Winter Warriors

CHAPTER ONE: RED SKY IN THE MORNING

“It is time to kill some fascists, bratishka.” Lieutenant Stanislav Knyaginichev let the bolt of his SKS rifle slam forward, chambering a round, ready to fire.

“It is always a good day to kill fascists, Tovarish Lieutenant. This day is yet young.” Sergeant Pietr Ivanovitch Batov spoke with grim satisfaction. As he did so, he looked on his young Lieutenant with care that was almost fatherly. ‘Knyaz,’ as the men in the unit called him was a good officer. In fact, he had the makings of an excellent commander; assuming he survived. He started his career as one of Mekhlis’s zampolits, the political officers, so many of whom had done so much to harm the Russian Army in 1941. Knyaz had not been one of those. Instead, he had been a good zampolit, using his powers to aid rather than hinder. As 1941 had ground on in days of fire and death, he had become loved by his men as much as he had been respected by his officers. When, in November 1942, Stalin had died and unitary command was restored, he had been one of the zampolits selected to be trained as a real officer. Six months later, he had been assigned to the 78th and there he had lead his men well.

Then, he had gone down with pneumonia. His men mourned him for they knew that pneumonia meant death. This time, it did not; fate had once again saved Knyaz. He’d been taken back to the hospital the Americans had set up at Murmansk and given some of the new wonder drug they had there. Pensin, or something like that, Batov didn’t know the name, but it had saved their Lieutenant. Now, once again, he commanded the Ski Group formed from the 78th.

This year, winter had come down early and very hard upon the Kola Peninsula. It froze the ground, covered it with thick snow and turned everything to ice. Already, the front line that had marked the furthest extent of the German advance was immobilized. The units that held it had gone into winter quarters. Cantonments provided some semblance of warmth and protection from the bitter cold and howling winds. The spaces between the camps were patrolled by ski troops. On the German side, they were Gebirgsjaegers, specialized divisions of mountain troops. They were specially equipped and trained to fight in the snows. Like all specialist troops they were very hard to replace. That made bleeding them worthwhile.

The Russians did things differently. Every one of their units had been expected to form its own ski patrols. That was no problem for the 78th Siberian Infantry Division. Siberians had been born on skis. To them, the cold of the Kola Peninsula was a mild thing compared with the frozen tundra of their home. Once the whole division had been Siberians. In 1941, they had been brought from the east and thrown against the Germans standing at Tula, on the very doorstep of Moscow. They had hurled the Germans back and hounded them through the blinding snowstorms, sparing none. That had been four years ago; few men from those days survived. Enough did to provide a cadre for the unit and to give the recruits a sense of being in an elite unit.

Knyaz checked the positions; the ambush was set. The snowmobiles that had brought them were parked several kilometers back. They had been tucked away where they were unlikely to be seen. Even if they were, their position was deceptive. It looked as if they were laagered just on the Russian side of the lines, not as if their ski troops had penetrated into German-held territory. Maskirovka, Knyaz thought, maskirovka, always maskirovka. Mislead, deceive, conceal. Never do the obvious, never do the simple. Always mislead and deceive. The Germans didn’t practice that art with the same grim determination as the Russians and now they were going to pay the price. The Germans were very good but they got into bad habits. Like using the same patrol routes too often.

“You ready, drug?” Knyaz spoke to the youngest of his new recruits. Kabanov was a true Siberian but one who had only joined the unit a week before. He’d never seen combat so he was still a lowly ‘drag,’ a friend, but not one raised to the comradely fellowship of the ‘brats’. He would be, soon, if he survived. The boy nodded, pretending to concentrate on his SKS but wouldn’t speak because his mouth was dry with fear. No shame in that, but the boy wouldn’t understand, not yet.

“They’re coming!” The growl of engines could be heard. It was amazing how far it carried over the frozen snow. The Germans didn’t use snowmobiles for their ski troops. Instead, they had a strange vehicle called the kettenkrad, a motorcycle with a sidecar but tracks instead of wheels at the rear. The patrol approaching had six of them, in two columns of three. Each pulled four ski-jaegers. Tough troops, Knyaz thought, well trained, well-acclimatized to this frozen wasteland. The ski-jaegers didn’t blunder around in the cold the way the German infantry did. A pity only a half-platoon was approaching. He’d wanted to bag a whole platoon. Still, a half platoon, two squads, a prize worth taking.

His two DP-28 machine guns would open the game. The two crews were already be tracking their targets. Two Kettenkrads were out in front, forming the point element of the patrol. The machine gunners would let those pass, if they could, and catch the following four in the L-shaped killing ground. He carefully swept his eyes around again; not a sign of his men waiting motionless in the snow. Their rippled white and light gray camouflage suits blended perfectly with the snow that hid them.

The point element of the patrol swept past. The four vehicles of the main body followed them right into the killing ground. Their engines sounded small and weak against the immensity of the snow; yet the sound carried so well that Knyaz believed he could hear each individual pop of the engines. The engine sounds were drowned out by the snarl of the DP-28s. The fire walked across the snow, tearing into the kettenkrads at the front of each column. The nearest driver was hurled from his seat. His blood sprayed dark and agreeably red against the whiteness all around. His kettenkrad tumbled as it lost its driver, dragging the four ski-jaegers behind it into a chaotic, confused heap.

Knyaz sighted and fired his SKS, squeezing the trigger of the semi-automatic rifle again and again. Gone were the old days of fumbling with the bolt of the Moisin-Nagant, fighting the stickiness caused by lacquer from cartridges building up in the chamber. His rifle cracked again and again, ten rounds rapid fire. One of the fascists in the chaos below tried to move to get under cover but his body jerked and stopped. Who had hit him? Did I? Who cared, the fascist was dead. His rifle was open, the last round gone. A new stripper clip, push down, five rounds into the magazine, another clip, five more. Bolt forward and ready to go again.

Out in the killing zone, one of the ski-jaegers was pointing at the long arm of the ambush, where the muzzle blast of the SKS rifles threw up a cloud of snow. Then, his head jerked and he crumpled. Noble Sniper Irina Trufanova had done her work. Her spotter identified the leader and the telescopic-sighted Moisin-Nagant had sent him to his grave. Now, the team would be moving to a new location. When the ski group fought, Trufanova and her spotter worked independently. They knew their job and nobody dared to advise them otherwise.

The second kettenkrad was burning. Armor-piercing incendiaries from the DP-28s had ruptured its petrol tank and ignited the contents. More figures scattered around. Few of the ski-jaegers towed by the vehicles the machine gunners had hit first managed to survive. That left the eight men and the two kettenkrads at the rear of the patrol and the two at the front that had already passed out of the killing ground. They’d be turning already, coming back to aid the main body. This was the critical bit. If it went wrong now, Knyaz knew his unit would be trapped between the two forces.

