He had ration tins in pouches on his belt. The first one he grabbed was steak and kidney pie, without a doubt the best ration the Army made. One of the men carried a cooker that burned methylated spirit with an all but invisible flame. They brewed tea. Life might not be ideal, but it looked a lot better after grub and char.
Snow came later in the Ukraine than it did in Russia proper, but come it did. Ivan Kuchkov and his men put on white snow smocks and whitewashed their helmets. The smocks would get dirty soon enough. Well, so would the snow. They’d stay camouflaged for a while.
Sasha Davidov was putting on a fresh coat of whitewash when Ivan came up to him. The skinny little Jew looked up before Ivan got very close. You couldn’t sneak up on him. Nobody could—certainly not Ivan, and he was pretty good at sneaking. Those hair-trigger nerves made Sasha such a good point man.
“What do you need, Comrade Sergeant?” he asked.
“Not a fucking thing, not right now,” Ivan answered. “Tomorrow … Tomorrow I hear we get some tanks.”
Davidov nodded. “Yes, I heard that, too.” With his beaky nose, he looked like a sparrow—a sparrow that badly needed a shave, but even so.
“Did you? I just now found out, so fuck your mother,” Kuchkov said without heat. “Who told you? One of your clipcock buddies?”
“You keep your ears open, you hear things,” Davidov said, a yes that wasn’t a yes.
“You keep your mouth open, somebody’ll stick a dick in it,” Kuchkov said. Then he got back to the business at hand: “So we’ll be going forward again.”
“Seems pretty likely,” Davidov agreed.
“Yeah. It does. So you take your sorry kike ass out before sunup and see what kind of cunts we’ve got in front of us,” Ivan told him. “The more we know, the better the chances we fuck them and they don’t fuck us.”
“I’ll do it, Comrade Sergeant,” the Jew said. “But I’m pretty sure they’ll be Germans.”
Ivan was pretty sure of the same thing. “Goddamn Hitlerite dickheads,” he said in disgust. “Always those Nazi pricks. Never the Hungarians any more. Never the shitass Romanians and their stinking cornmeal mush.” His scowl made him even uglier than he was already. “And I fucking know why, too.”
“Because there are more Germans—and a lot more front-line Germans—than anybody else?” Davidov was a rational, sensible man. Except for being a hell of a good scout, he was wasted in the field. He should have gone back to Stavka and helped the generals decide how to move armies around.
Of course, rational and sensible didn’t necessarily mean right. Ivan laughed a nasty laugh. “No! Shit, no! That doesn’t have one single fuck to do with it. The NKVD cunts, they’ve got it in for us. They didn’t throw our sorry asses in a penal battalion after Vitya plugged the prick of a politruk. They didn’t bother. Keep sending us up against Hitler’s bitches for a while and we get used up any which way, know what I mean?”
Sasha Davidov rubbed his narrow, pointed chin. No, he didn’t look like a Russian. No wonder Jews got it in the neck all the goddamn time. All you had to do was see them to know them for outsiders. “I don’t like to think things work that way,” he said slowly.
“Well, how the fuck else are things gonna work?” Kuchkov asked in honest amazement.
The T-34s came up during the night. They’d been whitewashed, too, to make them harder to spot. Ivan would have been amazed if the Germans didn’t know they were there, though. Their diesel engines belched and farted as if they’d been gobbling beans and cabbage for the past hundred years. When daylight came, the exhaust pipes would throw up black smoke you could see for kilometers. Just being able to see them coming, though, didn’t mean the Nazis could stop them when they did.
At least it wasn’t one of those attacks where everybody linked arms and charged the Germans yelling Urra! Machine guns did horrible things to attacks like that. Sometimes even Russians broke before they got to their target. Sometimes, though, the men the MG-34s and MG-42s didn’t slaughter jumped down into the Fritzes’ foxholes and cleared the bitches out.
Here, the Red Army soldiers trotted through the misty dawn by ones and twos and in small groups. Yes, the T-34s spewed smoke through the mist. Yes, loping along behind them meant breathing all that smelly crap. Ivan didn’t care, even if he coughed. For one thing, he’d had his hundred grams of vodka, so he didn’t care about much of anything. For another, attacking with tanks beat the hell out of going in without them. They smashed things for you. And they drew fire that would be aimed at your miserable ass without them.
