Winter Warriors

CHAPTER SEVEN: A KILLING COLD

“Message from the Yanks, Admiral.”

“I do hope it’s a bit more informative than the first one.

Captain Charles Povey took a deep breath. The first message had been “Sighted German Fleet, sank same” which hadn’t been terribly informative. Melodramatic certainly, even by Yank standards. It had at least slowed down the process of planning a battle in which a couple of light cruisers would take on a whole battle fleet. They’d got to the point of getting in to the middle of the German fleet, firing at everybody and hoping the Germans would hit each other in the crossfire. It had worked with MTBs in the Baltic, sometimes.

“Well, let’s hear it then?” Admiral Vian was impatient. He hadn’t been looking forward to that battle and needed to know that he wouldn’t have to fight it.

“Americans have finished recovering their carrier planes. They’ve lost more than four hundred aircraft.” A set of low whistles and the sounds of teeth being sucked filled the bridge. “They’re claiming they’ve got the lot. There are some smaller ships, a cruiser and a couple of destroyers last seen heading south east, probably towards Norway, but they’ve been hammered badly and Halsey isn’t going after them. Not with his planes anyway. By the sound of it his air groups are pretty shot up. But all eight battleships and three carriers are confirmed sunk.”

Cheers echoed around the bridge, spreading throughout the ship as the word passed from man to man. As always, shipboard rumor spread the word faster than even the most sophisticated communications system could manage. Vian shook his head sadly. “We’re at the end of an era gentlemen. After today, nobody will take battleships seriously any more. The Old Queen has handed her throne to her successor. What’s Halsey going to do now? Any offers?”

“He’s got to pull back, meet up with his support groups and get some replacement aircraft. Then, I guess, he’ll take a swing at the north of Ireland, just to remind the Huns it’s still business as usual, before going home to bomb up again. God knows how much ammunition he’s thrown at those battleships.”

“Sounds about right. Anyway, our way’s clear to Murmansk. Order the convoy to make full speed, we’ve got a Canadian division to deliver. And, by the sound of things, they’re going to be needed.”

Captain Hubert Wilkens knew that what he was seeing would haunt his sleep for the rest of his life. The sea was covered with wreckage, some shattered, some burned, some just strewn around. As Charles H Roan’s searchlight flickered across the scene it saw many other things as well. Bodies floating in the sea; hundreds, no thousands, of them. Some were just floating in the sea. Others were sprawled across wreckage.

“Air temperature is 15 degrees Fahrenheit Sir. With wind chill, it’s about ten below. Water temperature, 26.45 degrees. That’s a killing cold, Captain.”

Wilkens nodded. His eyes scanned across the dreadful scene. He could feel the bitter cold biting through him, even here in the shelter of the bridge wing, wrapped up in the warmest clothing the United States Navy could provide. Perhaps it was a mercy that the water was so cold, the sheer shock of going into it could kill a man and even if he survived that, his survival time was measured in a very small number of minutes. It was a quick death.

“Sir, movement out there!”

“Where away?”

“Directly on the port beam Captain.” The searchlight scanned across and illuminated a crude raft, made from timber strapped to what appeared to be oil drums. It had sides, giving whoever was on it some protection from the wind. Behind him, Wilkens heard the whine as the power-operated 40mm quad mount swung to bear on the raft.

“Taney Justice Sir?”

“No. These are surface sailors, not U-boats. Anyway, there’s a lot they can tell us. If anybody is alive on that raft, we’ll pick them up. Get scrambling nets over the side. Detail a rescue team to check the bodies there for survivors.”

The Roan pulled alongside the makeshift raft and four figures climbed down the nets. There was a pause for a couple of minutes then a voice came over the radio link. “Sir, twelve men here, three alive, just. An officer, two ratings. We’ll need some help to get them up. They’re literally frozen stiff.”

Wilkens gave the orders and looked at the scene. The sea seemed jelly-like somehow, as if it were on the point of freezing and only kept from doing so by its constant, restless motion. Already Roan was accumulating ice where the spray was hitting her rails and plating, freezing solid in an ever-increasing white coat that was adding to her topweight by the minute. The northern North Atlantic wasn’t a friendly place for destroyers. Across the TBS radio, he could hear other destroyers from the Battle Line screen searching the field of floating wreckage; hunting for any other sailors who had beaten fearful odds and survived long enough for the destroyers to pick up. There were a few triumphant calls as more isolated patches of survivors were found and brought on board. They were pitifully few. In his heart, Wilkens guessed that the death toll here had to be the worst in naval history. How many? Twenty, thirty thousand men? The Germans had overly large crews on their ships.

“Any idea how many?” His voice echoed around the frozen bridge.

The OOD knew what Wilkens meant. “We’re running a count Sir, so far, less than a couple of hundred. Message from Admiral Lee, Captain. The Battle Line is casting to the south east and east but they report no contacts. Looks like the fly-boys got the last of them. He’s ordering us to finish sweeping this area for survivors before rejoining the Battle Line.”

“Make it so.” Wilkens thought for a second. “Close up antisubmarine crews, maintain full sonar watch. If there’s a Type XXI around here, I’m not giving him a free shot. If the sonar crew as much as sniff a submarine, we go for it.”

“Very good, sir.”

Wilkens stood on his wing, looking out across the debris field to the dim shapes of the other destroyers methodically searching. After a while he felt his engines pick up slightly. They’d reached the end of the wreckage field. If there were other survivors out there, they’d lost out.

“Any sign of any of our pilots?”

“No sir.”

That figured. Most of the lost Corsairs and Skyraiders had either blown up in mid-air or plowed into the sea so fast their pilots had little chance of escape. The chances of survival when pressing home attacks from wavetop height were very poor. In this battle, ships, planes and men had survived together or died together. There had been very few who had found a middle way.