A roar of rifle fire from the StG-44 ‘banana guns.’ They were the fully-automatic rifles arming the ski-jaegers. The men carrying them had gone to ground and were hosing fire at the ambush position above them. Their machine guns had gone; they’d been on the two destroyed kettenkrads. Even without their support, those automatic rifles put out a fearful volume of fire. The Germans were trying to pin the ambushers down so they could be isolated and picked off. That had been anticipated; most of the Siberians had already slipped away from their original positions. The fascist ski-jaegers had fewer machine guns than the regular line infantry but they carried more ammunition and they had the banana guns. Knyaz watched a group of four fascists run forward a few meters, taking advantage of the lull in the Russian fire caused by the blast from the StG-44s. They’d take up new positions and provide covering fire for the other group of four. Soon, they’d be in grenade range. Or so they thought.

A new sound, something indescribable. The PPS-45 machine carbine didn’t snarl or roar, the sound was more like paper being ripped. It fired a version of the 7.62x25mm pistol round that had been “improved.” The Americans had done it. They’d taken the original cartridge and reloaded it with new propellant, pushing the chamber pressure up through the roof. A new, longer, heavier bullet took advantage of the extra energy. The new cartridge had its tip painted green because anybody who tried to fire it from a Tokarev TT-33 or an older PPsH-41 would lose his hand when the chamber burst open.

The tried and tested PPSH-41 had been redesigned with a 41cm barrel and a new foregrip. The result was a weapon half way between a submachine gun and the SKS. It still had the light bolt of the PPSH, so its rate of fire was phenomenal. Still, it did have its 71 round drum magazine to feed it. There was something else about it as well, the PPS-45 was built in one of the new American-supplied factories at Khabarovsk. Any part from a PPS-45 fitted any other PPS-45. If something needed replacing, the spare part would fit, right away, no need to file it down or select the best from a pile. It would fit. A magazine, any magazine, taken at random from a pile would fit any PPS-45. Amazing.

Knyaz knew what was happening. The two point kettenkrads had turned around and were towing their ski-jaegers to attack the ambush; the men held the tow lines with one hand and fired their banana guns from the hip with the other. Only, Knyaz had foreseen that and he had four of his six PPS-45 men in a skirmish line waiting for the move. An ambush within an ambush, maskirovka, always maskirovka.

The PPS-45 men waited until the range was point-blank and they sprayed the approaching fascists with long, long bursts. If it went right, they would sweep the fascists from their seats and tumble the ski-jaegers into the snow. The fascists wouldn’t be fighting back. At that close range, the greentips made huge gaping wounds in their victims as the bullet tumbled and broke up in their bodies.

Another surge forward from the fascists in the killing zone. Almost instantly one spun and fell into the blood-soaked snow. Another score for Noble Sniper Trufanova. Explosions. The fascists had thrown stick grenades, the long handle giving them extra reach. One DP-28 opened up and two more of the running men went down, the last diving for cover again. One DP-28? Had the other crew already died? When?

The five survivors of the fascist unit were pinned down in a ditch-like depression. The DP-28 was snapping out short bursts, keeping the fascists pinned, making sure any fire from them was wild and unaimed. Meanwhile, two more men with PPS-45s and two men with grenades, moved around their flank. Knyaz knew that Trufanova had watched the fascists go to ground and was already moving to somewhere that would give her a clear shot. He thought he saw a movement in the trees, off to the fascists’ right. They saw it too. They tried to turn and fire but two black objects arced out of cover, into their pit. The explosions were muffled by the snow but they still hurled the fascists back, stunning them. Then the four skiers burst out of the trees. The two men with PPS-45s hosed the fascist position with a long continuous burst; the snow fountained red and white around the occupants. The two grenadiers fired their SKS’s from the hip as they rode in. It was over, the last of the ski-jaegers were dead.

What happened next was a well-ordered drill. One part of the Russian group skied out. They first checked the bodies of the fascists lying sprawled around the kettenkrads, then the little vehicles themselves. They picked up the StG-44s, and stripped the bodies of ammunition, documents, anything of value. Letters especially, for no matter how careful the writer was, they always let something slip in a letter to a loved one. Binoculars, radios, everything. Nobody said anything but sometimes be a groan from a wounded fascist was silenced by a quick thrust from a knife. It wasn’t practical to take prisoners; even if they could, they wouldn’t. Unless they were needed for intelligence, nobody took prisoners on the Russian Front, not any more. Not even the Americans and Canadians, who were ridiculously sentimental and squeamish about realities, took prisoners any more. Not in winter, not on the Kola Peninsula.

Up on the slope, Knyaz looked at the rest of his ambush force. As he feared, he’d lost a machine gun crew to a stick grenade. Three of his riflemen had been killed by fire from the banana guns. Three other men had wounds; one bad, the other two not so much so. The badly wounded man could ride on a captured kettenkrad. The rest could ski. Then he saw the boy who had been the unit drug. He was standing on the slope, looking down and shaking with delayed shock and fear. Knyaz went over to him and clapped him on the back. “Remember, bratishka, you have to be alive to be cold!” Knyaz was very careful to misunderstand the shaking.

Kabanov looked at him. His eyes lit up as the meaning of his lieutenant’s words sunk in. He’d seen action; he had fired his rifle at an enemy. He was a proud brat now, not a humble drug. Behind him, Sergeant Batov dipped his fingers in the pool of blood that surrounded a dead fascist, blood already freezing in the bitter cold. He dabbed it on the boy’s forehead and cheeks. The old hunter’s ritual. Batov called out in a voice that carried across the ambush site. “Tovarish, we have a new Brat today.” A quick cheer; very quick for the unit needed to get moving. They picked up their dead, made their wounded man as comfortable as they could on one of the two captured kettenkrads then set off on the long traverse back to their snowmobiles.

“Something old, something new, something borrowed, all of it midnight blue.”

Captain Karl Newman chuckled as his CAG, Commander Pearson, dropped into a seat. “We have our new airgroup then. What we got?”

Pearson flipped through his clipboard. “Eighty eight birds; five squadrons of 16. Two fighter squadrons. One with FV-3 Flivvers, the other with F4U-7 Corsairs. Two light strike squadrons with F4U-4 Corsairs, one heavy strike squadron with AD-1 Skyraiders. Difference between fighter and light strike is a bit academic really. They’re both trained for either role. In addition, we’ve got a detachment of four F4U-4N night-fighters and another four Adies equipped with APS-20 search radars.”

“FV-3s? We got a new version of the Flivver?”