The Germans had sown mines in front of their positions. Signs with a skull and crossbones and the warning ACHTUNG! MINEN! made sure that was no secret. Kuchkov couldn’t have read the words even in Russian. He knew what they meant, though. They meant trouble, to say nothing of danger.
Either the tank commanders didn’t see the signs or they didn’t give a piss. Maybe they thought only antipersonnel mines lay under the snow, and they didn’t need to worry. They found out they were wrong when something went ba-blam! under the lead T-34. The tank slewed sideways and stopped, its left track blown off the road wheels. The crew bailed out on the side away from the Fritzes and huddled behind the crippled machine.
Ivan passed them with a certain sour sympathy. Pretty soon, some officer or NKVD man would see them and decide they could best serve the Soviet Union as infantrymen for a while. If they lived, maybe they’d get another tank. Or they might not. Nobody’d tried to put Ivan in another bomber after he bailed out of his burning SB-2.
A foot soldier tripped a different kind of mine. With a small boom, it kicked a package of shrapnel balls and more explosives up to about waist high. Then the package blew up in midair. The shrapnel balls tore the Russian almost in half. They didn’t kill him right away anyhow. He lay in the snow, thrashing and bleeding and screaming, till someone running by shot him to shut him up. Ivan nodded. That guy was doing the poor mutilated fucker a favor.
Trust the Fritzes to come up with a mine made to blow off your dick and your balls. Ivan wanted to cup his hands in front of his crotch as he ran through the minefield. It wouldn’t help, but he wanted to do it anyhow.
One of Hitler’s saws started spitting out death. The MG-42’s muzzle flashes came so close together, they made almost a continuous tongue of flame. Kuchkov threw himself down on his belly in the snow and crawled forward from then on out. Even so, some of the rounds cracked past just over his back.
A T-34 halted. Its cannon swung to bear on the machine-gun position. The Germans fired everything they had at it. Bullets sparked off its armor plating. But they didn’t seem to have any antitank guns in the neighborhood. The T-34’s gun boomed. The German machine gun fell silent.
“Urra!” the Red Army men yelled. Some of the ones who’d flattened out like Ivan got up and started running again.
“No, you stupid fucking dingleberries!” he screamed.
Too late. The MG-42 came back to malevolent life. Half a dozen Russian soldiers fell in the blink of an eye. The T-34 fired again, and then once more. The Nazis’ machine gun stayed quiet after that. Kuchkov kept crawling just the same.
By the time the Russians got to the German forward trenches, the Fritzes had pulled out of them. A dead man stared blindly up at the sky. Snowflakes grizzled the dark stubble on his cheeks and chin. Ivan fumbled through his belt pouches for food and tobacco. The Hitlerite had a nice flint-and-steel cigarette lighter. Kuchkov stuck it in a pocket of his snow smock.
“Come on! Chase them harder!” Lieutenant Obolensky yelled.
The men obeyed … to a point. If the Germans were pulling back on their own, a sensible Red Army soldier didn’t want to stick his neck out too far. Like a careless turtle, he might lose his head. Yes, the Nazis could wind up in a stronger position that would have to get cleared out next week. But next week lay a million years away, and it could damn well take care of itself.
The Block Island’s launch put-putted toward Tern Island. A strong swell was running down fro
m the north. Pete McGill had always had a pretty strong stomach. He’d been seasick a couple of times, but only a couple. Now, gulping, he wondered whether this would make one more.
Another Marine from the escort carrier leaned over the gunwale and noisily fed the fish. That did nothing to calm Pete’s queasy insides. “Take it easy, boys,” said the potbellied CPO at the rudder. “We’ll be there in a few minutes.” His cheeks were still bright pink. By the way he looked and sounded, he would have been happy as a clam if King Neptune and Davy Jones started playing ping-pong with the launch.
A stubby pier stuck out from the end of the runway the Seabees had built on Tern Island. The launch put in alongside it. Sailors helped the leathernecks scramble out of the launch and up onto the planking. The Marine who’d puked got down on his hands and knees and kissed the creosoted wood. Pete didn’t go that far, but he knew how the poor guy felt.
