right time. In the North Atlantic, that just didn’t cut it.
“We have a problem.” Major-General Klaus Marcks was not given to stating the obvious but there were times when a situation merited it.
“Captain Wilhelm Lang.” Colonel Heinrich Asbach also thought this was one of the times when stating the obvious was entirely justifiable. “The question is, how do we get rid of him? And should we?”
“We can’t, Heinie.” Marcks had a small group of officers who had been with him since the heady days in France, five years ago. The number was growing smaller as the Russian Front whittled them away, but he still depended on the survivors for advice and insight. Only a fool trusted his own feelings when there were other, better sources available. “The man has served on probably everybody’s staff over the years. He has powerful friends, the sort who could be very dangerous for this whole unit. He got us six brand new, fresh from the factory, self-propelled 150mm howitzers with a single telephone call. Do you want to take the chance that another call would send us to Archangel’sk? While he was assigned to a new post in the opposite direction?”
Asbach shook his head. It was not a chance worth taking. Even the name Archangel’sk had a horror associated with it, something quite unlike anything else on the Russian Front. There was a legend in the German Army. Archangel’sk didn’t actually exist anymore; it had become a gateway to Hell. That the units sent there just marched into the mist covering the city and vanished as if they had never been. It was pretty close to the truth. Being ordered to Archangel’sk was the nearest thing to a mass death sentence that could be given without actually ordering up the mobile gas chambers. He reached out and took another slug of brandy. His family owned one of Germany’s oldest brandy producers and he managed to keep the officer’s mess well stocked.
“Anyway, he isn’t actually a bad officer, Klaus.” Marcks lifted an eyebrow at that. “He knows the regulations inside out. He knows his duties and performs them well. It’s just that he has absolutely no experience at all. I guess that back in’38 we were just like him. Only, we spent all our time out here learning the reality of the war we’re stuck in. He spent that time in comfortable headquarters units, writing regulations and sending memos. He doesn’t know when the rules and regulations apply and when they do not. And he doesn’t really understand how the veterans think or listen to their experience. You heard the story about his nickname?”
“No?”
“He started off as being the ‘Perfectly Perfumed Prince’ and it got abbreviated to ‘Prince.’ When he heard about it, he assumed it was a term of respect, ‘Prince amongst men’ or something like that. A normal officer would know when to turn a blind eye. Not our Captain Lang. It was against regulations, so he forbade its use.”
“What do they call him now?” Marcks was genuinely fascinated.
“Well, the men started calling him ‘The Officer Formerly Known As Prince’ but that was too clumsy for general use so now they call him ‘Still’ because he’s still a Perfectly Perfumed Prince.”
Marcks barked out a laugh and shook his head. “Well, that’s all very fine but it doesn’t solve our problem. We’re kicking off as soon as this storm is over. It’s clearing from the west which is apparently very significant for some reason or another. The engineers have been checking the ice. The lakes and rivers are frozen hard enough to take the strain of our lighter vehicles. The heavy traffic will have to thread its way through as best it can. That includes the artillery, both the towed stuff and our newly-acquired self-propelled guns. Can we be sure than Lang won’t get carried away and drive them into a lake or something?”
Both men sighed and inspected their brandies. As they had both suspected, the levels in the glasses were inadequate to permit deep contemplation. Asbach topped them up again.
“I don’t think we have much choice, Klaus. If we move him out, who gets the battery instead of him? His lieutenant has even less experience and nowhere near the same level of knowledge. I think we’re going to have to leave Lang in place and just watch him carefully.” Asbach thought for a second. “There is one possibility of course.”
“Do tell.”
“My part of the attack is pretty close to a raid. An armored infantry column going in to try and seize those big railway guns north of here. Preferably capture them. If that’s not possible, destroy them. We’ve built the raiding group out of the recon battalion; used its halftracks and reinforced its infantry component. It’s short on tank killing power though, its armored cars have only 75s or long 50mm guns, and artillery. Only, we now have some self- propelled artillery we can take along. So if we attach Lang and his self-propelled guns to that force, it does two things. Beefs up the raid to the point where we can do useful things and put Lang in a position where he’s both under a group of experienced officers and in a prime position to get some battle-lore of his own under his belt.”
