Winter Warriors s-1

by Stuart Slade

  President Dewey was trying not to laugh. “That’s not how they teach our history in school.”

  “Mister President, in my experience, history is very rarely how it gets written up in the history books.”

  “I can believe that. You know there is a problem here. Governments get so set in their ways they forget they live in a narrow, self-validating clique. We could use an outside viewpoint sometimes. How advanced are these Commonwealth plans?”

  “Pretty well developed although they are intensely theoretical documents. Nobody in the Commonwealth believes that they are going to stage an invasion on their own, not now. They’ve got a lot of the groundwork though. Of course, if we bring in a Commonwealth force this size, it’s going to throw the whole Overlord-Downfall question open again. The Commonwealth forces will insist on making the first strike at England, possibly with Ireland as a first step but definitely aimed at the U.K. Even if they go along with hitting France first, they’ll want a commitment to strike at the U.K. later. I’d say no more than 60 days after hitting France. That’s going to be as bad as our present plans. Another reason why we like going it alone, alliances are an entanglement.”

  “No foreign entanglements rings a bell. If there are Commonwealth troops out there we can get our hands on, what about the French? They had colonial interests too.”

  “Bit of a different case. They had troops, quite a few of them, in Indo-China but they got hammered during the 1941 war with Thailand and then when the Japanese occupied the rest of Indo-China. They have troops in North Africa but nothing like the resources the Commonwealth has. Anyway, the French are likely to be as demanding as the Commonwealth, they’ll demand they hit France first and go no further. They don’t like the British right now and with good reason. They were still fighting hard when Halifax folded in 1940. I’m not saying they had a chance of winning but they were still hanging on.

  When Halifax signed his Armistice, they were left high and dry. If that hadn’t happened they’d probably have got better surrender terms. It was just like with the police here, the first person to fold gets the good deal.”

  “Stuyvesant, I know you’re an industrialist, not a general, but I want your honest opinion. Do you think an opposed transatlantic invasion of Europe is really possible?”

  Stuyvesant leaned back in his seat, appearing to calculate the balance of forces while an ironic thought passed through his mind. I must remember to tell Lillith and Naamah about the ‘industrialist, not a general’ comment. It was a good question though, was the invasion of Europe, across the Atlantic against a properly defended Europe possible? Images of the correlation of forces surged throughout his mind.

  “No, Sir. It is not. We cannot transport enough troops, support them well enough or keep them fighting once they are ashore. We’ll end up with a lodgment that we are hard pushed to hold; a Russian Front in miniature. The Germans have interior lines and that’s always bad news. We can’t get at them without using the B-36. If we try to do so using that aircraft we trade away our trump card. The Big One has to succeed, Sir. It has to shatter the German ability to resist and it has to destroy their ability to move troops around. We have to deprive Germany of its interior lines of communication so that the Russian and European fronts are disconnected. Only then can we invade with a hope of success. That’s assuming Germany keeps fighting after The Big One. All I can hope for is that the Germans see sense and surrender.

  “That’ll mean us just keeping order as the Europeans sort themselves out. I hope that’s all we have to do.”

  Dewey looked at the huge map on the wall of the conference room. “It would be so much easier if the Germans do see sense after The Big One. Will they?”

  “Sir, one of my staff has some suggestions along those lines. Could I impose upon you to listen to her ideas?”

  The President grinned quietly to himself. The number of women high up in the Economic Intelligence and Warfare Committee had caused a lot of comment. Oh, sure, women were in the war effort, working in the shipyards and aircraft factories and doing office work for the armed forces. A few were even flying aircraft, delivering them to units, but the number of woman in senior management was infinitesimal. Except in the EIWC where they seemed to be everywhere. That had caused some snide comments around Washington. As EIWC had gained power and influence, they’d waned. “Certainly. Ask her to come in.” The President knew Stuyvesant well enough to guess that the ‘member of his staff was sitting outside, waiting.

