Robert Conroy

by Red Inferno: 1945: A Novel

  Of course. The explanation was clear and simple.

  The Russian command wanted him to fail. He was one of the few non-Russians in a position of authority and he had been entrusted with the ultimate conquest of Potsdam. He knew that the siege was being given a high degree of publicity in the capitalist press and even in Moscow, and was a key part of Operation Red Inferno. If he succeeded, he would be a hero and probably even be promoted to lieutenant general, a rank he felt he richly deserved. If he succeeded, Stavka would be practically forced to recognize his efforts, and all Armenia would bathe in his glory.

  But what if he failed?

  Well, people would simply shrug and say, “What did you expect from some black-ass from the south, an Armenian, no less?” His disgrace would result in his loss of command and banishment to protecting some obscure border with a nation more despicable than Romania. If he failed, he would be replaced and his army removed so the Russians, the golden boys, could take the city and reap the renown.

  It was so obvious. But what could he do? First, he would have to prove it was the NKVD. He would have to catch their man and then he would decide how to handle it. But what to use as bait?

  PLATOON SERGEANT BAILEY lowered his binoculars and wiped his sweaty brow with a dirty cloth. He, Logan, and a handful of others were in a small fortified observation post dug into the ground just past the road from which the Russians had launched their earlier assault. General Miller had decided to extend the perimeter to provide earlier warning of the next Russian attack. Even though the Reds had been quiet for some time, everyone considered the resumption of the battle as inevitable. Thus, they had spent much of their time improving their already formidable defenses.

  “Lieutenant, are sieges always this boring?”

  Logan laughed and shifted the still unfamiliar weight of his Luger, which was holstered on his waist. Like many Americans, he had taken to carrying extra weapons from the liberated German stores. “Now just what makes you think I would know? And what makes you think this is boring? Why not consider it a vacation from reality?”

  Bailey grinned. They had been friends before Logan’s promotion. “Because now you’re an officer and supposed to know all these things. Besides, I thought the army was a vacation from reality in the first place.” Logan genially punched him on the arm and returned to watching the inactive and invisible Russians.

  They had been on the outpost line for two days and were just about ready to rotate back to the main defense lines through the myriad of tunnels and deep trenches that made movement along the defensive lines fairly safe.

  As he shifted, Logan felt the rustle of paper in his pocket. It was the letter from Elisabeth. He had read it a score of times and would read it again tonight. It was a very sensitive and eloquent statement of just how fond she was of him. At no time, he noted, had it mentioned the word love. They were both aware that their situation was both too sudden and too precarious for two very logical people to let their emotions run rampant. It wasn’t easy, however.

  On a number of occasions, Logan had tried to sort out his feelings for her. His first thought was that she wasn’t what he’d always thought of as his type of woman. Mary Fran Collins had filled that bill. Larger-bosomed and taller, the naked Mary Fran was a lusty delight and they had reveled in each other’s bodies in those frantic days before he shipped out. Lis, on the other hand, was petite.

  Mary Fran had not been the first girl he’d had sex with; she was the second. That distinction went to a girl in high school—her name was Florence Something-or-other—and getting her in the sack was no great trick. Instead, it was more of a rite of passage. Short and plump, she had screwed just about half the boys in his senior class. “Just tell her you love her,” one of his friends had instructed him, “and she’ll hurt herself trying to get out of her dress.” As it turned out, even that wasn’t necessary. Florence What’s-her-name, Jack recalled, just plain liked to screw.

  That brought him back to Lis and what attracted him to her. She was short and he preferred tall. He liked blondes, and her hair was almost jet black. He also liked a woman’s hair long and hers was, of necessity, chopped short. She was small-breasted, and he preferred them bosomy. She was thin, almost skinny, and he liked a little meat with his potatoes, as the saying went. The diet deprivations had blotched her complexion so that pimples were an almost constant problem for her. Well, they were for him too, so what the hell.

