Winter Warriors

CHAPTER TEN: ALL THINGS MUST PASS

“A Hitlerite battle group.”

Knyaz surveyed the railway junction with his binoculars. A few feet away, Noble Sniper Irina Trufanova was doing the same using the PMU telescopic sight on her rifle. At the moment she was under orders not to fire. This was a covert scouting mission after all. If the patrol was spotted, her first job would be to drop anybody giving orders. Still, no sign of that yet.

There were half tracks scattered around the buildings. Instinctively Knyaz counted them. Almost enough for a full battalion of Panzergrenadiers. There probably had been enough once but there were six bomb craters in the middle of the building cluster and at least two burned-out vehicles. That had to be the work of the Night Witch whose report had caused his patrol to be diverted here.

“What do you think they’re doing here?” Captain John Marosy was watching as well; rather hoping the force gathered around the junction was too strong for the ski unit to take on.

“There is one of your naval gun trains west of here.” Knyaz spoke slowly. He hadn’t told the Americans of the radio messages he’d received that morning. A Russian officer told nobody any more than he had to, a hangover from the bad old days. Ski units were more closely knit than most. Even so, operational security was paramount. Not because Knyaz didn’t trust his men; because lifting a man from a unit and getting him to tell everything he knew was a past-time both armies practiced. A few carefully-chosen barbarities and that man would tell whatever he knew. What he didn’t know, he couldn’t tell. Which could be very tough on the captured man, of course. “It is trying to escape to the North. The original line was cut by bombing, now it must come through here.”

“So the unit is trying to block it. Can they stop the train?”

“They do not have to. This junction splits the line two ways. A line to the north that takes the trains, eventually, to Murmansk. The other line goes east but eventually curves back south. Would you like to guess which way those points will have been set?”

Marosy didn’t like the way this was going. “They’ll be set so the train goes south.”

“That is so. The combat group is set up so it will stop anybody changing the points. If the train stops, it will be captured. If it does not, it will curve south, go deeper into enemy territory and still be captured.”

“So we will have to capture the points and change them. Put the train on the right track.” Neither comment was a question, much as Marosy would have liked them to have been. He was very unhappy about this. He’d heard of the horrors of infantry fighting on the Russian Front and that was quite enough.

“An easy thing to say, Tovarish Captain. Look at what we have down there. At least three mechanized infantry companies, an artillery battery, a platoon of armored cars with 50mm guns in turrets and another with 75mm anti-tank guns. That is much more than a battalion; far too much for a full-strength infantry platoon. And we will be under strength for I must send men to warn the train of what awaits it.”

Marosy thought carefully, An old proverb ran though his mind. “If you’re going to a fight, bring all your friends. And get them to bring their friends’ He knew few people in the American Army, let alone the Russians. He did have friends in the Air Force. To make matters better, he was trained as a forward air controller. “Knyaz, the switches for the junction, they are by that small shack, yes?”

“If this is the same as all the other lines, yes. And things are very standardized.”

“Well, suppose we had some air support. In fact, a lot of air support. Could we take that hut, it’s close to us, and hold it long enough to reset the junction and let the trains past? Then the trains pick us all up and take us North?”

Knyaz thought carefully also. His unit was small but very skilled and were veterans. If the Americans threw their aircraft in to the battle and kept the fascists under fire and if the trains were lucky, they might get past. And they might be able to pick up the remains of the ski unit. That was so many ifs but if they all came to pass, it would be good to ride a train on the way back home. There was the problem of the vehicles of course, but if their crews could take them further north, they could be picked up later.

“Can you get us air support?”

“Have you a radio I can use?”

“Sir, up ahead. Men in white.”

That could mean anything, Perdue thought. Everybody wore snow camouflage up here. It was very, very hard to tell who was who. The banana-shaped magazines of the German rifles were a pointer, certainly, but enough captured weapons were floating round to make them an unreliable guide at best. So who were these people?

“Sound General Quarters. Get the men with rifles ready. If this is an ambush, we’ll have to shoot our way out of it.”

Ahead, one of the white figures was standing on the railway line, waving his arms in the traditional “stop “ sign. Perdue had no intention of doing that, no intention at all. Not until the situation was a lot clearer than it was now. “Slow down a bit, but keep going.” Let the situation mature as the mud-puppies say. Trouble was if one let the situation mature long enough, it all turned into manure.

“What’s he doing?”

“Still waving, Sir. Now he’s making a ‘cut’ gesture. Looks like a guy on the carriers doesn’t it?”

“It does indeed.” Perdue’s binoculars were shaking too much from the vibration of the engine to allow clear vision but the guns carried by some of the men had the drum magazines of the PPS-45. That and the American-type ‘cut power’ gesture decided him. That and the fact he had a lot of riflemen on board.

The gamble paid off. The lone figure on the track ran forward when the engine came to a halt and saluted at the foot of the engine cab.

“Sergeant William Bressler, Sir. Navigator of the A-38 Hammer Blow, shot down a few days ago. We’ve been with a Russian ski unit since then.”

“Commander Perdue, United States Navy. We?”

“My pilot is Captain John Marosy, Sir. He’s with the rest of the ski unit. Sir, I’ve got bad news for you. The krauts have a reinforced battalion battle group around the junction up ahead. Mechanized infantry, artillery, those big armored cars with tank guns, you name it. They’re blocking the junction and the points are set to send you back south.”

That was it, Perdue thought, game over. Blow up the guns and hope we can infiltrate ourselves back North.

“Damn, we got this far too.”

“Sir, the ski unit commander has a plan. Captain Marosy is calling for air support. Given the situation, he thinks he’ll get it. The ski unit will attack under the cover of that air attack. They will seize the points and reset them. Then, while the aircraft are still bombing, you crank these engines up, open the throttle as wide as it’ll go and just crash through the krauts. The line north is fairly straight; it’s the southern branch that curves north. As you get clear, slow down and pick up the ski troops and then make a run north.”

