Winter Warriors

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.

CHAPTER EIGHT: THE ENDLESS SNOW

Somewhere on the Kola Peninsula, Heading North.

“Well, now we have a problem.”