  Even more surprising, since he had never been around little kids, Jack found that he actually liked Pauli, who seemed to like him too.

  Given all that, why did he care for her so much? Sometimes he suspected the obvious, that they were lost souls who had been thrown together by nearly tragic circumstances. But he knew better. The relationship had expanded beyond that. She was, in her own way, very attractive and, by anyone’s definition, intelligent, cultured, and mature. When he thought of that, he wondered just what she saw in him. Then he recalled the letter. Not too many people had ever called him good. Or honorable.

  As to sex, he knew that she’d had one lover. He wasn’t jealous, which surprised him, but he was envious and that did surprise him. He definitely did find Lis sexually desirable. So much for Mary Fran Collins and her great breasts.

  They had talked about some of the others with them in Potsdam and their open sexual activity, and she had firmly stated that she would not have sex during the siege. “I will not copulate in a sewer or in a ruined house like so many of the German women are doing.”

  So were the American men, Jack thought, but declined to add. “When it happens,” Lis continued, “it will be in a lovely room with a real bed and with a man I love very deeply.”

  “Anyone I know?” Jack had asked with mock innocence.

  “Quite possibly,” she had answered impishly. “I just adore Captain Dimitri. He’s so manly; don’t you think?”

  Before he could reply, she had kissed him, fully and deeply.

  Then, miracle of miracles, the next mail drop had brought Jack letters from his parents and his brother. All was well on the home front although everyone was shocked by the sudden and tragic turn the fighting had taken. They loved him, they were concerned for him, and they were all praying for him and wanted him to come home. The world knew that, along with the fighting now raging up and down Germany, there was a bunch of lonely GIs in Potsdam and all of America was concerned for them. Potsdam had become a symbol of American pride and resistance. He had sat there and wished there was some way he could tell his family that he loved them as well, but while mail could come in, it could not go out. He had missed so many opportunities in the past. Sometimes he had been such a stupid kid.

  Unbidden tears had welled up and he had commenced to cry in a way he hadn’t since he had been a small child. Elisabeth had started crying as well, and they had held each other tightly for comfort and protection from the rest of the world. When they stopped crying, they still held on to each other. Jack had never felt as close to anyone in his life as he had to her in those moments. He knew he would remember them forever. However long that was.

  “Lieutenant?” It was Bailey again, snapping him out of his reverie. The binoculars were at his eyes but he wasn’t seeing a thing. Hell, he had been so deep in thought the whole Russian army could have sneaked up on him. At least Bailey had been alert.

  “Yeah, Sarge.”

  “While you were watching the Russians so intently, we got a message from the captain. We’re being relieved in a couple of minutes.”

  Logan wondered if Bailey was being sarcastic about his being intent, and the twinkle in Bailey’s eyes confirmed it. “Sergeant, there are a lot of Russians out there and I didn’t want to miss any.”

  “Sure. But we are pulling out.”

  Logan scratched his beard. Not shaving was another result of being cut off from the rest of the army. They were out of razor blades and just about everyone was growing a beard. Elisabeth thought he looked like a Viking. She called him Jack the Red. “I don�
��t think I’ll miss this place.”

  “Me either,” Bailey said. “You think Elisabeth will be waiting for us?”

  Logan rattled around, gathering his equipment. “I hope so.” He understood what the sergeant meant. Elisabeth and Pauli had started to hang around the platoon, and the boy had been adopted by the soldiers while they all tried to talk with the skinny, dark-haired waif with the bad complexion who always responded graciously. The platoon had adopted her as well, although Logan thought their collective feelings weren’t quite as paternal as they were for Pauli. At any rate, they seemed to like her and weren’t jealous of his much closer relationship with her. Bailey said it was just so nice to be able to talk to a woman who spoke English, even though it was with a screwy Canadian accent.

  Relieved, the platoon snaked their way back to the main defensive line and the bunker they had built more than a month ago. At first it had been a chore; now it was their home. He settled his gear in the bunker and exited through the rear door. As Jack had both hoped and expected, Pauli and Elisabeth were waiting, and she had a big smile for him.