“Not a man for subtlety is your Captain.” Perdue thought it over. There was a certain simplicity about the plan that made it hypnotically attractive. Just go flat out and crash through. “Suppose the krauts block the line?”

“They haven’t, Sir. I guess they expect you to either stop or take the southern branch. Their unit is pretty spread out as well; a Black Widow hit them last night and cut them up.”

“Know how that feels.” Perdue grunted. His mind played with the images of what he had been told.

“Well, it means that if the bombing pins them down, they won’t be able to concentrate on the ski unit.”

“How are we going to coordinate this?” Perdue decided that just running his guns past an entire kraut battalion was too much of an opportunity to pass up. Just like Farragut in the days of old.

“Captain says just watch, Sir. And listen out on this frequency. No need to coordinate in advance. You just stay put here and wait for the bombing to start. Then just come through as fast as you can.”

“Interesting document from Lucy, Loki.” Branwen put the file on Loki’s desk. “And a… messenger… from Sweden is waiting to talk to you.”

It was a bit hard to decide what to call the visitors from Sweden. Messenger was a good approximation but messengers didn’t have the powers to negotiate things or give opinions. Ambassadors would have been a good option, only sovereign countries didn’t send ambassadors to banks. Even to banks that were a lot older than most countries. Supplicant might be a good term, thought Loki, or delegate perhaps?

“What’s the document?”

“Very interesting. It’s a description of German plans to deal with damage from bombing attacks. Everybody was expecting to get bombed right at the start of the war, you know that, but it never really happened. There was Rotterdam of course, and a few raids on England, but mostly no bombing until the B-29 raids. And they’ve more or less stopped now. I guess H.G. Wells must be really upset. He was so proud of The Shape of Things To Come.”

“So, what’s the gist of it?”

“Basically, if heavy bombing of their infrastructure starts, the Germans plan to disperse and decentralize their facilities. They will split the existing large factories into many small ones; perhaps as many as forty or fifty. No manufacturing process other than final assembly of aircraft is to be permitted within one and one-fifth miles of airfields. They’ll organize their plants so that the primary plants are dispersed to at least two different places. That way a firm with four plants today will have eight or more different sources of supply. The idea is that if one or two of these places was destroyed, it should still be possible to maintain approximately the same level of production by using salvaged parts from bombed plants.

“The problem is that Speer and his teams believe that dispersal, in their experience, is costly and inefficient. A plant which is subdivided into many sub-units, feeder plants and small shops cannot possibly manufacture as economically as can one large integrated unit. They believe that dispersing the production facilities will reduce production by about 20 to 30 percent. This is due to the need for large control system with many non-productive workers, the duplication of non-productive departments, such as fire prevention, first aid, social and recreational activities, increases in supervisory personnel and the impossibility of duplicating highly specialized single-purpose machinery and equipment.”

“Germany is just about hanging on now. Production equals losses, more or less. Except for their fleet of course; no way that’s being rebuilt.”

Branwen nodded. “Their damage control provisions are interesting as well. Their plan is to form flying squads, in convoys of cars who will go to the site of a bombed installation and organize the work of bringing it back up. The plan demands ‘energetic men’ be recruited, ones with a wide spread of expertise and who will be prepared to work as long as it takes. Their job is to immediately round up military personnel, available civilian labor and volunteer forces to help clean up, aid in casualty rescue, etc, and analyzed the damage.

“The intention is to produce a plan that lists the required machine tool replacements necessary building repair materials and man-power, emergency tarpaulins. Speer’s ministry has completed an inventory of all machine tools in the country with the plants they are located in and the priority assigned to those sites. Using that index, the damage control team can pick up suitable machine tools available in the immediate area and in plants of lower priority than the assigned one. This allows the higher-priority plant to be put back into production quickly. The stated target for the damage control teams is to have the plant up and running in 48 hours or less.”

“So it doesn’t matter what the importance of the target plant is then. It doesn’t even matter of we do manage to identify the key industrial plants. The damage will be repaired by stripping out less important ones. The Americans would have to bomb the same plants over and over again until there are no reserves of machine tools left. Well, Douhet came up with a nice theory but Speer and his cronies have just buried it. The Seer needs to see this; put it in with the next package out to Washington. When are Henry, Achillea and Iggy due over here next?”

“About five or six days.”

“They need to be here sooner than that. Ask them to come right over now. Next, send in our Swedish friend please.”

The door closed quietly behind Branwen. A moment later she opened it for a middle-aged man in a dark suit. “Mister Loki. I am afraid these are not happy times.”

“No Mister Erlander, these are not indeed. Why did those damned fool Finns have to go and do it?”

“You know the Finns Loki, obstinate, self-centered, conceited to a fault. Convinced they have the wisdom of all the world and unable to recognize they are a small part in a very large machine. It appears that the Germans convinced them that this offensive couldn’t fail and it was the way to Finnish greatness. They still believe that. I have been in quiet contact with Risto Heikki Ryti. He is not prepared to listen to reason. He told my representatives that Germany would win the war in the end. Even if it could not win, it would hold on long enough for America and Russia to give up from exhaustion. So Finland had nothing to fear from the allies but much to fear from the Germans. And I tell you this, he may well be right. How much longer will Russia lose its young men in a war that never ends? And how many more of its young men will America lose to keep this war running?”

Loki leaned back in his seat, luxuriating in the soft leather. Once, so long ago, such a chair would have been a throne for a king. “You have heard what has happened to the Germany Navy of course?”

“Of course. But the Navy is hardly the most important part of the German forces.”

