Winter Warriors Read online

  WINTER WARRIORS

  STUART SLADE

  Previous Books In This Series Available From Lulu Press

  Winter Warriors (1945)

  The Big One (1947)

  Anvil of Necessity (1948)

  The Great Game (1959)

  Crusade (1965)

  Ride of The Valkyries (1972)

  Coming Shortly

  Lion Resurgent (1982)

  Dedication

  This book is respectfully dedicated to the memory of Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov

  Acknowledgements

  Winter Warriors could not have been written without the very generous help of a large number of people who contributed their time, input and efforts into confirming the technical details of the story. Some of these generous souls I know personally and we discussed the conduct and probable results of the actions described in this novel in depth. Others I know only via the internet as the collective membership of the History, Politics and Current Affairs Forum yet their communal wisdom and vast store of knowledge, freely contributed, has been truly irreplaceable.

  I must also express a particular debt of gratitude to my wife Josefa for without her kind forbearance, patient support and unstintingly generous assistance, this novel would have remained nothing more than a vague idea floating in the back of my mind.

  Caveat

  Winter Warriors is a work of fiction, set in an alternate universe. All the characters appearing in this book are fictional and any resemblance to any person, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Although some names of historical characters appear, they do not necessarily represent the same people we know in our reality.

  Copyright © 2010 Stuart Slade. ISBN 978-0-557-62072-2

  CHAPTER ONE: RED SKY IN THE MORNING

  1st Platoon, Ski Group, 78th Siberian Infantry Division, First Kola Front, November 1945

  “It is time to kill some fascists, Bratishka.” Lieutenant Stanislav Knyaginichev let the bolt of his SKS rifle slam forward, chambering a round, ready to fire.

  “It is always a good day to kill fascists, Tovarish Lieutenant. This day is yet young.” Sergeant Pietr Ivanovitch Batov spoke with grim satisfaction. As he did so, he looked on his young Lieutenant with care that was almost fatherly. ‘Knyaz,’ as the men in the unit called him was a good officer. In fact, he had the makings of an excellent commander; assuming he survived. He started his career as one of Mekhlis’s zampolits, the political officers, so many of whom had done so much to harm the Russian Army in 1941. Knyaz had not been one of those. Instead, he had been a good zampolit, using his powers to aid rather than hinder. As 1941 had ground on in days of fire and death, he had become loved by his men as much as he had been respected by his officers. When, in November 1942, Stalin had died and unitary command was restored, he had been one of the zampolits selected to be trained as a real officer. Six months later, he had been assigned to the 78th and there he had lead his men well.

  Then, he had gone down with pneumonia. His men mourned him for they knew that pneumonia meant death. This time, it did not; fate had once again saved Knyaz. He’d been taken back to the hospital the Americans had set up at Murmansk and given some of the new wonder drug they had there. Pensin, or something like that, Batov didn’t know the name, but it had saved their Lieutenant. Now, once again, he commanded the Ski Group formed from the 78th.

  This year, winter had come down early and very hard upon the Kola Peninsula. It froze the ground, covered it with thick snow and turned everything to ice. Already, the front line that had marked the furthest extent of the German advance was immobilized. The units that held it had gone into winter quarters. Cantonments provided some semblance of warmth and protection from the bitter cold and howling winds. The spaces between the camps were patrolled by ski troops. On the German side, they were Gebirgsjaegers, specialized divisions of mountain troops. They were specially equipped and trained to fight in the snows. Like all specialist troops they were very hard to replace. That made bleeding them worthwhile.

  The Russians did things differently. Every one of their units had been expected to form its own ski patrols. That was no problem for the 78th Siberian Infantry Division. Siberians had been born on skis. To them, the cold of the Kola Peninsula was a mild thing compared with the frozen tundra of their home. Once the whole division had been Siberians. In 1941, they had been brought from the east and thrown against the Germans standing at Tula, on the very doorstep of Moscow. They had hurled the Germans back and hounded them through the blinding snowstorms, sparing none. That had been four years ago; few men from those days survived. Enough did to provide a cadre for the unit and to give the recruits a sense of being in an elite unit.

