Winter Warriors s-1

by Stuart Slade

  “The Gods are smiling on us, Sir. We had a rough fall up there, but the weather magicians tell us we’re in for a spell of fine weather. By North Atlantic standards anyway. We can go as soon as possible. Now if we wish.”

  “And the land battle?”

  “On Kola? If the supplies get through, we can win that as well. Or at least make sure the German offensive goes nowhere.”

  Dewey nodded. It made political and military sense. That was a rarity, usually the two demands opposed and contradicted. “Very good, Seer. We’ll make it happen.” Then his face fell again as the image of the ever-lengthening lines of white crosses in the snows of Russia returned to haunt him. “You’re right, we’ve got to win something, somewhere.”

  Short-Range Hunter-Killer Group “Oak”, Off the Virginia Coast.

  “Pickets in place Sir. We’ve got four PBJs overhead. They’re dropping sonobuoys now.”

  Captain Albert Sturmer nodded. That made twelve hunting platforms gathered around the position of the Type XXID that had launched its missiles at Washington. Eight were modified Gleaves class destroyers. They had been stripped of their anti-aircraft guns and three of their five-inchers after they had been phased out of service with the carrier groups. Now, they had three Hedgehogs, a big trainable launcher in place of B gun and two smaller fixed weapons amidships. Between them, the three launchers could put down a devastating barrage of charges. They also carried an array of depth charge throwers aft and big, one-ton depth charges in their torpedo tubes.

  If this had been a long-range hunter-killer group, they’d have had at least one jeep carrier with them, a CVE stuffed with Avengers and Bearcats. Instead, the PBJs overhead were the Navy’s version of the Air Force’s B-25J Mitchell. They had sonobuoys and an ASV radar, plus homing torpedoes in their bellies and rockets under their wings. For the endgame, they had their noses stuffed with machine guns; eight in the nose itself, four in packages on the aircraft side. Just in case the Germans decided not to go down with their ship.

  The Type XXID had two choices. It could run as fast as it could, and the Type XXI was fast underwater. By doing so, it could clear the area and make the search area much larger. The problem with running at high speed for any length of time was that doing so depleted its batteries. Within an hour or so, it would have to charge them. Even using its snort, that would make the job of finding it easier. Worse still, running at high speed meant it was generating flow noise and that also made finding it easier. That was why the PBJs were dropping their sonobuoys. One of the things the Navy had learned from the experiments with the modified British S-boats in Bermuda was what frequencies to listen for. That and the experience of the first wave of Type XXI attacks during late 1944 and early 1945.

  The other choice facing the Type XXID down there was to go slow and try to creep away. That had the advantages of extending battery endurance, to days if necessary, and cutting noise to a minimum. That would make it hard to detect. The disadvantage was that going slow meant going very slow indeed; four knots, barely more than walking pace. The missiles fired at Washington an hour ago had come from here. If the Type XXID that had fired them was going slow, it was still somewhere here, alive and well and with plenty of battery charge. If it had gone fast to clear datum, it was somewhere within a radius of 16 miles with dead batteries.

  “Anything from the PBJs?” Sturmer snapped out the request. “Nothing on the buoys, Sir.”

  “OK, Sweep the area, active search.” Two destroyers were sitting out on the flanks of the formation, ready to lash the water with their active sonars. The old sonars had been “searchlight” systems with a single beam. They had been fine for tracking the old, slow Type VII and Type IX U-boats but the Type XXI was fast enough to run between the sweep of the tracking beam. The current sonars had been modified and used three beams in an overlapping fan. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a good enough solution until the new generation of scanning sonars left the laboratories and joined the fleet. Whenever that was.

  Still, the new sonars gave the Type XXI down there another set of choices. It could accelerate and run between the net of tracking beams but that would deplete battery life and make noise that would be detected by the passive sonobuoys from the PBJs. Or, it could keep going and try to sneak away. A third choice was to try and get to the bottom and sit there. Sturmer paced the bridge waiting for the hunting systems to tell him which choice the U-boat skipper had made.