“No, but it was a part of them. Now it is gone and what is left is to be scrapped, broken up. The allies own the seas of the world now.”

“The survivors are to be scrapped. I did not know this?”

“They are. Hitler was apparently not pleased. I feel that this whole mad scheme may well have been his. Perhaps, perhaps not. But the fleet is gone. Doenitz has disappeared; probably dead by now.”

“That does not change the fact that this war is being fought on land. America may rule the seas now, but how does a shark fight a wolf?”

“Carefully, I would think. The Finns need to understand this and you must tell them it. They have harmed themselves greatly by taking part in this offensive. They will be punished severely for breaking the peace on their front line. I have heard from my contacts in Russia that they will lose the Aland Islands at least and some of their southern territories. Much of their southern territories. And not a small amount in the north”

“If the allies win.”

“Yes, if the allies win, Tage. If they win. If they do not, then we will all have much more important things than Finland to worry about.”

The Super-Marauders were spread out. Their formation was designed to give the best possible bomb pattern on the ground 27,000 feet beneath them. Normally, they were closed up to give a tight pattern that would devastate the target beneath them. Not this time. That was only one strange thing about this mission, the way the aircraft had spread out to disperse the bombs over a wide area. It was almost as if the brass didn’t really want this target destroyed. If that was so, why had they sent the 424th to bomb it? At short notice too; today’s mission had been to hit another railway junction in the German rear areas. It was a much more normal target for the mediums than one almost on the front line like this. Normally, a target this close in would be assigned to the fighter-bombers.

Around them, the fighter escort of F-80As weaved a defensive fence around the bombers. Originally the B-27 had been designed as a high-altitude version of the older B-26 Marauder that would be harder to intercept. Experience had quickly put an end to that idea. It wasn’t that the fighters could easily reach them; they couldn’t. The FW-190s were running out of steam way below them and the Me-109s were operating at their margins. At first, most of the German fighters had been loaded with additional guns to deal with the B-29 raids. Taking off the extra weight had meant they could get up to where the B-27s operated. Then, the Ta-152 and the new jets had arrived. They had fewer problems getting up to the 27,000 feet where the B-27s flew. Without escorts, the bombers couldn’t get to their targets without crippling losses. For all that, the main problem was accuracy. It was just too damned hard to hit targets from up here. Since high altitude hadn’t given the bombers the expected level of immunity, the B-27s usually flew at around 18,000 feet and had a heavy escort. That meant their concentrated bomb pattern could devastate a target.

Now, for once, they had gone back to the high altitude game. Odd. Once again, Colonel Joseph Patroulis thought that it was as if the brass didn’t really want this target destroyed. As if they were going through the motions somehow. Anyway, whatever the brass was up to, the bombers would be starting their bomb runs shortly. “All gunners, keep a sharp watch out. This is where the kraut fighters are likely to hit us.” That went without saying. Once the bombers had settled down into their bomb run and were trapped flying straight and level, the fighters and flak would turn on the heat.

“Flak bursts, Sir. Way below us.” That was the one good thing about being up here; only the heavy German flak could reach them and there was little of that in the front lines. Heavy anti-aircraft guns also made good anti-tank guns and it didn’t take much effort to guess which was the preferred use.

Down in the nose, Major Leo Andrassis settled down and applied his eye to the Norden bombsight. His orders were strict; bias the aim to the right of the target complex and beyond it. The ‘beyond it’ bit made sense. He was the lead bombardier and when he dropped, so would everybody else. That meant the bombs would walk back, along the line of sight. If the point of aim was beyond the target, the pattern of bombs would be in the right place. But a right-hand bias was unusual. “Bombardier to pilot, bomb doors open. I have the aircraft.”

Patroulis took his hands and feet off the controls. “Pilot to Bombardier, confirm, you have the aircraft.”

Andrassis started to make his fine adjustments as he saw the magnified picture of the railway junction approaching. A slight touch on the controls, and the picture shifted slightly. The buildings passed underneath and he started counting to himself. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi and go. He pressed the release. Eighteen 250 pound bombs dropped free from the belly. Behind him, the other 27 aircraft in the formation saw the release and dropped their own loads. “That’s it boys; we’re done. Bombardier to pilot, you have the aircraft. Now let’s go home.”

It wasn’t like the night attack. That blast that had come from the darkness without warning. This time, the air raid sirens sounded well in advance and given plenty of warning. The troops had dispersed into their foxholes. The flak guns had been prepared to open fire although the alert had said medium bombers and those would drop from far above the range of the 20mm and 37mm guns equipping the column. Some units had the new 55mm gun, but not this one. The Heer came a long way behind the SS when it came to the new equipment.

“There they are.” Asbach pointed out the flashes in the sky as the sun reflected off the silver bombers. Typical of the Amis. They never bothered to camouflage their aircraft. The he frowned. “That’s odd, they’re much higher up than usual.”

Beside him, Lang raised an eyebrow. Asbach grinned in reply. “The Amis tried bombing from high altitude. They couldn’t hit anything. Nobody can from up there. So they gave up and came back down to below 5,000 meters like everybody else. I was expecting a strike after that Night Witch hit us, but this is odd.”

“Perhaps it is a new group, just arrived? And like all newbies, they think they know it all.” Lang had an innocent expression on his face. Asbach saw it and smacked the officer on the back.

“Indeed so. Terrible people, newbies.” And you’ve come a long way my friend. Old Lenin was right, there is a soldier inside you trying to get out. We just had to give it the chance. “Look out! Here they come….”

