by Colin Gee
“You throw ok, Tapper?”
“I’ll do, Sarnt.”
“Stand ready.”
If the partisans had not all disappeared, there should be a two man party on the riverbank, marking the spot where there was a track to take them north of Route 141 and back towards their base.
Again, lady fortune smiled and the snow parted sufficiently for the two female partisans to be spotted.
Tappett threw the line and the two women pulled it in vigorously, almost spilling the corporal from his perch.
The dinghy bumped against the bank and the four men were out and on firm ground in under three seconds.
Bouzyk took the hauling line and pulled the dinghy onto the grass, where he opened the valve to collapse the inflatable.
The firing seemed to have followed them and their expert eyes started to pick out muzzle bursts amongst the snowflakes.
“Move out. Up and over the road pronto.”
He grabbed part of the dinghy and he and Boozy ran side by side, pressing on various parts in an effort to exhaust all the air.
There as a sound like an angry wasp, and another, as bullets fired at someone else came close.
An explosion illuminated the road to the east, and moving figures became apparent.
“That’s our lot for sure.”
Cookson dropped into cover by the roadside, the very core of him chilled beyond description.
His strength started to ebb at a greater speed.
“C’mon Sarnt. We gotta get you into the dry and warm.”
Tappett took a closer look and made a decision.
He used sign language to cajole one of the women to part with her spare blanket.
Cookson seemed almost drunk as he flopped around whilst Tappett wrestled with the soaking camouflaged jacket.
He got it off and the dry blanket around his commander’s shoulders after some effort, during which he knew he had not done his damaged fingers any favours.
“Boozy, Choc… grab the Sarnt. He’s fucked up bad. We need to get him out of here damn fast or he’s a goner.”
A scream close by made them all grab for their weapons again, all but the now unconscious Cookson.
Out of the snow came two partisans, supporting a third who was leaking vital blood from a number of important places.
Tappett stepped up and motioned the party to the side.
He examined the woman and quickly established that she was beyond help.
The bigger of the two men picked up the body and slung it over his shoulder.
‘The Shield’ did not abandon its own.
More figures moved back down the road and dropped into positions in and around the SAS group.
Bottomley arrived with the rest of his men and the partisan rearguard and immediately took command.
“What’s up with the Sarnt?”
“Hypothermia, boss. Went in the water a coupla times.”
“Right. Get yourselves away sharpish. Janina, send some of your people with them please.”
Mikenas snapped her fingers at a group of four who almost swept the three SAS men up as they moved away.
More bullets zipped through the air around them, and the MG-42 spat back, scoring hits from the sounds of distress that greeted the controlled bursts.
Bottomley beckoned Mikenas to one side.
“We’ll take the main party off the road here. We need a group to fall back up the road… continue to lead them on… for at least ten minutes.”
Janina Mikenas understood, and also understood what the order might entail for the distraction group.
“Audra!”
Karelis flopped beside her leader, fresh blood flowing from a nasty gash in her cheek.
“You alright, Audra?”
“Scratch. Fell as I got out of the boat. Nothing to it.”
Mikenas gave Karelis her instructions, hugged the older woman, and sent her friend and six men to their deaths.
The main group moved away quickly, the rearmost partisans doing everything they could to disguise the traces of movement, mainly with little success.
The return route had been chosen because there were some exposed rock surfaces that would help mask the direction the partisans took, but for now they relied on the distraction provided by Karelis’ party.
The firing seemed to be getting further away, and the rearmost men sent a message forward reinforcing the view that the subterfuge had worked.
Keen to take advantage of the ‘victory’ earned by the sacrifice, Mikenas and Bottomley drove the force on to greater efforts.
The events of that night were slowly pieced together by both sides, who arrived at very different conclusions.
From the Soviet viewpoint, the local villagers had distracted the NKVD guards with their drink, food, and flesh, to permit the Lithuanian partisans to mount an attack.
That the commander of the convoy had arrived on the scene before they were in position and ordered the execution of the villagers had thrown the partisan’s plan completely out, which meant that the guarding troopers were able to protect their charges and inflict a significant defeat on ‘The Shield’, counting fifty-nine dead partisans, whilst sustaining twenty-one dead and an equal number of wounded themselves.
Despite extensive questioning, the old woman and sole surviving man they had captured gave up no significant information, even when roasted alive and skinned.
The report concluded that the loss of one barge was caused by nothing more sinister than an accidental uncoupling of the mooring line.
Most of the load had been recovered, a few cases of food and medical supplies having been washed away.
A nearby Soviet engineer unit was seconded to help with the recovery of some of the barge’s load, and the report initially indicated that ten of the twelve drums were recovered.
An addendum later reported that one of the missing drums was found at the engineer unit’s base, surrounded by dead and dying men.
Volunteers dug a communal grave for the seventy men who died and the corpses were first incinerated before being buried deep and NKVD clear-up teams dealt with the survivors.