“They’re the new bit, along with the F4U-7s. The FV-3 is similar to the Air Force’s F-80B Shooting Star, only it’s got a hook and folding wings.” Pearson spoke with satisfaction. The older FV-1 and FV-2 had fixed wings and they’d caused handling problems on the deck. The jet fighter was far faster than anything else in the fleet; hence the nickname ‘flivver’ after the 1920s sports car. “They’ll do 557 on the deck, 580 higher up. Rate of climb is 4,870 feet per minute. That’s forty, fifty miles per hour faster than the 262 and it climbs almost 1,000 feet per minute faster, ‘bout the same edge over the 162. The U-7s aren’t so shabby either. Can’t compete with the jets, well, it’s about as fast as the 162 on the deck where it matters so I guess it can.”

“And I guess the U-4s are the old. So, what’s the borrowed?”

“Our heavy bomb squadron was Mames, but I talked to the CAG on the Evil Eye. They’ve got two heavy bomb squadrons, were going to be one of Mames and one of Adies. So we agreed to swap our Mames for their Adies. We’re switching everything that goes with them now. Better for both of us; we get Adies, they have two squadrons of the same type.”

Newman nodded. The Martin AM-1 Mauler could lift heavier loads than the AD-1 Skyraider and was a touch faster, but the Adie had an awesome reputation for toughness and reliability despite some worrying instability problems. But then, both aircraft had been rushed into service. The deal to swap squadrons made sense to him; the skipper of CV-11 Intrepid must have thought the same.

“Loadout?”

Pearson flipped another page on his clipboard. “The usual. Rockets, five inch high-velocity aircraft rockets and 12 inch Tiny Tims. Thousand and two thousand pounders, rocket-boosted sixteen hundred pounders. Some five hundreds. Napalm of course. Mines and torpedoes, more than usual. Rumor is we’re running cover on a convoy, a big one. To Murmansk. Guess the powers that be want to get as much supply through as they can before winter really sets in. Expect we’ve got the torpedoes in case the Kraut fleet comes out.”

“If only.” Newman’s voice was loaded with longing. “Nobody’s ever put a battleship at sea down with airstrikes before. Good time to be the first.” The German fleet was still orientated around its battleships. They only had three carriers, and one of those had been captured from the British. Third Fleet had twenty Essex class carriers with more than 1,950 aircraft, including those on the Gettysburg. Five more of the big CVBs were on the way, three would join the fleet before spring next year. “Anything else I should know about?”

“Notice anything about our airgroup Captain?” Newman looked down the list. “All single-seaters.”

“That’s right. It’s the same right across the fleet. All the multi-crew birds have gone. The Beasts went a long time ago and nobody misses them, but the Avengers have gone as well. Even on the last cruise, when a couple of the carriers still had them, they were short of crews. Now, they’re all gone. No flight engineers, no navigators, no gunners, nobody. All single seaters, just pilots. Odd that. I’d have expected it to be the other way around: plenty of aircrew, shortage of pilots. I hear the ASW hunting groups still get their crews but the rest of us are running mighty short.”

“I guess the Air Bridge must be draining off the aircrew. Running that must take a lot of manpower. Still, it is odd that it’s hitting us this hard. It’s not just you CAG. We’re having difficulty getting aircraft mechanics and hangar deck crewmen. Bear that in mind. We’re short-handed on the decks; it’s going to take us longer to turn birds around and a lot longer to repair cripples. Anything else?”

“No, Skipper, not unless you count some more Foo Fighter sightings.”

The two burst out laughing at the thought. Every so often a ship reported some highly anomalous radar contacts. Very high altitude, relatively slow moving, usually inland over Canada but sometimes over the sea. Always on the edge of radar coverage and peculiarly hard to get a hold on. As if the radar pulses kept slipping off them. The Foo Fighters led to all sorts of weird explanations, the usual clutch of secret weapons and (from the pulp magazine devotees) space aliens. The scientists had explained it. There was a thing called the Jet Stream, a very high-speed current of air that circled the globe. The B-29s had found it when they’d started their ill-fated career and a lot of problems it had caused them. Apparently, every so often, a pocket of moist air got caught up in the Jetstream and floated around in it until it dispersed. Those pockets were remarkably stable and could last for hours. While they did so they gave a solid radar return. That made sense. Radar shadowing from moist air pockets down at sea level were a constant problem, so why shouldn’t the ones high up be the same? No, the Foo Fighters were nothing to be concerned about. Just a natural phenomenon of no great consequence.

No importance at all.

“That damned fool will kill us all.” Sergeant Heim swore, fluently but quietly. After all, nobody knew who was listening these days. It was true though, that damned Captain from the staff, that perfect perfumed prince from Berlin, seemed perfectly determined to kill them all.

The convoy wasn’t a big one. A half-track with a quadruple 20mm gun at the front, another with a squad of infantry, then two big Henschels towing the first pair of 15 cm sFH 18s. Then, another halftrack with infantry, one mounting a 37mm anti-aircraft gun and two more Henschel 10 tonners with the other pair of sFH 18s. A second half-track with a 37mm gun then four British-built AECs carrying ammunition. Another quad twenty on a half-track and one more halftrack with the rest of the infantry bringing up the rear. Almost more escorts than escorted in this convoy. That made it like every supply convoy on the Kola Peninsula. Russian Partisans and Ami Jabos saw to that. And, right in the middle of the convoy rode the thing Heim considered more dangerous than either, a staff officer desperate to break the pristine, decoration-less monotony of his uniform with a medal or two.

“We must get the guns into place by evening.” he had said. “The Jabos will not fly in winter,” he’d claimed. So now this artillery battery, his artillery battery more the pity, was moving in broad daylight. Something no sane person did when Ami Jabos were on the prowl. Even moving at night was getting dangerous, the Ami Night Witches saw to that. A country so rich it could put radar sets on ground attack aircraft, Heim shuddered at the thought. The Night Witch struck from the darkness and never gave any warning of its approach. Perhaps moving in daylight was better.

Heim’s eye was caught by a flash in the sky up ahead. The sun reflecting off a cockpit perhaps? There was a chance, a slim one, it was a Luftwaffe fighter but the odds weren’t in their favor. He scanned the area with his binoculars; they were good ones, taken from a dead officer. There were lots of those over the years. At first he saw nothing. When the truck lurched a little he caught a glimpse. Two engines, a nose that stuck far, far out in front. Damn it, he thought, Grizzlies, just what we needed. Probably four of them, carrying rockets, a couple thousand kilos of bombs or, horror of horrors, jellygas. Six .50 machine guns and a 75mm gun that stuck out of the nose like the unicorn’s horn gave the aircraft its distinctive appearance in the recognition books. The Beechcraft A-38D Grizzly to give it its full and proper name. Where would they be coming from?

