Winter Warriors

communist. He should know that these things are evil and refuse to take part. If he knows better but takes part anyway, then his blame is all the greater. Tovarish Aleksandrov forgets that. He is right, there may be good Germans, but if there are, then their blame is all the greater. They deserve death; not less, but more. For they knew good and evil and chose the evil.”

There was a swell of appreciation and Knyaz heard somebody give Kabanov an approving swat on the back. Now, the tricky bit. “But, bratischkas, bad things happened in the Rodina as well. What do we make of that?”

That caused a silence. There had been a time when Knyaz would have disappeared for making a statement like that. Also, many of the younger soldiers had a positive image of Stalin and thought that he was a great politician. They’d remembered him for his small period of pre-war urban welfare and the idea that he might not be perfect was troubling for some of them. Even in this shadowy zemlyanka, force of habit made people measure their words. Then, a voice spoke carefully from one of the gloomiest parts of the shelter.

“But it has been put right yes? Perhaps bad things were done in past years, Tovarish Stalin had bad advisors who deceived him but those who did that have gone. They have been replaced.” By us was the unspoken addition. Nobody quite knew what had happened at the end of 1942; they knew everything had changed since then. The NKVD had been broken up between various armed services and the intelligence branch had been re-named back to CheKa. The spy problem had been too serious to allow counterintelligence would vanish completely from the frontlines. Knyaz remembered how Germany easily obtained the Soviet offense or defense plans in 1941-1942. That hadn’t been done without the help of massive infiltration. In his heart, Knyaz knew what had happened. When one needed working structures but also had to change their “image” so to speak, purging several key perpetrators could work wonders.

“Tovarish Stalin died a hero in Moskva. We all know that. And anyway, whatever problems we had happened here, we did not force them on others.”

“Right, bratishka. We saw that bad things had happened and we put them right. Where are those in Germany, the ones who should have put things right? Of course there are none. If we can change things, why do not the Germans? This is what Tovarish Aleksandrov forgets. The blame of the good is all the greater if they do not resist evil. And let us never forget that the Fascists are here, in our Rodina.”

“So are the Americans?” This voice was very hesitant. Everybody knew that it was the Americans with their wonders who had saved their beloved Lieutenant.

“But we invited them to come and they came as guests, with gifts and friendship. And they fight beside us, to drive out the Fascists. Remember what Gospodin Zhukov says. ‘It does not matter whether a man fights under the Red Star or the White Star as long as he kills Fascists.’”

The approval was more than a murmur; it was a subdued roar. In the eyes of these soldiers, the Americans had their faults, a tendency to softness and mercy being one. But, they had one great redeeming virtue. They had invented napalm. Anyway, Stalin’s propaganda had rarely touched the United States with the fervor it had used to pummel states like the Reich, France and the British Empire. So the soldiers were a bit more open to the idea of the Americans as their allies, all in the spirit of proletarian internationalism.

In the background, Batov tapped two men on the shoulder and they went outside to relieve the sentries. A few seconds later, the two men who had been relieved joined the zemlyanka. There was a quiet muttering as they were brought up the date on the discussion. Knyaz passed his flashlight and the pamphlet over so the men could read it. A good meeting he thought, one that had fortified the men’s spirits and intensified their resolution. And all thanks to Tovarish Ehrenburg.

RB-29C Bad Brew II 3rd Photographic Group, 22,500 feet over The North Sea

Photographic was a bad joke. Bad Brew II did everything except take photographs. Communications intercepts, radar intelligence data, collecting radar images of the coastline in general and of coastal towns in particular. The latter could, just, be defined as photographic. Sort of. Bad Brew II didn’t even have a bomb bay any more. It was sealed shut and converted into an electronic intelligence gathering center. That didn’t matter too much; nobody in their right mind would send a bomber over Germany again. Bad Brew II’s crew were only too well aware of that.

The Third Photographic Group had once been the Third Bomb Group and they had taken part in the Ploesti Massacre. To be more honest, they’d been one of the four groups that had provided victims for the Ploesti Massacre. The Third had sent 27 B-29As on that raid. Bad Brew I had been the only survivor. Two engines shot out, their wings and tail riddled with bullets and shell holes, a quarter of the crew dead and half the survivors wounded; they’d survived because they’d turned back early. The lonely flight back had been an epic struggle to survive. Their B-29 had got them home, how nobody could work out. Rationally, there was no reason why the aircraft should have kept flying, but it had. They’d made it back to base. The undercarriage had collapsed on landing and the aircraft had been written off, a constructive total loss.

The Third had been pulled out of Russia, reorganized as a Photographic Reconnaissance group with RB-29s and then sent to Iceland. Their new assignment, photographic reconnaissance sounded safe enough, but it wasn’t. The RB-29Cs operated alone, under cover of darkness; gathering their data as they penetrated closer and closer to hostile territory. Their casualty rate was around ten percent. That was low by the standard of the Russian-based bombing campaign but it was still cripplingly high by rational analysis. Statistically, a ten percent loss rate meant a given crew had a seven percent chance of surviving a tour of duty.

The rewards were worth it. A completed tour of duty meant the crew went back to the continental United States and were then reassigned to the Pacific. Deterring the Japanese by spending hot days on Pacific Island beaches, relaxing and drinking beer, spending warm nights relaxing with affectionate maidens from the Pacific Islands.

Some of the crews had made it, left the Third and went home. Then they vanished. Too busy relaxing with island maidens to write letters was the standard guess. Recently one whole Photo Group, the 305th, had been withdrawn from Keflavik and vanished as well. Another reinforcement for the Pacific; another reason for the Japanese to keep quiet and not annoy the American Eagle. The Germans might be able to stop the B-29. It was a very good bet that the Japanese would have a much harder time trying.

“How’s it going?” Captain Jan Niemczyk wanted out of the North Sea at the earliest possible time. As soon as they’d got their radar pictures of the coast and, especially, Hamburg. That meant a long penetration into hostile airspace. An airspace that held night-fighters.

“We’ve got the pictures command wanted. You reckon the Navy pukes from the carriers are coming down this way?”

“Gotta be. I’ve heard they’re planning to bring their carriers further in. No other reason for us to be this far inside enemy-controlled airspace. Any emissions?”

“Coastal radars only. They’re probably tracking us; signal strength is well over threshold. Command says the Germans are too short on gas to send fighters out for a single aircraft.”

“Yeah, right.” Niemczyk’s voice was loaded with cynicism. “Anybody asked them about the birds that don’t come back? All eaten by wolves, perhaps?”

There was a bark of laughter around the flight deck. The command line was simple. The aircraft that came back made no reports about being intercepted by night-fighters. Ergo, the Germans didn’t send night-fighters out after single aircraft. Much like the nature-lovers claimed there were no reports of people being eaten by wolves. The fault in the logic was the same in both cases. People who were eaten by wolves didn’t live to make reports. Nor did RB-29s intercepted by night-fighters.

“Hamburg coming up on the radar screen now, boss.” The mapping radar under the belly gave good pictures, particularly where there was water and ground to give vivid contrast. Built-up areas showed up well also; bright white on the dark background. “We’re taping the images now.”

“Good. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“Right. Boss, uh-oh.”

In the cockpit, Niemczyk decided that the words he hated most in the English language were ‘uh-oh.’

“What’s the problem?”

“Airborne emissions boss. Fug-220 Liechtenstein. A night-fighter. Signal is above threshold; he’s after us.”

“Time to go home.” Liechtenstein probably meant a He-219. A thoroughly nasty beast; fast and heavily-