  Stuyvesant picked up the phone and buzzed reception. “Nell, step inside for a few minutes will you?”

  Dewey looked at the red-head with pleasure and a certain element of relief. Stuyvesant had two red-heads on his staff. This was the one that didn’t terrify people.

  “Mister President, may I introduce Eleanor Gwynne, she runs the section of the EIWC that is responsible for gathering economic and production data from the U.K.”

  “Mister President, as part of my duties, I gather information from the British Resistance concerning the forces in the U.K. and their readiness status. Over the last few months an interesting pattern has started to emerge. It appears that the a substantial number of the troops in Britain are no longer German but British. Even units that are nominally German contain a large number of conscripted British personnel, with the German elements acting as stiffening and reinforcement. For example, in a panzer-grenadier platoon with four half-tracks and infantry, the command track and two of the infantry tracks will be German, the other one will be British. The two British SS divisions are, of course, wholly made of British troops. This pattern … “

  Nell spoke quietly and in detail for almost twenty minutes, running through orders of battle, morale levels, force structures and the effects of Russian front casualties on the German units. “So, Mister President, we can only see this trend continuing. If we invade, these units will fight and probably fight hard. Their German corseting will see to that. But, it is likely that, once The Big One is launched, a well-constructed, well-broadcast radio message, sent by people the British trust, Churchill and their King, will have a very good chance of causing the “German” units in the U.K. to lay down their arms. If that happens in the U.K., it is likely that the example will be seen and adopted in other countries. Ireland is a different case of course, given what has been happening there. There’s no way the SS and Partizanjaegers there will surrender. Now would we want them to. There must be an accounting for what those people have done.”

  “How would we transmit such a message? We couldn’t put it out over the BBC.” President Dewey was fascinated by the concept.

  “We’re exploring that now. We would have to put it out over German radio frequencies. There are a number of options for doing so, all very low cost in terms of assets. Mister President, this option costs us but little and offers significant gains. Perhaps, at the appropriate time you could raise it with the King and Mister Churchill?”

  “If it avoids civil war and reduces the fighting, yes, of course.” Dewey noticed Nell’s lips moving and though he had missed something she’d said. “I’m sorry, you hadn’t finished?”

  “I was just thinking Mister President, of a previous civil war in England, between King Stephen and the Empress Maud. Neither side could win so both devastated the countryside to starve the other out. Of course, it was the common people who starved, not the nobles. People said it was a time when God and his angels slept. We could apply that description to the world today.”

  President Dewey looked at the great map with its display of the fighting going on around the world. “Yes, Eleanor, I guess we could.”

  161st Rifle Division, South of Petrozavodsk, Lake Onega, Kola Front

  It had been a long, long road from Alexander Ignatievich Shulgin’s home, at Kineshma on the Volga, to the Kola Front. It began in August 1942 when he had been at work in his office. “They” had called him, telling him the fascists were coming and all civilians were being evacuated. He’d been given a notice telling h
im to pack as many of his things as he could carry in a suitcase. Everything else would be destroyed. There would be nothing left for the fascists, not food, not shelter, not clothes, nothing not even a piece of paper. While fascists remained on Russian soil, they would not even be able to ease their bowels in comfort.

  The message had ordered him to be at the railway station the next morning. It had confused Shulgin. Weren’t the fascists attacking in the North, towards Moscow? There was no word of fascists attacking to the south, towards Stalingrad. Moscow was under siege and the fascists had more than they could handle there. The newspapers had been full of stories of the heroism of Moscow’s defenders, each being prepared to sell his life if doing so would add to the total of fascist dead. Comrade Stalin was there too, masterminding the resistance, cheering the people with his grim determination that Moscow would not fall.

  The railway station had been a sight to behold. Crowds of people being herded onto trains heading East. It wasn’t like the first evacuation, the one last year when the fascists had first struck. That had been chaos. This was well-organized, the people being pushed onto trains as they arrived and were identified.