“Sir, Doc Tulley wants to see you, the German officer we picked up has recovered consciousness.”

Wilkens left the bridge and found his way down to the sickbay. Doc Tulley was waiting outside. “Captain, one man has come around, the officer. He’s in a bad way. Exposure, frostbite, you name it. His temperature is 81 degrees, it’s a miracle he’s alive. We’re trying to do core warming and we’re using a new trick, inhalation warming, getting him to breathe heated air. If it’s enough, I don’t know. I don’t think anybody has ever picked up men this frozen who were still alive.”

“Core warming?”

“Preferentially warming his body, with hot water bottles and bricks the boiler rooms have been heating, but not his arms and legs. The army has found if you warm those, cold, acid blood from the extremities flows back to the body and stops the heart.”

“Will he make it?”

“He might. If gangrene doesn’t set in. If he doesn’t develop a pneumonia we can’t control. We have some penicillin on board, so he has a chance.”

The sickbay was oven-hot; the heating turned up to maximum in an effort to get some warmth into the frozen men who had been brought on board. Wilkens sat down by the bunk. The man in it was breathing hoarsely, his face a mass of red chaps and cold-blisters.

“I am Captain Hubert Wilkens, Commanding Officer, the United States destroyer Charles H. Roan. Is there anything I can get for you?”

The voice was so distorted it was hardly recognizable, as if the cold had frozen and broken his vocal chords. “Captain Christian Lokken, battleship Gneisenau. My men, any saved?”

“A few, not many.” Wilkens decided to keep the news of just how few to himself.

“You picked us up.” The hoarse, faint, cracked voice sounded surprised.

“Admiral Lee, commander of the Battle Line detached some of his destroyers to search for survivors.” Again Wilkens decided to be economical with the truth, the orders had been to search for shot-down pilots. Nobody had expected any German survivors.

“The Battle Line.” Lokken seemed shocked. “Battleships also, how many?”

“Ten.”

The number seemed to stun Lokken although he should have know it. His voice faded even more. “It was all for nothing. If we had survived the jabos, we would still have lost. This was surely our death ride.”

There was no reason why they should still be afloat. Lutzow had taken three more torpedo hits and her superstructure was a mass of tangled, unrecognizable wreckage. She was still moving backwards. Her engines thudded with the grim determination to get her crew to safety. Her pumps strained beyond their maximum capacity to keep the flood waters at bay. Captain Becker had organized bucket chains to try and keep the flooding from overcoming them. They were helping a little, not much but a little. They were keeping the survivors of the crew busy and their minds away from the water that was, despite all their efforts, slowly gaining on them.

Off to port, their last destroyer, Z-27, was painfully keeping up with them. She was crowded. She’d picked up survivors from Z-28 after that destroyer had been battered into a wreck during the last, furious, American assault. Becker had been listening as Scheer went down, too crippled to evade the horde of aircraft that had studded her with their torpedoes then drenched her with bombs and rockets. It had been a miracle that Lutzow had survived; a miracle Becker didn’t understand, he could just accept that it had been so.

Then, they’d had another miracle. He’d got the reports from his shattered ship and realized there was no way he could make Norway. It was more than 350 miles away. At his painful 6 knots, backwards, that meant almost three days transit. His ship simply could not stay afloat that long. But, southwest, that was different. He was only just over 130 miles away from Torshaven in the Faroe Islands. Less than a day’s transit and he could make that. Just. So he’d swung his stern southwest and started the long, painful journey. Six hours later, he’d detected a large formation of ships. They were obviously enemy but had crossed his path, some 30 miles behind him, heading east. At a guess, the Amis had detached surface ships to mop up any survivors. He’d read somewhere that was their doctrine; carriers batter the enemy, then surface ships move in for the kill. Only, his change of course for the Faeroes had meant they’d missed him.

“Damage report?”

“We’re holding our own, Captain. The bucket brigades are helping a little and the pumps, well, they’re far above their rated capacity. The old girl is fighting hard, Sir.”

Becker nodded. “And we can save her yet. We can’t get into Thorshavn, but we can beach her outside. Then we can get the crew ashore. If Z-27 makes it, she can probably get into the harbor.” Becker laughed grimly. “It looks like the Faeroe Islands have just acquired a

Navy.”

“Sir, aircraft secured, pilots are sleeping it off. We’ve got an initial debrief, we’ll do some more details tomorrow. Our F7Fs are spotted on the deck, ready to go if there’s a need.”

“Any word from Admiral Lee?”

“No, Sir. They’ve done a sweep south and east of the kill zone, they found nothing. Formation Nan must have got the cripples. He’s complaining bitterly Admiral. He says you might at least have left him something for his guns. Oh, and the destroyers have picked up some survivors from the German ships. They’re in a pitiful state Admiral; the cans are doing what they can.” The Exec thought for a second. “Sorry Sir, that was a horrible pun.”

“I’ll forgive it. Any word on our pilots?”

“Mariners picked up a dozen; floatplanes from the cruisers about the same. A few ditched close enough to the screen to be picked up, total of about 30. As for the rest, we’ll have to assume they’re gone Admiral. On board the carriers, we’ve about seventy or eighty with wounds and burns from deck crashes. We’ve got around 400 dead in all. Group Sitka says it’s lost about 200 with the same number wounded. They’re heading west for Churchill and a repair yard.”

“Pass word out to the groups. We’ll pull back; west then south west. All groups to make up a strike wave to hit whatever targets we have listed in the Londonderry area. Since we’re passing, we might as well make use of what munitions we have left.”