The first set of explosions shook the ground. A rain of earth and mud descended on the troops around the junction. The bombs were way over, so far beyond the buildings that their fury was wasted on trees and snow. Asbach knew that wouldn’t last. The bombs would walk back over his command and devastate it. Or perhaps not. He risked a peep over the edge of the foxhole. The bombs were scattered all over the place, a loose pattern, not the tight group that the American mediums normally produced. That was the altitude of course, nobody could hit a target from 9,000 meters, but something was nagging him. This was wrong, the Amis didn’t fight like this. They were unimaginative, repetitive, they found something that worked and stuck with it.

“Sir, air raid warning.”

“I would never have guessed.” Asbach fixed a mock-serious glare on the radioman who had risked his life running through the bombs to carry the message.

“Sir, not this. Jabos coming in right behind. Single- and twin-motors.”

Damn. Grizzlies and Thunderstorms. That is all I need. The sense that something was wrong got worse, with the Amis it was either mediums or jabos, not both. It was almost as if…. Then the penny dropped and Asbach risked another quick look over the rim of his foxhole. What he saw threw him back to 1941 and the horrors of the retreat from Moscow that first winter of the war. White-clad Siberian ski-troops skimming through the snow, slashing at the Germans freezing in their first taste of a Russian winter. They were here again. They had broken out of the tree line even as the bombs had fallen and were racing across the snow towards the small cluster of buildings around the set of points that were the whole reason for this little way-station existing. This bombing raid wasn’t aimed at destroying the junction. It was a covering barrage for the attack by the ski-troops. It was aimed at seizing the controls that operated the junction itself. An attack that was already well on the way to succeeding.

“Out! Ski Troops! Siberians!” Asbach yelled the warning but it was lost in the last roar of bombs. He was not the only one who had seen the attack though. Others had done also. Already a defense was being mounted. An MG-45 put out one of its vicious bursts that bowled over at least three of the skiers. For a moment Asbach had thought they had more, but some of those who went down opened fire on the German positions in return. Either wounded or just covering the attack, Asbach didn’t know which. The rest of the Siberians made it to the huts around the junction itself and Asbach guessed what would be happening. They would be resetting the points so that the gun train would head north, back to the allied lines. Still, to do that, they would have to capture this junction first and a single ski-platoon wasn’t going to manage that, even if they did have the Ami Jabos in support.

“Damn. We made it!” Marosy looked in amazement at the group of shabby little huts that surrounded them. Old, weathered and half-rotten wood, they offered but little cover. Most of that little was of the morale variety. Over on his right, three of the strongest Russians were already wrestling with the level that manually changed the points over. As they had guessed, the points had already been set to send the gun trains south again. Now the challenge was to make the frozen lever move far enough to send the trains along the north bound line. They had to do it; they had to do it fast and they had to do it under fire.

There was a crackle of fire mounting from the main cluster of buildings used by the Germans. The shock of the medium bomber attack had allowed the ski troops to get across the open ground towards the railway lines but now the Germans were grimly determined they shouldn’t stay there. The problem was, the Siberians had to. They had to hold the lines until the trains had got through. What happened after that didn’t matter. Amidst the sound of the rifles and machine guns, Marosy heard the roar of engines starting. The Germans were getting their armor ready. They didn’t have heavy armor here but even their half tracks and armored cars were deadly enough against unsupported infantry. It was Marosy’s job to change the unsupported bit. The Russians were betting their lives on him being able to do it.

“Eagles this is Ground Crown. Do you read me?”

“Ground Crown, this is Little Eagle Leader. Keep your heads down. We’re coming in with rockets and .50 caliber. And be advised, the Big Snakes are on the move.”

“The mediums are making their run now, Sir.” Perdue had already seen the formation of B-27s high up in the morning sky. Everything was timed to run off the first sighting of the mediums. If they screwed up, the whole plan would fall apart. It wasn’t a good way to run things but it was the only way that stood a chance of working. The rain of bombs from the B-27s was the signal flare that started the race. For the two remaining guns of the 5th Artillery, it was exactly that. A race.

“Roll. Maximum speed, give her everything we’ve got.” This whole attack depended on speed to get past the German unit while they were still recovering from the shock of the bombing. Every man on both trains had a rifle or grenades, A few had anti-tank rockets. The windows in the carriages had been knocked out. In front of the frames, extra pieces of wood had been nailed to give an illusion of extra protection. Now the trains looked like an old-fashioned ship of the line with the guns sticking out of their sides in rows. That was one thing running for them, the hail of fire the men on board could put out. Another was that the long straight run to the junction was downhill. That would allow the trains to build up speed nicely ready for the charge through the railway junction. Under his feet, Perdue felt the Mikado pulling as it got Curly and the rest of the train moving. Behind her, Moe had started to follow.

The buildings were ahead, just as the model had shown. A large group in the middle, a smaller group surrounding the points. The Germans were scattered around the former; the Russians dug in around the latter. The fountains of smoke and debris from the B-27’s bombs were already subsiding, clearing the way for the raking bursts from the Thunderstorm’s six .50 caliber machine guns. Some of the armored vehicles were already covered by the blue clouds that showed their crews were trying to get them started. Copperhead changed her heading slightly. Eight five-inch rockets streamed out from under her wings to bracket one of the half tracks that was starting to move forward. The vehicle stopped and a thick black cloud rolled out. A kill.

“Get those vehicles moving!” Asbach knew he had only minutes if that to get some sort of attack mounted. “Block that line!”

He’d guessed what the Amis had in mind. They’ve come up with nothing so subtle as seizing the junction and driving his unit out. They were just going to crash the trains straight through. He glanced over his shoulder and saw what he had expected. Five kilometers away, the gun trains he had been chasing had crested the ridge and were heading straight for him. The ground was already beginning to shake with their weight. Did that make sense? Asbach realized it didn’t. What was making the ground shake was the salvoes of rockets and hail of machine gun fire from the Jabos making their final run towards him.

