Stuart Slade: Winter Warriors

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.