Winter Warriors s-1

by Stuart Slade

  “I’ve got the train Boss.” Sergeant James Morton’s eyes were hurting and he had a bad headache. Too much work, too many searchlights, not enough sleep. Helsinki had been the added bit of strain on the Black Widow crews that had pushed them over the edge. They needed rest, needed it very badly.

  Evil Dreams orbited over the train, recognizing the gun in the dim light. Then, the crew set off north again and tried to work out where the German ambush unit was situated. The railway skirted the ridgeline, curved around a mound and then set off across the shallow valley. Then it curved away around another gentle rise. Quayle looked down at the track in the valley. Somehow it looked wrong.

  “Donnie, look at that track. It seem wrong to you?”

  Phelan looked hard, cupping his eyes and trying to focus on the track. Even with binoculars specially designed for low-light conditions, it was hard to make out but…. Then as the light strengthened he realized what he was looking at.

  “Got it, Boss. The tracks been torn up. Rails are off to the sides. The sleepers have been pulled away. Shadows make it look like the bed has a couple of holes in it as well.” That could be a mistake, the shallow-incidence light made every slight bump or dip look like a mountain or a yawning chasm.

  Quayle circled around again. Now, if the track was torn up here, then the best place to cover it would be over there wouldn’t it? He looked down hoping for a flash of light as an incautious officer watched him with binoculars but no such luck. Too much to hope for. “Donnie, get on the radio and call our friends over. We’ll need some help for this.” And better to have four Black Widows than one if enemy fighters turned up. As soon as the light grew better, they would be replaced by Thunderbolts or Thunderstorms and that would make life a lot more comfortable.

  Right, it was time to start. He had to make a choice and Quayle picked a point that looked as if it would give a good field of fire for the hidden German force. Evil Dreams angled over and started her run towards the selected piece of pine forest. Quayle leveled the aircraft out and let fly with all twelve of his five inch rockets. Below him, the wood line erupted into explosions as the salvo struck home.

  Mechanized Column, 71st Infantry Division, Kola Peninsula

  The American Night Witch pilot was good, very good. Even in the deceptive light of early dawn he had searched out his target and selected the likely position of his prey. He’d got damned close as well, the rocket salvo had punched into the treeline barely 100 meters from his position, close enough for some of the rockets to land amongst his men. Asbach had held his breath, hoping that none of them would open fire and reveal his true position. Doing that would bring down accurate fire from the Night Witch overhead. Discipline held, and the Night Witch climbed away, resuming its circling and waiting for something to break cover. Asbach guessed that the big twin-engined jabo wouldn’t be on its own much longer, it had probably called in its friends and reinforcements would be on the way.

  Then Asbach heard the sound he had been expecting, hoping that he wouldn’t hear it but expecting it nevertheless. The crash of light mortar rounds, the rattle of machine guns and the baying ‘urrah, urrah’ of Russian infantry. Asbach listened carefully, for sounds could tell him what eyes could not. Was the rhythmic thumping of StG-44s, the German rear-guard? Or partisans with captured weapons? The ripping sound of the German MG-42s and MG-45s were already dominating the symphony. That meant the attack had to be developing fast. Mixed up with the sound of the German weapons was another tearing noise, one so fast that individual shots were indistinguishable. That had to be the PPS-45. And finally, a slow, dull, thumping, richer and heavier than the rest. The American .45 machine pistols they handed out with such largess. A crude, clumsy weapon but one that was accurate and fired a crippling bullet.

  Asbach held his breath. It was a partisan attack for sure. But if Lang moved his two halftracks to support the tiny force at the rear of the formation, he would reveal the position of the unit to the Night Witches overhead. Even as he thought the situation through, a runner slid in the snow beside him.

  “Captain’s compliments and he’s leading his reaction force in on foot, doesn’t want to move his vehicles. Says the enemy is attacking in at least battalion strength and there are ski-troops mixed in with Partisans. They have mortars, machine guns and our rifles.”