One drum was left unaccounted for, and special diving teams were to be flown in to help locate it.
What really happened was different in many ways.
The partisans received word that Audra Karelis and one other had been taken alive, and then accounts arrived of their screams and suffering, before one final message told of their refusal to bend and death under the torturer’s blade.
Partisan stocks of food and medical supplies had received a welcome boost, but less than had been hoped, for which Cookson was eyed with some annoyance.
The SAS had lost no one, but Tappett and Cookson were casualties, whereas the partisans brought home only five wounded, but left fourteen of their brothers and sisters lying in the snow.
The villagers of Pupkaimis accounted for the rest of the bodies in the Soviet report, a total that was added to subsequently, when the surviving villagers were herded into the Neman to die.
The losses had been severe for ‘The Shield’, particularly those of Karelis and Lukša, and even the prospect of some important item falling into their hands failed to raise the collective morale.
Some days later, the story of the Soviet engineer unit reached Pyragius’ ears, and the barrel took on an almost sinister significance.
Without prompting from Bottomley, the partisan leader understood that the clearly dangerous contents of the barrel were suddenly extremely important, and plans were laid to recover it.
0900 hrs, Friday, 7th February 1947, Semipalatinsk-21, Kazakh SSR
At 1500, scientists and engineers at the new secret complex successfully created a ‘rainbow’.
It was an extremely small device, but it proved that they could make a device that would work.
The Soviet Union entered the Atomic age.
The scientists and engineers spread throughout the Soviet Union now had a three-week deadline to sati
sfy their immediate orders and produce four Izdeliye 500 mini-bombs, exact copies of the moderate yield device that had ravaged the Kazakh countryside, and somewhat longer to satisfy an order for eight Izdeliye 501s, their best effort to copy the US atomic device, based upon their direct knowledge of the Pumpkin bombs.
1759 hrs, Sunday, 9th February 1947, the Neman River, four kilometres west of Pupkaimis, Lithuania.
Cookson dropped into the freezing cold water and immediately found the drum.
The line was still as he had placed it and recovery proved easier than expected.
Inflating the dinghy was swiftly achieved and within ten minutes the barrel was safely in the inflatable and being towed across the Neman to rendezvous with a horse drawn sledge, whilst Cookson, this time properly equipped, exchanged his sodden clothing for warm and dry replacements.
With the barrel safely hidden underneath a load of hay, the old crone guided the bag of bones that could once have been a horse towards the selected hiding place, a small weather-beaten barn just south of Bartiškiai.
Once there, the barrel was hidden in a specially prepared pit, but not before Bouzyk had recorded all the details in a sketch.
At Bottomley’s insistence, a Westland Lysander was dispatched to pick up the vital information.
It didn’t make it, for reasons that would never be known.
Two nights later, another aircraft made the attempt and it arrived safely, dropped off some morphine, and took the sketch and other intelligence materials back with it, its wheels on the cleared field for less than two minutes.
Whilst the Lithuanian group knew the barrel contained something nasty, they had absolutely no idea of the hurricane they had just unleashed upon the Allied intelligence agencies.
So they went about the business of christening the four new arrivals whilst the world changed around them.
The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.
Arthur Schopenhauer
CHAPTER 187 - THE BITCH
1515 hrs, Tuesday 11th February 1947, Chihkiang Air Force Base, China.
Lieutenant General Ennis C Whitehead, C-in-C PACUSA, the unified command group for the US Air forces in the Pacific, watched through the two-way mirror as one of his Colonels went back over the startling information one more time.
His scheduled visit to the headquarters of the 14th US Air Force had coincided with the delivery of the unkempt man sat opposite the neatly turned out USAAF colonel.
Normally he would not have dirtied his hands in such matters, but the Chinese military personnel who brought the prisoner were wholly insistent that a most senior officer should speak with their charge, a man who claimed to be a Japanese officer in possession of important information.
His claim had saved his life, for most Japanese who fell into the hands of their archenemies lived but a few brief heartbeats more.
Yukio Kikutei had been precise in his words, his English impeccable, as befitted a man who had attended Cambridge University.
The information he delivered, all kept in his head, chilled every listener to the very core.
Kikutei, or to give him his full dues, Major the Count Yukio Kikutei, was a former officer of Unit-731 and, as personal aide and confidante of its second commander, Lieutenant General Masaji Kitano, was privy to every little grubby secret and despicable act attributable to the inappropriately named ‘Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department’ of the Kwantung Army.
0803 hrs, Monday, 17th February 1947, NATO headquarters, Frankfurt, Germany.
“So what’s so goddamned important that you wake me up like that, Walter?”
“Sir, if you’ll grant me a moment please.”
Eisenhower took his place at the front of the hastily arranged chairs and took alternate swigs and puffs, clearly extremely unhappy at being rousted out on what was rostered as a day off for him.
