Stuart Slade: Winter Warriors

Heim scanned around fast, over to the left, a low ridge. The Grizzlies will dive down, use the hill as cover, then slash across us. Different tactics from different air forces, the Russian Sturmoviks would circle their prey, each diving on it in turn. The Americans made straight strafing runs across the target area. Difficult to say which was worse. He looked around his truck.

“Jabos coming. Get your snowshoes on. When I give the word, bail out and run like the wind, to the left.”

That was a painful lesson, learned at grim cost. Run away from the Ami jabos and they’d give chase, treat killing the men on the ground as a game. Run towards them and one might, might, get under the attack, escape that way. Whatever one did, get away from the vehicles. For vehicles drew jellygas.

Heim was right. Four Grizzlies erupted over the ridgeline, heading straight for the convoy. The vehicles lurched and swayed as they came to a halt, the anti-aircraft gunners swung their weapons to bear. Those who couldn’t fight the jabos were already running for the snowbanks on either side of the road. The perfect perfumed prince stood in the back of his kubelwagen, shouting something. Probably exhorting his men to stand and fight. He would learn. Learn and burn.

Tracer screamed across the sky towards the racing jabos, the noses of the aircraft vanished behind the orange fireballs as they fired back at the flak guns. Nobody had ever accused the Amis of being inventive; they found the best way of slaughtering their enemies and stuck with it. This was the first act. They would concentrate fire on the flak guns and take them out. The guns will probably die, but if they can maul the Grizzlies, they might not go through with killing the rest of us. Heim couldn’t see the flak gunners serving their guns behind him, he was too busy running across the hardened crust on top of the snow, for the soft, deep banks where he could hide, but he knew they’d be steadily, efficiently, serving their guns.

He couldn’t see but he sensed the fountains of snow erupting around the half-tracks. The guns on the Grizzlies outranged the flak pieces, so they’d be hoping to get at least some of them before the range closed. He heard the clang as an armor piercing round hit the side of one of the vehicles, heard the explosion as the ammunition in the half-track exploded, felt the heat from the ball of flame as the 37mm gun and its crew died. The viciously cold air was burning his lungs as he ran. He saw some snow banks and hurled himself into them as the Grizzlies swept overhead. The rockets screamed from under their wings and he heard the explosions. The mass of secondary explosions meant he didn’t need to look to know that the tracks brought all the way from England had just blown up.

He did sneak a look anyway. Pyres of black smoke were rising from where both the 37mm guns and one of the quadruple 20mms had gone. The AECs weren’t just burning, they were an inferno of exploding ammunition and fuel. The infantry, the convoy’s guard against partisan attack had spread out into defensive positions, away from the guns but near enough to protect them from any partisans closing in on the scene. Joint attacks between Ami jabos and partisans weren’t unknown but they weren’t common either. More often the partisans stayed in the background and called in the air attacks.

Up above, the four Grizzlies were turning away. One was streaming thick black smoke from its starboard wing. Heim watched it turn away still further and head north slowly losing height. One of the other jabos was leaving with it. Another difference between the Amis and Ivans. A crippled Russian aircraft was on its own, left to get back to base as best it could. The Americans detached aircraft to escort the cripple. If it crash-landed, they’d land to pick up the crew. They’d risk men to save men. In their eyes, expending treasure, machines, resources to rescue their men just didn’t enter into the equation. If their men were down, they’d do what it took to get them back. May the good Lord help anybody who got in the way.

The Grizzlies vanished behind the trees again. Heim guessed what was coming next. It wasn’t an accident that the 20mm quad at the front of the convoy had been knocked out in the first pass. He and his men took the opportunity to get still further from the tracks on the road. They had little time and it ran out as the two remaining Grizzlies broke over the treeline. Their 75mm guns belched out the familiar orange ball of flame. They were joined by the flat hammering of the .50 machine guns. Heim saw the lead ten tonner explode. A 75mm round had plowed through the front and it shattered the vehicle into blazing fragments. There were only a handful of shots, the range was short and the Grizzlies had better things on their mind. Better for them that was.

Heim watched the two stubby tanks detach from the bomb racks on the jabos. They wobbled down, turning end over end as they fell. An inaccurate weapon but it didn’t matter. It was the dreaded jelly gas, the foul thing the Amis had created by mixing gasoline with stuff that made it burn hot and slow. Stuff that made it stick to whatever it touched. Stuff that nothing could put it out.

The first pair hit the ground just short of the wrecked 20mm half-track. They bounded high and erupted into a roaring mass of orange and black flame. It boiled skywards as the bouncing tanks spewed the hellish jellygas back along the lines of stalled vehicles. The second pair hit just behind the middle point of the convoy and repeated the inferno that was consumed what was left of the convoy. Roaring and screaming, the black smoke and orange flames blotted out the sky above the convoy. The black cloud of smoke turning the sun blood red. Heim’s face blistered as the heat from the nightmarish holocaust rolled across the snow. He felt the hard-packed whiteness soften and saw it turned black with soot from the fires.

The two Grizzlies swept over the inferno below them. The orange glare of the fires reflected off their glossy white-and gray camouflage paint. Then they were gone, heading north. Probably for more ammunition, more fuel, more jellygas. Heim got up and waited for the roaring conflagration to die down. Then, he went back to the cooling remnants of the convoy. Around him, the survivors did the same, slowly, shocked by the ferocity of the assault. The vehicles were gone. Some had been hit by gunfire and rockets, others incinerated by the jellygas. Most cases it was hard to tell which was which. Burned, blasted, who knew?

Only one vehicle had survived, the little kubelwagen right in the middle. It must have been just far enough back to miss the first pair of jellygas tanks and too far forward to catch the second. Around it, the wreckage on the convoy burned. Scattered around it were the blackened, carbonized husks that had once been soldiers.

The perfect perfumed prince stood immaculate, in the middle of the destruction, neither burned nor asphyxiated. Mentally, Heim raised his eyes in despair. He had long since ceased to believe in God; this was just another example of the injustice that made up his world. The survival of the perfect perfumed prince responsible for this nightmare confirmed his disbelief in any form of divine providence. “Sir, I shall assemble the survivors. We should head back to the depot.”

The depot was a safe cantonment heavily guarded against attack. They had to get back there by dusk; the Partisans were closing in. They’d have seen the smoke and heard the explosions. They knew what was happening. Most of the Partisan bands had radios now. It was a fair bet that they’d been told of the strike, to find any survivors the Grizzlies had left and kill them.

“Our orders are to reach the 71st Division base area as soon as possible. We will go on.”