  Asbach nodded. “Tell Lang to drive the enemy back. Keep them away from our main position. If those Partisans have a radio and they report where we are, our friends up there will be having a field day.” The runner nodded and slid off to rejoin his units.

  Asbach sighed gently. This was likely to be the final confrontation between him and the men on that accursed train. Once, in Monte Carlo, before the war, he had seen the combination of hope and despair on the face of a man who had placed his last few chips on a single number on the roulette wheel. He had watched that wheel spin with hope despite the odds against him. Against all common sense, he had been shocked when the turn went against him and he lost the last of his small wealth. Now, Asbach knew just how that man had felt.

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

  “Any word from the Finns, Tage?”

  “Much news, it will be public soon but we have had warning first. Helsinki, what’s left of it, told Stockholm less than an hour ago and they told me. Risto Heikki Ryti has resigned as President and Marshal Mannerheim is being elected to take his place. Ryti had to go, nobody would believe him, even if he did declare peace. The message from the Marshal is that Finland will accept the Russian peace terms as laid down in our last meeting, harsh though they are. He believes German troops in the north of the country will retreat to Norway but it will be necessary for the Canadians and Russians to deal with those in the South.”

  “I am surprised, I’d thought the Finns were certain to reject those terms.” Loki relaxed in his chair, spinning it slightly from side to side as he absorbed the news. “And Finland is out completely?”

  “Completely.” Tage Erlander had also found it hard to believe that Finland would collapse. “It was the bombing that did it, that and the way their Motti tactics failed against the Canadians. Their success against the Russians and the lack of any real strikes against the homeland had persuaded Ryti that carrying on the war was risk-free. As he saw it, Finland had everything to gain by carrying on and nothing to lose. Then, the Canadians cut up the Finnish Army and the Americans burned Helsinki down. Win or lose, Finland was going to get hurt and hurt badly.”

  “How many died in Helsinki? Anybody know yet?”

  “Final total? No, nobody will know for days or weeks. The estimates are rising every hour. It was 10,000 at dawn, now it is 20,000 and still it rises. The Finns had no real air raid precautions in place, not against the sort of raid the Americans launched. Oh, they had antiaircraft guns, searchlights, all those things and sirens to warn people. But all they’d experienced before was some Russian planes scattering a few light bombs. Their buildings had strong cellars and, as usual, people went there to hide from the bombs. They died there, roasted by the fires. The only ones who lived were the ones who started to run early and kept running. It is rumored the American had night fighters over the city and they strafed the refugees as they ran.”

  Loki snorted. “Not likely. I’d guess they were attacking the anti-aircraft guns to protect the bombers.” And I know the mind behind this thought Loki, not knowing how completely wrong his belief was. “Doesn’t matter though. Finland’s out, that’s what matters. Tage, we need to get this through to Washington and Moscow as quickly as possible. Does your embassy still have its circuits open?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good, and I will tell the Swiss government.”

  Haven’t I just done that? thought Erlander then dismissed the idea as unfair. The banks weren’t the same thing as the Swiss Government, not even this one. Not quite anyway. “Well, we wanted the Americans to intervene and they did. Just not the way we thought.”

  “True Tage. But
we wanted them to secure a less severe peace for the Finns, not force the original down their throats. You know, when this is all over, all of the Nordic countries are going to have to think about this very carefully. If the Russian Bear is on the move up your way and the Americans will back those moves, it doesn’t look very good. If you don’t hang together.”

  “We will all hang separately.” Erlander half-chuckled at the quotation. “But Danes, Norwegians, Swedes hanging together? That would be a first time. And to have the Finland in there as well. Or what is left of Finland. It will not be a happy or comfortable alliance.”

  “So much worse than being Russian provinces?” Loki was irritated. The petty quarrels of his original homeland in the face of impending disaster rankled him. “Look, Tage, we all share much more than our differences suggest, you know that. Scandinavia has to put up a united face when this damned war ends or it’ll get eaten alive. You know that as well.”

