guess based on the crash site and time elapsed. One good thing, the men were floundering in the snow, it would take them some time to get up to the easier going under the trees. That gave him and Bressler a chance to get clear.
Headquarters, 3rd Canadian Infantry Division, Kola Peninsula
“What’s happening out there?” General John M Rockingham wanted information and wanted it now. He was in de-facto command of the 3rd Infantry since General George Rodgers had caught a blast of grenade fragments and gone down. Which raised another point. “And what’s happened to the RCAMC post? Have we got it back yet? What are we doing about our wounded?”
The Lieutenant spoke very carefully, his voice clipped to avoid it shaking. “We’ve recaptured the field hospital Sir. They’re all dead in there. They shot the patients in their beds, made the doctors and the nurses lie on the floor and then one of them walked down the line, putting a bullet in each of their heads. Boys are hopping mad about it, Sir. They’re in a killing mood now; there’s no disguising it. We won’t be seeing prisoners any time soon. We’ve set up an emergency facility using some first aid post people who happened to be here and some of the not-so-badly wounded who learned first aid in the Boy Scouts.”
There was a quick pause while the Lieutenant composed himself. He’d seen the scene inside the RCAMC post himself and wouldn’t forget it in a hurry. “As for the rest, we’re just mopping up now. We’ve cleared out the snipers. The EYs did a grand job as usual. We’ve restored the Southern perimeter as well and driven the Finns out. We guess they’re retreating. Should we pursue them?”
Rockingham thought for a second. “No. Secure the perimeter, then we’ll get set up and get the headquarters back
into operation. Lord knows what’s happening out there while we’ve been pinned down. Any prisoners?”
There was a bitter laugh from the Lieutenant. He hadn’t exaggerated. After the RCAMC post, there hadn’t been any interest in taking prisoners. A couple of the Finns had tried to surrender but they’d been shot or bayoneted, or both. “No, Sir. The Finns are fighting to the last man and the last bullet. No prisoners.”
“And nobody prepared to take any I’d guess. Very well. Lieutenant. Pass word around that if we can get some, it would help us find out what the hell is going on here.”
“I’ll pass the word, Sir.” ‘And a fat lot of good it will do’ was the Lieutenant’s unspoken addition.
Rockingham slipped out the Division Office and made his way to the communications office. The Royal Canadian Corps of Signals had their radio sites set up but it was a gamble whether they had any operational capability back yet. He made his way from building to building, keeping well under cover all the time. There were wise words he’d heard from a fellow officer once. ‘All situations are tactical until you have proved otherwise for yourself. Never take somebody else’s word for it, if you do you could earn the unfortunate distinction of being the last casualty of the battle.’
The firing had stopped and the battle here at the headquarters unit did seem to be over. He reached the RCCS bunker and announced himself. Entering a defended building unannounced was another good way of becoming the last casualty of the battle.
“Have we contact with our forces yet?”
“No, Sir. Re-establishing now. We are receiving but we’re not able to transmit yet. We’re re-rigging the aerials; we should have that solved soon. We’re picking up a lot of transmission from our units, Sir. It seems like the Finns infiltrated between them during the storm and set up road blocks and so on. All our front line units are cut off. They’re in a series of hedgehogs, spiny side out, where our front line used to be. They’re holding firm but calling out for air and artillery support. It’s a mess, Sir. The whole divisional front is a gaping hole, if those hedgehogs collapse, there’ll be nothing to stop the Finns going through and rolling up the whole of Second Corps. Or heading north and hitting First Corps in the rear.”