At the end of the runway, a flock of C-47s crouched under camouflage netting. More Gooney Birds circled overhead. They’d land for refueling as soon as the first bunch took off. More Marines would file into them. Then they’d get airborne again, too.
Pete ducked his head as he climbed into the plane to which a sailor with a clipboard beckoned him. He took his seat with his back against the C-47’s aluminum skin. He’d be fifth in the drop order. Good, he thought. Not long to wait once the jumping starts. Not long to think about anything.
Not long once the jumping started. But Tern Island was still two or three hours away from Midway. Till the jump light started going green, he’d have plenty of time to brood about this, that, and the other thing. He figured he’d come up with more ways for this operation to get fubar’d than the Japs ever could.
A scraping noise. A leatherneck across from Pete twitched. “What’s that?” He’d already started brooding.
“That’s your crabs playing hopscotch,” Pete said. The other Marine gave him the finger. Chuckling, Pete went on, “Nah, that’s just the netting coming off. They’ll fire up the motors soon—you wait.”
They did. First the starboard engine roared itself awake, then the port. The thunderous roar filled Pete from the soles of his boots to his helmet pressing against his hair. It seemed to come from inside as much as from without. If you had a loose filling or something, that roar would shake it right out of your tooth.
Before long, the C-47 taxied down the new runway. It bumped a few times, but what did you want—egg in your beer? One last bump and it was airborne. More noises from below meant the landing gear was retracting up into the wings. Pete unslung his rifle and cleaned it. No jams today, he thought. Better not be.
He wondered if they would have done better to take off in the middle of the night, so they got to Midway around daybreak. He shrugged. He was only a sergeant. He didn’t make choices like that. Hell, he didn’t even get asked about choices like that. They told him to get into the airplane, jump out of it, and start killing Japs as soon as he hit the ground.
He’d do it, too. All he wanted was to kill as many Japs as he could before they killed him. He figured they would, sooner or later. He just wanted it to be later. He was still paying them back for Vera, killed in Shanghai before the USA and Japan were even officially at war. He was paying them back for his own smashed shoulder and leg, too, but those were details.
The Marine next to him pulled his canteen from its pouch and took a swig. Then he offered it to Pete. The way he’d drunk told Pete it probably didn’t hold water. He took his own cautious swallow. Sure as hell, that was vodka or raw corn or torpedo juice or something else that would pour clear and look harmless but would get you crocked in nothing flat.
“Thanks, man,” he said as he gave back the canteen.
“Sure. All part of room service, y’know?” The other leatherneck grinned.
“Yeah, well, I wish I was in a room in some crib on Hotel Street with somebody prettier’n you,” Pete answered.
“This ain’t exactly the Ritz, is it?” the other Marine said.
“Only compared to where we’re going,” Pete said. That held enough truth to have sobered them if they’d drunk a lot more than the small knocks they’d poured down.
Somebody sitting up near the front bulkhead liberated a harmonica from a pocket and started blowing on it. A civilian DC-3 would have had enough soundproofing to let Pete listen to whatever he was trying to play. A military C-47 didn’t bother with such frills, except maybe in the cockpit. Anybody back here was strictly cargo. Pete wasn’t going to complain. If he had to choose between engine noise and harmonica music, he’d take engine noise any time.
On and on they went. The plan was for high-altitude bombers to plaster Midway before the C-47s got there. That way, the Japs would already be groggy by the time the Marine started falling out of the sky on top of them. It sounded good. Whether it would actually work … Well, they’d all find out pretty damn quick.
After what seemed like either ten minutes or three years, depending, the pilot spoke over the intercom: “Midway comin’ up. Jumpmaster, open the door. Marines, good luck to y’all.” His drawl said he was from somewhere between South Carolina and Mississippi.
Wind howled into the plane when the jumpmaster undogged the door. Pete got his first look outside since takeoff. The Pacific wasn’t nearly far enough below. He got a glimpse of a real gooney bird—an albatross—gliding along looking for fish.
Then the jumpmaster yelled, “There’s Midway, dead ahead!” He could see it. Pete couldn’t, not from where he was sitting. He just watched the light over the door. Red meant they were still out to sea. When it went green … That was when the picture show started.
