Winter Warriors

by Stuart Slade

  “An easy thing to say, Tovarish Captain. Look at what we have down there. At least three mechanized infantry companies, an artillery battery, a platoon of armored cars with 50mm guns in turrets and another with 75mm anti-tank guns. That is much more than a battalion; far too much for a full-strength infantry platoon. And we will be under strength for I must send men to warn the train of what awaits it.”

  Marosy thought carefully, An old proverb ran though his mind. “If you’re going to a fight, bring all your friends. And get them to bring their friends’ He knew few people in the American Army, let alone the Russians. He did have friends in the Air Force. To make matters better, he was trained as a forward air controller. “Knyaz, the switches for the junction, they are by that small shack, yes?”

  “If this is the same as all the other lines, yes. And things are very standardized.”

  “Well, suppose we had some air support. In fact, a lot of air support. Could we take that hut, it’s close to us, and hold it long enough to reset the junction and let the trains past? Then the trains pick us all up and take us North?”

  Knyaz thought carefully also. His unit was small but very skilled and were veterans. If the Americans threw their aircraft in to the battle and kept the fascists under fire and if the trains were lucky, they might get past. And they might be able to pick up the remains of the ski unit. That was so many ifs but if they all came to pass, it would be good to ride a train on the way back home. There was the problem of the vehicles of course, but if their crews could take them further north, they could be picked up later.

  “Can you get us air support?” “Have you a radio I can use?”

  Curly, Battery B, US Navy 5th Artillery Battalion, Kola Peninsula.

  “Sir, up ahead. Men in white.”

  That could mean anything, Perdue thought. Everybody wore snow camouflage up here. It was very, very hard to tell who was who. The banana-shaped magazines of the German rifles were a pointer, certainly, but enough captured weapons were floating round to make them an unreliable guide at best. So who were these people?

  “Sound General Quarters. Get the men with rifles ready. If this is an ambush, we’ll have to shoot our way out of it.”

  Ahead, one of the white figures was standing on the railway line, waving his arms in the traditional “stop “ sign. Perdue had no intention of doing that, no intention at all. Not until the situation was a lot clearer than it was now. “Slow down a bit, but keep going.” Let the situation mature as the mud-puppies say. Trouble was if one let the situation mature long enough, it all turned into manure.

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Still waving, Sir. Now he’s making a ‘cut’ gesture. Looks like a guy on the carriers doesn’t it?”

  “It does indeed.” Perdue’s binoculars were shaking too much from the vibration of the engine to allow clear vision but the guns carried by some of the men had the drum magazines of the PPS-45. That and the American-type ‘cut power’ gesture decided him. That and the fact he had a lot of riflemen on board.

  The gamble paid off. The lone figure on the track ran forward when the engine came to a halt and saluted at the foot of the engine cab.

  “Sergeant William Bressler, Sir. Navigator of the A-38 Hammer Blow, shot down a few days ago. We’ve been with a Russian ski unit since then.”

  “Commander Perdue, United States Navy. We?”

  “My pilot is Captain John Marosy, Sir. He’s with the rest of the ski unit. Sir, I’ve got bad news for you. The krauts have a reinforced battalion battle group around the junction up ahead. Mechanized infantry, artillery, those big armored cars with tank guns, you name it. They’re blocking the junction and the points are set to send you back south.”

  That was it, Perdue thought, game over. Blow up the guns and hope we can infiltrate ourselves back North.

  “Damn, we got this far too.”

  “Sir, the ski unit commander has a plan. Captain Marosy is calling for air support. Given the situation, he thinks he’ll get it. The ski unit will attack under the cover of that air attack. They will seize the points and reset them. Then, while the aircraft are still bombing, you crank these engines up, open the throttle as wide as it’ll go and just crash through the krauts. The line north is fairly straight; it’s the southern branch that curves north. As you get clear, slow down and pick up the ski troops and then make a run north.”

  “Not a man for subtlety is your Captain.” Perdue thought it over. There was a certain simplicity about the plan that made it hypnotically attractive. Just go flat out and crash through. “Suppose the krauts block the line?”