  Tage Erlander sighed, this strange Swiss banker was right, the times when Scandinavia could remain absorbed in its own petty affairs while the rest of the world ignored it were fading fast. This war would end and Sweden had better be prepared for it. Otherwise, the fate of Helsinki could be repeated many, many times. Then, he asked himself the one question that he had always been afraid to ask. Just how far would the Americans go to bring Nazi Germany down?

  Watching him, Loki saw the message sink home. He had tried before to bring Scandinavia to the center of the world stage. His efforts had been a disaster. Because Stuyvesant had played his own game as usual and wrecked everything. The thought seethed through Loki’s mind and made him want to slam his fist down on his desk. It had so nearly worked before …. Then he forced himself to calm down. This time it would be different, this time Stuyvesant owed him for all the intelligence material he was relaying back. This time Stuyvesant was in a war that he couldn’t win without Loki’s help. Now, when Loki tried to get Scandinavia united again, it would work. Because that was the price of his aid to the Americans.

  Mechanized Column, 71st Infantry Division, Kola Peninsula

  There had been a time when artillerists had fought their guns to the barrel. Gunners would fight cavalry and infantry hand-to-hand around their guns to prevent the disgrace of the artillery pieces being lost. When indirect fire had become the normal way of doing things and the guns had been positioned miles behind friendly lines, it had seemed those days were gone. Russia had quickly dispelled that idea. First tank thrusts that penetrated the defenses and suddenly emerged kilometers behind friendly lines had brought the guns back into the front line. Then had come the partisans whose sudden strikes could turn a safe haven into a battlefield without warning. Gunners had had to fight their guns to the barrel again and know how to use the weapons that kind of fighting required.

  Sergeant Heim had been in Russia since the heady days of 1941. Then, the Heer had driven through western Russia, scattering the Soviet Army before them. For a while the huge encirclements brought in prisoners by the tens or hundreds of thousands and cities had fallen with the regularity of a ticking clock. It had seemed like the war really would be over by Christmas. But the Heer hadn’t made it to Moscow by the time the winter arrived. In the snows of that first winter, the Soviet counter-offensive had driven the Germans from the gates of Moscow. That’s when Heim had learned that artillerymen still had to fight like infantry sometimes. The lesson had stayed with him in the years that came next, the fall of Moscow in 1942, the last German drive forward, the arrival of the Americans, the descent of the war into a bloody, futile deadlock. As every year rolled by, the gunners had had to protect their guns. Now they had to do it again.

  The perimeter of the defensive position had been weak. Just a squad of panzergrenadiers. A total of eight men with two machine guns and four rifles. One of the machine gun teams had gone in the first second of the attack, a grenade thrown out of the trees had landed in the pit beside them, killing both men instantly. Then there had been the roar of rifle, machine gun and machine-pistol fire. It had been followed by the sight of the white-clad partisans and ski-troops slipping through the trees to assault the paper-thin defense line.

  Both sides had been blasting off ammunition at each other. That was something else that had changed since 1941. Now virtually every soldier had an automatic, or at least semi-automatic, weapon. Attacks tended to be concentrations of automatic fire poured at the other side. The hope was to pin them down until the artillery got them. Only, there was no artillery in this battle. The partisans had light mortars only, weapons that were of little use in the dense trees. Their rounds exploded in the treetops, scattering down light fragments but without the power to do crippling damage. The German unit had Heim’s four surviving 150mm self-propelled guns but they had been lined up on where the train would have to appear and men would have to work on the torn-up tracks. The gun was in a limited-traverse housing. Turning the whole vehicle around just wasn’t going to be possible.

  So, this battle was infantryman against infantryman and would be decided by the weapons they carried. And the numbers on each side of course. There, the partisans had an advantage. They had struck the weakest part of the German position. Already they were wearing the defenses down. The partisans themselves weren’t normally the best of soldiers. Today, the Siberians were mixed in with them and they could stand toe-to-toe with the best Germany had to offer. The squad guarding the rear wasn’t going to last much longer. Then, Heim knew he would be fighting as an infantryman again.