  Knyaz checked the positions; the ambush was set. The snowmobiles that had brought them were parked several kilometers back. They had been tucked away where they were unlikely to be seen. Even if they were, their position was deceptive. It looked as if they were laagered just on the Russian side of the lines, not as if their ski troops had penetrated into German-held territory. Maskirovka, Knyaz thought, maskirovka, always maskirovka. Mislead, deceive, conceal. Never do the obvious, never do the simple. Always mislead and deceive. The Germans didn’t practice that art with the same grim determination as the Russians and now they were going to pay the price. The Germans were very good but they got into bad habits. Like using the same patrol routes too often.

  “You ready, drug?” Knyaz spoke to the youngest of his new recruits. Kabanov was a true Siberian but one who had only joined the unit a week before. He’d never seen combat so he was still a lowly ‘drag,’ a friend, but not one raised to the comradely fellowship of the ‘brats’. He would be, soon, if he survived. The boy nodded, pretending to concentrate on his SKS but wouldn’t speak because his mouth was dry with fear. No shame in that, but the boy wouldn’t understand, not yet.

  “They’re coming!” The growl of engines could be heard. It was amazing how far it carried over the frozen snow. The Germans didn’t use snowmobiles for their ski troops. Instead, they had a strange vehicle called the kettenkrad, a motorcycle with a sidecar but tracks instead of wheels at the rear. The patrol approaching had six of them, in two columns of three. Each pulled four ski-jaegers. Tough troops, Knyaz thought, well trained, well-acclimatized to this frozen wasteland. The ski-jaegers didn’t blunder around in the cold the way the German infantry did. A pity only a half-platoon was approaching. He’d wanted to bag a whole platoon. Still, a half platoon, two squads, a prize worth taking.

  His two DP-28 machine guns would open the game. The two crews were already be tracking their targets. Two Kettenkrads were out in front, forming the point element of the patrol. The machine gunners would let those pass, if they could, and catch the following four in the L-shaped killing ground. He carefully swept his eyes around again; not a sign of his men waiting motionless in the snow. Their rippled white and light gray camouflage suits blended perfectly with the snow that hid them.

  The point element of the patrol swept past. The four vehicles of the main body followed them right into the killing ground. Their engines sounded small and weak against the immensity of the snow; yet the sound carried so well that Knyaz believed he could hear each individual pop of the engines. The engine sounds were drowned out by the snarl of the DP-28s. The fire walked across the snow, tearing into the kettenkrads at the front of each column. The nearest driver was hurled from his seat. His blood sprayed dark and agreeably red against the whiteness all around. His kettenkrad tumbled as it lost its driver, dragging the four ski-jaegers behind it into a chaotic, confused heap.

  Knyaz sighted and fired his SKS, squeezing the trigger of the semi-automatic rifle again and again. Gone were the old days of fumbling with the bolt
of the Moisin-Nagant, fighting the stickiness caused by lacquer from cartridges building up in the chamber. His rifle cracked again and again, ten rounds rapid fire. One of the fascists in the chaos below tried to move to get under cover but his body jerked and stopped. Who had hit him? Did I? Who cared, the fascist was dead. His rifle was open, the last round gone. A new stripper clip, push down, five rounds into the magazine, another clip, five more. Bolt forward and ready to go again.

  Out in the killing zone, one of the ski-jaegers was pointing at the long arm of the ambush, where the muzzle blast of the SKS rifles threw up a cloud of snow. Then, his head jerked and he crumpled. Noble Sniper Irina Trufanova had done her work. Her spotter identified the leader and the telescopic-sighted Moisin-Nagant had sent him to his grave. Now, the team would be moving to a new location. When the ski group fought, Trufanova and her spotter worked independently. They knew their job and nobody dared to advise them otherwise.

  The second kettenkrad was burning. Armor-piercing incendiaries from the DP-28s had ruptured its petrol tank and ignited the contents. More figures scattered around. Few of the ski-jaegers towed by the vehicles the machine gunners had hit first managed to survive. That left the eight men and the two kettenkrads at the rear of the patrol and the two at the front that had already passed out of the killing ground. They’d be turning already, coming back to aid the main body. This was the critical bit. If it went wrong now, Knyaz knew his unit would be trapped between the two forces.