  In the background, passing the trains full of people were other lines of railway cars, loaded down with industrial machinery. It wasn’t just the people who were going east; the factories were as well. The lines of people were labeled by initials. Shulgin found the row labeled S and stood there, waiting for his turn. Eventually, an NKVD man had looked at his notice, then at Shulgin. “Infantry Academy” had been his only comment. Then he’d been herded onto the train with the rest.

  As the long train ride had ground on, the packed railway cars had become progressively more foul. Water had been in short supply, food even shorter. They’d been stopped, sometimes for hours, sometimes for a day or more, as higher-priority trains took up the track. Factory machinery heading east; Army units, supplies, armored vehicles on flatcars heading west. Whichever they were, the people on the trains waited until they’d gone. Then, the long journey started again. People had wept; others raged. In some of the packed cars, babies had been born. They were given special care for they were a sign that a future still existed.

  Finally they had arrived at somewhere in the depths of Siberia, far to the east. Once again, NKVD men inspected the notices and this time Shulgin had been one of the younger men sent to one side. There were trucks waiting, Studebakers, and the men from the train were loaded into them. The trucks had taken them all to the Infantry Academy where the pre-war three months course had been compressed into two weeks. Then, they were made part of the 161st Rifle Division.

  What had followed was a blur. A mixture of being sent to the front, assaults on fascist positions, beating back assaults on their own, fighting seemingly without end. Shulgin had felt as if he’d lived his whole life in that blur, without any past or future The 161st Rifle Division had been ground down to a shell, pulled from the line and rebuilt, then sent back. 1943 had faded into 1944. The 161st had been one of the divisions trapped in the Kola peninsula when the fascists had broken through to besiege Archangel’sk. Ground down to a shell again, rebuilt again. Somehow, without quite remembering how or when, Shulgin had advanced in rank and was now a Sergeant.

  The warning came earlier in the day. One of the ski patrols, from the 78th Siberian, had spotted the fascists moving up to attack. They’d hit during the night, probably; perhaps at dawn the next day. So the 161st was going to pre-empt them. They would hit the fascists at dusk, hopefully catch them while they were moving into their jump-off positions. The company commanders had already visited their units and given their orders. The squads were to stay together in shallow trenches, covered with branches so that the fascists would not spot them. Shulgin took a tighter grip on his rifle. It was not the three-line Mosin Nagant he had trained with an age ago, but a Canadian-made Lee-Enfield supplied under Lend-Lease.

  That wasn’t the only thing that was different from the way he had trained in the Infantry Academy. Today, there would be no cries of “Forward!” There would be no shouts of “Urrah.” Shulgin heard a quiet “Let’s go, bratischka” from his company commander and saw him climb out of his foxhole. Shulgin did the same and followed him automatically. The rest of the men rose up after him. They just quietly stood up; just as quietly, they walked forward. Darkness was closing in. A mist was rising where the freshly-fallen snow steamed slightly as the temperature rose in the wake of the storm. Shulgin felt the eeriness around him, the dead silence seeming to suffocate them. Then one of the newbies in the unit started quietly rattling with his improperly carried weapons. That changed the situation instantly. The Germans picked up the sound and opened fire. First a rifle, then machine-guns. The Russian infantry hunched up and started to run forward; praying their feet wouldn’t break the crust on the snow and leave them floundering. Shulgin could see only the back-pack of the man in front.

  The cries of “Forward!” were already ringing through the trees. Shulgin had no idea how long he had been running forward. It could have been a second; it could have been an hour for all he knew.

  He’d reached the German foxholes scraped in the snow and dropped flat into the largest of them. A firm grip on his rifle, butt tucked firmly into his shoulder. Bolt handle held between thumb and forefinger, little finger around the trigger. Not a grip taught by the Russian Army but a trick shown to them by the Canadian Sergeant-Major who’d instructed them in the workings of the Lee-Enfield. Shulgin flipped the bolt forward and back, one smooth action and squeezed the trigger with his little finger. Almost instantly he was operating the bolt again, blessing the smooth speed of the Lee action against the sticky roughness of the Mosin-Nagant. Ten aimed shots went out, then the magazine was empty. He pushed the catch that released it and inserted a loaded magazine for another ten shots.