The Exec consulted his flipboard. “We’re OK for land attack munitions. Lots of HE stuff, we didn’t use much of that. We’re out of Tiny Tims and rocket bombs, pretty much out of torpedoes and badly down on armor piercing 2,000 pounders, 1,600s and 1,000s. We’ve hardly any 500s. We’re low on chemicals for napalm as well. We can give one set of land targets a good seeing to. Wouldn’t be wise to hang around too long though.”

“Agreed. The courier plane is ready?” Halsey had spent hours writing up a detailed account of the battle. What had gone right, what had gone wrong, the lessons to be learned. It was only a preliminary document. The day’s action would be as closely and avidly studied as any in naval history. There was a naval historian on board, a man called Morison. He would be writing the popular history of the battle, one that would be a rare example of a history written by an expert who had actually seen the events in question. That raised an interesting point. “I guess we have to give a name to this battle.”

He walked over to the chart and looked down. It was smeared and smudged with the notations that had been put on it in the frantic planning that had taken place over the last 24 hours. Halsey wished he could put on his reading glasses but they wouldn’t fit the image, not here on his command bridge. The nearest patch of land was a small group of islands about 250 plus miles south west of them. The problem was that he couldn’t make out the name.

“These islands here. What are they?”

Across the chart table Ensign Zipster glanced at the map. He couldn’t make out the name either, but he was aware of the need for a young Ensign to impress his Admiral at every chance. Anyway, there was only one group of Islands north of the UK wasn’t there? The British had a naval base in them or something. “They’re the Orkneys Sir.” Zipster spoke with authority, tinged with a slight level of condescension that nobody else had known.

Halsey looked at him sharply. He hadn’t missed the inflection in the voice. Still, it was the information he needed. “Very well then, We’ll call it the Battle of the Orkneys.”

Despite the Russian work teams who had been out all night, there was still slush on the runway. Just enough to drag on the wheels and lengthen the A-38Ds take-off run. Captain John Marosy mentally calculated how much the effect was likely to be as he ran his R-3350 engines up. His hands moved, dropping the flaps to the 20 degree setting, while his eyes watched his instruments as the engine temperature climbed. The R-3350 was a temperamental beast with a habit of eating cylinders when it overheated. A valve’s temperature would climb beyond the limits and burn. Then the head would disintegrate and chew up one of the eighteen cylinders. Next, the cylinder would go airborne and chew up the whole engine. At that point the hydraulic fluid would be lost and he wouldn’t be able to feather the prop. It would over-speed and come off, slashing at the fuselage on its way. Usually at that point, the whole engine would seize and twist right off the wing. On the whole, it was better not to let the engines overheat.

He was pressing hard on the brakes but Hammer Blow was still shifting forward. Ready or not, it was time to go. Up ahead of him, the runway clearance crews saw the A-38 start to pick up speed and scattered to clear the way. Most of them anyway, a few took the chance of stopping to clear one last spadeful of slush before jumping clear. Then, the white and gray A-38 raced past them, its twin tail lifted as the aircraft picked up speed. A few waved as he passed but Marosy didn’t respond, not now. His hands were full dealing with the Grizzlies take-off run. Like most over-powered aircraft, its flying characteristics were unforgiving. The torque on its take-off run was as much as he could control. Ground-looping would be a sad way to start a mission. Embarrassing.

Marosy blinked as Hammer Blow rotated and lifted over the snowfield. The storm had past and the air was crystal clear, the early morning sun reflections off the snowfields blinded him. Blinded wasn’t an understatement, snow-blindness was a real problem. That was why the Americans had brought along one of the war’s less obvious secret weapons. Sunglasses; available in huge quantities. They were bringing them in by the millions and distributing them as needed. The wire-framed dark glasses had even become something of a fashion statement back home. Those who could get them flaunted them. Beside him Lightning Bolt had moved into position on his wing. There were supposed to be four aircraft in this formation but Angelina had been one of the aircraft destroyed in the A-4 bombardment while Worst Nightmare had developed engine trouble and been pulled from the flight line. That left just two.

“Where are we going?”

In the back, Sergeant Bressler had his map spread out on the table. Originally, the second crewman on the A-38 had controlled the two twin .50 machine guns in remote controlled turrets. The D-model had those stripped out and replaced them with four fixed guns in the outer wing panels. The reduction in weight had reduced the strain on the engines and added a little to maximum speed. Now, the second crewman served only as a navigator and radio operator. He was vital in that role. He could speak with the forward air controllers on the ground and leave the pilot to worry about avoiding German flak.

“Hitting an armored column moving up from the south. Its threatening one of the Navy’s railway gun batteries so we’re to slow it down a bit. Steer course 178, hold altitude, 2000 feet. We’re about 15 minutes out.”

“Armored. Panzers?”

“Panzer-grenadiers. According to the recon patrols, it’s a mixed column. Mostly mechanized infantry with an armored car unit and a self-propelled artillery battery.”

Marosy sucked his teeth. Panzer-grenadiers meant flak, a lot of it. Each half track had a 20mm gun and there would certainly be at least one quad twenty or twin thirty. And that wasn’t the worst of it. If there were infantry, there would be spirals. They’d only appeared in the last few months and weren’t that effective but they were yet another thing to worry about. He scanned downwards, trying to pick out the vehicles on the ground against the glaring snowfields. There were theoretical armchair “experts” who decried camouflage, who would point at the vehicles on display or in pictures and sneer that the elaborate paint schemes didn’t fool him. Well, it was interesting that people like that were very keen to fire off their opinions but very reluctant to get involved in any other form of firing.

Up here, trying to spot white vehicles against a white background, camouflage was very effective. It cost aircraft. It meant that the Grizzlies had to stay higher so they could search more effectively, then dive down for their attacks. That gave the Germans a few seconds of warning, time for them to start to disperse and get their guns lined up. No, Marosy thought, camouflage was effective all right.