  “They haven’t, Sir. I guess they expect you to either stop or take the southern branch. Their unit is pretty spread out as well; a Black Widow hit them last night and cut them up.”

  “Know how that feels.” Perdue grunted. His mind played with the images of what he had been told.

  “Well, it means that if the bombing pins them down, they won’t be able to concentrate on the ski unit.”

  “How are we going to coordinate this?” Perdue decided that just running his guns past an entire kraut battalion was too much of an opportunity to pass up. Just like Farragut in the days of old.

  “Captain says just watch, Sir. And listen out on this frequency. No need to coordinate in advance. You just stay put here and wait for the bombing to start. Then just come through as fast as you can.”

  Top Floor, Bank de Commerce et Industrie, Geneva, Switzerland.

  “Interesting document from Lucy, Loki.” Branwen put the file on Loki’s desk. “And a .... messenger .... from Sweden is waiting to talk to you.”

  It was a bit hard to decide what to call the visitors from Sweden. Messenger was a good approximation but messengers didn’t have the powers to negotiate things or give opinions. Ambassadors would have been a good option, only sovereign countries didn’t send ambassadors to banks. Even to banks that were a lot older than most countries. Supplicant might be a good term, thought Loki, or delegate perhaps?

  “What’s the document?”

  “Very interesting. It’s a description of German plans to deal with damage from bombing attacks. Everybody was expecting to get bombed right at the start of the war, you know that, but it never really happened. There was Rotterdam of course, and a few raids on England, but mostly no bombing until the B-29 raids. And they’ve more or less stopped now. I guess H.G. Wells must be really upset. He was so proud of The Shape of Things To Come.”

  “So, what’s the gist of it?”

  “Basically, if heavy bombing of their infrastructure starts, the Germans plan to disperse and decentralize their facilities. They will split the existing large factories into many small ones; perhaps as many as forty or fifty. No manufacturing process other than final assembly of aircraft is to be permitted within one and one-fifth miles of airfields. They’ll organize their plants so that the primary plants are dispersed to at least two different places. That way a firm with four plants today will have eight or more different sources of supply. The idea is that if one or two of these places was destroyed, it should still be possible to maintain approximately the same level of production by using salvaged parts from bombed plants.

  “The problem is that Speer and his teams believe that dispersal, in their experience, is costly and inefficient. A plant which is subdivided into many sub-units, feeder plants and small shops cannot possibly manufacture as economically as can one large integrated unit. They believe that dispersing the production facilities will reduce production by about 20 to 30 percent. This is due to the need for large control system with many non-productive workers, the duplication of non-productive departments, such as fire prevention, first aid, social and recreational activities, increases in supervisory personnel and the impossibility of duplicating highly specialized single-purpose machinery and equipment.”

  “Germany is just about hanging on now. Production equals losses, more or less. Except for their fleet of course; no way that’s being rebuilt.”

>   Branwen nodded. “Their damage control provisions are interesting as well. Their plan is to form flying squads, in convoys of cars who will go to the site of a bombed installation and organize the work of bringing it back up. The plan demands ‘energetic men’ be recruited, ones with a wide spread of expertise and who will be prepared to work as long as it takes. Their job is to immediately round up military personnel, available civilian labor and volunteer forces to help clean up, aid in casualty rescue, etc, and analyzed the damage.

  “The intention is to produce a plan that lists the required machine tool replacements necessary building repair materials and man-power, emergency tarpaulins. Speer’s ministry has completed an inventory of all machine tools in the country with the plants they are located in and the priority assigned to those sites. Using that index, the damage control team can pick up suitable machine tools available in the immediate area and in plants of lower priority than the assigned one. This allows the higher-priority plant to be put back into production quickly. The stated target for the damage control teams is to have the plant up and running in 48 hours or less.”