Heim scanned around fast, over to the left, a low ridge. The Grizzlies will dive down, use the hill as cover, then slash across us. Different tactics from different air forces, the Russian Sturmoviks would circle their prey, each diving on it in turn. The Americans made straight strafing runs across the target area. Difficult to say which was worse. He looked around his truck.

“Jabos coming. Get your snowshoes on. When I give the word, bail out and run like the wind, to the left.”

That was a painful lesson, learned at grim cost. Run away from the Ami jabos and they’d give chase, treat killing the men on the ground as a game. Run towards them and one might, might, get under the attack, escape that way. Whatever one did, get away from the vehicles. For vehicles drew jellygas.

Heim was right. Four Grizzlies erupted over the ridgeline, heading straight for the convoy. The vehicles lurched and swayed as they came to a halt, the anti-aircraft gunners swung their weapons to bear. Those who couldn’t fight the jabos were already running for the snowbanks on either side of the road. The perfect perfumed prince stood in the back of his kubelwagen, shouting something. Probably exhorting his men to stand and fight. He would learn. Learn and burn.

Tracer screamed across the sky towards the racing jabos, the noses of the aircraft vanished behind the orange fireballs as they fired back at the flak guns. Nobody had ever accused the Amis of being inventive; they found the best way of slaughtering their enemies and stuck with it. This was the first act. They would concentrate fire on the flak guns and take them out. The guns will probably die, but if they can maul the Grizzlies, they might not go through with killing the rest of us. Heim couldn’t see the flak gunners serving their guns behind him, he was too busy running across the hardened crust on top of the snow, for the soft, deep banks where he could hide, but he knew they’d be steadily, efficiently, serving their guns.

He couldn’t see but he sensed the fountains of snow erupting around the half-tracks. The guns on the Grizzlies outranged the flak pieces, so they’d be hoping to get at least some of them before the range closed. He heard the clang as an armor piercing round hit the side of one of the vehicles, heard the explosion as the ammunition in the half-track exploded, felt the heat from the ball of flame as the 37mm gun and its crew died. The viciously cold air was burning his lungs as he ran. He saw some snow banks and hurled himself into them as the Grizzlies swept overhead. The rockets screamed from under their wings and he heard the explosions. The mass of secondary explosions meant he didn’t need to look to know that the tracks brought all the way from England had just blown up.

He did sneak a look anyway. Pyres of black smoke were rising from where both the 37mm guns and one of the quadruple 20mms had gone. The AECs weren’t just burning, they were an inferno of exploding ammunition and fuel. The infantry, the convoy’s guard against partisan attack had spread out into defensive positions, away from the guns but near enough to protect them from any partisans closing in on the scene. Joint attacks between Ami jabos and partisans weren’t unknown but they weren’t common either. More often the partisans stayed in the background and called in the air attacks.

Up above, the four Grizzlies were turning away. One was streaming thick black smoke from its starboard wing. Heim watched it turn away still further and head north slowly losing height. One of the other jabos was leaving with it. Another difference between the Amis and Ivans. A crippled Russian aircraft was on its own, left to get back to base as best it could. The Americans detached aircraft to escort the cripple. If it crash-landed, they’d land to pick up the crew. They’d risk men to save men. In their eyes, expending treasure, machines, resources to rescue their men just didn’t enter into the equation. If their men were down, they’d do what it took to get them back. May the good Lord help anybody who got in the way.

The Grizzlies vanished behind the trees again. Heim guessed what was coming next. It wasn’t an accident that the 20mm quad at the front of the convoy had been knocked out in the first pass. He and his men took the opportunity to get still further from the tracks on the road. They had little time and it ran out as the two remaining Grizzlies broke over the treeline. Their 75mm guns belched out the familiar orange ball of flame. They were joined by the flat hammering of the .50 machine guns. Heim saw the lead ten tonner explode. A 75mm round had plowed through the front and it shattered the vehicle into blazing fragments. There were only a handful of shots, the range was short and the Grizzlies had better things on their mind. Better for them that was.

Heim watched the two stubby tanks detach from the bomb racks on the jabos. They wobbled down, turning end over end as they fell. An inaccurate weapon but it didn’t matter. It was the dreaded jelly gas, the foul thing the Amis had created by mixing gasoline with stuff that made it burn hot and slow. Stuff that made it stick to whatever it touched. Stuff that nothing could put it out.

The first pair hit the ground just short of the wrecked 20mm half-track. They bounded high and erupted into a roaring mass of orange and black flame. It boiled skywards as the bouncing tanks spewed the hellish jellygas back along the lines of stalled vehicles. The second pair hit just behind the middle point of the convoy and repeated the inferno that was consumed what was left of the convoy. Roaring and screaming, the black smoke and orange flames blotted out the sky above the convoy. The black cloud of smoke turning the sun blood red. Heim’s face blistered as the heat from the nightmarish holocaust rolled across the snow. He felt the hard-packed whiteness soften and saw it turned black with soot from the fires.

The two Grizzlies swept over the inferno below them. The orange glare of the fires reflected off their glossy white-and gray camouflage paint. Then they were gone, heading north. Probably for more ammunition, more fuel, more jellygas. Heim got up and waited for the roaring conflagration to die down. Then, he went back to the cooling remnants of the convoy. Around him, the survivors did the same, slowly, shocked by the ferocity of the assault. The vehicles were gone. Some had been hit by gunfire and rockets, others incinerated by the jellygas. Most cases it was hard to tell which was which. Burned, blasted, who knew?

Only one vehicle had survived, the little kubelwagen right in the middle. It must have been just far enough back to miss the first pair of jellygas tanks and too far forward to catch the second. Around it, the wreckage on the convoy burned. Scattered around it were the blackened, carbonized husks that had once been soldiers.

The perfect perfumed prince stood immaculate, in the middle of the destruction, neither burned nor asphyxiated. Mentally, Heim raised his eyes in despair. He had long since ceased to believe in God; this was just another example of the injustice that made up his world. The survival of the perfect perfumed prince responsible for this nightmare confirmed his disbelief in any form of divine providence. “Sir, I shall assemble the survivors. We should head back to the depot.”

The depot was a safe cantonment heavily guarded against attack. They had to get back there by dusk; the Partisans were closing in. They’d have seen the smoke and heard the explosions. They knew what was happening. Most of the Partisan bands had radios now. It was a fair bet that they’d been told of the strike, to find any survivors the Grizzlies had left and kill them.

“Our orders are to reach the 71st Division base area as soon as possible. We will go on.”

