Ike watched him go and then returned his focus to the group.
“Right. We move on.”
He brought them back to the moment.
The men edged forward to examine the map but were distracted by the sound of laughter from outside the room.
Their eyes were drawn to the window and a group of military policemen, playing hard as soldiers do, firing missiles at each other at breakneck speed, stopping only to scoop up more handfuls of the snow that covered the landscape for as far as the eye could see, and whose arrival had caught the Allied forces unprepared.
Patton moved briskly to the window but Eisenhower stopped him with some quiet words.
“Let ’em be, George, let ’em be.”
Reluctantly, the Commander of the US Third Army moved back, sparing a moment to scowl at the soldiers, oblivious to their seniors as they cavorted in fifteen inches of pure white snow.
“Now. Let’s sort this mess out.”
That work was in progress when a simple message arrived.
The Italian Government had declared its neutrality.
To be fair to the Meteorological Department, they had forecast snow to fall as of the night of the 30th. The issue was in its quantity and the dip in temperature that ensured it remained.
On the morning of the 30th October, the temperature stubbornly refused to break 0°, dropping to -9° as November arrived.
November 1st had seen better temperatures at the southern end of the line but, in the centre and the north, 0° became but a pleasant memory.
Stagg had presented them with a revised forecast that morning; one that did not cheer them.
More snow was on its way and with it would come a further drop in temperature, partially because of the presence of a huge cold front and partially because of the winds that would accompany it.
He added widespread freezing fog to his glum forecast.
Now the Allied Armies would have to battle the elements, as well as the Russians.
The three men sat quietly, well apart from all the others, mainly wounded soldiers and furlough men waiting for the arrival of their ride home.
The threesome drew a number of looks, as much for their disparate proportions as the fact that they were clearly combat veterans who had been through some sort of hell on earth, which, in truth, they had.
A cigarette moved steadily between the smallest man, seated on the left end of the barrier that the three had made their personal seat, travelling to the man seated in the middle, and back.
On the end, nearest what had been decided had once been an Opel Blitz lorry, sat the largest of the men. He did not smoke, but shared the canteen doing steady business on all three sets of lips.
A brazier, constructed by the airfield guards for their own comfort, produced both heat and smoke, warming bodies and stinging eyes.
The steady drone of an approaching aircraft broke into their comfortable silence and three sets of eyes were suddenly wide open and scanning the sky for threats.
An RAF transport aircraft descended through the gently falling snow, landing harder than the passengers or the pilot wished for.
A door flew open on the temporary structure that was presently the operations centre for the small field, yielding a weasely faced British MP Captain, whose voice broke the silence as he shouted the waiting passengers into some sort of order.
The moment had come, one the three had simply ignored.
They stood as one and hands were extended.
Bluebear ignored both hands and swept his two friends up in his massive arms, crushing them close.
From under his left armpit came an unmistakeable voice.
“Oi Vay Chief! Leave me shome breath already!”
With a laugh, BlueBear tightened his grip on Rosenberg and then released both men.
The diminutive Jew drew air into his recently crushed chest and proffered his favourite suggestion one more time.
“You shure you don’t wanna batman like the Limeysh do? You’d be doin’ me a favour, Chief.”
The Cherokee looked the small man up and down, feigning disdain.
“No pets allowed on the aircraft.”
Hässler laughed, as much at Rosenberg’s inability to immediately respond as at the humour itself.
Rosenberg rallied.
“And fucking shquaws ride on the roof!”
Their intimacy was broken as the MP Captain appeared magically in their midst, his clipboard held firmly as a pencil hovered expectantly.
“Names.”
“Rita Hayworth, Hedy Lamarr, Betty Grab…”
The British MP poked Rosenberg in the chest with the clipboard.
“Don’t try to be funny with me, Yank.”
“You asked for namesh, you got namesh, wishe-assh.”
The clipboard seemed to develop a mind of its own, firstly moving back, almost as if to strike the recently promoted Jewish Sergeant. Secondly, it jerked upwards as it left the British officer’s grasp, snatched away in the mighty paw of a Cherokee who was not going to watch his friend messed with by the Limeys.
“My name’s BlueBear…. Lieutenant BlueBear… I’m on the list… here, Captain.”
A strange silence followed.
One in which the MP was clearly assessing his next move.
One in which he realised the precariousness of his position.
One in which he decided that valiant retreat was the order of the day.
“Well, hurry up and get yourselves on the ’plane. The weather’s going to close in shortly and there won’t be any more flights for some time.”
This time the three shook hands in silence, exchanging smiles and nods, everything having been said on the journey to the airfield.
BlueBear mounted the steps to the DC3 and turned to wave at his two friends.
The wave was returned and then they went their separate ways.[1]
A week had passed and passed quickly.
There was plenty of work in which to immerse a troubled mind and Nazarbayeva had committed herself fully to the new challenge ahead. The pain of the wound had eased and her recovery was assured.
Some minor irritations had surfaced, men who had felt they were more qualified than the woman who had pulled the trigger on Pekunin, men who started agitating, whispering, and plotting behind the scenes.
Nazarbayeva had been put in her new position by events, that was clearly the case, and some wondered whether her obvious ambition either had engineered those events or pushed her into precipitous action. After all, there was no evidence against Old Pekunin.
‘Was there?’
On Stalin’s personal order or, more likely on Beria’s suggestion, NKVD General Dustov had remained at hand, supported by a contingent of his troops.
The whispering and plotting gradually died away, as did the presence of the two senior GRU officers mainly responsible for it, neither of whom welcomed their transfers to other distant and much cooler climes.
Poboshkin, newly promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, stood smartly as GRU Major General Tatiana Nazarbayeva opened the repaired office door, her work for the night complete.
“Good night, Comrade General.”
She smiled a weary smile to her loyal aide.
“And to you, Comrade Poboshkin. I wish you every success. Safe journey tomorrow.”
Nazarbayeva strode over the crisp snow, her thoughts mainly on the special mission that she had entrusted to her Aide.
Poboshkin reseated himself, anxious to keep on top of the fine details of his first presentation to the GKO, intended for Moscow the following Sunday. But his thoughts also strayed to the mission he had been given by his new General, the reason he was returning to the seat of power two days earlier than needed, a mission that was intended to delve into certain aspects of the life and death of the dearly departed GRU Colonel General Roman Samuilovich Pekunin.
1
Charley BlueBear was being flown back to the States to receive his Medal of Honor from the hands of President Truman. As the first Native American to be honoured in the new war, the propaganda value was immense and, as with others before him, BlueBear was to be used to raise the capital with which to grease the wheels of war.