  “So it doesn’t matter what the importance of the target plant is then. It doesn’t even matter of we do manage to identify the key industrial plants. The damage will be repaired by stripping out less important ones. The Americans would have to bomb the same plants over and over again until there are no reserves of machine tools left. Well, Douhet came up with a nice theory but Speer and his cronies have just buried it. The Seer needs to see this; put it in with the next package out to Washington. When are Henry, Achillea and Iggy due over here next?”

  “About five or six days.”

  “They need to be here sooner than that. Ask them to come right over now. Next, send in our Swedish friend please.”

  The door closed quietly behind Branwen. A moment later she opened it for a middle-aged man in a dark suit. “Mister Loki. I am afraid these are not happy times.”

  “No Mister Erlander, these are not indeed. Why did those damned fool Finns have to go and do it?”

  “You know the Finns Loki, obstinate, self-centered, conceited to a fault. Convinced they have the wisdom of all the world and unable to recognize they are a small part in a very large machine. It appears that the Germans convinced them that this offensive couldn’t fail and it was the way to Finnish greatness. They still believe that. I have been in quiet contact with Risto Heikki Ryti. He is not prepared to listen to reason. He told my representatives that Germany would win the war in the end. Even if it could not win, it would hold on long enough for America and Russia to give up from exhaustion. So Finland had nothing to fear from the allies but much to fear from the Germans. And I tell you this, he may well be right. How much longer will Russia lose its young men in a war that never ends? And how many more of its young men will America lose to keep this war running?”

  Loki leaned back in his seat, luxuriating in the soft leather. Once, so long ago, such a chair would have been a throne for a king. “You have heard what has happened to the Germany Navy of course?”

  “Of course. But the Navy is hardly the most important part of the German forces.”

  “No, but it was a part of them. Now it is gone and what is left is to be scrapped, broken up. The allies own the seas of the world now.”

  “The survivors are to be scrapped. I did not know this?”

  “They are. Hitler was apparently not pleased. I feel that this whole mad scheme may well have been his. Perhaps, perhaps not. But the fleet is gone. Doenitz has disappeared; probably dead by now.”

  “That does not change the fact that this war is being fought on land. America may rule the seas now, but how does a shark fight a wolf?”

  “Carefully, I would think. The Finns need to understand this and you must tell them it. They have harmed themselves greatly by taking part in this offensive. They will be punished severely for breaking the peace on their front line. I have heard from my contacts in Russia that they will lose the Aland Islands at least and some of their southern territories. Much of their southern territories. And not a small amount in the north”

  “If the allies win.”

  “Yes, if the allies win, Tage. If they win. If they do not, then we will all have much more important things than Finland to worry about.”

  B-27C Terrible Trixie 424th Medium Bombardment Group, Approaching Railway Junction 18 West

  The Super-Marauders were spread out. Their formation was designed to give the best possible bomb pattern on the ground 27,000 feet beneath them. Normally, they were closed up to give a tight pattern that would devastate the target beneath them. Not this time. That was only one strange thing about this mission, the way the aircraft had spread out to disperse the bombs over a wide area. It was almost as if the brass didn’t really want this target destroyed. If that was so, why had they sent the 424th to bomb it? At short notice too; today’s mission had been to hit another railway junction in the German rear areas. It was a much more normal target for the mediums than one almost on the front line like this. Normally, a target this close in would be assigned to the fighter-bombers.

  Around them, the fighter escort of F-80As weaved a defensive fence around the bombers. Originally the B-27 had been designed as a high-altitude version of the older B-26 Marauder that would be harder to intercept. Experience had quickly put an end to that idea. It wasn’t that the fighters could easily reach them; they couldn’t. The FW-190s were running out of steam way below them and the Me-109s were operating at their margins. At first, most of the German fighters had been loaded with additional guns to deal with the B-29 raids. Taking off the extra weight had meant they could get up to where the B-27s operated. Then, the Ta-152 and the new jets had arrived. They had fewer problems getting up to the 27,000 feet where the B-27s flew. Without escorts, the bombers couldn’t get to their targets without crippling losses. For all that, the main problem was accuracy. It was just too damned hard to hit targets from up here. Since high altitude hadn’t given the bombers the expected level of immunity, the B-27s usually flew at around 18,000 feet and had a heavy escort. That meant their concentrated bomb pattern could devastate a target.

