Winter Warriors

The MG-45 was already loaded and waiting. Heim pulled back the charging lever and nestled down behind the gun. It wouldn’t be long now. His eyes ran along the nearest group of trees, was there movement already from behind them? The butt of the machine gun fitted neatly into his shoulder and he squeezed the trigger gently. The movement sent a short burst into the suspect trees. That broke the brief silence that had descended on the battlefield. A hail of return fire ricocheted off the armor of his self-propelled gun. Heim briefly thanked the gods of war that the fire was from rifles only. The self-propelled guns only had armor to protect them against rifle-caliber weapons. Anything more would go through and bounce around inside.

His men were returning fire. Their StG-44s cracked out quick bursts as the gunners tried to spot the muzzle flashes of the approaching Russians and pin them down. Firing was spreading quickly along the line of self-propelled guns. The machine guns laced the treeline with tracers, the riflemen filled in the gaps. On the other side, the automatic weapons carried by the partisans returned a growing volume of fire. Heim noted that for all the sound and fury of the fire exchange, nobody actually seemed to get hit. Idly the mathematician’s part of his mind, the part no artilleryman could do without, wondered just how many rounds got fired from these assault rifles and machine pistols to get a kill, and how that compared with the old bolt-action weapons. It sometimes seemed as if we have replaced one round that hits with a lot that don’t.

That idle speculation didn’t last long. Nor did it stop Heim from raking the woodline with his machine gun. The problem now wasn’t ammunition, it was heat build-up on the barrel. Carry on like this and the barrel will burn out. Over on the left, the gun at the extreme end of the line stopped firing. Either the gunner inside had been hit or his weapon had jammed. Almost at once, the weight of Russian fire shifted to that section. Heim saw more white-clad figures moving through the snow towards the silent vehicle. Their fire was pinning down the men next to the vehicle. Soon, they would be close enough to blast them out with hand grenades. Heim switched his fire to the new threat. He saw his burst of fire tumble down three or four of the ghostly figures. Then he had to duck as almost every gun the Russians had concentrated on him. He hadn’t heard such a concentration of ringing since the church bells at his wedding. His wife’s family had been overjoyed at the ceremony. That hadn’t surprised Heim, their first baby had been born seven months later.

He shook his head, clearing the memory out and peeked over the edge of the armor. He was just in time to see a gray-black cloud of smoke flash from the ground. A rolling explosion enveloped the side of the gun. Either an RPG-1 or a captured Panzerfaust he thought. He’d heard the Americans had copied the Panzerfaust and were building them in a new factory in Siberia. Rumor had it they were building so many that every Russian soldier would carry one. That was only fair, the Germans had copied the American Bazooka as their Panzerschreck. The stricken self-propelled gun was already starting to burn. The petrol engine used by the British tank that served as its chassis would see the fire quickly become terminal.

That didn’t take long at all. The fire took hold and reached the ammunition store. The gun exploded in a brilliant white flash that scattered great burning trails across the snow. Three guns left and the Russians were closing in fast. It hadn’t taken long for them to exploit the destruction of the gun. They used the cloud of black smoke from the burning vehicle to cover their approach. Heim thought quickly. The Panzerfaust has a range of around 30–60 meters depending on the version the Russians had captured. If they seized the position around the burning gun, they could open fire on the next vehicle and roll the whole artillery position up. It was time to do something about that.

“Take over the machine gun!” He snapped the words at the nearest soldier on the ground beside his vehicle and jumped down. Then he pointed at two men from the crew. “You and you. Follow me.”

He repeated the same process with the three surviving gun crews. That gave him seven men including himself, all armed with assault rifles. A dozen men were left to man the remaining artillery positions. It was thin but he hoped it would be enough. Then, he took his squad behind the parked guns and worked his way towards the burning gun. A quick burst of fire from right next to it showed him that his fears were already well on the way to being realized. The Russians had taken the position and were holding it, positioning themselves dangerously close to the destroyed self propelled gun in order to take advantage from the smoke. That could work against them as well, they had to be ducking to avoid the wreckage being flung around by the secondary explosions.