  “Contact Sir. Grayson has picked up something on the bottom.” Option Three, then, Sturmer thought. Gone to ground.

  “Set up a line attack.” The waiting six destroyers were already formed into a line and they curved around to the location from their left-hand picket destroyer. They were accelerating to attack speed, a speed that left their own sonars blind. It didn’t matter. They were being coached in by the two pickets that lashed their contact with all the sonar power they had available. Earle shuddered as her Hedgehogs fired. The big bow launcher put down an eight-shaped barrage of the small charges, the two waist Hedgehogs added their circles, overlapping the center of the eight. The other five destroyers in the line laid down their own patterns. The result was a maze of intersecting circles that gave the submarine underneath little chance of escape. Even a XXI couldn’t outrun the carefully planned web that was dropping on it. The same attack pattern had driven old Type VIIs and Type IXs from the sea.

  On board Earle the crew waited. Hedgehog rounds only exploded if they hit something hard enough to activate the fuze. The mud of the sea bottom wouldn’t do it. Opinions were divided about that. Some people preferred the heavy Squids carried on the Canadian destroyers, their charges exploded at pre-set depths and gave a satisfying mass of explosions. On the convoys to Russia, American and Canadian destroyers worked together; Hedgehog and Squid complemented each other. That was why not many German submarines survived to make a second voyage and very few made a third cruise.

  Two explosions sent columns of water skywards. The destroyers turned to bring their depth charge throwers into action. The ten-charge patterns went over the side, covering the area marked by the Hedgehog round explosions, then Earle lurched again as her torpedo tubes fired a one-ton depth charge square over the position of the contact.

  Now, they had to wait while the water cleared from effects of the explosions. Sturmer resumed pacing the bridge again.

  “It’s still down there!” The voice from the sonar room was the epitome of frustration. There was no way a bottomed submarine could have survived the hammering that had just been handed out.

  “Damn. Order Grayson and Mayo to drop a pair of one-tonners each on it. That should blow the damned sub apart.” Earle had the picket role now; she painted the contact with her sonar and coached the other destroyers in. Then, even her sonar picture vanished as the water was roiled by the massive explosions of the big depth charges. There was an anguished wait while the trace cleared and a sigh of disappointment. The submarine was still there.

  “Sir, I’ve got an uneasy feeling about this.”

  “What’s up, Nav?”

  “Sir, we’re not that far from where Porter went down a couple of years ago. It’s possible, more than possible, that’s her wreck. There’s a lot of sunken ships around here, but she’s the best candidate.”

  Sturmer nodded; it made sense. No submarine could take the pounding that had just been handed out. It had to be a wreck on the bottom. And that meant their real target had had that much time to get clear. In fact, the German skipper had probably chosen this point for his launch for just that reason. It was time to start over.

  Starting over didn’t do any good. The destroyers and aircraft crossed and re-crossed the search area; one that was expanding with every minute that passed, and found nothing. As the night went on, the hunting group was slowly forced to accept that the Type XXID had got clean away.

  At dawn, Sturmer went back to his cabin. The Germans had used their best technology and every skill at their command and blown up a few trees and pos
sibly the odd skunk. The Americans had used their best technology and skills and pounded a sunken wreck. All that effort, all that skill wasted, all that expenditure for nothing. It struck Sturmer that the night hunt had been a pretty good metaphor for the war as a whole.

  1st Platoon, Ski Group, 78th Siberian Infantry Division, First Kola Front

  “The sentries are out Tovarish Lieutenant. I have a rota set up. They will be relieved at 20 minute intervals. The storm out there is getting worse.”

  The arctic storm hit hard and without warning. The winds picked up, the skies clouded over then the snow started coming down. The wind blending the fall with the loose covering already on the ground to create a white-out that reduced visibility to near zero. Outside was just a white mass. There was no way of knowing what was ground, what was sky, what was solid, anything. In the white-out, a man could walk into a tree never having seen it.