“With respect, sir, reaching the base area is no longer possible. We are barely a third of the way there. Even if we are left undisturbed, we will not make it by nightfall. We will be hard put to get back to the depot by then. It is cold now; when dusk comes it will be much, much worse. We can’t make it. Even if we could, the wounded couldn’t. We must go back.”

The perfect perfumed prince stared at the shabby, grizzled sergeant. Slowly Captain Wilhelm Lang realized the truth that lay behind the words he had heard. The stink of the burning vehicles and incinerated men drifted across him and with great annoyance he realized his spotless white scarf was in danger of being stained black by the soot from the fires.

“Very well Sergeant, we will head back for the depot area. With the guns gone, there is no point in carrying on anyway. For the sake of the wounded, we must return to the depot.”

“I’ve got the latest production figures from Germany, Loki. Third quarter, 1945. And the transportation requirements for military and civil resource allocations.”

Loki was leaning back in his high leather chair, looking out over Geneva, the wet roofs glistening in the morning sun. “Thank you, Branwen. Anything interesting?”

“I’ve only had a brief look but it looks like much the same as before. Steel, coal, nitrates; all have increased a bit but not much. Armored vehicle and aircraft production are holding steady. It looks like Speer’s reforms have finally finished working through the system. Production totals have been steady for two quarters now. I expect they’ll drop a bit in the fourth quarter as coal production gets diverted from industrial production to heating. If one goes up, the other goes down, there’s no slack left in the German economy any more. Everything they do these days is a zero-sum game, as one thing goes up, another goes down.”

Loki took the two-inch thick file and started to skip through the pages. “You know, this would all make a lot more sense if we had the American and Russian figures by way of comparison. We’ve no idea how much of the American economy is mobilized.”

Branwen snorted. “I had Manannan take a look of the American economy; more or less from what we can see they’ve produced and guesswork at the rest. He reckons the Americans have mobilized about half their productive capacity. To put that into perspective, they’re producing around two thirds of the world’s aircraft engines.”

“About half? I wonder why they haven’t mobilized the rest. German’s running, what eighty, ninety plus percent mobilized? And the Russians?”

“Germans at least that. Russia? No means of knowing. Most of their industrial infrastructure was in the area now occupied by the Germans. The Russians evacuated a lot and destroyed the rest but how much and what did they have to begin with? We don’t know. How much of what they evacuated has been returned to use? We don’t know. We do know the Americans have been building factories and resource recovery facilities in Siberia but their output? We just don’t know. Loki. It’s maddening. We know far, far more about the Germans than about the people we’re supposed to be working with.”

“With Stuyvesant over there at the heart of things, does this surprise you? I’m astonished he’s even told us there’s a war on. Ask Manannan mac Lir to drop up and see me this afternoon will you? I need to talk with him about the Americans and Russians.”

Branwen made a note on her pad. Manannan had some odd theories about the American war effort. He believed that something about it didn’t quite make sense. As if anything in the madness that was tearing the world apart made any kind of sense.

Loki started thumbing through the thick file again wondering if those who got the data understood where it came from. Masses of numbers from all over Germany. Mostly from little people who didn’t like what Nazi Germany stood for but were too afraid, either for themselves or their families, to do much about it. That, Loki could understand, he had seen the brutality of the Nazi regime for himself. But, a few economic figures, how many rifle bolts they had produced, how many trains went through a station, what the consist on those trains was, surely that didn’t matter? Loki snorted to himself. Individually, none of it did but put together by talented economists it meant a lot. Not just raw economic data either.

Loki’s spy ring, his Red Orchestra, had assembled a complete performance and design specification dossier on the Type XXI U-boat and got it through to the Americans. It had arrived in time for them to have a test boat, modified from a British S-class submarine, at sea before the first German Type XXI was in service. The Battle of the Atlantic might have looked quite different if it hadn’t been for that coup. “Natural oil production seems steady as well. The Russians did a good job in blowing up their oil fields. Mostly this comes from Romania. Synthetic fuel production is up but not enough, Germany is still running at a net deficit in fuel.” Loki found that satisfying.

“Consumption’s slackened off a bit. The end of the B-29 raids has reduced the amount of fuel the home defenses burned, and that’s been reallocated to the Russian Front. Also the submarine operations have been cut right back in the second and third quarters. You can see how much less fuel is going to the U-boat bases.”

Loki nodded. Fuel was the one German weakness, their one over-riding constraint. They were short of all types of fuel, bunker oil for ships, gasoline for aircraft engines, diesel fuel for armored vehicles, kerosene for jets. They just didn’t have enough. They spent their time shifting what supplies they had around, trying to make do with what they had. That’s what made the distribution of fuel supplies such a marvelous indicator of future operations.

Loki turned to the pages of railway transport data. So simple to obtain, just needed one man to count the wagons in a consist and drop the list in a dead letter box somewhere. Meaningless numbers. One of those who collected the train data had been caught by the Gestapo, but had talked his way out of the arrest. He had claimed that the numbers were his orders for black market goods, so many grams of sugar, so many of sausage. They’d believed him. Who would confess to being a black marketeer when interrogated by the Gestapo unless he was one? They’d beaten him senseless and dumped him in the street as a warning to other black marketeers — and the lists had kept coming.

Loki looked sharply at the train consists again and then at the summary. “Branwen, did you see this?”

“Hmm?”

“The consists of the trains heading east. The fuel shipments going through Kaunas are up 20 percent in the third quarter; those through Minsk and points south are down by the same amount. Kaunas is the rail nexus that supplies the northern end of the front. Especially the area from Petrograd to Archangel. Last time we saw that was second quarter, 1944.”

Branwen flipped through her own file, turning to the trend lines. “First quarter. There was a jump in second quarter as well, but first quarter was the big one. Right before the great Northern offensive, the one that broke through to the White Sea.”

Loki sucked through his teeth. Those had been grim days, the most recent great breakthrough on the Russian Front, the Russian Army sent reeling backwards. Petrograd and the whole Kola Peninsula cut off, Archangel besieged. Archangel still was under siege, still fighting grimly. Were the Germans planning to finish off Archangel? Something wasn’t right, to strip the areas further south of fuel to bring that siege to an end, it seemed disproportionate somehow. Were there other areas being reinforced?

“Branwen, you’ve got the area summaries. Where else is the oil going?”

“Gasoline, kerosene and diesel, are running through Kaunas as you say….” Branwen hesitated for a moment. “Now, that’s odd. Bunker oil for ships, production was up in the second quarter. We noted that but we thought it was just an adjustment to earlier production deficiencies. It’s up this quarter as well. And a lot of it, a whole lot of it, is going to Kiel.”

“German naval base Kiel?” It was, just barely, a question.

“Where else, Loki? Where else would that much bunker oil be going?”

