World War Three 1946 Series Boxed Set: Stalin Strikes First

by Harry Kellogg

  He and his generator and support team were almost dropped by parachute until cooler minds prevailed. The Stavka was so desperate to gain a few extra kilometers of early warning that he had almost been pushed out of a plane instead of landing in a field. Say what you will, those little Po-2s planes still had a purpose and had ferried him and his men here to Meghri in no time.

  He heard his commander relaying his sighting data to what sounded like Novikov himself. On the one hand he hoped not but on the other he was kind of proud that what he was doing was so important to the homeland. He only wished they had listened to him yesterday and maybe more could have been saved and more Amerikosi bombers shot down.

  “What the Hell”

  The landing craft lifted a good 10 feet before it settled back down to where they could start to climb up the rope nets. Once you got on you had to move fast and climb at least 11 feet before the boat came up and knocked you in the water and you were crushed between two metal walls. Earl had seen that happen a few times.

  “What the hell are we doing this for Corp? This is nuts. You look at any map and there is just no place that we are going to need to amphibious invade on our way to Moscow. This is FUBAR Corp. Day after day climbing up and down, pretending to invade some foreign shore. What a waste of time and my energy.

  I interrogated dozens of Nazis after the war and not one of them made an amphibious assault on their way to the outskirts of Moscow. Maybe a few river crossings but nothing that involved real LCTs, LSTs, DUCKS and other all this other shit. It’s almost like they had to find a way to use all this equipment left over from the invasion of Japan or something. Sounds like something the Army would do. “We bought it so we have to use it” or some shit like that.”

  “Shut up and climb Sims... here comes the wave and we don’t want you getting your pants wet now do we?”

  Earl scrambled up a little faster although he knew he was high enough based on his previous couple of dozen climbs under similar circumstances. Hell he figured he had three feet to spare so he was not worried but he moved a little faster to shut the Corporal up.

  Boy that guy was irritating. Is that how they pick corporals? You take the most irritating guy and put him in charge. Asshole! He knew how far the Goddamn boat was going to rise better than he did. That asshole missed the first 2 weeks of this shit and here he is telling me what to do.

  Four weeks of going down the nets into the boats. Watching Jennings get seasick...every goddamn time… then we scramble out onto the rocky shore and shoot at imaginary Reds. The Navy lobs a few shells over our heads and we fix bayonets and charge off the beach and stab a few straw bales and dive into a ditch and get up and run up that same god damn hill. It was almost like they knew exactly where they were going to land and attack even now. How could they know that at this stage of the war?

  He wished he could see the topo map the lieutenant was always looking at. Maybe that would give him a clue as to where in the world they were going to attack. Ah hell what did it matter all he had to do was to follow orders from guys like this asshole corporal.

  “We have an extra treat for you clowns today...two climbs down the net and up again. Seems the Major didn’t like your cavalier attitude. He doesn’t think your serious enough. Serious enough to fight the commies and win and that’s all he cares about. All he cares about is winning.

  NOW GET YOUR ASSES BACK ON THE NETS AND BACK IN THOSE BOATS! AND THIS

  TIME DO IT SERIOUSLY”, the Corporal yells dripping with sarcasm …”or we’ll do it again.” All the noncoms start to yell at the same time. It’s all jumbled together but you know what they want so down you go and wait for the landing craft to rise up and then you climb down as fast

  as you can and wait again for it to come up and greet you like some deranged metal wave and if you time it right you don’t jump on your squad mate and you land without twisting your ankle or breaking anything and scramble out of the way of another falling squaddie and all the time trying to look “serious” for the major.

  He can’t even see your face from up there where he’s standing. I can’t see his so he can’t see mine. Everything smells old and musty. All this equipment and even his uniform was in storage in some island in the Pacific and reeks of rotting vegetation and wet canvas. Jees there goes Jennings again right on time. Disgusting, how can you puke so much

  Chapter Twenty One:

  Change of Strategy

  Soviet sniper

  ***

  A number or Soviet snipers in WWII had over 400 kills with one claiming over 700. The top ten snipers in history are all Soviets.

  ***

  Moving On

  Yeorgi was going home. He was leaving his trench near the creek with the desmans and was going back to his beloved Caucasus Mountains where he could also be around the little moles. Why had those creatures been put in only two places on earth and why had he been brought up in one and become a man in another. His part of the Pyrenees Line had not changed in months and he and his desmans have had a fine time of it but now it was time to move on and the rumor had it that his unit was going to be assigned to the Southern Front and was going to either march on the Levant or the oil fields in Iraq.

  He was going to miss his dozen or so furry rodents he had watched for hours through his sniper scope but he knew that the area they were going to temporarily also had a good population of desmans for him to befriend. It was all that made this nightmare bearable. He had shot over 30 Americans and Spanish. A number of them looked like his cousins. He was having nightmares composed of exploding heads. You just can’t kill fellow human beings day after day watching them die by your hands close up through a sniper scope and not be affected.