His eyes continued scanning downwards, looking for the telltale signs of a vehicle convoy moving. It could be anything; tracks on the snow although thickness and freshness made that unlikely. The vehicles would be moving on the roads. He wouldn’t see the roads themselves, they were white as well, but he might see the shadows. The sharp, clear sun was a friend as well as an enemy. It cast shadows of banks and vehicles where the object itself wasn’t so easily seen.

In fact, it was the sun that helped him, although it worked in a different way that he had expected. His eyes caught a flash on the ground, a reflection off a windshield perhaps, or a pair of binoculars. Whatever it was, it caught his attention and focused him on a section of road underneath. That’s when he saw the vehicles and knew that they had seen him. Given the snarl of four R-3350s and the altitude he was flying at, they would have had to be blind, deaf and stupid to have missed the pair of Grizzlies. They were dispersing as much as the ground and the snow let them. He knew for certain that they were getting their flak ready.

“Lightning Bolt, I’ve got them. 11 o’clock, about two miles out. There’s a ridgeline over at 3 o’clock. We’ll run from behind that.”

“Got you, Hammer Blow.”

Marosy put Hammer Blow into a long curving dive, heading for the terrain masking provided by the ridgeline. The two Grizzlies would make their first run from there, trying to see the anti-aircraft vehicles and pick them off with their 75mm guns. The ground swept up. The ridge masked the position of the German unit as the Grizzlies leveled out behind it. Then, the two aircraft swung around, skimmed the top of the rise and went straight at the German halftracks. They’d already spread out, trying to reduce the casualties when the inevitable napalm drops started. The first flicker of tracers were already starting to lick out. These days, every German half-track had a 20mm cannon, the days of the vehicles having rifle-caliber machine guns were long gone. That was why the A-38 had replaced most of the other twin-engined ground attack aircraft; its 75mm gun could knock out the flak guns from outside the range of the 20mm.

Marosy saw one of the half-tracks giving a dense stream of tracers. It had to be a quad-twenty vehicle; probably the biggest threat. He lined up and squeezed the firing trigger. The aircraft lurched as the 75mm in its nose fired. Through the muzzle flash he saw his first round had landed short. His second was a little to the left but the third turn the half-track into a red and orange fireball. Then, he saw something else, streaks of gray smoke leaving the ground and heading for him. Spirals.

“Disperse! Get those vehicles separated. Gunners open fire when you have the target.” Colonel Asbach yelled the orders out. They had little time to prepare for the attack that had suddenly developed. They’d seen the Grizzlies of course, and heard their engines. For a while it seemed that the Ami jabos had missed them and would head off south. Then, the aircraft had turned slightly towards them, before diving away to the west. Everybody in the column knew that they had been spotted. That meant the column would soon be fighting for its life.

At the rear of the column the six self-propelled 150mm howitzers were frantically backing up, trying to get clear of the rest of the column. Their trucks were doing likewise and doing a better job of it. The English-built AECs were renowned for their ability to cope with bad conditions. When they worked at all. The British truck workers had a habit of building subtle defects into their vehicles; an axle over-tempered perhaps so it fractured under stress, or a towing bar whose mounting welds would fail when an extra load was put on it. More importantly, they weren’t overloaded. The self-propelled guns were. Like most German self-propelled artillery, the guns used captured enemy tank chassis. In this case, some British cruiser tank captured back in 1942. The Covenanter or something similar. It didn’t matter, what did was that the chassis was overloaded and clumsy. Still, the battery was better than towed guns.

The two anti-aircraft half tracks attached to the artillery battery had already swerved to a halt. The crews on the quadruple 20mm guns elevated their weapons and scanned for the approaching jabos. Ahead of them, the half-track belonging to the anti tank squad of one of the mechanized infantry platoons had also stopped. Strange figures were emerging from it, looking like running tents with a stove pipe sticking out. The stove pipes were the Panzerschreck rocket launchers, the running tents were the men who were going to be firing them. To his astonishment, Sergeant Heim saw Captain Lang jump from his kubelwagen and run over to that half-track. What, he wondered, was Captain Still up to now? And would any of the unit survive it?

“Sergeant! A cape, a Panzerschreck launcher and a Fliegerschreck rocket. Now!” Lang’s voice was urgent, there was little time. In the back of the vehicle, the anti-tank unit Sergeant looked doubtful. Captain Still’s reputation had spread beyond the artillery unit. Lang’s hand dropped to his pistol. “Now, Sergeant.”

That did it. The Sergeant passed out the equipment demanded. Lang hurriedly checked the cape. The white side was out. It was shaped like a cone, with two tubes for his arms. He slipped into it, then took the Fliegerschreck rocket and checked the fuse. It was the standard Panzerschreck rocket but fitted with a powerful booster and had a time fuse on the end. Lang dialed it down to minimum, then slipped it into the rocket launcher. The Grizzlies had already come over the ridge and were heading for the unit when Lang got into position. He knelt exactly the way the user manual for the Fliegerschreck said, and aimed the clumsy launcher at the lead of the two aircraft.

Two aircraft, that was odd, the Ami jabos usually flew in fours. Perhaps the A-4 bombardment of their bases had hurt them worse than anybody had expected. Lang hoped so, his contacts on the General Staff had whispered that the navy part of this operation was truly a disaster. The Amis had to lose somewhere didn’t they? And they had no equivalent to the A-4 rocket, the weapon that gave the German artillery the ability to strike deep into the heart of an enemy rear area. Whatever the reason, there were only two jabos and that gave the mechanized column a fighting chance.

Lang was already starting to sweat inside the clumsy protective cape. The first Panzerschreck launchers years before had required the users to wear protective capes but their back-blast was nothing compared with that of the Fliegerschreck rocket. The booster needed to give the rocket the speed and range necessary to engage an aircraft would immerse the operator in a ball of fire when the rocket ignited. Without the tent-like cape, survival was not an option.