  The Siberians knew these conditions well. They’d grown up with them, and they’d seen the storm coming. They’d parked their snowmobiles and the three captured Kettenkrads in a hollow where they’d be sheltered from the biting wind. Then they had built themselves a “Zemlyanka,” a ground-house. They’d dug a cave in the deep snow, then continued to dig for another 2 meters into the ground. Fortunately, on Kola, the ground wasn’t permafrost so it could be dug out easily. They’d covered the pit in the snow with wooden sticks broken off from nearby woods, put more snow over it, leaving just a small entrance. They’d taken care to see that entrance looked no more than a simple dark hole under a rotten tree. They’d even built a dummy zemlyanka close to their vehicles, maskirovka, always maskirovka.

  Sergeant Pietr Ivanovitch Batov had arranged the sentry roster with care. A man who spent more than twenty minutes outside would freeze to death. He’d arranged for them to be relieved before that could happen. The men had been divided into three teams of six. Every twenty minutes, two men would come in and spend the rest of the hour warming up again while two more went out to keep watch. Each team of six men would rotate that way, 20 minutes on duty and 40 minutes warming up, for three hours before another team of six relieved them. There were 18 men in the unit; each group of six would have six whole hours to rest. The storm could last at least that long.

  Lieutenant Stanislav Knyaginichev looked around the zemlyanka. It was cramped, not from necessity although that had played a part, but from design. Men grouped together shared warmth, those apart wasted it. Warmth was the key to life. There was another reason as well, morale. Keeping men’s spirits up was as important as food and warmth in surviving the arctic. Knyaz had something to help him with that.

  “Bratya listen. So, you want to hear some new stuff from the papers?”

  “Yeah, sure.” The voice from the back of the zemlyanka was only marginally interested.

  Another voice cut in. “Anything new from Tovarish Ehrenburg?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes.” Knyaz reached into a pocket. “I have his latest speech. This is one called ‘Kill’.” That did it, there was a stir of interest and approval. Ehrenburg knew what the Frontniki thought and his pamphlets found ready acceptance with them. “Now listen. Here it is.” Knyaz shone his dim torch on the dog-eared paper and started to read.

  “Germany is dying slowly and miserably without pathos or dignity. Let us remember the pompous parades, the Sportsplast in Berlin where Hitler used to roar that he would conquer the world. There, he showed us the truth. Germany does not exist, there is only a colossal gang of murdering rapists. The Germans are not human beings. From now on the word German means to use the most terrible oath. From now on the word German strikes us to the quick. We shall not speak any more. We shall not get excited. We shall kill. If you have not killed at least one German a day, you have wasted that day. If you cannot kill your German with a bullet, kill him with your bayonet. If there is calm on your part of the front, or if you are waiting for the fighting, kill a German in the meantime. If you leave a German alive, the German will hang a Russian man and rape a Russian woman. If you kill one German, then kill another — there is nothing more amusing for us than a heap of German corpses. Do not count days, do not count kilometers. Count only the number of Germans killed by you. Kill the German — that is your grandmother’s plea. Kill the German — that is your wife’s demand. Kill the German — that is your child’s prayer. Kill the German—that is your motherland’s loud request. Do not miss. Do not let through. Kill.

  There was a mutter of approval around the crowded snow house. Knyaz could sense the men nodding. “But not everybody feels this way. In Pravda, Tovarish Georgy Aleksandrov replies to ‘Kill’ with an article entitled ‘Tovarish Ehrenburg Oversimplifies’. I have not got the full text here, but Grazhdanin Aleksandrov says that the fact the Gestapo hunt for opponents of the regime and appeal to Germans to denounce them proves that all Germans are not the same. He says it is the Nazi Government that has brought about this calamity in the name of national unity and that very act proves how little unity there is. He says that we should punish the enemy correctly for all his evil deeds and that the slogan of ‘kill them all’ oversimplifies. What do you think.”

  “Grazhdanin Ilya doesn’t oversimplify!’ The voice was belligerent and the outburst met with another mutter of approval.

  “Tovarish Aleksandrov needs to spend a few weeks out here. Then we’d hear him speak of ‘oversimplifying.’“ Another voice, another mutter of approval.