“Power stations?” Loki was playing devil’s advocate and they both knew it. Asking questions they both knew the answers to, just in case.

“Not a chance. Germany generates electricity from coal-fired stations, mostly brown coal from open-cast mines, and hydro from those dams along the Ruhr. Not from oil. The few power stations that used oil converted to coal a long time ago.

“It has to be the ships then. Has to be. With that much bunker oil moving, the Germans have to be planning a major naval movement. Surface navy with these quantities, not submarines.”

“Linked to the northern front?”

“Don’t ask me, I’m a futures trader remember? I’m not the great all-seeing strategist.” Loki was bitter and spiteful, his longstanding hatred of Phillip Stuyvesant dominating his voice. “We’ve got a major shift in fuel supplies to the extreme northern end of the Russian Front and indications of an equally major naval operation impending. Let’s get it all off to Washington. Stuyvesant can make sense of it. We’ve done our job; let him do his for a change.”

His ships had more fuel in their tanks now than at any time since 1939. Further shipments arrived every day. After years of existing on fuel delivered by an eyedropper, they now had as much as they needed and more. That made Admiral Ernst Lindemann a very happy man. For the first time since it had adopted that honored name in 1944, the High Seas Fleet was actually capable of putting to sea.

In numbers, this High Seas Fleet didn’t compare, with the battle fleet of World War One. In fighting power, that was hard to say. Certainly the old fleet had nothing to compare with the four 55,000 ton battleships of the First Division. The 40.6 centimeter gunned Derfflinger, von der Tann, Seydlitz and Moltke were the most powerful battleships in the world. Not even the American Iowas could compare with them. Their main guns had given the First Division its nickname, “the Forties”, just as the Second Division had been given its nickname, ‘the Thirty-Eights” from its 38-centimeter main guns. Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Bismarck and Tirpitz were very much the second division. Their status was not helped by the fact that Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had only six guns each. The eight battleships still represented an awesome force, even if they had yet to fire their gun against an enemy ship. Well, technically, the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had, but that was before they had been rearmed with their new 38 centimeter guns.

Lindemann knew that the Americans believed the day of the battleship was done; that the lumbering gun-ships couldn’t stand up to the concentrated aircraft striking power of fleet carriers. That was why they had ended their production of battleships with the Iowas. Now, they were building carriers as fast as their yards could turn them out, and that was terrifyingly fast. The Americans had already built twenty four Essex class carriers, each with a hundred aircraft. There were rumors of an even bigger class joining the fleet.

Lindemann believed they had made a catastrophic blunder in listening to their air power advocates. Aircraft were all very well, but they couldn’t replace the sheer battering power of a ship’s heavy guns. Aircraft couldn’t fly in very bad weather and bad weather in the North Atlantic was the rule rather than the exception. Lindemann looked forward to the day when he could get the American carriers under the guns of his battleships, just like Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had once got the British carrier Glorious under their guns.

He desperately hoped the Americans had got it wrong. If they hadn’t, Germany had and the new High Seas Fleet was an obsolete anachronism. It had only three carriers; none were close to the size and capability of the American ships. Graf Zeppelin and Oswald Boelcke were German-built, weird, ungainly designs with a heavy, useless, low-angle gun armament. Graf Zeppelin had 32 aircraft, Oswald Boelcke a mere 20. The third was the Werner Voss. On paper she was a better carrier, certainly she looked better. Appearances were deceiving, for the Werner Voss had started life as HMS Implacable. She’d already been launched when the British Fleet ran away to Canada. Too incomplete to join them, she’d been scuttled at her shipyard. Her sister ship, HMS Indefatigable, had still been on her building slip and the British had done a very thorough job of blowing her up.

Still, between the two wrecks, there had been enough salvaged to complete the Implacable a few months ago. On paper. In fact, everything imaginable was wrong with the ship and the British shipyard workers had managed to devise ‘construction errors’ that no sane person could have dreamed up. There wasn’t a watertight door on the ship that fitted properly; they were all twisted just that little bit out of true. The cable runs led through the “watertight” bulkheads and the “seals” were constantly dripping. The gearing for the main turbines created dreadful vibration at cruising speed, enough to break glass and cause the engine room gauges to become unreadable. The officer’s latrines, now they were a masterpiece. They worked fine as long as the hatch was left open but if somebody absently-mindedly closed it, the unfortunate occupant couldn’t get out until somebody rescued him. The mess decks were beyond description. It wasn’t just the smell although the stench of rotting herring permeated the entire ship. It was that even the paint scheme seemed deliberately designed to induce nausea and heartburn.

Three carriers, between them had 106 aircraft. Barely more than a single Essex class. Their aircraft, they were a hasty adaptation of whatever could be found for them Their fighters weren’t too bad, Ta-152Fs, hurried modifications of the Ta-152C. A lot better than the converted Me-109s originally planned. The Zeppelin had twelve, the Boelcke ten, the Voss had twenty four. It was the strike aircraft that were the problem. Despite frantic efforts, nobody had found anything better that could fly off a carrier than the aged Ju-87Es. They served as both dive and torpedo bombers, the Zeppelin carried twenty, the Boelcke ten and the Voss thirty. When the fleet put to sea, Lindemann intended to use them primarily as scouts. The Ta-152s would serve as fighter cover for the battleships. Still, the old High Seas Fleet hadn’t had any aircraft carriers at all, so he was ahead of them there.

There was worse trouble in the smaller units of the fleet. The High Seas Fleet had one heavy cruiser squadron, with three ships. Two, Admiral Scheer and Lutzow were awkward hybrids. Their six 28 centimeter guns made them too big for cruisers, too small for battleships. One of the class had already been lost, the British had sunk the Graf Spee down in South America. Lindemann fumed at the memory. Three of their cruisers had shot her up, then that spineless coward Langsdorff had run for port and blown his ship up rather than fight it out. Turning the German Navy into a laughing stock in the process. Both the surviving Panzerschiffe bore the humiliation of that fiasco.

The other heavy cruisers had even worse luck. On paper, they were good, 14,000 tons with eight 20.3guns, but the class had been cursed with ill luck. Blucher had been sunk by a Norwegian coastal defense battery, Prinz Eugen had gone down in the Kattegat after a submarine put four torpedoes into her. One had been sold to the Russians and was now a floating battery at Petrograd, firing on the German troops south of the city. Seydlitz had been converted into the Boelcke. That just left the Hipper, a ship that had become a by-word for mechanical unreliability.