Through the glass panel in the front of the cape, Lang saw the first Fliegerschreck rockets go out. First, the long streak of the booster, then the wild spiral as the Panzerschreck rocket detached for the final spurt. There was something odd about firing things in stages; it didn’t work very well at all. Lang had heard that the Peenemunde group’s efforts to build two-stage versions of the A-4 had been failures for that reason. They were still trying, still working towards a rocket that could cross the Atlantic and strike at American cities, but the problems were proving intractable. Quietly, one of Lang’s General Staff friends had told him it wasn’t likely that the multi-stage rockets would be anywhere near usable this decade. Looking at the wild gyrations of the Fliegerschrecks, Lang could see why.

The lead Grizzly, Lang’s target, was already firing. Its first two shells had missed, but the third had hit a half-track down the road. Tracers from the 20mm guns were already surrounding it but they seemed to be brushed off by white monster that was coming for him. Lang took a brief breath and settled down, still tracking the target in his sights. It was so tempting to fire, but Lang resisted it. He waited for the optimum moment. Then, he squeezed the trigger and felt the furnace-like heat seep through the protective cape as the rocket soared away.

He watched it fly, needle straight, for the Grizzly. Then the second stage separated. It didn’t even have a chance to start spiraling before the time fuse ignited. The rocket exploded almost directly under the starboard engine of the Grizzly. Lang watched the whole nacelle erupt into flames; a brown and red streak stained the sky behind the stricken aircraft as it reared up. Lang saw the propeller detach. It spiralled away and broke up, lashing the fuselage with its fragments. Then, the pilot got the aircraft under control and curved away, still surrounded by the firefly tracers from the 20mm guns. The second Grizzly broke off the attack instantly, moving to cover it’s stricken team-mate. That’s what the Ami jabos did; they covered each other. Normally, there would have been two more aircraft to carry on with the attack on the unit but not this time. The two Grizzlies disappeared; the one trailing smoke quickly losing altitude.

Land peeled off the cape. The residual heat from the rocket blast stung his hands but he ignored it. There were cheers coming up from the vehicle crews, cheers that lifted Lang’s heart. He saw Sergeant Heim running over to help him with the cape and the clumsy launcher.

“Well done Sir! Superb shot! May I ask, sir, where did you learn to use a Fliegerschreck?”

Lang grinned, in relief more than anything else. It was the first time his men had referred to him with anything other than carefully-concealed derision. “I was the adjutant to the head of the team who developed this. It was my responsibility to write the operating manual and to do that I had to know how to use it. I must have fired fifty of these things.” Lang good-humoredly wagged his finger at the sergeant. “Never say that doing one’s paperwork doesn’t have its uses, Sergeant.”

Marosy saw the gray streaks coming straight at his aircraft but that didn’t mean much. If the spirals flew in a straight line, they could be evaded. The Germans had been more cunning than that. There was a flash as the main rocket separated from the booster, then the Spiral started cart-wheeling through the air, There was no way of predicting where it would go so it couldn’t be evaded. A turn could just as easily put the aircraft into the wild gyrations of the spiral as avoid one. It was purely a matter of luck whether the damned thing went into the aircraft or off into the sky. That’s what made the spirals so dangerous.

This time, the first salvo of spirals exploded well clear of the pair of Grizzlies. Marosy was lining up his aircraft on one of the self-propelled guns at the rear of the column when there was another streak of gray. This one had no time to start spiraling. It was still going straight when it exploded underneath his starboard engine. He felt the lurch as the R-3350 started to fly apart from the damage; heard the crash as the propeller ripped off the shaft and its fragments tore into the fuselage. Much more importantly, he saw the sea of warning lights as the aircraft’s systems started to fail from the damage inflicted by the warhead fragments. There was only one way to interpret those lights; Hammer Blow was finished. The best Marosy could hope for was to put her down somewhere reasonably safe. The worst was that the ruptured fuel lines would feed a mid-air explosion.

“Don’t look good, boss. We got fire out here.” Bressler’s voice was deadpan.

“Hitting the extinguishers now.” Marosy thumbed the buttons and glanced sideways. The fire subsided a bit, but not much. At this rate, the main wing spar would fail soon. That would mean Hammer Blow would lose a wing and spin in. A part of his mind recorded that he had broken off his attack and was trying to separate from the column he had just been attacking. Only a remarkably stupid pilot bailed out over the troops he had just strafed. There had been all too many cases of such pilots being killed on the end of their parachutes or being thrown into the burning wreckage of their aircraft. Another part of his mind recorded the streaks of 20mm tracer around him. Once they had been a matter of concern; now they were almost inconsequential compared with the danger he faced from his crippled aircraft.

“Hammer Blow, this is Lightning Bolt. You better get down fast, the under surface of your wing is falling apart. Fire is spreading in there.”

“Roger that, Lightning Bolt. We’re losing fuel, oil, structure, ideas and hope. We’re going in as soon as I can see somewhere to do it. Well away from the Krauts.”

“I hear you, Hammer Blow. We’re ready to do a pick up.”

Marosy looked out in front. There was some flat ground up ahead. The question was whether he could make it. Hammer Blow was giving up fast; the port R-3350 was overheating with the stress of keeping the aircraft flying. It was a question of whether he would run out of altitude before he could make somewhere a crash landing was possible. The A-38 cleared one ridgeline but doing the next was almost impossible. Abort that, Marosy thought grimly, clearing the next ridgeline was impossible. He swung the nose around, feeling the controls stiffen in his hands. Time was running out.