  “Pass word out, all the gun crews, get ready. Man the machine gun with two men per gun. The rest of you, get rifles and get between the vehicles.” Each one of the self-propelled guns had an MG-45 machine gun mounted on the gun casement for exactly this emergency. They would act as pillboxes while the rest of the crews prevented the enemy getting too close.

  A single figure dressed in white suddenly backed out of the woods. He was firing his rifle from the hip, short bursts ripping out at an unseen enemy following him. “Kameraden!” The word rang through the waiting guns. The man turned and ran for the guns. He dived into cover as he reached the illusion of protection offered by their steel shapes.

  “Come here.” Heim’s voice was sharp and insistent. The man quickly mounted the self-propelled gun and dropped into the fighting compartment. “What is happening.”

  “Partisans. And ski troops. They have chewed us up, I am the only one left. There are hundreds of them.”

  Heim shook his head. There weren’t, it just seemed like that. His mind flipped back to that winter offensive of 1941/42 and the Siberians sliding through the snow. They had harried their enemies the way wolves brought down their prey. “We’ll hold them here. Join the men by the guns.”

  The MG-45 was already loaded and waiting. Heim pulled back the charging lever and nestled down behind the gun. It wouldn’t be long now. His eyes ran along the nearest group of trees, was there movement already from behind them? The butt of the machine gun fitted neatly into his shoulder and he squeezed the trigger gently. The movement sent a short burst into the suspect trees. That broke the brief silence that had descended on the battlefield. A hail of return fire ricocheted off the armor of his self-propelled gun. Heim briefly thanked the gods of war that the fire was from rifles only. The self-propelled guns only had armor to protect them against rifle-caliber weapons. Anything more would go through and bounce around inside.

  His men were returning fire. Their StG-44s cracked out quick bursts as the gunners tried to spot the muzzle flashes of the approaching Russians and pin them down. Firing was spreading quickly along the line of self-propelled guns. The machine guns laced the treeline with tracers, the riflemen filled in the gaps. On the other side, the automatic weapons carried by the partisans returned a growing volume of fire. Heim noted that for all the sound and fury of the fire exchange, nobody actually seemed to get hit. Idly the mathematician’s part of his mind, the part no artilleryman could do without, wondered just how many rounds got fired from thes
e assault rifles and machine pistols to get a kill, and how that compared with the old bolt-action weapons. It sometimes seemed as if we have replaced one round that hits with a lot that don’t.

  That idle speculation didn’t last long. Nor did it stop Heim from raking the woodline with his machine gun. The problem now wasn’t ammunition, it was heat build-up on the barrel. Carry on like this and the barrel will burn out. Over on the left, the gun at the extreme end of the line stopped firing. Either the gunner inside had been hit or his weapon had jammed. Almost at once, the weight of Russian fire shifted to that section. Heim saw more white-clad figures moving through the snow towards the silent vehicle. Their fire was pinning down the men next to the vehicle. Soon, they would be close enough to blast them out with hand grenades. Heim switched his fire to the new threat. He saw his burst of fire tumble down three or four of the ghostly figures. Then he had to duck as almost every gun the Russians had concentrated on him. He hadn’t heard such a concentration of ringing since the church bells at his wedding. His wife’s family had been overjoyed at the ceremony. That hadn’t surprised Heim, their first baby had been born seven months later.

  He shook his head, clearing the memory out and peeked over the edge of the armor. He was just in time to see a gray-black cloud of smoke flash from the ground. A rolling explosion enveloped the side of the gun. Either an RPG-1 or a captured Panzerfaust he thought. He’d heard the Americans had copied the Panzerfaust and were building them in a new factory in Siberia. Rumor had it they were building so many that every Russian soldier would carry one. That was only fair, the Germans had copied the American Bazooka as their Panzerschreck. The stricken self-propelled gun was already starting to burn. The petrol engine used by the British tank that served as its chassis would see the fire quickly become terminal.