  A roar of rifle fire from the StG-44 ‘banana guns.’ They were the fully-automatic rifles arming the ski-jaegers. The men carrying them had gone to ground and were hosing fire at the ambush position above them. Their machine guns had gone; they’d been on the two destroyed kettenkrads. Even without their support, those automatic rifles put out a fearful volume of fire. The Germans were trying to pin the ambushers down so they could be isolated and picked off. That had been anticipated; most of the Siberians had already slipped away from their original positions. The fascist ski-jaegers had fewer machine guns than the regular line infantry but they carried more ammunition and they had the banana guns. Knyaz watched a group of four fascists run forward a few meters, taking advantage of the lull in the Russian fire caused by the blast from the StG-44s. They’d take up new positions and provide covering fire for the other group of four. Soon, they’d be in grenade range. Or so they thought.

  A new sound, something indescribable. The PPS-45 machine carbine didn’t snarl or roar, the sound was more like paper being ripped. It fired a version of the 7.62x25mm pistol round that had been “improved.” The Americans had done it. They’d taken the original cartridge and reloaded it with new propellant, pushing the chamber pressure up through the roof. A new, longer, heavier bullet took advantage of the extra energy. The new cartridge had its tip painted green because anybody who tried to fire it from a Tokarev TT-33 or an older PPsH-41 would lose his hand when the chamber burst open.

  The tried and tested PPSH-41 had been redesigned with a 41cm barrel and a new foregrip. The result was a weapon half way between a submachine gun and the SKS. It still had the light bolt of the PPSH, so its rate of fire was phenomenal. Still, it did have its 71 round drum magazine to feed it. There was something else about it as well, the PPS-45 was built in one of the new American-supplied factories at Khabarovsk. Any part from a PPS-45 fitted any other PPS-45. If something needed replacing, the spare part would fit, right away, no need to file it down or select the best from a pile. It would fit. A magazine, any magazine, taken at random from a pile would fit any PPS-45. Amazing.

  Knyaz knew what was happening. The two point kettenkrads had turned around and were towing their ski-jaegers to attack the ambush; the men held the tow lines with one hand and fired their banana guns from the hip with the other. Only, Knyaz had foreseen that and he had four of his six PPS-45 men in a skirmish line waiting for the move. An ambush within an ambush, maskirovka, always maskirovka.

  The PPS-45 men waited until the range was point-blank and they sprayed the approaching fascists with long, long bursts. If it went right, they would sweep the fascists from their seats and tumble the ski-jaegers into the snow. The fascists wouldn’t be fighting back. At that close range, the greentips made huge gaping wounds in their victims as the bullet tumbled and broke up in their bodies.

  Another surge forward from the fascists in the killing zone. Almost instantly one spun and fell into the blood-soaked snow. Another score for Noble Sniper Trufanova. Explosions. The fascists had thrown stick grenades, the long handle giving them extra reach. One DP-28 opened up and two more of the running men went down, the last diving for cover again. One DP-28? Had the other crew already died? When?

  The five survivors of the fascist unit were pinned down in a ditch-like depression. The DP-28 was snapping out short bursts, keeping the fascists pinned, making sure any fire from them was wild and unaimed. Meanwhile, two more men with PPS-45s and two men with grenades, moved around their flank. Knyaz knew that Trufanova had watched the fascists go to ground and was already moving to somewhere that would give her a clear shot. He thought he saw a movement in the trees, off to the fascists’ right. They saw it too. They tried to turn and fire but two black objects arced out of cover, into their pit. The explosions were muffled by the snow but they still hurled the fascists back, stunning them. Then the four skiers burst out of the trees. The two men with PPS-45s hosed the fascist position with a long continuous burst; the snow fountained red and white around the occupants. The two grenadiers fired their SKS’s from the hip as they rode in. It was over, the last of the ski-jaegers were dead.