The pine trees were the next problem. Hammer Blow couldn’t quite clear the trees as she started to belly in. The tree tops lashed at the windscreen, thundered against the structure of the aircraft, and ripped the port propeller apart. Then, the A-38 flopped on her belly into a long, flat patch of snow. It was soft enough to absorb the impact but the crew were still thrown against their straps by the impact. Something caught the port wing, spinning the aircraft around. The tail broke off, sliding away from the main fuselage while the rest of the aircraft skidded to a stop.

“Out, out, out!” Marosy yelled. In the back, Bressler knew if he said ‘what?’ he would be talking to himself. He flipped up the aft canopy, heaved himself out and started to run. At some point he had grabbed the walkie-talkie kept in the rear compartment; he had no memory of doing so. By the time he and Marosy got to the treeline, Hammer Blow was already burning furiously. The explosion that destroyed the aircraft was almost an anticlimax by comparison.

“We’re coming in for a pick-up; be ready to get out fast.” Lightning Bolt’s voice was urgent.

“Negative on that Lightning Bolt. The snow’s feet thick. If you land, you’ll ground loop. We’re going to have to walk out. We’ll try and link with the partisans.”

“Roger Hammer Blow. We’ll spread the word. Good luck and God’s Speed.”

Marosy knew that was the minimum he’d need. If they didn’t meet up with a partisan group, their chance of getting home was slight. “Bressler, time to start walking. North I think.”

“Sounds good to me. Damned Spirals.”

“Is it safe?”

The AST AC Major commanding the bridge repair detail stared at the jury rigged repairs, his lips silently moving as he computed the risks. The bridge had been hard-hit by the German railway guns and the earthquake effects of the big shells meant that its structure had been undermined. Had it been fatally undermined? He didn’t know. His men — and women — had been working all night to get repairs done but were they adequate to take the weight of the great railway guns? He didn’t know that either. Yet the answer to both questions was critical.

“Is it safe, Tovarish Major?” Commander James Perdue repeated the question. Larry was rigged with explosives. C4 demolition charges were wrapped around the vital parts; the breech was stuffed with split propellant bags. The gunners had managed to squeeze fifteen of the bags in, more than 50 percent more powder than the breech was designed to take. Then they’d taken a sledgehammer to drive the tompion solidly into the end of the barrel. The gun crew had made a lot of rude jokes about that. Meanwhile other demolition teams had been at work on the battery fire control center, rigging it with both C4 and the contents of more propellant bags. The battalion fire control center had been detached and added to Curly’s train, giving the gun both battalion and battery command cars. A number of the magazine cars were empty and they’d been detached to save weight. Curly had been reduced from 14 cars to nine; Moe to eight. The surplus cars were parked on the sidings, also rigged for utter destruction.

“I think so, yes. But it will be a very near thing. You will send the diesels over first?”

Perdue shook his head. “Curly goes first, then Moe. Once they’re over we’ll hook passenger cars to the diesels and send as many over as the bridge will take. Each train is going to damage that bridge a bit more and we have to get the heaviest stuff over first. If the bridge goes, whatever is left this side will get blown up as well.” That would include the diesels if they got trapped. They were only shunting engines, intended to move cars around, but they would still be useful to an enemy that was short of rail transport. The partisans had seen to that, they had a talent for devising innovative ways to sabotage steam engines.

“Very well. I wish you luck Tovarish Commander. My men and I will buy you what time we can.”

“Tovarish Major, I beg you, please, we need you too much to leave you here. None of my men understand how to repair railway track or work on the lines. We have no knowledge of what the capacities of the tracks are or anything like that. The Hitlerites are all over the place, they may have cut lines, bombed them, shot them up, who knows? If there is damage, we do not know how to repair it. We need you and your men Tovarish; if we are to get these guns out, your experts are vital. And beyond that, skilled railway engineers are worth their weight in gold. Once the bridge has been blown, the fascists will be stuck here for hours anyway. There is little you can achieve by staying here, but there is service of incomparable value you can perform if you come with us. We have room set aside for all your men in the trains. After the miracles they performed last night, we cannot afford to leave you.”

The AST AC Major looked bewildered at the impassioned appeal. Before he had time to commit himself to a refusal, Lieutenant Commander Enright from Moe cut in. “Tovarish Major, my Commander speaks nothing but the truth. There is a major fascist offensive going on. The damage in the rear areas will be heavy and we all know the railway lines are the first targets. We will need you and your men if we are to get these guns out.”

Major Boldin looked at the two American Navy officers and sighed. Their appeal made sense and he was under no illusions about how little a group of railway engineers armed only with bolt-action rifles could achieve when fighting a panzer-grenadier unit. It was just that he had his own chain of command to worry about.

“Very well. I will order my men to cross the river and wait for your trains there. After that, we will ride with you. For my files, please will you give me a written explanation of why we must ride with you?”

Perdue hid his smile carefully; he had anticipated that. There was still enough of the old days left in Russia to make written orders a valuable commodity. He had already written a paper that explained the problems of getting his guns to safety and how essential the help of the ASTAC unit was. “That can be arranged, Tovarish Major. If you will excuse me for a few minutes I will prepare it for you now.”

As Perdue went to get the letter, he saw the ASTAC Major telling his work teams they would be riding with the guns, not staying here to fight. The air of general relief was quite unmistakable. Then, Curly’s Mikado engine sounding its whistle drove everything else out of his mind. The trains were about to start moving.

The bridge looked as shaky as he had suspected. It had been repaired all right, but the work had been done fast and had used whatever materials were available. As the first train had moved up, the ASTAC work team had flooded over the bridge, combining an urge to run for the safety of the other side with a last check on the hasty repairs. Perdue swung up into the Mikado’s cab where the engine crew was getting ready to move off.

“How do we do this? Get over as fast as we can?”

The engine driver spat over the side of the cab reflectively. “No Sir. No way, We take this slow and steady. We try to run over and we’ll shake this contraption apart. We take it careful-like and Mike here will get us over.”