  TRUE TO SOVIET military tradition, the headquarters of the Russian field armies was closer to the front lines than its allied counterparts would normally be. Soviet generals felt they had to smell gunpowder to show bravery to their soldiers. This often led to higher than ordinary casualty rates among Russian generals.

  The city of Brunswick, only thirty miles from the Elbe River, had fallen two weeks earlier to the Red Army and was still a smoking ruin. It was less than fifty miles from Brunswick to the Leine River, the next natural obstacle the Russians would have to cross on their way to the Weser, the Rhine, and Antwerp. In the distance, the sound of artillery could be heard.

  Marshal Zhukov looked at the numbers the report indicated and was appalled. The fight for Brunswick had cost nearly fifty thousand casualties. It was small comfort that they had badly mauled the American 19th Corps. The Soviets had been suckered into a street fight for a city the Yanks had never intended to hold for long. It was the result of his second in command, Vassily Chuikov’s relative inexperience in handling large forces. The city should have been surrounded and left to rot like Potsdam. Chuikov was a good general and he would learn. He would have to. Zhukov was learning as well. The Americans were nasty fighters.

  “This cannot happen again,” Zhukov said firmly.

  The smaller, darker-haired Chuikov nodded glumly. “I thought we could trap them. I was wrong. But”—he sighed—“ wouldn’t it have been wonderful to have bagged four American divisions, one of them airborne?”

  Grudgingly, Zhukov had to agree. It was probably something he might have attempted had he been put in Chuikov’s position. The victory that didn’t happen would have punched a great hole in the American lines and bloodied them terribly, perhaps badly enough to make them pull out of the war. However, it hadn’t worked out that way. The American general had sniffed out the trap and led Chuikov by the nose through the streets of Brunswick while he and his corps escaped largely intact. Even the lightly armed American 17th Airborne Division that Chuikov had so badly wanted to capture had only been wounded, not mortally damaged. It had been a mistake, but Chuikov was an aggressive bulldog who would fight again.

  “No more,” Zhukov said. “We cannot afford victories at such cost. A few more of these and we will have no army.”

  Chuikov accepted the rebuke in silence.

  “Now,” Zhukov said, “we must continue to plan for the future as Stalin and Stavka have defined it. The Americans have found our Achilles’ heel and attacked it with great success. As you are aware, the oil situation has gone from merely bad to critical.”

  “Marshal Zhukov, I have already instituted a program of hoarding and rationing. I am confident that we will have enough for this campaign.”

  “As am I, but only if dire steps are taken. I have ordered all available fuel reserves shipped to you. Other armies will be allocated enough for defensive actions, but not enough to go on the offensive.”

  “Koniev and Rokossovsky will not be happy.”

  Zhukov flared. “I do not give a fuck if they are happy or sad! I only care that Operation Red Inferno is a success. I do not care if their soldiers starve or have to walk into battle carrying spears. I only want to drive the Americans out of Germany and take Antwerp!”

  Zhukov brought his anger under control. “I am fairly certain that the Americans will withdraw quickly to the Weser when the Leine is crossed. The battles from the Elbe to here have given them ample time to prepare their defenses along the west bank of the Weser. I think you will advance rather quickly for the next few days after crossing the Leine. No, that is not my main concern.”

  “Then what is, comrade?”

  “The war in the air, Vassily. I am afraid we are losing it. I had feared that would happen. We have been losing planes and men at a faster rate than I thought would occur. Stavka thought, and I agreed, that it would take the Americans far longer to move additional planes from the Pacific than it has. Worse, the fuel situation will be more critical for the air force than it will be for us.”