Off to his left was a strange sight. A white cone running across the ground with a stick in its hand. Asbach recognized Lang in his white Fliegerschrenk cape with a loaded launcher in his hands. He dropped to one knee in the precisely-approved position, and held his fire despite the fountains of bullets whipping the snow around him. Then he fired. The rocket sped straight and true, scoring direct hit under the lead Jabo’s belly.

Copperhead reared in the air, lurched over on one wing then plowed straight into the ground. The wreckage bounced through one of the flimsy buildings before exploding. Lang lowered his launcher and started to reload, taking a new rocket from the three round pack he had brought with him.

Noble Sniper Trufanova saw the man in the cape shoot the American sturmovik out of the sky and guessed who he was. The American pilot had spoken of this unit. They’d said it had one rocket man who was better, braver and more skilled than the others. The one who had shot down his Hammer Blow. It was her duty to kill any Hitlerites who were better, braver and more skillful than the rest. The less skilled and less brave could be dealt with after victory was won. She aimed at the man and squeezed her trigger, then watched him crumple as the bullet struck home. Through her sight, she saw the body moving. That was when she broke the sniper’s code, operating the bolt of her rifle and putting another shot into the crumpled rocket man. That extra shot cost her life.

Asbach saw Lang fall as the sniper shot him. Then he saw the body lurch as another shot struck home. Only, this time he was watching. He saw the muzzle flash from the rifle. So did three of his machine gunners. They saturated the whole area with bullets. There would be no more shots in the head from that one.

Over by the tracks, a driver moved a half track onto the rails so that the way for the trains was blocked. Asbach’s Puma armored cars were already on the move. Their 50mm guns cracked shots at the Russians holding the buildings around the points. Then one of them exploded. The second wave of jabos, Grizzlies with their big 75mm guns sticking out the nose raced overhead. Asbach knew what was coming next. Jellygas.

Then he heard the thunder of the approaching trains. He spun around. They were very close; their sides lit up with a rippling wave of flashes as those inside poured rifle fire at the German troops milling around. He guessed very few of the shots were hitting anything, but the sheer volume was making his men put their heads down. He was expecting the trains to slow down as the drivers saw the track was blocked but there was no sign of them doing so. It suddenly occurred to him; they weren’t going to.

“You know, I’ve always wanted to do this.” The engine driver spoke contemplatively, but there was a glimmer of sheer joy in his statement. Ahead of them a German half-track blocked the railway line. Its gunner was intent on firing his machine gun at the Mikado bearing down upon him. Suddenly the German realized the awful truth and leaped out of his vehicle to run clear. He just made it. The locomotive smashed into the half track and spun it around before the disintegrating wreckage was hurled through the air to land in a blazing heap at one side of the track.

Perdue heard and felt the crash, but it didn’t really register. He was leaning out of the engine cab, firing his pistol at the Germans to one side of the train. The roar of gunfire from the carriages hadn’t stopped. The ripping noise of the PPS-45s and captured banana guns mated with the slower cracks of the SKS, Garand and Mozzie-Nag rifles to make a thunderous role of musketry that seemed to dominate the air around the train.

One of the armored cars had turned to fire on them. It could hurt, this one had a 75mm gun in a semi-fixed mounting. Its first shot screamed straight through the wooden carriage it had been aimed at, probably the crew had loaded armor piercing shot by force of habit. They didn’t make the same mistake twice. Its next shot was explosive and it devastated the carriage, leaving its thin wooden box in ruins. The carnage inside had to be awful. Then the armored car stopped firing and broke away, trying to escape from the shots of a Grizzly that was closing in on it.

The Mikado was slowing, Perdue turned to the engine driver. “We hit?”

“No sir, points coming up, we have to take them a bit careful like. Or we’ll go over.” Perdue nodded. It was fortunate the northern branch was the part of the points that went straight, not curved off but the slowdown was going to be dangerous. The rifle and machine gun fire from the Germans was hitting the carriages. That had to be hurting but the points were coming up. As the train slowed, the men on the first flat car reached down, hauling the Russian ski troops on board. Then Curly accelerated away. The remaining ski troops would have to be rescued by Moe.

Knyaz had the remaining part of his force forming a rear guard, holding back the German troops while the rest got clear. The Ami-fighter-bombers were strafing the German positions. Perhaps they would hold the Germans back long enough for my rear guard to board the second train out. That second train was in trouble. Two armored cars, Pumas, were shooting at it with their 50mm guns. The damage was easy to see. The great gun had been hit several times and many of the carriages were little more than splintered wood. A few meters away, the American pilot was talking to the sturmoviks, steering them to the targets. A couple of Grizzlies were already lining up for a pass on the Pumas. Knyaz saw their noses disappear in the flash of the 75mm guns firing. One of the Pumas blew up. The other stopped firing and backed away fast. Its crew knew what was to come. Sure enough, the napalm tanks wobbled free. Rolling orange and black clouds from the inferno shrouded the second American gun train from the Germans.

“Bratischka, quickly, while we are screened by the fire!” The Russians left their positions and ran to the track where Moe slowed down to take the points and make the pick-up. They ran alongside the train, grabbing the arms held down to them and being hauled on board the flatcar behind the engine. Knyaz was last on board, and he looked quickly around. “How many?”

“We have lost eight dead, and have four wounded.” The voice of the Sergeant was heavy. Twelve was a heavy toll for a small unit. Then Knyaz looked at the train he was on, saw the damage and the bodies scattered in the wreckage. The men on this train had paid a much heavier price than his little unit.

Asbach looked at the trains pulling away. That was impossible. That shouldn’t have happened. One just can’t do that with trains. He stopped an orderly who was collecting casualties. Once the trains had escaped, the jabos had left. “How is Captain Lang?”