  All along the rifle line, the other infantrymen were doing the same. The rapid rifle fire cut down the fascists as they tried to counterattack their lost positions. The squad machine guns opened up, spraying the fascists and sending them tumbling over in chaos. “Forward!” Shulgin cried out, without even realizing it. They followed up the shattered fascist counter-attack. He and his men were drove through the woods, pushing the fascists back, faster and faster. The troops that were preparing for their own attack were caught out of position and at a disadvantage. Even if they recovered from this blow, any attack they launched would be a weak and feeble thing compared with the original plan.

  Smoke filled the woods. The world seemed full of explosions, shooting, the crash of grenades going off. In Shulgin’s eyes, the whole battlefield was littered with people. Some were motionless, others convulsing from pain. Then, something hit him from the side, sending him flying through the air. He tried to get up but his foot turned under him. The agonizing wrench seemed to turn his whole leg to jelly. He couldn’t even move to get back to where the medical unit was. He started to crawl back but stopped. Why go back when I can go forward? He changed direction and found a wooden stump that offered some cover. He couldn’t remember what happened next; only a blaze of pain from his ankle when somebody tugged it. Shulgin rolled over, bayonet at the ready but held the thrust. One of the aid women was staring at him, contempt in her eyes.

  “What the hell are you doing here? Advance, coward. Good men are dying because you skulk behind a tree.”

  “My foot; it’s wounded. I can’t walk.”

  “What wound?” Her voice was scornful. Nevertheless, her fingers felt his ankle, none too gently. “Oh, I see. A dislocation. Well, I can fix that.”

  The aid woman grabbed his ankle. Shulgin expecting her to bandage or splint it. Instead, she just wrenched hard and the joint snapped back into place. Shulgin screamed, then let fly with a stream of curses. He’d never guessed he knew such language, let alone use it. The aid woman shook her head and crawled away to try and find other wounded to treat.

  He’d scurried forward. His ankle still felt like fire but at least the shooting pain and weakness h
ad gone. The Russian troops were getting artillery support now that surprise had gone. The shells howling over their heads to the German positions beyond. By the time Shulgin had rejoined his company, they had been joined by several 57mm antitank guns Somehow the crews had manhandled the heavy weapons through the trees and into position. His company commander waved him over. Their company had lost so many men they had been assigned to protect the guns rather than hold a section of the line. The good news was that the gunners had brought some extra Degtyarev light machine-guns with them. That would make up for the casualties they had taken.

  “Bratya! The fascists will be counter-attacking soon so we can all make sure my watch is set right!” There was a burst of laughter from the troops. Every veteran knew that the fascists took exactly 30 minutes to come to their senses and organize a counter-attack; not a second more or less. “Don’t forget what we are here for! We cannot hold without these guns. We must stop the fascist beasts from getting close to the guns. If we protect the artillerists, they will protect us from the tanks and half-tracks. Machine-gunners, cut the infantry off the tanks. The tanks will try and destroy our machine guns first. If we can get rid of the infantry, the artillerists will see to the tanks. If every man does his duty, we will hold!”

  A good speech, thought Shulgin, short and to the point, stirring and just long enough to keep the men’s minds off the fact that fascist tanks were coming. Fascist propaganda always showed them pouring masses of tanks in every assault but most of the time they would have a couple of tanks if that. They would sit at a safe distance and shell the Russian infantry positions. They would try to spot the Russian guns and suppress them but they would not close, not unless they were desperate to break through. Of course the answer to that was to position the guns on a reverse slope so that the tanks had to close to short range. Then, there would be a lethal, bloody duel. The tanks would fire. The half-tracks with them would close with their panzer-grenadiers. The 57s would make short work of them. Then the machine gunners could cut down the fascists as they abandoned their vehicles.