  He was not a natural born killer. He was just a good shot. He had natural abilities for hitting a target no matter if it was a piece of paper or a human head. Nine times out of ten if he could see it he could hit it. That didn’t mean that he enjoyed it or even felt proud of it. How “manly is it to kill someone while they are taking a shit or brushing their teeth. It was cowardly in his opinion but the commissar did not ask his opinion. He just wanted dead Amerikosi. He just wanted to take credit for Yeorgi’s record number of kills...kills...yes kills. That’s exactly what he was doing. He was killing some other father, son, brother or lover and for what?

  Maybe if there were like the Germans who raped their way through the Ukraine and tortured their way to the gates of Moscow. How would his killing these 30 men stop the Amerikosi from dropping atomic bombs on his little village?

  What was that idiot doing? Why didn’t his compatriots pull him down and under cover? Did they not care. Oh no the commissar sees him too and I have to kill him.. He knows I can see him. He knows I cannot miss at this distance. Shit! I have to do this.

  “Nice shot comrade. That makes what 31 or 32?” “I lose track comrade commissar.”

  “That’s ok Yeorgi I will keep track for you. I saw that one from my scope. Wonderful shot, just wonderful.”

  “Thank you commissar.” Yeorgi said but he was thinking ...I’ll be seeing that in my nightmares tonight and for many nights to come. What was that idiot thinking? I was his fault and I had no choice, no choice. I had to take the shot it was so blatant an infraction of any kind of military discipline or even common sense even for a new person. What was that Amerikosi thinking? Now I will be thinking about him for the rest of my life, thinking of how his head just exploded from the eyes downward. How the jaw just hung open and even twitched and how his body did not comprehend what had just happened to it. How it sat there for a few seconds before it toppled over. Yes he would be seeing this one forever, possibly every night over and over again. It would be mixed up with the many others but it would always be there, night after night in his nightmares.

  Suicide by Sniper

  Bill had just got a “Dear John” letter from his high school sweetheart, his one and only. On top of that he had just lost his best friend Miller to a napalm attack. He couldn’t sleep and had b
een up for three days straight thinking about the hell he was living and how he just wanted it to stop. He wanted the pain and suffering he saw around him every day to just stop but he could do nothing about it.

  He had fought starting on D-Day up until the end of the war and had seen horrible things but the new weapons that each side in this fight where using on each other was inhumane by any standard, especially napalm. He had a lifelong fear of fire anyway and to see your best friend consumed by fire in front of your eyes screaming for you to shoot him and stop the pain had just been too much. Combined with losing his girl…”his girl”, Jenny, it was just too much for him to take.

  By letting the sniper take his life he would be able to give his mother some money from his life insurance policy. If he had just put gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger she would get nothing but if he just leaned a little bit further forward from his post on the wall he would be an easy target and knowing the skill of that commie sniper they had over there, he would be dead quite quickly and painlessly before his brain had time to register what happened.

  All in all a good solution for his physical and mental pain that had become unbearable. First his father had been killed when his tractor rolled over him, leaving his ma to try and run the placeby herself. Jenny had come over to help and they had hired some drifter as a hired hand. Then Miller had been burned alive before his very eyes and the next day the letter from Jenny arrived telling him she was running away with the hired hand...it was all just too much for his 20 year old brain to handle and he had just leaned over a little bit too far knowing what would happen, and it did.

  Whoever had killed, Jones and Edwards had just killed him. The last thing that went through his mind was the phrase “suicide by sniper” and that was it.

  The Bridge

  Rene had never seen so many trucks. Trucks carrying both men and tanks and all headed East. He had concerns that the bridge would hold after such a pounding. The tanks had come by the dozens and under their own power fighting their way at times. Now they were just passengers on trains and large trucks going back the direction they had come from. I guess tanks are meant to fight and not to travel long distances, Rene thought. He really didn’t care why. I’m sure the commander will be glad to hear it one way or the other. They are leaving Southern France and that is all that matters for now. Why in the world would they be headed east? Could the Americans be attacking somewhere else?

  He had heard about the atomic bombs, so maybe they were going to that area. Once again it did not matter too much to him just as long as they were gone. Rene was not a very curious man for being a sometimes spy for NATO. He spied whenever he found or observed something worth passing on. He did not go looking for trouble but if it was going past his car at 50 kilometers per hour he would take notice and pass that information on.

  He was going to be here all day from the looks of the dust clouds coming from the mountains. He personally hated the mountains. Too many things that could kill you. He understood the sea but being high up made him breathe hard and who needed that to be added to their woes. Too many other things that can go wrong besides not being able to breath.

  He noticed a strange looking engine on the train he was watching at a distance from his vantage point where he was stuck anyway by the military traffic of the Red Army. It looked more like a rolling fortress than an engine. It had multiple what looked like tank turrets mounted on top. Rene shrugged. I suppose you can do anything if you have the will, he thought. It certainly looked intimidating and that is what the Ruskies loved big things that looked intimidating similar to the Germans in a way.