  Knyaz smiled slightly in the gloom of the zemlyanka. There had been a time when an article in Pravda had been the epitome of truth; that was after all what Pravda meant. Woe betide anybody who argued with it. Those days had gone at last. “So bratya, we capture some Fascists.” There was a chuckle of grim, cynical laughter at that idea. “Hypothetically speaking of course. One of them produces his Communist party card and claims to have been a Member since 1920. What should we do with him?”

  There was a pause while the soldiers thought it over. Then their new brat, Kabanov, spoke up, hesitantly. He was still uncertain of his new-found status and whether it gave him the right to speak up. Before being conscripted, Kabanov had won prizes for dialectic in his school and had been picked to go to one of the Moscow universities. After the war of course. He didn’t want the men around him to think he was posturing or trying to curry favor with their officer. He knew he’d won a little respect in the ambush a few days before and he was afraid they’d think it had gone to his head. “The others we kill straight away. That one, we should beat him before we kill him.”

  “And why should we do that bratishka?”

  “Because he should have known better. When a wolf takes a baby from its cradle it is not because the wolf is evil, it is because he is a wolf. It is his nature to prey upon the helpless. We kill him for his act but that is all. When an evil man does evil things it is because it is in his nature and he knows no better. But we expect better of a communist. He should know that these things are evil and refuse to take part. If he knows better but takes part anyway, then his blame is all the greater. Tovarish Aleksandrov forgets that. He is right, there may be good Germans, but if there are, then their blame is all the greater. They deserve death; not less, but more. For they knew good and evil and chose the evil.”

  There was a swell of appreciation and Knyaz heard somebody give Kabanov an approving swat on the back. Now, the tricky bit. “But, bratischkas, bad things happened in the Rodina as well. What do we make of that?”

  That caused a silence. There had been a time when Knyaz would have disappeared for making a statement like that. Also, many of the younger soldiers had a positive image of Stalin and thought that he was a great politician. They’d remembered him for his small period of pre-war urban welfare and the idea that he might not be perfect was troubling for some of them. Even in this shadowy zemlyanka, force of habit made people measure their words. Then, a voice spoke carefully from one of the gloomiest parts of the shelter.

  “But it has been put right yes? Perhaps bad things were done in
past years, Tovarish Stalin had bad advisors who deceived him but those who did that have gone. They have been replaced.” By us was the unspoken addition. Nobody quite knew what had happened at the end of 1942; they knew everything had changed since then. The NKVD had been broken up between various armed services and the intelligence branch had been re-named back to CheKa. The spy problem had been too serious to allow counterintelligence would vanish completely from the frontlines. Knyaz remembered how Germany easily obtained the Soviet offense or defense plans in 1941-1942. That hadn’t been done without the help of massive infiltration. In his heart, Knyaz knew what had happened. When one needed working structures but also had to change their “image” so to speak, purging several key perpetrators could work wonders.

  “Tovarish Stalin died a hero in Moskva. We all know that. And anyway, whatever problems we had happened here, we did not force them on others.”

  “Right, bratishka. We saw that bad things had happened and we put them right. Where are those in Germany, the ones who should have put things right? Of course there are none. If we can change things, why do not the Germans? This is what Tovarish Aleksandrov forgets. The blame of the good is all the greater if they do not resist evil. And let us never forget that the Fascists are here, in our Rodina.”

  “So are the Americans?” This voice was very hesitant. Everybody knew that it was the Americans with their wonders who had saved their beloved Lieutenant.

  “But we invited them to come and they came as guests, with gifts and friendship. And they fight beside us, to drive out the Fascists. Remember what Gospodin Zhukov says. ‘It does not matter whether a man fights under the Red Star or the White Star as long as he kills Fascists.’”

  The approval was more than a murmur; it was a subdued roar. In the eyes of these soldiers, the Americans had their faults, a tendency to softness and mercy being one. But, they had one great redeeming virtue. They had invented napalm. Anyway, Stalin’s propaganda had rarely touched the United States with the fervor it had used to pummel states like the Reich, France and the British Empire. So the soldiers were a bit more open to the idea of the Americans as their allies, all in the spirit of proletarian internationalism.