  What happened next was a well-ordered drill. One part of the Russian group skied out. They first checked the bodies of the fascists lying sprawled around the kettenkrads, then the little vehicles themselves. They picked up the StG-44s, and stripped the bodies of ammunition, documents, anything of value. Letters especially, for no matter how careful the writer was, they always let something slip in a letter to a loved one. Binoculars, radios, everything. Nobody said anything but sometimes be a groan from a wounded fascist was silenced by a quick thrust from a knife. It wasn’t practical to take prisoners; even if they could, they wouldn’t. Unless they were needed for intelligence, nobody took prisoners on the Russian Front, not any more. Not even the Americans and Canadians, who were ridiculously sentimental and squeamish about realities, took prisoners any more. Not in winter, not on the Kola Peninsula.

  Up on the slope, Knyaz looked at the rest of his ambush force. As he feared, he’d lost a machine gun crew to a stick grenade. Three of his riflemen had been killed by fire from the banana guns. Three other men had wounds; one bad, the other two not so much so. The badly wounded man could ride on a captured kettenkrad. The rest could ski. Then he saw the boy who had been the unit drug. He was standing on the slope, looking down and shaking with delayed shock and fear. Knyaz went over to him and clapped him on the back. “Remember, bratishka, you have to be alive to be cold!” Knyaz was very careful to misunderstand the shaking.

  Kabanov looked at him. His eyes lit up as the meaning of his lieutenant’s words sunk in. He’d seen action; he had fired his rifle at an enemy. He was a proud brat now, not a humble drug. Behind him, Sergeant Batov dipped his fingers in the pool of blood that surrounded a dead fascist, blood already freezing in the bitter cold. He dabbed it on the boy’s forehead and cheeks. The old hunter’s ritual. Batov called out in a voice that carried across the ambush site. “Tovarish, we have a new Brat today.” A quick cheer; very quick for the unit needed to get moving. They picked up their dead, made their wounded man as comfortable as they could on one of the two captured kettenkrads then set off on the long traverse back to their snowmobiles.

  Captain’s Cabin, CV-33 USS Kearsarge, Churchill, Nova Scotia, Canada

  “Something old, something new, something borrowed, all of it midnight blue.”

  Captain Karl Newman chuckled as his CAG, Commander Pearson, dropped into a seat. “We have our new airgroup then. What we got?
”

  Pearson flipped through his clipboard. “Eighty eight birds; five squadrons of 16. Two fighter squadrons. One with FV-3 Flivvers, the other with F4U-7 Corsairs. Two light strike squadrons with F4U-4 Corsairs, one heavy strike squadron with AD-1 Skyraiders. Difference between fighter and light strike is a bit academic really. They’re both trained for either role. In addition, we’ve got a detachment of four F4U-4N night-fighters and another four Adies equipped with APS-20 search radars.”

  “FV-3s? We got a new version of the Flivver?”

  “They’re the new bit, along with the F4U-7s. The FV-3 is similar to the Air Force’s F-80B Shooting Star, only it’s got a hook and folding wings.” Pearson spoke with satisfaction. The older FV-1 and FV-2 had fixed wings and they’d caused handling problems on the deck. The jet fighter was far faster than anything else in the fleet; hence the nickname ‘flivver’ after the 1920s sports car. “They’ll do 557 on the deck, 580 higher up. Rate of climb is 4,870 feet per minute. That’s forty, fifty miles per hour faster than the 262 and it climbs almost 1,000 feet per minute faster, ‘bout the same edge over the 162. The U-7s aren’t so shabby either. Can’t compete with the jets, well, it’s about as fast as the 162 on the deck where it matters so I guess it can.”

  “And I guess the U-4s are the old. So, what’s the borrowed?”

  “Our heavy bomb squadron was Mames, but I talked to the CAG on the Evil Eye. They’ve got two heavy bomb squadrons, were going to be one of Mames and one of Adies. So we agreed to swap our Mames for their Adies. We’re switching everything that goes with them now. Better for both of us; we get Adies, they have two squadrons of the same type.”

  Newman nodded. The Martin AM-1 Mauler could lift heavier loads than the AD-1 Skyraider and was a touch faster, but the Adie had an awesome reputation for toughness and reliability despite some worrying instability problems. But then, both aircraft had been rushed into service. The deal to swap squadrons made sense to him; the skipper ofCV-11 Intrepid must have thought the same.