Stuart Slade: Winter Warriors

“Look at it this way Sir. The Germans are tapped out; like us, they can’t support any more than they already have. They’ve got pitifully few troops outside Russia. Most of their occupation forces are those ‘allied’ divisions. Romanians and Slovakians mostly. Those German units that are elsewhere are reconstituting after being torn up in Russia.”

For a second Colonel Charles Lampier looked very tired. “Europe’s bleeding to death Sir, the whole continent is just bleeding to death.”

There was a grim silence. Running through both men’s minds was a terrible question that neither would admit to even thinking. Had Halifax been right? Was striking a deal better than this endless slaughter? Canada is stretched as far as we can go in supporting First Canadian Army. We’re being bled white by the casualties we’re suffering.

“So why don’t they?”

“Three reasons Sir. Two are military, one is political. The first military reason is that the terrain here is some of the finest defensive ground in the world. It’s a maze of lakes, rivers, ridges, swamps. You name it, we’ve got it. The weather is frightful; you saw how bad flying down here. That isn’t the worst of it; you wait until we get white-out conditions. The sky fills with windblown snow and nobody can see where the sky ends and the ground begins. Too dangerous even to try and fly.

“This whole area is a defending force’s paradise. Even a high correlation of forces in favor of the attacker doesn’t help much. The attack is channeled into a series of narrow thrusts and the additional troops just stack up behind the lead elements. A company can hold a division for days, weeks if necessary, and when it’s finally destroyed, the next defending company has moved in behind it.

“That brings us to the second military reason: air power. The Americans in particular; they shoot up everything that moves. And I do mean everything. If your division has vehicles on the move, make sure they display the recognition panels and pray intensely. All the Yank fighter-bombers are trigger-happy but the Grizzlies are the worst. They have a 75mm right in the nose and it’s accurate so they tend to shoot from long range. Let’s just say they aren’t too careful sometimes.

“But, once all those troops stack up in front of a defensive position, the aircraft get to work and they reduce those forces to a shambles. You should have seen the roads west of here a few weeks ago. The Germans tried a local advance to straighten their line before winter. There’s a lot of that going on, everybody tries to seize the best shelter for their own people and to deny it to the enemy. Anyway, the front was about the width of a main road. A couple of SU-100 tank destroyers and an infantry platoon blocked it then the fighter-bombers got to work. Mostly Thunderstorms and Grizzlies but even some of our Williwaws got in on the act. By the time they’d finished, the road was a tangled mass of burned out wreckage.

“Anyway, put together, those two things mean that attacking here is slow and expensive. Applies to us as much as the enemy of course but we don’t plan to go anywhere though. ‘ The Germans don’t know that of course; they can see that if we broke out of here, we could cut off their whole northern flank. Isn’t going to happen, but they have forces pinned here in case. The ground their side isn’t so defensible so they need more troops to hold it.

“The third reason is political. The Finns want to survive this war as an independent state and the way they’ve screwed the political side of things to date puts a big question mark against that. The Russians and us are doing a good-cop, bad-op act on them. The Russians make noises that, when the allies have won, Finland is going to be occupied and reduced to a Russian province and any Finns that don’t like it can seek new lifestyle opportunities in Siberia. We tell the Finns, we can argue the Russians out of that but how effective our arguments are depends on how active a part they take in the war. The more operations Finland engages in against us, the less will be left unoccupied post-war.

“Of course, the Finns have the Germans telling them that they’re going to win and if Finland wants to survive post-war and get a share of the goodies, it had better be an active German ally. So they’re dancing a tightrope. Frankly I doubt if anybody here has any sympathy for them. We all had when we arrived, Winter War, gallant little Finland and all that, but it didn’t last.

“The problem is that we need to keep this front quiet, that’s our prime driver. We need to keep the activity, and thus casualties, down to a minimum. You know how stretched manpower is back home. We’re keeping units up to ToE at the moment but if the casualty rate spikes, that’ll end and we’ll drop behind the curve. Once that happens, we’ll never catch up. It’s not as if we could draw on any of the Free British units. They’re all being reserved and trained for the invasion of the UK. If that ever happens.”

“You don’t think it will?”

“I have my doubts. Oh, sure, the Yanks are going through the motions. They’ve trained and equipped a Marine Corps, six divisions of it, and are planning a landing in France. They’ve got the Royal Marines and various other units doing beach reconnaissance and all those good things and they’re training and equipping the Free British units for a landing in the UK but there’s something missing. Either they’re not serious about it or they’re heading for the worst amphibious foul-up since Gallipoli.

“Six divisions sounds really good and, as we’ve seen, there isn’t that much to oppose them, not at first. But the Germans are on interior lines; they can move troops around. We just can’t get at their core railway system, so they can shift forces west without much interference. If they moved, for example, 11th SS Panzer Army west, they’d go through the Marines on the beach like shit through a goose. And they’re talking of landing in France? Why would they do that? The UK is the fortress that guards Europe from the west; that’s been true since the time of the Barbary pirates. Retaking it has got to come first. Surely they’d do that with one landing, at full strength, not two spread out over half Europe?

“No, sorry General, but I think they’re bluffing. They’re not really planning to land in the west; they’re just trying, not too successfully, to keep German troops pinned down in France and the UK. The issue’s going to be decided here, in Russia. And we won’t see Free British troops out here.

“So, I’m sorry to have to tell you this but at least half your job is political. We’ve got to keep the Finns scared enough so they stay quiet but not so scared they decide they have nothing to lose. Anyway, another thing running for us. Our Intel is good, very good indeed. Don’t ask me how, but we get warning of every major German move, when and where. In effect, the Germans are telegraphing every punch and that gives us a huge edge. I believe a lot of stuff comes in from the Norwegian resistance and I think we get more from the Swedes.”

“I thought the Swedes were tight with the Germans?”

“They are, or so we thought, but the intelligence thing makes it look different. It’s really weird. There are Swedish volunteer units fighting with the Germans. One of the SS panzergrenadier divisions is a third Swedish, yet I’m pretty certain we’re getting all this good intel out of Stockholm. Another thing that doesn’t make sense. Looks like the Swedes are playing a really deep double game and the Germans are not pleased about it.

“In terms of equipment, one of our two armored divisions have got late-model M-4 Shermans. They have HVSS suspension, wide tracks and 90mm guns. The other has M-27 Sheridans; same gun but a bit more armor. Between them, they’ll handle most things except the German heavies. There’s a few of those, mostly Royal Tigers down around Petrograd. The Russians have JS-IIIs down there and seeing those two go at it is a real treat. This isn’t really tank country though. Armor is a help but it’s a supporting weapon, not a decisive maneuver arm.