  Merde! They were really on the move in enormous numbers and all heading east. Borscht sucking scum...he would miss their vodka however. He had acquired a taste for it along the way as it was the only thing available in some towns. He was not tight with the Ruskie like the mayor and the council members. He doubted that the mayor and the council would be run out of town like the Vichy when the Red finally left and the town thought it could retaliate without being burned down like so many during the time of the hated Boche.

  Besides many of the city leaders were former resistance fighters and most were communist for many, many years. Who could blame them for putting in place a government that they thought would save the world. It was much better than the time of terror or even the Vichy. It was amazing to him that his own people could be so cruel to their neighbors.

  Let’s see that makes roughly 6 battalions by his count with over 200 tanks. They were those big ones that had the turret with no neck kind of like a short helmet and that massive gun that they had mounted on those beasts. The whole effect was horrifying. Must be hard to knock that pot off the body he mused. Well that was up whoever faced those steel monsters and not him. He was part of the earth here. One way or the other he would never leave. One day his body would nourish the ground he was now squatting on and perhaps the small tree he was using for cover would grow big and tall on the chemicals and nutrients his body put back into the soil. No, he would never leave here and that was just fine with him.

  Konstantin

  Zhukov was intrigued with the idea of invading the Turk, the Ottoman Empire, the former scourge of the south and the peoples who had terrified many generations of Russian children. He was going to avenge the Byzantine empire and once again bring Constantinople into the sphere of civilization once again.

  Individually the Turk was a formidable fighter but collectively he was a disaster. He expected to eliminate the Amerikosi airfields that were being used in Turkey to be overrun in as little as 45 days once the assault started. Constantinople’s walls would be no impediment to a modern army as they had been for thousands of years first to keep out the Mongol, then the Turk and finally the west.

  The art of war had progressed too far for the old walls to withstand a 122mm shell or a 46 ton tank. The Soviet soldier was the undisputed master of city warfare so he expected little trouble in first bypassing and then eliminating any resistance there. With the Turk no longer in control of the Bosphorus or collectively the Turkish straits and the Black Sea fleet could start to harass the British and Yankee boats that have so far plagued his plans. That Sergo character had promised to unleash his missiles if a worthy target presented itself and he had more conventional weapons ready to fight the B-29, Shooting Star and RAF Meteor. It was some kind of new jet that would bring superiority to the VVS over the skies of the battlefield.

  He just wanted the pesky boats gone. He had seen the devastation they had created near Le Havre and now had to take detours to bring his forces to bear on the Turk. He had to stay a good 30 miles from the shore of the various seas in the area for fear of intervention by the naval forces of the imperialist pigs.

  The irony of Sergo not using the missiles on the ships was that the guidance system was initially designed to target ships. His fear of an unexploded warhead falling into the hands of NATO was somewhat warranted but not enough to allow the Western navies the unfettered freedom they possessed currently. That would have to be addressed especially when his forces got closer to the Levant and the Suez. Sergo’s missiles would have to be used for what they were designed for.

  As he stared at the line of tank transports and train loads of forces crawling along the mountain roads from his command car in his armored train he suddenly turned and his aide quickly came to his side knowing that something was about to occur that meant his life was about to change. He knew his Marshal very well and the twitching of the jaw always meant something significant was about to happen.

  Zhukov spoke in the low rumble that was his trademark for beginning an important statement. It forced you to get closer even knowing that the volume and pitch that frequently came would physically force you to take a step back. But that initial beginning made you lean in close knowing what was to come and what was to follow. It was an effective technique that had never failed Zhukov nor failed to frustrate and intimidate his subordinates.

  The aide knew by now that th
e first few sentences were more of a stalling tactic while the Marshal collected his thoughts for verbal communication. Kind of like clearing your throat or a platitude filled welcoming statement about how pleased he was to be in your company. Zhukov did not use platitudes so he unconsciously used the technique he had developed over the many years of commanding men, commanding them to give their very lives for an idea and in sometimes great numbers.

  Finally the essence of the order came to the fore and the aide did not need to lean in to hear it.

  “Bring Konstantine to me. He is the one who has been working on masking the true nature of the Stalin’s Fire missile’s guidance system.”

  “Of course comrade.”

  The aide thought to himself, that was not what I expected. What is that old fox up to now? He was never bored in this position. The marshal’s other aide had made it through the war against the Nazis only to be killed by a stray bullet from an unknown source while standing next to Zhukov while he was touring the newly captured city of Berlin. He was in the right or wrong place at the right or wrong time depending on your point of view and had been ordered to step in and be the marshal’s aide. Luckily he was a natural and Zhukov had no complaints that he knew of.

  He quickly walked the length of the train and entered what had easily become the most disorganized mess anyone had ever seen that was the command car of the undisputed master of maskirovka. A man no one ever heard of or knew existed.

  The master of deception had his back to the door and did not turn around when the compartment was bathed in sunlight and cold air.