Winter Warriors

“What have we got?” Perdue snapped the question out.

“Two shells, Sir. They hit somewhere behind us. The Germans overshot us by miles. Two shells, two guns. Petrograd Pete has arrived, no doubt about it.”

Perdue looked at the map and tapped a portion of railway line with his finger. “Here? Range and angle is right?”

“That’s our guess Sir.” The telephone rang and Perdue answered it. “Battalion agrees as well. Hit it.”

Perdue felt the train creak slightly as men alongside the wheels made tiny adjustments in position. There were more creaks and groans as the traverse of the gun was finely adjusted. In the fire control center, Perdue couldn’t hear the crashing as one of the great shells was pushed forward followed by the bags of powder. This would be a supercharge shot, no doubt about it; Curly could only just match Petrograd Pete for range. The way the train lurched back on the rails confirmed that impression. A split second after the concussion of Curly’s shot; Larry and Moe added their shells to the return fire.

The sirens on the trains went off again; five minutes after the first pair of shells had arrived. The German gunners were getting better; Perdue braced himself for the impact, only to hear the train like roar, again passing safely overhead. It hadn’t faded before it was drown out by the crash and shock of Curly firing. The German Army gunners might have improved but they still had a lot to learn from the American Navy artillerymen. Then, the telephone rang and Perdue took down another string of numbers. The tracking radar had backtracked the last pair of shells and provided a new set of coordinates and error circle. He transferred the figures to the plot. The new circle mostly overlapped the old but not quite. There was an area common to both and that area was significantly smaller than the circles on their own. The suspect rail line was right in the middle of the shared area.

“Same again.” Ten minutes after the alarm signal, Curly hurled its third shell towards the German lines. The train had hardly returned to its original position when the alarms sounded for the next pair of German shells. Another set of overs. To Perdue’s practiced ear it sounded as if they were heading over on an almost identical trajectory. That worried him. The German railway gunners were good, it wasn’t like them to make mistakes like that.

“Error in positioning?” Warrant Officer Phillips was obviously thinking the same thing. A positioning error was the great fear of all railway gunners. It didn’t take much to throw the aim hopelessly off. Perdue was saved from answering by the telephone. Another string of numbers; another fix; another circle. This one made a cloverleaf with the first pair and the shared area was much smaller. There was only a single candidate railway stretch in it, not the one they had been firing on. Perdue telephoned in the change. It was confirmed and that meant Curly had to be moved slightly.

“We can fire at will.” Perdue passed the order through.

“Why, whatever did Will do to us?” An old joke; but the fire control center laughed anyway. Underneath their feet the train shifted forward to make the firing correction. The fine adjustment crews swung the barrel a little further. Then, there was another crash and lurch as Curly hurled a projectile at the new target area. Once again, the responding German shells hurtled overhead to explode somewhere in the hills behind the American guns.

Perdue reflected that the duel between railway guns was a slow-motion affair. The exchanges of blows took so long they almost seemed like separate events. The American gun crews were tiring; their rate of fire had dropped to four minutes between rounds, then to five. The German gunners seemed to be holding theirs at one pair of rounds every six minutes; their shots still screamed far overhead, into the hills. After nearly an hour, the German salvoes dropped to single rounds. Had one of their guns been hit? Or malfunctioned? Their 15th salvo was the last. After it had roared overhead, there was silence. The three American guns fired a last salvo and then they too fell quiet.

Warrant Officer Phillips added up the figures on the log. “27 rounds inbound Sir. 12 double salvoes and three single rounds. We fired 21 rounds Sir.” Perdue nodded and telephoned in the information. “Larry fired 20 and Moe 18, making it 59 rounds total went out. I wonder if we got Petrograd Pete?”

Perdue shook his head. “Doubt it. Long range duel like that, we’d have to be damned lucky to get him.”

The telephone rang again and Perdue picked it up. He listened for a few minutes then put the receiver down. “That was the battalion command. We’ve got a problem. Those rounds we thought were overs? Well, they’ve smashed up the railway line and a bridge behind us. The Russians are getting a work team on the tracks right away but the bridge is looking pretty sick. They doubt if it can take the weight of the trains, not without a lot of work. So, we’re cut off for the time being.”

Phillips shrugged. “It’s not as if we’re going anywhere, Sir. And we’re well stocked up with food. A supply train brought in a load just a few days ago. Mostly canned beef stew but that isn’t so bad.”

Phillips paused and looked at his officer. Just for a moment he’d thought Commander Perdue had whimpered.

1st Platoon, Ski Group, 78th Siberian Infantry Division, First Kola Front

“The fascists are moving already, Tovarish Lieutenant?” Sergeant Batov sounded doubtful. The storm had lessened greatly and was now no more that a minor background irritation for the Siberians but the Germans weren’t so used to the wind and snow. Even now, going into their fifth winter in the Rodina, the Germans had still not adapted to the rigors of the Russian weather. Yet, this time they were moving before the storm had cleared.

The firefight had been brief and vicious. Neither side had been expecting to make contact. The Germans weren’t expecting to find a Russian unit so far behind their nominal front line while the Russians hadn’t anticipated that the Germans would be on the move so soon. It had been a classic meeting engagement. The two groups of skiers had emerged from the snow; for a moment, both had been frozen, partly with disbelief at the meeting, partly with confusion. Who were these people? Friend or enemy? They all wore white uniforms, had skis, carried guns. It was the sight picture that had done it. The curved magazines on the German rifles were just that bit more recognizable than the Russian rifles and submachine guns.

That had given the Russians the tiniest edge, an almost invisible edge in the pause that had lasted for brief seconds before the fastest-reacting soldiers on either side had opened fire. When using automatic weapons at point-blank range, even an advantage so small it couldn’t be measured was enough to make a vital difference. All four Germans and two Russians had gone down in the brief blast of gunfire. The PPS-45s had scored again; their phenomenal rate of fire literally cutting the Germans in half. It had been over so fast that the men carrying SKS rifles hadn’t had a chance to open fire.

One of the four Drags that had been brought by the transport earlier had carried a PPS-45. He’d emptied a 71-round drum at the Germans and now wore the blood-marks of a Brat on his forehead and cheeks. Two of the four looked at him with envy. They were carrying SKS rifles and had missed their chance. The last of them had also carried an SKS but hadn’t missed his chance. He’d been killed in the savage exchange of fire. His body was already being stripped of weapons and identification. The ski group couldn’t bring his remains back, so they had to make sure they held nothing of value. Other members of the group were stripping the German bodies.

“Bratishka?” Stanislav Knyaginichev had been looking at his map and trying to work out what was going on.

“The fascists, Tovarish Lieutenant. It is very early for them to be moving.”

“I have been thinking the same thing. And such a small unit as well. When did we ever run into a detachment of just four men?”

“Only when they were the flank guard for a larger unit. Oh.” Batov saw what the Lieutenant was driving at.

“Exactly. I have been looking at the map. We are here, just under this ridgeline. It looks to me as if those four were paralleling the road down here. Perhaps looking for a patrol like ours. They left early to catch us before we could move in but forgot we are Siberians, not pampered Leningraders or soft, feeble Ukrainians. We caught them, not them us. So what is moving on this road that requires flank guards?”

“A supply column?”

“Perhaps, but I have a sense it is something more important. We should check that road, see what it has to tell us. I will take a group of four men down, you stay here with the rest of the men. Get ready to cover us if we