The orderly chuckled. “The Captain is still with us, Sir. A bullet in the shoulder and one through his ear but still alive. He refuses to be put on sick call Sir. That’s why the men call him Captain Still Sir. No matter what the enemy do to him, he still turns up for duty.”

“Very good. Give the Captain my commendations and ask him to come to me immediately. We must reassemble the unit and get after those guns.”

Asbach stared at the cloud of smoke that marked the position of the escaping guns. If he could get moving and kept up the chase, he would have one more chance to intercept them.

“Right boys, this is the last stretch. We’re hitting the outer edge of the Finnish forces that have got our infantry bottled up. We break through here and we’ve punched through to the hedgehog. They’re Finns ahead of us; not Germans. So we can expect a lower standard of equipment. They’re hard bastards though; they’ll fight. And remember what they did to the RCAMC detachment back at Division. There’s payback due for that.” A stir of agreement ran around the tank crews and infantry gathered for the briefing.

Captain Michael Brody looked at the assembled team. His squadron of Sheridan tanks had been reinforced with a troop of armored infantry carried in Kangaroos, old Ram tanks that had been converted to armored infantry carriers. There were rumors that the Yanks were producing a new armored carrier, one that was completely enclosed and bullet proof. If it was, that would make a change from their existing half-tracks. Until that rumor became reality, if it ever did of course, the Kangaroo was the best infantry carrier on the battlefield. Well, the least vulnerable anyway.

“The word is, take it easy. There’s no hurry over this. Our hedgehogs are in no danger. The Finns have been trying to break into them for days now and had no luck. Time isn’t long enough for supply to be a problem so we don’t have to crash through. When we contact the enemy, open fire; pin them down and call for artillery. We’ve got lots of it and even more airpower. The Yanks are over on the other front so we don’t have them to worry about. It’s just us and the Russians overhead.” An exaggerated sigh of relief went around the meeting; the American fighter-bomber pilots were notorious for hitting friendly targets. “Right, so everybody mount up. The ground’s hard, we’re not stuck on the roads. First troop, left flank, second troop on the road, third troop out to the right flank. Line abreast. Infantry, you follow on behind. Enemy infantry we’ll take care of, if we run into Pak guns, you take over and handle them while we cover you with HE.”

“Any word on the Paks, Sir?”

“Word is, since its Finns, 50mms.” A murmur of discontent at that. Although the 50mm was technically obsolete, at the ranges the Finns fired them it didn’t make much difference. The 50 was much smaller and easier to hide than the 75s and 88s the Germans used. Usually the first time somebody saw them was when a tank was knocked out. It was a 50 that had brewed up the tank used by the previous commander of A squadron and put Brody in command today.

The relative warmth of the day before had softened the mass of snow that had fallen during the storm and caused it to compact. The cold of the night that had followed froze that compacted mass hard and turned a soft field that would bog tanks down into what amounted to near-perfect tank ground. Brady’s command had three troops of tanks. Technically, he should have had a total of fourteen M27s; but his squadron, like everybody else’s was under strength. Including his own vehicle, he had eleven operational tanks, spread out into a rough line abreast. There were patches of forest ahead, ones that would grow larger and closer together as the site of the besieged Canadian hedgehog got closer. The plan was to plow through the defenses before the Finns could react, force them out of their positions and back on to that hedgehog. It was a classic hammer and anvil approach; Brody’s tanks the hammer and the Canadian infantry in the hedgehog the anvil.

“Tank destroyer, in the woods, one o’clock.” Brody swung his binoculars and stared hard. Lost in the trees, almost, was the sleek shape of a Hetzer. Not one of the more modern German tank destroyers, some of them were real swine with long 88s and thick armor. The Hetzer had the same 75mm as the Panzer IV and was built on the old Panzer 38t chassis. The Germans had passed most of them along to their allies. The Hetzer was cheap, easy to build and maintain. It was also a lot less capable than the German tank destroyers. Allegedly one of the reasons why the Germans had given it to their allies was to make sure that, if said allies decided to change sides, they would be outgunned enough to make sure they did not survive the attempt. Brody reflected that trust was not a dominant feature of the German make-up.

“Load AP.”

“Up.”

“Shoot!”

Five M27s fired almost simultaneously. Their 90mm shots raising fountains of dirt around the concealed Hetzer. A black, oily cloud rose from its position. The sight appeared to have woken the Finns up, or perhaps they had been waiting for the M27s to get into closer range? Three more Hetzers broke cover. They maneuvered to try and get lined up for shots at the fast-moving M27s. That was a problem with the little tank destroyers. They were cramped inside and their guns had very limited traverse. Tracking the Sheridans meant they had to spin the whole vehicle on the suspension in order to get out their shots.

The Finns had obviously been expecting the Canadians to stick to the road. They’d set their tank destroyers up to cover that arc. The wide, spread out Canadian line had thrown that plan to the winds. To make matters worse, most of the Canadian tanks were to the right of the position occupied by the Hetzers and the Hetzer had virtually no right traverse. The time taken for them to spin their vehicles around and aim was just that decisive few seconds too long. Four more of Brody’s tanks concentrated their fire on to the nearest tank destroyer, sending more fountains of frozen snow up around it. They were rewarded by another boiling cloud of orange-shot black smoke. Brody saw one of his tanks lurch to a halt. One of the two surviving tank destroyers had scored and put at least one of the M27s out of the battle. Two of Brodys tanks took a Hetzer each and demolished it with 90mm rounds. That was another problem with the Hetzer, it’s cramped interior made loading painfully slow. In this case, fatally slow.

“Watch out for Paks. Those Hetzers won’t be on their own.” Brody sent the word out while scanning the tree line for the flashes that would reveal the position of the Finnish Pak guns. They were there. He knew it, he could sense them; he could feel the gunner’s eyes on him. “Driver, hard left, now!” His tank swerved and there was the ripping noise of an anti-tank shot missing his vehicle by a few feet. “Load HE”

“Up.”

