Winter Warriors

from their positions on the road, and had dug in. Ihrasaari guessed they were quite pleased by that.

The Finns were pleased as well. They’d forced the Canadian units to dig in along the road. That meant they were fixed in place. Ihrasaari’s platoon was one of many that had infiltrated through the snow-covered, frozen lakes and dispersed through the rear areas of the Canadian Third Infantry Division. If the plans had worked, that division had been chopped up into a series of small packets, isolated along the communications line leading to their rear areas. That meant the real work could start, eliminating those small pockets one at a time. Just the way Soviet infantry divisions had been wiped out during the Winter War. Only one uneasy thought disturbed Ihrasaari’s mind. These weren’t Soviet infantry divisions. In fact Russian infantry divisions weren’t the same as the ones that had been wiped out in 1939. And this was the Continuation War, not the Winter War.

Headquarters, 71st Infantry Division, Kola Front

“Captain Still would like to see you, Sir.” Major-General Marcks stared at his aide coldly. There was a time and place for such remarks. This was neither. The aide whitened slightly and spoke again. “Captain Lang would like to see you Sir.”

“Send him in.” This, Marcks thought, might be interesting.

“Sir, thank you for seeing me, Sir.”

“Are your orders assigning you to Colonel Asbach’s command clear?”

“Very much, Sir, I thank you for giving me this chance. I know I have much to learn and my start here was not good.”

“Others have been worse. Is there anything else?”

Lang didn’t reply but rubbed his ear reflectively. It was a well-understood silent question. Was this room secure? Marcks nodded briefly.

“Sir, the attack we are to launch tomorrow, it’s part of a much bigger operation.” Marcks remained silent letting the Captain talk on. “It’s not just Army forces along the Kola front involved, or the Finns. We are one major part yes, but there is another. The fleet is out, trying to cut the supply convoys to Murmansk.”

Marcks nodded. He’d heard that as well. Lang wasn’t the only one with well-placed sources.

“Sir, I have friends in OKW. The whisper there is that the naval part has gone very badly. The American fleet was waiting in ambush and our casualties have been very heavy. Worse, the supply lines have not been cut. I thought you should know this.”

“Have you told anybody else this news?”

“No Sir. Other than you, my lips are sealed on this. But I thought you should know. You know what happens when operations turn out to be disasters.”

Marcks did. The politicians would blame the military high command. High command would deny that its marvelous operations could possibly fail and that they could only be so if they were deliberately sabotaged by the field officers. So scapegoats would be hunted down and given a quick show trial before being hanged. It hadn’t always been this way. Once it had been understood that every so often things went wrong. But those days were long gone. Now failure was treason. Those high up would hang those lower down, or be hanged themselves.

“You will continue to say nothing of this Captain. This conversation never happened. And I wish you success in your first field operation tomorrow.”

Curly Battery B, US Navy 5th Artillery Battalion, Kola Peninsula.

There was another roar as Larry hurled a shell south, towards the German lines. There was no specific target. The great gun was firing at random, it was enough that the shells landed inside German-held territory. Technically, it was harassment fire. In reality it was just to wear the barrel out before the gun was blown up at dawn.

The trains were being reorganized. The empty shell and charge wagons were being detached from the trains and moved to one side. They’d be left behind and blown up as well. The remaining ammunition was being concentrated into the magazine cars that were left. The surplus fire control car was being attached to one of the two remaining trains. The anti-aircraft wagons from Larry split between Curly and Moe. One of the two locomotives had already been repaired and was moving backwards and forwards, getting the consists sorted out. Come dawn, this whole area would be abandoned. The ASTAC engineers were already planting demolition charges on the lines. That was something the Russians had down to a fine art. When they pulled out, there was nothing left but scorched earth.

“What’s the word?” Moe’s gun captain spoke quietly in the silence between Larry’s roars.

“Huns are advancing all right. They’ve pushed the Russian infantry down south back and bust a hole wide open in the front. There’s tanks and armored infantry probing north, they’ll be here by mid-morning. Just to make life interesting, the Finns have caved the Canadian Third Infantry in and they’re edging east. Looks like the plan is to bag the whole of the Kola Front. Anyway, that’s the bad news.

“Good news is that the weather has cleared. There’s F-61 intruders up already. They’re hunting the German supply columns. The poor innocent lambs think they can move at night without the Black Widows finding them. Or the ones that haven’t tried it do. The rest of the Kola Air Force will be covering us come dawn. We’ll have Grizzlies trying to blast a way through if we need them. Which I rather suspect we might.”

“What are our orders? Any changes.”

“Nope. Still get the guns out if we can, blow them up if we can’t. Err on the side of caution. These guns and their fire control must not fall into German hands. Larry’s a write-off but we’ll try and get the other two out. Take a look at this.”

Perdue spread a map out on the deck of the battalion command car. “The bridge will be fixed well enough for us to cross by dawn. Then we’ll head north along this line here. It’s a straight run, no real problems except for fuel and the Mikado locomotives can burn wood if they have to. Lucky they’re not oil-fuelled. The Russians are setting up a stop line here, using the White Sea Canal as a base. Once we’re over that, we can set up again and get back to work.”

“Suppose the lines are gone? If they’ve been hit here, they may have been taken down elsewhere.”

“I thought of that, that’s why we’re taking some extra cars along. We’ll persuade the AST AC engineers to ride with us, that’s why I wanted to speak with you now. They’ll want to stay and try and hold back the Germans but we need them to help get the guns out. Anyway, it’s a waste of good railway engineers to throw them away as second-line infantry fighting panzers. So, I’ll order the commander to bring his men with us. He’ll argue, then you join in and we all stress how much we’re going to need them around to get the guns out.”

Larry crashed again, sending another of its dwindling pile of shells south.

CHAPTER SEVEN: A KILLING COLD

HMCS Ontario Flagship, Troop Convoy WS-18 en route from Churchill to Murmansk

“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.”