And, if his heavy cruiser force was weak, his light cruisers were even worse. He had three: Koln, Leipzig and Nurnburg. Nine 15-centimeter guns each. Weak ships, poorly designed but there was nothing better. His destroyers? Lindemann snorted in disgust. The best were also the oldest, the ten survivors of 22 Z-1 class ships. The British had destroyed the other twelve in the Norway campaign. That had been a nightmare. At Narvik, the new German Navy had faced the British in combat for the first time. The destroyers had taken the brunt of the onslaught as the British had gone through them like a buzz-saw through butter.

Those destroyers had five 12.7 centimeter guns and eight torpedo tubes each. On balance Lindemann felt that made them as good as the American destroyers. The other twenty of his destroyers, well, some fool had armed them with 15 centimeter guns, leaving them over-armed and poor seaboats. They were all right inshore and in the Baltic. Take them out in the North Atlantic and they’d be hard put to stay upright, let alone do any fighting. Lindemann had made repeated requests to have them rearmed with 12.7 centimeter guns but he’d been turned down.

Lindemann put down his status report file. The major fleet units were all right; it was the smaller stuff that was so lacking. That was logical. It took time to build the big ships, the Forties had taken five years, and the last two had never even been started. The idea had been that the smaller ships could be built quickly when the need arose but that wasn’t the case. By the time the need arose, the demand for tanks on the Russian Front was over-riding everything else and the small ships had never been built.

Until now that was. The High Seas Fleet had orders. The Americans were expected to send a huge convoy through to Murmansk and Archangel. It would be a mixture of Canadian and American ships bring supplies for the troops on the Kola Peninsula and besieged in Archangel. It would be heavily escorted, at least two battleships, probably more, cruisers and destroyers. An American aircraft carrier group would be providing distant cover. But, the new American battleships were with the carriers and the not-so new ones were out in the Pacific. The only battleships left for the Atlantic convoys were the very old Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, and Oklahoma. There were reports that the even older Arkansas, Texas and New York had already been sent back to the States for scrapping.

So, at most four old battleships, all ready to be destroyed by his guns. Then the convoy was to be annihilated. It didn’t take much insight to see what the plan was. His ships would destroy the convoy, leaving the Kola and Archangel troops desperately short of supplies. Then, the army would attack and overrun both northern ports. It wouldn’t win the war but it would be a break in the grinding deadlock.

“Lutjens!” Lindemann called his chief of staff. Once Lutjens had been the senior, a full Admiral to Lindemann’s mere Captain but Lutjens had mysteriously fallen out of favor. Just as mysteriously, Lindemann had gained a place in the sun. It was, perhaps, a measure of the man’s character that he’d never displayed resentment or ill-will from that turn of events. “Lutjens, we are going to sea as soon as the tankers are filled up. We have a mission worthy of us at last.”

“So what are we up against?”

“In global terms, sir, the German armed forces deploy a total of three hundred and thirty three divisions and forty three independent brigades, of which sixty six divisions and thirteen independent brigades are drawn from their ‘allies’. That force totals some six and a half million men. Their major effort remains facing the Russians and the Americans along the Volga. There, the Germans deploy 258 divisions and 16 independent brigades totaling just over five million men.

“Against them, the Russians have deployed three hundred and ninety one divisions with an aggregate of six point one million men and, now that SUSAGIR has entered the line, the Americans deploy 72 divisions with a total of one and a half million men.”

“SUSAGIR?”

“Second United States Army Group In Russia Sir. It and FUSAGIR are much more powerful than their numbers suggest. Every one of those divisions is fully mechanized, by the standards of the Russian Front they’re armored divisions. And they have tactical air power coming out of their ears.”

General John M Rockingham grunted. “And very nice for them it is I’m sure. What I need to know is what do we face here?”

“On the Finnish Front Sir, the Finns have deployed a total of sixteen standard infantry divisions and one mountain infantry division plus an independent armored brigade. They’re backed up by two German mountain divisions and four German infantry divisions together with two independent armored brigades. We, First Canadian Army, face that force with two corps, with a total of five divisions. Six once your Sixth Infantry Division comes into the line. Three infantry divisions, four as soon as the Sixth arrives, and two armored divisions.

“The odds aren’t as bad as they seem. The Finns have 250,000 men at most, the Germans about 100,000. We have 120,000 men. The catch is aircraft. The Finns have about 200, the Germans less than a hundred. Here in Kola, we have 300 planes, the Americans have 350 and the Russians 950. So we rule the air pretty much unchallenged. As long as we have avgas, of course. If that runs out, we’re in a world of hurt.

“To complete the picture, at a right angle to our deployment is the Petrograd Front. The Russians have fourteen infantry divisions, one mechanized corps and two tank corps down there plus about forty independent battalions, most of them in Petrograd itself. They face Army Group Vistula under the command of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.”

“Vistula? How did it get that name? The river Vistula runs through the middle of Poland.” Rockingham was amazed at the out-of-place name.

“The Germans only change the name of their Army Groups when they get seriously defeated or are split. They started the war here in Russia with three, Army Group North, Center and South. Near the end of ‘41, Army Group North split with Army Group Vistula being formed to mop up the Baltic states and Petrograd. The rest remained Army Group North and headed east. I guess the Vistula was the nearest big river back then and there’s been no reason to change it. Down south, Army Group Don is still in business as well. Anyway, Vistula has two armies, Ninth and 11th SS Panzer. Total of 17 infantry divisions, one mountain division, two SS Panzer divisions and three SS Panzergrenadier divisions. Ninth is pretty poorly equipped, but 11th SS? Well, they’re SS divisions, if its good, they’ve got it.”

“If they outnumber us that much, why don’t they attack?” The balance of forces he faced appalled Rockingham.

“It must be very tempting Sir. The Germans have seventy five divisions and twenty seven independent brigades not deployed on the Volga Front. Of those, a total of thirty five divisions and three independent brigades are deployed here on Kola. That’s not quite half their uncommitted forces but it’s pretty close to it. It must be frightfully tempting for them to attack, roll us up and seize Kola. Once that’s done, they could free up, probably, the whole of the German contingent and leave most of the occupation work to the Finns. Thirty more divisions on the Volga front, well, it won’t win the war for the Germans but it’ll swing the deadlock there in their favor.

“Look at it this way Sir. The Germans are tapped out; like us, they can’t support any more than they already have. They’ve got pitifully few troops outside Russia. Most of their occupation forces are those ‘allied’ divisions. Romanians and Slovakians mostly. Those German units that are elsewhere are reconstituting after being torn up in Russia.”

For a second Colonel Charles Lampier looked very tired. “Europe’s bleeding to death Sir, the whole continent is just bleeding to death.”

There was a grim silence. Running through both men’s minds was a terrible question that neither would admit to even thinking. Had Halifax been right? Was striking a deal better than this endless slaughter? Canada is stretched as far as we can go in supporting First Canadian Army. We’re being bled white by the casualties we’re suffering.