“You’re happy to take such an inexperienced man along?”
“Happy is the wrong word, Klaus, but I think it’s the best solution.”
“Agreed. I’ll issue the orders. After we’ve finished supporting your family business.”
“Your ten o’clock Mister President. Senator Stuart Symington.” President Dewey’s secretary spoke quietly on the intercom.
“Thank you. Send him straight in please.” There were those whose services merited immediate access and those who deserved a long, long wait in the Presidential anteroom. Symington was one of the former.
“Senator. Pleased to see you. How goes work on the Air Material Production Subcommittee?”
“Thank you for seeing me so promptly, Mister President. It’s one aspect of our work I wish to see you about. Particularly one aircraft, the C-99. On the face of it, the aircraft appears to be a scandalous waste of resources. I wanted to discuss the matter with you before the subcommittee investigates the program. In case there is a reason behind this program that I and my committee are not aware of.”
“You have doubts about this aircraft Senator? If you could enlarge on them, perhaps I can set your mind at rest.”
“Sir, put at its most basic level, the aircraft seems to perform poorly and demand excessive amounts of support. It is slow. It flies at around 200mph. That makes it appear to be even slower than a C-47 and much slower than a C-54. It is restricted in altitude. My understanding is that it cruises at around 10,000 feet. We have reports that it can’t climb above bad weather, so it is often grounded. Worst of all, it uses six of the R-4360 engines that are in such short supply. The Navy is crying out for F2G Super-Corsairs and the Air Force desperately needs F-72 Thunderstorms to replace the old F-47s. Yet the production of both is restricted by the shortage of engines. If we cancel the C-99, we could free up engines for those aircraft.”
“Senator, put like that, you make a strong case. If I might show you some pictures, they might put a different light on the matter.” Dewey had been anticipating a problem like this and he had the files waiting in his office. Symington’s Air Material Production Subcommittee dealt mostly with the components for aircraft; engines, weapons, most recently radar and other electronic systems. His point had been a good one. It was just he didn’t, couldn’t, mustn’t know the whole picture. The President opened the file and handed some 10 x 18-inch prints over to Symington.
The Senator gasped. The pictures, obviously taken from a high-flying RB-29, were of a port. From the size and scale, he guessed they must have been taken from almost 30,000 feet. The port showed clearly. What was even clearer was the mass of shipping that surrounded it. Symington was irresistibly reminded of ants swarming around a leaf. A mass of shipping that engulfed the port, obviously swamping its facilities.
“That’s Vladivostok Senator. Of all the supplies that go to Russia, 25 percent goes via the northern convoy route to Murmansk and Archangel. Another 25 percent uses the southern route, via Iran and the Afghan Railway. The other half, all of it, goes via the western route to Vladivostok. And you can see the result. The congestion off the Russian port is terrifying. I’m told Admiral King has woken up screaming in the night when he imagines enemy submarines or surface ships getting loose into that mass of shipping.”
Symington nodded. In his mind he could see the exploding ships; enemy warships running through the tightly-packed merchantmen and the burned bodies of seamen washing up on the cold shores. Just like they had back in the bad days of 1942. It could not be allowed to happen again.
Dewey was still speaking. “Of course, we’re doing what we can to solve the problem. We’ve got engineers expanding the facilities at Vladivostok. They’ve doubled the capacity of the port since 1943. We’ve moved a whole new prefabricated port over there, called a Mulberry, and that helps. We’re even unloading cargoes directly over the beach where we can. They’re all only marginal solutions. We’ve achieved a lot more by building support factories in Russia. There’s iron ore, copper, nickel, lead there, oil as well, a lot of it. We used to ship crude oil back to
