White resumed the crouching advance and found the foxhole.
That was pretty much all he found.
No radio, no maps, no Ames.
Just Gray.
Gray was already cold and stiff, his throat cut from ear to ear.
“Stand to! Stand to!”
Chapter 104 – THE FEAR
Courage is doing what you are afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you are scared.
Up and down the Allied lines, soldiers were woken from their slumbers by cries of alarm, as Soviet raiders visited trenches and bunkers in search of intelligence and prisoners.
Many men simply disappeared into the freezing night, others died at their posts. Yet others were fortunate enough to see or hear the threat before they were overcome, turning the tables on their would-be kidnappers.
Nervous sentries called their units to arms and equally nervous officers filled the sky with magnesium light, or called down artillery to deal with a supposed enemy attack.
Artillery and mortars exchanged their shells and bombs, as ranging shots, then battery, then counter-battery fire escalated the long-range exchange. And then it stopped, as quickly as it had erupted.
Whatever happened, few men on either side of the divide slept that rest of that night.
Private First Class Frederick Lincoln Leander, the worst soldier in his platoon, bar none, reluctantly rose up from the bottom of his position, unable to ignore the urgent whispers of the other occupant.
He looked around with an inexperienced eye.
Nothing.
“Oh Lordy, it’s cold.”
“Can it.”
“Sorry, Sarge.”
“I said fucking can it, Contraband!”
Silence had descended again, except for the gentle patter of fresh snow falling… and the heavy breathing of the terrified.
The sound of artillery was gone, its intrusion brief, but intense. Its flashes and bangs had added to the decidedly threatening atmosphere, illustrating trees long stripped of their shape, creating almost a gothic horror movie feeling to the frontline positions of the 92nd Colored Infantry Division.
The occupants of the shallow hole were not friends; far from it. Circumstances had brought together Sergeant Clay and Private First Class Leander and placed them in the foremost position of King Company, 3rd Battalion, 370th Infantry Regiment.
Everywhere was white, something that had become a joke to the Buffalo soldiers of the 92nd Colored Infantry Division.
A number of humorous discussions had taken place about the wiseness of using black soldiers in a white environment. The humour of it was soon lost after a few men were lost to sniper fire and a number of soldiers started to cover their faces with anything suitable, from flour pastes to white paint, which brought forth more humour.
In the main, the men accepted their lot and coped with the increasingly bitter temperatures, but some found their prejudices either resurfacing or reinforced, as they perceived some intent on the part of their white superiors.
Clay and Leander came from different poles of the matter; the former, his rank hard earned in the face of extreme discrimination, saw bias in everything, racism in everything, hate in everything, and tempered his judgement with his own beliefs and prejudices, as his father and his grandfather had before him.
Leander came from a privileged, educated background, one in which there was little or no tension between people of different colours, just an acceptance of difference without the fear and vitriol that normally went with it.
He was different, hence his nickname, one that was intended to cause offence, with its roots back in the Civil War. His education and attitude set him apart from the majority and he found himself discriminated against by those who would, should, have called him brother, although it was his lack of soldierly skills that caused most angst amongst his peers and which set him at loggerheads with Clay.
The Sergeant’s hand was suddenly raised and a finger marked out a direction down which both men strained their eyes.
Nothing.
‘What’s that?’
Nothing.
‘Ma eyes is playing tricks.’
Nothing.
‘That moved!’
Leander brought his own hand up, pointing slightly off to the right of the NCO’s, picking out the ‘something’ that he thought had just shifted slightly.
The snow flurried, driven by a sudden wind.
Nothing.
A sudden single sound broke the reverie, and had Clay taken but a moment to think about it, a sound similar to that of a small stone thrown into the snow.
But he didn’t and automatically swivelled to his right, eyes searching out the source whilst his soldierly instincts screamed at him for his stupidity.
His companion hadn’t heard it so stayed ‘eyes front’.
Those eyes widened.
Something.
‘Oh my lord!’
“Sergeant!”
The nothing that had become something became more stark and real, subdividing into two then three rapidly moving somethings, white forms on a white background almost on top of the position already.
Clay swivelled back to his front as his hands started to bring up his grease gun.
The short barrel fouled on the iron hard edge of the hole, but his finger had already received the command to pull the trigger and the weapon started to chew the frozen earth as it sent out bullets.
The first white shape was on him in an instant and Clay’s own camouflage, a simple bed sheet looted from a Gasthaus in Möggers, was indelibly marked with blood as a wicked blade slashed at his throat.
The grease gun stopped and was dropped to the floor of the hole as approaching death took precedence, Clay’s hands grabbing at the wound in an attempt to stem the flow of blood.
The enemy soldier reversed his blade and rammed it hard into the back of the dying man’s neck, killing him instantly.
Leander screamed as the second figure loomed large over him, a similar blade beginning to descend.
He ducked and the knife glanced off his helmet.
Other calls of alarm rose up from nearby positions, as more Buffalo soldiers became aware of the enemy in their midst.
A flare rose and silhouetted a number of Soviet ski troopers in various poses, from grabbing unfortunates for prisoners to plunging their Kandra knives into unprotected flesh.
It was also, for some, a deadly distraction.
Leander, the useless soldier, motivated now by survival, picked up his Garand and sideswiped his attacker in the face.
The Russian went down hard and out for the count.
The third man got his hands on the rifle but without sufficient purchase and Leander jerked the butt into his throat, crushing soft tissue and dropping the would-be kidnapper to the snow.
Shots started to punctuate the night, as attackers and defenders brought more conventional weapons into use.
The Garand jumped in Leander’s hands, pointed in the right direction by the trembling soldier but with no accuracy and both bullets missed.
Knife recovered from Clay’s corpse, the Soviet ski trooper launched himself at the petrified negro soldier, content that he could easily overpower the man and bring back the prisoner that his Commander so wanted.
He changed direction in mid-air as the Garand barked again, this time putting a heavy bullet through his stomach.
The Russian thrashed about in the scarlet snow, screaming as the agony overtook him, attracting attention from both friend and foe.