“So why don’t they?”

“Three reasons Sir. Two are military, one is political. The first military reason is that the terrain here is some of the finest defensive ground in the world. It’s a maze of lakes, rivers, ridges, swamps. You name it, we’ve got it. The weather is frightful; you saw how bad flying down here. That isn’t the worst of it; you wait until we get white-out conditions. The sky fills with windblown snow and nobody can see where the sky ends and the ground begins. Too dangerous even to try and fly.

“This whole area is a defending force’s paradise. Even a high correlation of forces in favor of the attacker doesn’t help much. The attack is channeled into a series of narrow thrusts and the additional troops just stack up behind the lead elements. A company can hold a division for days, weeks if necessary, and when it’s finally destroyed, the next defending company has moved in behind it.

“That brings us to the second military reason: air power. The Americans in particular; they shoot up everything that moves. And I do mean everything. If your division has vehicles on the move, make sure they display the recognition panels and pray intensely. All the Yank fighter-bombers are trigger-happy but the Grizzlies are the worst. They have a 75mm right in the nose and it’s accurate so they tend to shoot from long range. Let’s just say they aren’t too careful sometimes.

“But, once all those troops stack up in front of a defensive position, the aircraft get to work and they reduce those forces to a shambles. You should have seen the roads west of here a few weeks ago. The Germans tried a local advance to straighten their line before winter. There’s a lot of that going on, everybody tries to seize the best shelter for their own people and to deny it to the enemy. Anyway, the front was about the width of a main road. A couple of SU-100 tank destroyers and an infantry platoon blocked it then the fighter-bombers got to work. Mostly Thunderstorms and Grizzlies but even some of our Williwaws got in on the act. By the time they’d finished, the road was a tangled mass of burned out wreckage.

“Anyway, put together, those two things mean that attacking here is slow and expensive. Applies to us as much as the enemy of course but we don’t plan to go anywhere though. ‘ The Germans don’t know that of course; they can see that if we broke out of here, we could cut off their whole northern flank. Isn’t going to happen, but they have forces pinned here in case. The ground their side isn’t so defensible so they need more troops to hold it.

“The third reason is political. The Finns want to survive this war as an independent state and the way they’ve screwed the political side of things to date puts a big question mark against that. The Russians and us are doing a good-cop, bad-op act on them. The Russians make noises that, when the allies have won, Finland is going to be occupied and reduced to a Russian province and any Finns that don’t like it can seek new lifestyle opportunities in Siberia. We tell the Finns, we can argue the Russians out of that but how effective our arguments are depends on how active a part they take in the war. The more operations Finland engages in against us, the less will be left unoccupied post-war.

“Of course, the Finns have the Germans telling them that they’re going to win and if Finland wants to survive post-war and get a share of the goodies, it had better be an active German ally. So they’re dancing a tightrope. Frankly I doubt if anybody here has any sympathy for them. We all had when we arrived, Winter War, gallant little Finland and all that, but it didn’t last.

“The problem is that we need to keep this front quiet, that’s our prime driver. We need to keep the activity, and thus casualties, down to a minimum. You know how stretched manpower is back home. We’re keeping units up to ToE at the moment but if the casualty rate spikes, that’ll end and we’ll drop behind the curve. Once that happens, we’ll never catch up. It’s not as if we could draw on any of the Free British units. They’re all being reserved and trained for the invasion of the UK. If that ever happens.”

“You don’t think it will?”

“I have my doubts. Oh, sure, the Yanks are going through the motions. They’ve trained and equipped a Marine Corps, six divisions of it, and are planning a landing in France. They’ve got the Royal Marines and various other units doing beach reconnaissance and all those good things and they’re training and equipping the Free British units for a landing in the UK but there’s something missing. Either they’re not serious about it or they’re heading for the worst amphibious foul-up since Gallipoli.

“Six divisions sounds really good and, as we’ve seen, there isn’t that much to oppose them, not at first. But the Germans are on interior lines; they can move troops around. We just can’t get at their core railway system, so they can shift forces west without much interference. If they moved, for example, 11th SS Panzer Army west, they’d go through the Marines on the beach like shit through a goose. And they’re talking of landing in France? Why would they do that? The UK is the fortress that guards Europe from the west; that’s been true since the time of the Barbary pirates. Retaking it has got to come first. Surely they’d do that with one landing, at full strength, not two spread out over half Europe?

“No, sorry General, but I think they’re bluffing. They’re not really planning to land in the west; they’re just trying, not too successfully, to keep German troops pinned down in France and the UK. The issue’s going to be decided here, in Russia. And we won’t see Free British troops out here.

“So, I’m sorry to have to tell you this but at least half your job is political. We’ve got to keep the Finns scared enough so they stay quiet but not so scared they decide they have nothing to lose. Anyway, another thing running for us. Our Intel is good, very good indeed. Don’t ask me how, but we get warning of every major German move, when and where. In effect, the Germans are telegraphing every punch and that gives us a huge edge. I believe a lot of stuff comes in from the Norwegian resistance and I think we get more from the Swedes.”

“I thought the Swedes were tight with the Germans?”

“They are, or so we thought, but the intelligence thing makes it look different. It’s really weird. There are Swedish volunteer units fighting with the Germans. One of the SS panzergrenadier divisions is a third Swedish, yet I’m pretty certain we’re getting all this good intel out of Stockholm. Another thing that doesn’t make sense. Looks like the Swedes are playing a really deep double game and the Germans are not pleased about it.

“In terms of equipment, one of our two armored divisions have got late-model M-4 Shermans. They have HVSS suspension, wide tracks and 90mm guns. The other has M-27 Sheridans; same gun but a bit more armor. Between them, they’ll handle most things except the German heavies. There’s a few of those, mostly Royal Tigers down around Petrograd. The Russians have JS-IIIs down there and seeing those two go at it is a real treat. This isn’t really tank country though. Armor is a help but it’s a supporting weapon, not a decisive maneuver arm.

“Our infantry is outgunned. The Germans have those banana guns, StG-44s. We still use bolt action No.4s. We’ve got Capsten submachine guns though; they fire the hot greentip Tokarev 7.62s. Machine guns, its mostly our Brens vs their Spandaus but we’ve got the Vickers and those water-cooled machine guns are worth their weight in gold. They’ll fire forever in the cold and snow. One thing, make sure all your sub-commanders check their ammunition supplies. We’re shipping both our .303 and Russian 7.62 three-line ammunition through Murmansk and the two rounds are alike enough to get mixed up. Happened already, it’ll happen again. You don’t want one of our battalions to find out it’s got three-line ammunition just as it goes into action.”