“Two’clock, by those three big pines, shoot.”

The 90mm guns of his third troop crashed, flinging their shells in the general direction of the Finnish position. More fountains of dirt, the anti-tank gun apparently silenced. Brody knew better than to believe that. “Diamond, this is Coronet. We’ve found the enemy defense line, map reference,” he fumbled with his map and read out the numbers. “Anti-tank guns and tank destroyers.”

“Coronet, on its way.” That was his forward artillery observer. He would take over the shoot now, walking the shells from whatever guns he had been allocated on to the Finnish position. Brody heard the express-train roar overhead and instinctively ducked into his turret. By the time he looked up again, the second salvo had struck home. 25 pounders he guessed. The Yanks preferred their bigger 105s but the 25 pounder could fire eight rounds to the 105s six and in this sort of work it was the number of bangs that mattered, not their size.

“Coronet, hold position, there’s some Sturmoviks coming in as well.” Now that was an interesting surprise. I didn’t think I was that important. He looked overhead, searching for the aircraft while the shells from the artillery battery supporting him continued to pulverize the tree line. Keyed by a flash as the sun reflected off a canopy, he saw them, a dozen aircraft already forming into a circle over the target area. Like buzzards waiting for something to die.

The lead aircraft peeled out of the circle and dived on to the forest. At the end of the dive, the rockets under its wings flashed out with long black-gray trails that ended inside the wood. As the Il-10 pulled out of its dive, it released a shower of small 10-kilo fragmentation bombs that exploded with flat, vicious cracks inside the cluster of pine trees. The second Il-10 was already diving on the position below.

“Infantry move up to within 100 yards of the woods, then debus. Diamond, have we still got the artillery?”

“That we have Coronet. As soon as the Il-10s have finished, they’ll do a rolling barrage right through the woods.”

Brody nodded. Overhead, the Russian sturmoviks had finished their first cycle of attacks and were now diving on the Finns. This time, they used the 37mm guns in their wings at whatever they could see. As soon as the last aircraft was clear, the express train roar of inbounds resumed. “Infantry, rolling barrage. Follow it in. Keep it nice and tight.” That was another advantage of the 25 pounder; its smaller shells meant the infantry could follow the rolling barrage that much more closely. There was a belief, never said but real, that the best way of judging whether the infantry were following the barrage tightly enough was whether they took casualties from their own fire. It was one of the grim equations of war. A few dead from one’s own artillery fire meant a lot more saved by the suppressive effects of the barrage.

Brody sat back in his turret as the infantry platoon followed the barrage into the heart of the Finnish defense. It would be time for the tanks to move in soon enough. At the moment they were better placed here on overwatch.

It had all gone wrong. Lieutenant Martti Ihrasaari knew it and he suspected the top brass knew it although they wouldn’t admit to the fact. They’d be telling everybody how chopping up this Canadian division had been a great victory that showed the great fighting spirit and skills of the Finns. The problem was that Ihrasaari knew the truth, the ‘great victory’ had achieved nothing. Oh, they’d split the division up into a series of motti all right but that was as far as it had gone. The Canadians had just dug themselves in and proceeded to shoot at everybody around them with artillery and air power. It had been days since Ihrasaari had slept and his eyes felt as if they were full of sand. He was sick as well, his arms and hands had been burned by white phosphorus. The medic had dug the wicked fragments out of his flesh but the ill-effects hadn’t ended. His skin was yellowing and it hurt to urinate. The phosphorus was still there, still working.

No, the Canadians hadn’t exhausted themselves trying to break out. They’d just waited for the outside relief forces to break through to them. Ihrasaari had a disturbing mental picture, of drops of water on a glass plate. At first the drops of water would be well separated, just as the Canadians had been in their motti. But, as more water was added, the droplets spread out and joined together. Soon, they had the dry bits of glass surrounded and were squeezing them out of existence. Ihrasaari had a bad feeling that he was in the shrinking dry bits. The besieger who had become the besieged.

The very fact he was here proved that. This morning, he and what was left of his platoon had been pulled out of the line facing the Canadian motti and sent to reinforce a sector of the front that was crumbling under a Canadian armored attack. What his dozen or so riflemen could do against tanks was an interesting question. They had a Molotov cocktail each. They would have to do, if they could get close enough. Otherwise, they had their rifles, an average of 15 rounds and a single hand grenade each.

Up ahead, there was the sound of an approaching battle; the constant staccato cracks of rifle fire, the ripping noise of submachine guns and the longer, deeper rasp of machine guns. And, the trademark of the Canadian infantry; the crash of grenades as the Canadians threw them at everything that moved. By the rate the noise was approaching, the infantry up front, the ones Ihrasaari was supposed to be supporting, were falling back fast. Behind the noise of the gunfire, he could hear another noise, the roaring of engines. That would be heavy vehicles pushed their way through the open pine forest. In the movies, they’d be shown pushing the trees down but that was just the film maker’s idea of what might happen.

The Canadian appearance was unexpected. One moment the woods up ahead were empty, the next figures had appeared. The first group ran towards him, then went to ground to lay down covering fire for the next. They were white-and-gray camouflaged. Not that that meant much, nearly everybody’s uniform was either light gray, white or a mixture of both on Kola. What betrayed them as Canadians was their machine gun, the slower thumping noise of a Bren Gun. Spray erupted around a group of branches and rocks. An obvious strongpoint, one far too obvious to be used by the battle-hardened Finns. Ihrasaari’s men held their fire. With ammunition in as short supply as it was, there was little point in wasting it until there were better targets.