The engine started to move. The strain of towing the 16-inch gun and the rest of it’s consist showed in the faces of the cab crew. They were moved steadily forward and watched their speed pick up slowly. The engineer kept the pressure just right to hold at the correct speed. Perdue could tell when the wheels hit the bridge. The sound changed dramatically and he could feel the structure groaning beneath him. He tore his eyes away from the gauges in the cab and looked out at the river below. Then, he wished he hadn’t. He could see the train swaying on the bridge and, out of the corner of his eye, what looked suspiciously like bits of the bridge structure falling away to splash in the river below. Ahead, the far side of the river seemed to be receding rather than getting nearer. That had to be an illusion didn’t it? They couldn’t be going backwards.

They weren’t. The sound changed again as the Mikado’s wheels left the bridge and were once more on solid ground. Perdue jumped down as the train started to slow and went over to the ASTAC officer who was watching with anguished anxiety.

“Well done, Tovarish Major. Your crews did a fine job. We have saved our first gun.”

Major Boldin smiled weakly. The American Navy officer hadn’t seen the bridge sagging under the train or the supports that had been hammered into place, breaking loose and falling into the river. “Tovarish Commander, can you order your gun to go down the line so we have room for the next. We must hurry, we have little time.”

Perdue nodded and spoke into the walkie-talkie radio. The other side of the river, Moe‘s train started to move. He could see why the Russian was so worried. The bridge seemed to be stretching under the weight, only there was no ‘seemed’ about it. The track was stretching. It had to, the way the railbed on the trestles was arching downwards. He heard the Mikado starting to strain as it pulled Moe up the slope to the side of the river. The underside of the bridge now dropped a steady rain of fragments into the river. Finally, the train made it, the Americans and Russians joined in a prolonged barrage of cheers. The guns were over, anything else that made it was a bonus.

The next to try was a diesel shunting engine towing two carriages. The demolition teams were on board those and they had one last job to do before they took the perilous ride over the river. That was to start the fuses on Larry and the rest of the gun site working. Once they’d finished, their diesel started to pull them over. By then, the bridge was clearly on its last legs. It swayed from side to side as well as up and down. The fragments that detached from it were larger, obviously from more than just the track bed. The diesel and its carriages made it, just; it was clear nothing else would. The remaining two diesels and the carriages that were left were going to have to go.

As if to emphasize the point, there was a despairing groan from the bridge. Then the whole structure started to collapse into the river. The tracks and rails detached as it fell. The roar of the bridge’s descent was drowned out by a massive explosion from the site that the battery had used for so long. Perdue could see the huge cloud boiling over the hill that separated them from Larry’s explosive demise. It roiled upwards, towering over them, dropping yet more debris into the river that was already three quarters blocked by the remains of the bridge. Unidentifiable objects rained down. Perdue had a nasty feeling they were parts of Larry’s barrel. Then the original explosion was joined by more than a dozen more as the rest of the rolling stock was destroyed.

“Well, that’s it.” Perdue was as sad as he sounded. It was a hard thing to blow that gun up.

“Not quite.” The demolition engineer had a nasty grin on his face. When Perdue thought about it, he realized that all demolition men had nasty grins, most of the time. “We left a few surprises for the Nazis.”

Perdue nodded. Anything to buy time. Then he turned to the AST AC major. “We head east, for Murmansk?”

“I would recommend not Tovarish Commander. The fascists are coming through that way, a right flanking move. They will cut the line soon. We should go west. We can go that way, then pick up a spur line that will take us to the northern trunk line.”

“There isn’t a spur line on this map.”

Major Boldin grinned. This day was his. The bridge had held for the two vital trains, he’d got his people out with all the paperwork to justify it and now he knew something the American did not. “Of course not, Tovarish Commander. To put all our railway lines on a map the fascists may capture? I think not. There are some lines that are not shown on these maps and some that are shown do not exist. That is why we always have guides on trains that are heading off the main routes.”

“Very well. West it is.” Perdue turned around; he just couldn’t resist the chance. He waved his arm like an old-fashioned wagon train guide and gave the time-honored order, “Wagons West!”

The huge pyre of smoke rolled over the trees a few seconds before the rumbling crash of the explosion rocked the column. Colonel Asbach cursed; fluently and with great imagination. The devastating blast had come from the site of the railway guns he was supposed to be seizing. A coup de main wasn’t much use if there was no coup to put in the main. His monologue, to which his men listened with great, if discrete, glee, was brought to a halt by another rippling crash of explosions. That would be the rest of the rolling stock at the site being blown up, he thought bitterly.

“Right, follow me, We’ll see if the Amis have left anything for us to salvage.” Not that there was likely to be. The Russians were the skilled ones at destroying things with minimum use of explosives, the Americans just stuffed everything with every type of explosive they could find and blew the whole lot up. The Amis were like little boys sometimes, obsessed with creating bigger and better explosions.

“Sir, where are the Ivans?” Captain Lang spoke tentatively. Since shooting down the Grizzly he had gained a little respect and he didn’t want to risk it by asking foolish questions.

“First thing Lang. Out here, no salutes and we don’t use the word Sir. The Russian snipers are too damned good and there’s no point in marking their targets out for them. Secondly, the Ivans?” Asbach waved his hand around and the snow-covered fields and the trees. “They’re out there, probably all around us. Regular troops, ski units, partisans; one or all of those is watching us right now.”

Lang looked dubious. While serving as an adjutant to OKH, he’d heard of defeatism and poor morale being prevalent and a deep concern. This seemed bordering on paranoia though. He couldn’t see anybody out there. Then he reflected on his first disastrous days here on the front. Those days made him cringe every time he thought of them. He reflected grimly that, since that time, he had learned just enough to realize that he knew less than nothing about the realities of soldiering on the Russian Front. On the other hand, Asbach was a veteran of the siege of Moscow and had taken part in the almost legendary Operation Barbarossa.