Green! The first Marine went out before the jumpmaster could scream at him. Red. Then green again, much sooner that it would have come on a practice run. Another leatherneck out. Red. Green. Another. Everybody slid toward the door at each jump. Red. Green. Red.
Green. Pete stepped forward and stepped out. Sand and scraggly grass not far below. A bullet snarled past him. Not all the slanties were dead or stunned, then, dammit. Wham! The chute opened. Down he went. He was a sitting duck, but he wouldn’t hang up here for long. That was why the C-47s came in so low.
His boots thumped on the sand. He cut himself out of the parachute—no saving for a rainy day now. He just missed cutting off the top of his left thumb as he slashed through the tough webbing. He was looking around for his fellow paratroops when there was a tremendous explosion overhead. One of the Gooney Birds had taken a direct hit from a flak gun. It tumbled out of the sky in burning chunks. He hoped the Marines had already got out, but he had no way of knowing.
He had to worry about staying alive himself. Midway was full of broad, shallow bomb craters—the sand didn’t lend itself to deep ones. Marines sheltered in some of them. Others held Japs. The small-caliber Arisakas they carried sounded different from the Marines’ Springfields. The Japs didn’t seem to have any Tommy guns, though a couple of Nambu machine guns and their pale blue tracers added to the chaos.
There! That bastard was wearing the Japs’ faded khaki. Pete brought his rifle to his shoulder. It bucked as he pulled the trigger. The Jap folded up on himself. Then something tugged at Pete’s sleeve. When he looked down, he saw a bullet had torn his tunic without tearing up his arm. Sometimes you’d rather be lucky than good.
Most of the enemy fire seemed to be coming from the east. That was where the main American base had been. Hirohito’s boys must have taken it over when they seized the island. Now they’d die here.
“Come on!” Pete called, and waved his men forward. Before long, his bayonet had blood on it. All that training he’d done with the damn thing, and here he’d finally used it. But the revenge still didn’t feel like enough.
When the air-raid sirens began to howl in the middle of the morning, Hideki Fujita laughed and swore at the same time. The officers had their heads up their back passages. Who would take a drill seriously when it came at a time when American bombers were most of the way back to Oa
hu?
Only it turned out not to be a drill. The antiaircraft guns pounded away. Bombs began bursting on Oahu and in the ocean around it. The Yankees had lousy aim. When enough came down, though, how much did it matter?
All Fujita could do was huddle in a trench and hope none of those badly aimed bombs came down on top of him. None of them had yet, or he wouldn’t be here huddling. He dared hope he’d stay lucky one more time.
One of the bombers got hit and plunged toward the Pacific. That was what they got for having the nerve to come over in broad daylight! Fujita wasn’t the only Japanese fighting man to raise a cheer.
Another bomber got hit, and then another one. The Americans weren’t buying anything cheaply today. But the bombs kept raining down, too. A near miss knocked Fujita over onto his back, half buried him in sand, and left his ears too abused to hear anything much below a shout.
Air raids always seemed to last forever. Digging a finger into one ringing ear, Fujita scrambled out of the trench when the American planes finally flew off to the southeast. Unless an officer grabbed him and told him to do something else, he intended to go over to the lagoon and fill his belly with fresh-killed fish. Even bombs brought some good with them.
He saw that the airstrips had taken another beating. It would be a while before the G4Ms on Midway could even try to repay the Yankees for what they’d done here today. If you didn’t count the potency of germs, it was an uneven fight. Japan was at the very end of her reach here, while American strength in Hawaii kept growing and growing.
Fujita had almost got to the lagoon when the air-raid sirens began to screech again. He heard them as if from very far away, but hearing them at all made him swear. The Americans wouldn’t be coming back, and they wouldn’t throw two separate waves of planes at Midway … would they? Why? What point to it?
But those were more planes coming in from the direction toward which the bombers had flown. These were much lower, and differed in shape. Fujita rubbed his eyes, not to get sand out of them but in disbelief. These airplanes had a familiar outline. On his journeys across the vast reaches of the Japanese Empire, he’d flown in more than one Showa L2D3-1a. How could he not recognize them when he spied them now? What were they doing coming up from the southeast?
Last Orders: The War That Came Early Page 21