  Now, for once, they had gone back to the high altitude game. Odd. Once again, Colonel Joseph Patroulis thought that it was as if the brass didn’t really want this target destroyed. As if they were going through the motions somehow. Anyway, whatever the brass was up to, the bombers would be starting their bomb runs shortly. “All gunners, keep a sharp watch out. This is where the kraut fighters are likely to hit us.” That went without saying. Once the bombers had settled down into their bomb run and were trapped flying straight and level, the fighters and flak would turn on the heat.

  “Flak bursts, Sir. Way below us.” That was the one good thing about being up here; only the heavy German flak could reach them and there was little of that in the front lines. Heavy anti-aircraft guns also made good anti-tank guns and it didn’t take much effort to guess which was the preferred use.

  Down in the nose, Major Leo Andrassis settled down and applied his eye to the Norden bombsight. His orders were strict; bias the aim to the right of the target complex and beyond it. The ‘beyond it’ bit made sense. He was the lead bombardier and when he dropped, so would everybody else. That meant the bombs would walk back, along the line of sight. If the point of aim was beyond the target, the pattern of bombs would be in the right place. But a right-hand bias was unusual. “Bombardier to pilot, bomb doors open. I have the aircraft.”

  Patroulis took his hands and feet off the controls. “Pilot to Bombardier, confirm, you have the aircraft.”

  Andrassis started to make his fine adjustments as he saw the magnified picture of the railway junction approaching. A slight touch on the controls, and the picture shifted slightly. The buildings passed underneath and he started counting to himself. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi and go. He pressed the release. Eighteen 250 pound bombs dropped free from the belly. Behind him, the other 27 airc
raft in the formation saw the release and dropped their own loads. “That’s it boys; we’re done. Bombardier to pilot, you have the aircraft. Now let’s go home.”

  Mechanized Column, 71st Infantry Division, Kola Peninsula

  It wasn’t like the night attack. That blast that had come from the darkness without warning. This time, the air raid sirens sounded well in advance and given plenty of warning. The troops had dispersed into their foxholes. The flak guns had been prepared to open fire although the alert had said medium bombers and those would drop from far above the range of the 20mm and 37mm guns equipping the column. Some units had the new 55mm gun, but not this one. The Heer came a long way behind the SS when it came to the new equipment.

  “There they are.” Asbach pointed out the flashes in the sky as the sun reflected off the silver bombers. Typical of the Amis. They never bothered to camouflage their aircraft. The he frowned. “That’s odd, they’re much higher up than usual.”

  Beside him, Lang raised an eyebrow. Asbach grinned in reply. “The Amis tried bombing from high altitude. They couldn’t hit anything. Nobody can from up there. So they gave up and came back down to below 5,000 meters like everybody else. I was expecting a strike after that Night Witch hit us, but this is odd.”

  “Perhaps it is a new group, just arrived? And like all newbies, they think they know it all.” Lang had an innocent expression on his face. Asbach saw it and smacked the officer on the back.

  “Indeed so. Terrible people, newbies.” And you’ve come a long way my friend. Old Lenin was right, there is a soldier inside you trying to get out. We just had to give it the chance. “Look out! Here they come.......”

  The first set of explosions shook the ground. A rain of earth and mud descended on the troops around the junction. The bombs were way over, so far beyond the buildings that their fury was wasted on trees and snow. Asbach knew that wouldn’t last. The bombs would walk back over his command and devastate it. Or perhaps not. He risked a peep over the edge of the foxhole. The bombs were scattered all over the place, a loose pattern, not the tight group that the American mediums normally produced. That was the altitude of course, nobody could hit a target from 9,000 meters, but something was nagging him. This was wrong, the Amis didn’t fight like this. They were unimaginative, repetitive, they found something that worked and stuck with it.