Bradley, in Frankfurt to enjoy a relaxing day’s golf with his commander in chief, looked glummer than usual as he clattered through one of the doorways, almost tripping on the recently installed carpet where it terminated in a metal strip.
“Where’s the goddamned fire, Walter? Morning, Sir.”
Eisenhower indicated the chair next to him and Bedell-Smith found himself under the glaring eyes of two unhappy men as he gathered the last elements of his briefing.
Eisenhower had, in his half-asleep state, approved Bedell-Smith’s request that every two star and above in the headquarters be pulled in for the briefing, and pretty soon senior officers of all shapes, sizes, and nationalities drifted in.
Von Vietinghoff walked in with precise movements looking like he had just spent hours on his uniform and grooming, causing Ike and Bradley to share a look of exasperation, given their own delicate states.
Eisenhower spotted Patton amongst a group at the back and decided to let it ride, not wishing to cause a scene by ordering the General without portfolio from the room, or more accurately, not feeling up to the confrontation.
It had been a long night and the lack of sleep was taking its toll.
Colonel Hood, looking as tired as Ike felt, slipped in through one of the side doors and passed Bedell-Smith a piece of paper.
The briefing could commence.
Some of the language used was difficult for the translators to get right, and they had several attempts at some of the names used.
Okunoshima.
Sovetskaya Gavan.
Lewisite.
Mustard Gas.
Bubonic Plague.
Anthrax.
Cholera.
That the Japanese had released fleas carrying the plague in China and in the initial stages of the new war was already known, but the full extent of the activities of facilities like Units 100, 516, 731, and 1644 were suddenly laid bare before them, as the recently discovered information was revealed in all its horrible glory.
The listening officers started to shift more uneasily as the evidence that much of the Japanese research, and probably considerable amounts of the product of it, had been willingly handed to the Soviet forces.
Hand in hand came the suspicions about the Sen-Tokus, and the possible progress of a Soviet nuclear arms programme.
Again the translators were challenged by the briefing.
Centrifuge was not a common word in Portuguese, Spanish, or any of the other languages being whispered around the room.
All in all, it was a lot for the listeners to take in.
Whilst the briefing was eye opening, most of the assembled officers understood it was also as much about what was not known, and the glaring holes in Allied understanding became more and more apparent when Bedell-Smith took questions.
There were a lot fewer answers than questions, and the feeling of concern mounted the more times Bedell-Smith conceded a hole in Allied understanding.
Eisenhower eventually stood and held his hands out to calm the growing volume of discontent.
“Gentlemen, please! The purpose of the briefing is clear. Share what we know and highlight what we don’t know. We keep all of this under wraps, but now you all know what the issues are, and will be on the lookout for any clue… any piece of information that may help us in finding out exactly what is going on… and there is something going on, and that something may threaten our future more than it’s been threatened before.”
The throng had fallen silent.
Eisenhower moved to the pedestal, ceded to him by his CoS.
“Gentlemen, like most of you, I was unprepared for this briefing. I anticipated one later this morning, but it was brought forward, given the nature of the new information received this morning. Some of this stuff we knew already, but the totality of it all is such that I feel I must act.”
He exchanged a look with Bedell-Smith, who understood what his commander was about to say.
“The p
olitical masters will have their say in the matter, but I’m in charge of the Allied Forces in Europe, and I’m now ordering an increase in our readiness state. All absences will be reduced to an absolute minimum and units will be kept at fully operational levels, effective immediately.”
That meant a lot of people were going to be extremely unhappy.
“I want all commands to furnish this headquarters with complete readiness reports before 1500 today.”
He looked at Tedder and Cunningham who were sat together nodded.
“Naval and air patrols will be increased across the board. We’re not going to be taken by surprise by anything. New rules of engagement will be issued as soon as possible, but anything that crosses a line is to be taken down immediately. If the Soviets have these… these… terror weapons, then we’ll take no chances whatsoever. Remember what happened at Hofbieber. An unauthorised use, which explanation we’ve accepted, but none the less some of our communist opponents have already demonstrated their willingness to use such awful weapons and they’ll not get a chance to again… not on my watch!”
He swivelled to speak to his CoS.
“Anything to add, Walter?”
“No, Sir.”
Turning back, Eisenhower lifted his voice to ensure that the passion of his words carried to those at the furthest corners of the room.
“Gentlemen, we’ve no real proof that the Soviet Union is intending to attack us, but then… neither did we before December 7th 1941, not until the nips bombers came out of the morning and caught us with our trousers round our ankles. It must not… no… it will not happen again!”
The rumble of voices told Ike that he was fully understood.
“Remain vigilant, make sure your G-2s are all over everything that could possibly give us a clue to intentions… miss nothing… spare nobody… report anything at all suspicious to headquarters as per normal but also separately to the group under General Strong. I want nothing going astray here. I’m depending on each and every one of you. Good luck, gentlemen.”