“It’s that bad?” Lang hoped that would be an acceptable phrasing of the question.

“Worse. We live and fight in a goldfish bowl. Everybody knows what we do before we do it. I said there’s partisans out there; well, you can take that for granted. They’re always there. Once winter comes down, ski troops as well.” Asbach glanced at the Captain beside him. The man seemed incredulous and suspicious, but was also listening intensely. “Lang, if we go off the roads, how fast can we move.”

Lang was about to say 52.5 kilometers per hour, the book maximum speed of the 251 when the incredible stupidity of the comment surged through his mind. He nearly bit his tongue stopping himself. It was the sort of thing Captain Still would say. He looked at the deep snow either side of the cleared road and pictured a 251 trying to force its way through. The wheels would break the crust at the top and the tracks would dig their way in. He pictured the vehicles floundering, digging themselves in deeper every minute.

“We can’t move at all, S… Asbach.”

“Very good, Lang. We’re roadbound. Trapped on this road. The partisans live here; they know where to go and what to do. They can go where they want. The ski troops are even worse. You know what division we face here?”

“The 78th Infantry Division?”

“No, Lang, the 78th Siberian Infantry Division. The Siberians are born on skis. They grew up in weather than makes Kola seem like a summer resort. They can move cross-country on their skis faster than we can move in our vehicles.” Asbach’s face went blank for a minute, remembering. When he started speaking again, his voice was small. “We met them outside Moscow for the first time. They came through the forests like ghosts, they’d hit us and vanish into the snows again. We couldn’t hold. We had to retreat from Tula but they never stopped slashing at us. We called them the white wolves but no wolf was ever as deadly or as merciless as those Siberians. Any man who was on his own for more than a minute or two would be their prey. They’d slide out of the forest, cut him down and be gone before anybody could do anything about it. We’d find a defensive position, set up our forces and try to hold. Then we would find they were already behind us, hacking up our rear area troops. For two months they drove us back and nothing we could do could stop them. That’s the people we are fighting here, Lang. That’s why I know they are watching us.”

“So why don’t they attack?”

“Could be any number of reasons. They may be calling in artillery, or Ami jabos. They could be under orders to watch and report. They may be moving themselves. Just don’t ever delude yourself that they’re not watching us. They were bad enough before the Amis started giving radios to everybody. Now, they’re ten times worse. So, what do you think we should do?” Asbach looked at Lang sharply.

“If they could be calling in artillery, we should keep moving. The Amis will have things like crossroads and bridges pre-registered, we need to avoid them as much as possible.” Lang stopped with the realization he was being Captain Still again. “I’m sorry, that’s stupid. We’re trapped on the roads, we can’t avoid crossroads and bridges. We just have to move as fast as we can and hope to keep ahead of any artillery.”

“Good man. So, let’s get moving. And our first objective?”

“The railway gun site. See what’s left, what can be salvaged. Then, once we’ve fulfilled our primary order of seizing the site, we have a relatively free hand.”

“Very good. So we move out.” Asbach turned away, a small glow of hope burning inside him. He’d been right; there was a soldier inside Lang, trying to get out. It had been crushed, stifled, by too much work in the rear area, too much contact with the top brass who gave the orders without understanding what it was they were asking, but the spark was there. It just needed to be patiently coaxed into life.

The site that had once been the railway gun battalion was devastated. There was a great pile of steel scrap in to one side. A burst barrel forlornly pointed at the sky; a disemboweled breech had been hurled across the tracks. That had once been one of the guns he had been ordered to try and capture. The tracks had been torn up by other explosions. At the neck of the network of lines were the remains of two lines of carriages headed by diesel shunters. The carriages were burned-out skeletons; the diesel shunters hardly recognizable. The stench of burned wood and the bitter, acrid smell of explosives saturated the area. It was enough to make eyes water. Asbach surveyed the destruction and shook his head. When the Americans had first arrived in Russia, the material they discarded or abandoned when it wasn’t convenient to withdraw the stuff would keep a German unit in comfort for weeks. A bit of an exaggeration, perhaps, but the Germans had been stunned by the wealth the Americans couldn’t be bothered to save. Only, they’d learned the lessons taught by the Russians well. Now they blew up or burned even their garbage.

That thought perturbed Asbach and he turned around towards where a group of his men were starting towards the wreckage, looking for salvage. “Halt, right there. Nobody move until the area has been checked. Engineers, start looking for booby traps.”

It didn’t take long to find the first one. A pipe bomb buried beside a pathway that lead to what appeared to be a bunker. The bunker was just a shallow hole dug deep enough to give the impression of a tunnel in the snow. An explosive ordnance disposal man from the engineers quickly defused the pipe bomb and made it safe. Then the engineers started to check the site in detail. Asbach stopped them. There was nothing here worth keeping; all that was necessary was to clear a path through the site. That meant clearing out the main track, that was all.

It was there that they found the real surprise. A thin wire, buried under the snow, leading to a standard push-pull detonator. Only there wasn’t just one charge; there were half a dozen, spaced down each side of the main road through the site. If they had been tripped off, the whole column would have been immersed in explosions. It took the bomb disposal expert nearly an hour to defuse the intricate web of charges and detonators. Eventually he did so and stood up, stretching his back.

Fire one shot, they know you are there. Fire two and they know where you are. The sniper, be he a partisan or a member of a ski patrol knew his — or her — job well. Lang heard only a single shot and saw the explosives disposal expert crumple with a terrible finality. He looked at the trees surrounding them and saw nothing. He finally understood what Asbach had been trying to tell him. They were being watched. All the time.