Winter Warriors

been the absolute truth but not for the reasons he’d given. A lot of Gettysburg’s crew were Irish. The majority of them reckoned they had scores from ‘the old country’ to settle with a convenient German. There was another bang and roar from overhead. More Corsairs on their way to pound the SS units headquartered around Londonderry.

CHAPTER TEN: ALL THINGS MUST PASS

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

“A Hitlerite battle group.”

Knyaz surveyed the railway junction with his binoculars. A few feet away, Noble Sniper Irina Trufanova was doing the same using the PMU telescopic sight on her rifle. At the moment she was under orders not to fire. This was a covert scouting mission after all. If the patrol was spotted, her first job would be to drop anybody giving orders. Still, no sign of that yet.

There were half tracks scattered around the buildings. Instinctively Knyaz counted them. Almost enough for a full battalion of Panzergrenadiers. There probably had been enough once but there were six bomb craters in the middle of the building cluster and at least two burned-out vehicles. That had to be the work of the Night Witch whose report had caused his patrol to be diverted here.

“What do you think they’re doing here?” Captain John Marosy was watching as well; rather hoping the force gathered around the junction was too strong for the ski unit to take on.

“There is one of your naval gun trains west of here.” Knyaz spoke slowly. He hadn’t told the Americans of the radio messages he’d received that morning. A Russian officer told nobody any more than he had to, a hangover from the bad old days. Ski units were more closely knit than most. Even so, operational security was paramount. Not because Knyaz didn’t trust his men; because lifting a man from a unit and getting him to tell everything he knew was a past-time both armies practiced. A few carefully-chosen barbarities and that man would tell whatever he knew. What he didn’t know, he couldn’t tell. Which could be very tough on the captured man, of course. “It is trying to escape to the North. The original line was cut by bombing, now it must come through here.”

“So the unit is trying to block it. Can they stop the train?”

“They do not have to. This junction splits the line two ways. A line to the north that takes the trains, eventually, to Murmansk. The other line goes east but eventually curves back south. Would you like to guess which way those points will have been set?”

Marosy didn’t like the way this was going. “They’ll be set so the train goes south.”

“That is so. The combat group is set up so it will stop anybody changing the points. If the train stops, it will be captured. If it does not, it will curve south, go deeper into enemy territory and still be captured.”

“So we will have to capture the points and change them. Put the train on the right track.” Neither comment was a question, much as Marosy would have liked them to have been. He was very unhappy about this. He’d heard of the horrors of infantry fighting on the Russian Front and that was quite enough.

“An easy thing to say, Tovarish Captain. Look at what we have down there. At least three mechanized infantry companies, an artillery battery, a platoon of armored cars with 50mm guns in turrets and another with 75mm anti-tank guns. That is much more than a battalion; far too much for a full-strength infantry platoon. And we will be under strength for I must send men to warn the train of what awaits it.”

Marosy thought carefully, An old proverb ran though his mind. “If you’re going to a fight, bring all your friends. And get them to bring their friends’ He knew few people in the American Army, let alone the Russians. He did have friends in the Air Force. To make matters better, he was trained as a forward air controller. “Knyaz, the switches for the junction, they are by that small shack, yes?”

“If this is the same as all the other lines, yes. And things are very standardized.”

“Well, suppose we had some air support. In fact, a lot of air support. Could we take that hut, it’s close to us, and hold it long enough to reset the junction and let the trains past? Then the trains pick us all up and take us North?”

Knyaz thought carefully also. His unit was small but very skilled and were veterans. If the Americans threw their aircraft in to the battle and kept the fascists under fire and if the trains were lucky, they might get past. And they might be able to pick up the remains of the ski unit. That was so many ifs but if they all came to pass, it would be good to ride a train on the way back home. There was the problem of the vehicles of course, but if their crews could take them further north, they could be picked up later.

“Can you get us air support?”

“Have you a radio I can use?”

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

“Sir, up ahead. Men in white.”

That could mean anything, Perdue thought. Everybody wore snow camouflage up here. It was very, very hard to tell who was who. The banana-shaped magazines of the German rifles were a pointer, certainly, but enough captured weapons were floating round to make them an unreliable guide at best. So who were these people?

“Sound General Quarters. Get the men with rifles ready. If this is an ambush, we’ll have to shoot our way out of it.”

Ahead, one of the white figures was standing on the railway line, waving his arms in the traditional “stop “ sign. Perdue had no intention of doing that, no intention at all. Not until the situation was a lot clearer than it was now. “Slow down a bit, but keep going.” Let the situation mature as the mud-puppies say. Trouble was if one let the situation mature long enough, it all turned into manure.

“What’s he doing?”

“Still waving, Sir. Now he’s making a ‘cut’ gesture. Looks like a guy on the carriers doesn’t it?”

“It does indeed.” Perdue’s binoculars were shaking too much from the vibration of the engine to allow clear vision but the guns carried by some of the men had the drum magazines of the PPS-45. That and the American-type ‘cut power’ gesture decided him. That and the fact he had a lot of riflemen on board.

The gamble paid off. The lone figure on the track ran forward when the engine came to a halt and saluted at the foot of the engine cab.

“Sergeant William Bressler, Sir. Navigator of the A-38 Hammer Blow, shot down a few days ago. We’ve been with a Russian ski unit since then.”

“Commander Perdue, United States Navy. We?”

“My pilot is Captain John Marosy, Sir. He’s with the rest of the ski unit. Sir, I’ve got bad news for you. The krauts have a reinforced battalion battle group around the junction up ahead. Mechanized infantry, artillery, those big armored cars with tank guns, you name it. They’re blocking the junction and the points are set to send you back south.”

That was it, Perdue thought, game over. Blow up the guns and hope we can infiltrate ourselves back North.

“Damn, we got this far too.”

“Sir, the ski unit commander has a plan. Captain Marosy is calling for air support. Given the situation, he thinks he’ll get it. The ski unit will attack under the cover of that air attack. They will seize the points and reset them. Then, while the aircraft are still bombing, you crank these engines up, open the throttle as wide as it’ll go and just crash through the krauts. The line north is fairly straight; it’s the southern branch that curves north. As you get clear, slow down and pick up the ski troops and then make a run north.”

“Not a man for subtlety is your Captain.” Perdue thought it over. There was a certain simplicity about the plan that made it hypnotically attractive. Just go flat out and crash through. “Suppose the krauts block the line?”

“They haven’t, Sir. I guess they expect you to either stop or take the southern branch. Their unit is pretty spread out as well; a Black Widow hit them last night and cut them up.”

“Know how that feels.” Perdue grunted. His mind played with the images of what he had been told.

“Well, it means that if the bombing pins them down, they won’t be able to concentrate on the ski unit.”