Those targets came quickly, more Canadians, moving through the snow. Swiftly, probably on snow shoes, but not as swiftly as Ihrasaari’s ski-troops could manage. He took aim at one of the figures and fired a shot. His target crumpled into the ground. All the others went down. The covering group switching their fire to where the shots had come from. Spurts of snow jumped up a few feet short of his position. Off to his left there was a crash and a scream. It might have been a mortar but was more likely to be an EY rifle, that odd contraption that used a blank round fired from a worn-out rifle fitted with a cup discharger to throw a grenade much further than a man could manage. The Canadians had experts with that thing that could make a grenade explode a meter above a man’s head. Even as he thought the words, Ihrasaari heard another crash and felt the sting in his back as a fragment found its home.

He reached into a pouch for another clip. His fingers told him this was his last, just five rounds left. The Canadians were moving up fast. Each group covered the others, keeping a constant stream of bullets and grenades on the Finnish position. Ihrasaari pulled the pin out of his grenade and threw it. He ducked down so that he wouldn’t see the results. The problem with grenades was that their blast could throw fragments further than a man could throw the grenade. Still here, the snow tended to tamp their exuberance a little. He looked up as the blast faded. The Canadians were still approaching. Then he remembered his Molotov cocktail. He pulled the bottle out of its pouch, turned it upside down quickly to soak the fuse, lit it and threw. He heard the whoomph as it shattered and heard a scream. Another quick look showed him the Canadians were very close now. More shots from his rifle and a final despairing click as it ran dry. They were almost on top of him. That only left one thing to do. He stood up and raised his hands in surrender.

The Canadian soldier looked at him with loathing. “Too late, chum.” They were his only words and his submachine gun crackled. Ihrasaari felt the impacts and fell back against the snow. His last sight was of the Canadian taking careful aim and his finger closing for a short, vicious burst that Ihrasaari neither heard nor saw.

“Sir. Message from Brigade. Coronet has broken through the Finnish lines. They’re on their way to us now. We’re to exercise full caution, Sir. The first troops will be infantry and they’ve had a hard fight. They’ve got M27s from the Sherbrookes backing them up.”

Lieutenant Colonel Haversham read the message flimsy. People getting killed by their own side was a serious danger. The infantry and tanks coming in would be ready to shoot at anything that moved. The troops out on the defenses could easily make a mistake and assume this was another Finnish attack. “Major Gillespie, spread the word fast, to everybody and I mean everybody. Even the cooks and bakers. Friendly forces coming in, the colors of the day are… blue to green with response green to white. Nobody to shoot unless fired upon and then only if they are absolutely sure the shooters are Finns or Huns. Better to take a few shots than start a blue-on-blue here.”

Gillespie nodded and started his rapid circuit of the perimeter, passing the urgent orders along the line. Especially to the Vickers gun crews. One mistake with those murderous water-cooled guns could turn the relief into a massacre. Then, he took up his position and watched. He could see the trees moving slightly as the vehicles passed between them. He guessed that the incoming infantry already had seized positions along the treeline. Now was the time. He took his flare gun and a flare from the recognition pouch, religiously checking that it was indeed blue turning to green. Then he fired it upwards and followed it with his eyes. A blue train of smoke that arched upwards and turned to green as it descended. A second or so later, another flare arched upwards from the treeline. A flare that started green and turned to white.

Cautiously, some white-and-gray figures detached from the treeline and started to move down towards the hedgehog. Gillespie focused his binoculars on them and checked details. The top-mounted curved magazine of the Bren gun, the sideways mounted magazine of the Capsten. They were Canadians. He stood up and raised a Bren gun over his head. The figures broke into a run and closed on the defensive hedgehog. About 30 yards out they stopped and a voice echoed across the trees.

“Reginas?”

“Aye, that’s us. Welcome home.”

“We’ll be more sure of that when you tell us where the mines are.”

“You’re clear. We didn’t have enough for a circuit, so we put what we had on the roads in case the Huns brought up armor. Come on in”

The relief force broke out of the trees. The best part of an infantry platoon so Gillespie guessed, and eight tanks. Plus three of the Kangaroo armored carriers. “Lieutenant Marcelle, Sir. We’ve got wounded with us, mostly grenade fragments, none too bad. One man badly burned. Finnish bastard threw a Molotov at him. Could I ask the loan of your field medics?”

“Certainly, Lieutenant. Seeing you here today, you can have anything we have, including the services of my wife and daughters. If they were here of course, which, of course, they aren’t. Otherwise I would not be making the offer.”

There was a roar of laughter from the Canadian troops surrounding him. “Your medics will be more than gratefully received. In response, I must tell you I am reliably informed the tanks have bottles on board. I believe that Captain Brody may even have a bottle of Canadian Club.”

Gillespie looked heartbroken for a split second. “Lieutenant, you’re a hard man. Get your wounded over to our first aid tent. Be careful to identify yourself. After we heard what happened at Division, it’s unmarked and heavily guarded.” Gillespie dropped his voice slightly. “We heard, unofficially. Are the stories true.”

Marcelle looked grim. “Sir, it’s true. Heard it from a Sergeant who was in the fighting at Division. The Finns killed them all; even the nurses. Don’t think we’ll ever know why. All the Finns that attacked the camp got killed. The bastards fought to the last man on the way in here as well. We’ve taken no prisoners we can ask and I very much doubt that any of the other columns have either.”

His words were silenced by the roar of tank engines as the M27s nosed into the hedgehog. “Sir, Captain Brody, Squadron commander. Where do you want us?”

“Captain Brody, a little bird tells me you have some Club on board. Is there any truth to that scurrilous rumor?”

“Well, Sir, we have now, but if you’d like to confiscate it…”

“A generous offer, Captain. Could you accompany me to meet Lieutenant Colonel Haversham? Perhaps we can have a little chat over a glass and find out what comes next.”