He took aim and his seven men raked the position with fire from their rifles. Then, they ran forward, their snow shoes helping them glide over the piles of frozen snow and ice that lay between them and the Russians. Two of his men went down. One collapsed in a bloody heap as a PPS-45 burst ripped him up. The other, Heim couldn’t see. A grenade fragment? Or a rifle bullet. It didn’t matter. He and the four others jumped into the Russian troops. They flailed with their rifle butts and stabbed out with bayonets. A frantic, chaotic slaughter that Heim couldn’t understand or follow. He beat one Russian down, bayoneted him, then fired his rifle so that the recoil jerked the bayonet out of the body. When he ducked, he felt a slam on his side. A butt strike from a Russian who held an StG-44 identical to Heim’s own. The blow took his breath away but the Russian fell also, shot down by the one surviving man who was with Heim.

There were five dead Russians in the pit by the burning self-propelled gun and three more dead Germans. Heim looked across, another group of partisans were already approaching, attempting to regain the self-propelled gun position. Heim did a quick count. Eighteen, perhaps twenty?

“How many rounds have you got?”

“One magazine. And Shultzie has two. Here.”

The soldier handed the extra magazine over to Heim. With two magazines each, the two of them couldn’t hold this position. The best they could do was hope that they could delay the Russian assault long enough for somebody to think of something. He took aim at one group and squeezed off a quick burst. They scattered, leaving a figure laying still on the ground. That was good, but the burst of return fire wasn’t. It seemed as though every gun in the Russian army was firing on his little position.

Across from the cover, another group of partisans rushed forward. Suddenly, they were intercepted by a burst of fire that felled four of them and sent the remainder scuttling back to cover. Heim looked over to his left. A group of German troops, almost twenty of them were moving in to the gun positions and along the line. A part of them were heading this way. Heim watched them, with shock recognizing the figure that led the section.

“Sergeant, your men told me you were here. Situation?”

“Enemy in the woods over there and around our flank. They got this gun but we pushed them out again. There’s a lot of them, a hundred or more. All with a automatic weapons and there’s ski-troops mixed in with them.” Heim looked at Captain Lang with amazement. Despite everything, the man’s silk scarf was still snowy, unstained white.

“Well done. I’ve got 22 men with me. I’ll leave six with you and disperse the rest between the remaining guns. That should hold this position.”

There was a note of query in Lang’s voice, as if he was expecting approval. Heim appreciated it. “That’s good, but there’s our friend overhead to worry about.”

“Ah yes, the Night Witches. We’ve run out of our Fliegerschrecks. We will have to hope that they will not do us too much harm. Hope is about all we have left right now.”

Heim nodded. The reinforcements Captain Lang had brought would help hold the area here. But what was happening on the flanks? And how long would it be before the Ami Jabos turned up in strength.

Heim got one answer to that question almost immediately, the sight of a blue flare that turned red streaking up from the Russian positions.

F-61D “Evil Dreams “ Over Letnerechenskiy, Kola Peninsula

The flares arched up, out of the pine forest and down, changing from blue to red as they burned. They formed a box, defining three of the edges with the front edge of the trees making the fourth. In between them was their target. Its location was marked by a plume of black smoke rising from the trees. That could only be a vehicle burning and the vehicles down there were all German. Lieutenant Quayle swung Evil Dreams around and headed for the defined area. He’d already fired his rockets but he still had six five hundred pound bombs and his guns.

“We’re coming in from the east.” That made sense, if any of the bombs hung up on the racks, they’d land clear of the Russians closing in on the German unit. Bombs often hung up and released late, Quayle had never known one release prematurely. “Donnie, the turret guns are yours, open up on anything that fires on us. Be generous guys, we’re going home soon and we don’t want to take anything back with us.”

“Situation Evil Dreams!” The voice crackled over the radio unexpectedly. “This is