  Chuikov found neither statement hard to dispute. Since realizing that fuel depots were high-priority targets for the Allied planes, he had introduced a system of fuel distribution within his armies, which, although less efficient than depot storage, did have the benefit of disbursing the precious commodity. Some of his commanders had carried it to an extreme. They were reintroducing the expedient used in the early days of the war of strapping fifty-five-gallon drums of fuel to the outside of the tanks as a ready reserve. Many tanks carried more than one drum since no one was really certain when the next shipment would arrive from the scattered division or corps reserves.

  Even though the T34s ran on diesel, which was less combustible than gasoline, storing it on the outside was still a dangerous practice. A rocket or a .50 caliber tracer could easily ignite the diesel and turn the tank into a very large iron torch. Even the American bazookas, ordinarily ineffective against a T34’s armor, could prove lethal if they found the fuel.

  Yet what had Zhukov meant when he said it would be even worse for the air force? “Comrade, how can it be harder for the air armies? After all, they do not have to drag their reserves around under the noses of the enemy like we do.”

  Zhukov chuckled. He was fond of Chuikov, who had fought and won at Stalingrad and then led the storming of central Berlin. “Correct, Vassily, but the difference is more subtle. We can manufacture large numbers of planes as replacements, but what about the replacement pilots? If they are to be effective, pilots must be trained in all aspects of flying.

  “Vassily, we still have the vast spaces where they can be trained, and thousands of young men eager to die for Mother Russia, but we no longer have the fuel needed to train them properly. We have just given directives that the pilot training flights will immediately be cut by two thirds. Therefore, when replacements arrive at the front, they will be scarcely know how to take off and land. They will be easy prey for the Allies. The same restrictions will be true for tank drivers, but it will not be as serious a problem to overcome.”

  Chuikov was dismayed. If that occurred, the aerial cover he counted on to support his massed armor and infantry attacks would be shredded and the enemy planes could rain hell upon his formations.

  Chuikov was aghast. “Comrade, I need air support. If the air force continues to deteriorate, the Allies will do even more to savage my transportation system. If they are successful at that, it will not matter how many tanks and guns they produce in the Ural Mountain factories; they won’t get here! It makes no sense to protect properties in Romania and the Caucasus that have already been destroyed and cannot be fixed in time to be of any help to us! Did you not explain this to Stalin?”

  Zhukov was not put out by the younger man’s vehemence. It was something he felt himself. “Stalin was adamant.”

  Chuikov rubbed his forehead in frustration. “Does this have anything to do with the rumore
d American superweapon?”

  Zhukov blinked. How the devil did Chuikov know about that? “I don’t know. Perhaps.”

  Chuikov laughed derisively. “Well, comrade, let me tell you something. I do not believe in superweapons any more than I believe in goblins and ghosts.”

  “I hope you are right,” Zhukov said.

  Zhukov was not certain what the Americans were up to. He knew only that it was supposed to be a giant bomb. But what sort of giant bomb? He had seen the effects of giant bombs, blockbusters, but the size of the bomb was limited by the weight and bulk that a plane could carry. The blockbusters were impressive, but not that devastating and surely limited by aircraft technology.

  Zhukov was puzzled. Just how much larger could the American monster bomb be? If it was larger than the mammoth blockbusters, just what would they use to carry the monster? he wondered. Perhaps Chuikov was right. Perhaps it was all a deception on the part of the Americans to scare first the Germans and now Russia. How could there be such a thing as he had heard rumored? And how could it be that Stalin had fallen for the deception?

  CHAPTER 21

  There were two sets of hospitals in besieged Potsdam: military and civilian. Most of the medical personnel were military but still found time to help out at the main civilian hospital, located in a ruined hotel. Work had been done to seal windows and roofs, but the building was still stark, drab, and poorly ventilated.

  With the need for her services as a translator diminishing, Lis found herself with time on her hands and a need to do something useful. Working at the hospital was an easy choice.

  “Look at them,” she said to Logan. “This shouldn’t be happening in the twentieth century.”

  Lis was wearing a dirty smock and her short hair was a mess. She was tired, but appeared satisfied. She admitted that the work took her mind off the terrible things she’d seen and it permitted her to help others.