He had spotted and sent out the warning about the turn to the north yesterday. I would think that today they would listen to him a little bit harder and not ignore his warnings like they did of a full 15 minutes on the previous raid. His immediate supervisor had passed the warning up but his superior had not and now he was on his way to Siberia from all accounts. He had actually been given a pair of his boots as a reward. They were excellent boots as well. He needed them here in this place with no heat near Dustan just over from the Turkish border. He hoped the Amerikosi could not detect his powerful radar or at least ignored it.
He and his generator and support team were almost dropped by parachute until cooler minds prevailed. The Stavka was so desperate to gain a few extra kilometers of early warning that he had almost been pushed out of a plane instead of landing in a field. Say what you will, those little Po-2s planes still had a purpose and had ferried him and his men here to Meghri in no time.
He heard his commander relaying his sighting data to what sounded like Novikov himself. On the one hand he hoped not but on the other he was kind of proud that what he was doing was so important to the homeland. He only wished they had listened to him yesterday and maybe more could have been saved and more Amerikosi bombers shot down.
The landing craft lifted a good 10 feet before it settled back down to where they could start to climb up the rope nets. Once you got on you had to move fast and climb at least 11 feet before the boat came up and knocked you in the water and you were crushed between two metal walls. Earl had seen that happen a few times.
“What the hell are we doing this for Corp? This is nuts. You look at any map and there is just no place that we are going to need to amphibious invade on our way to Moscow. This is FUBAR Corp. Day after day climbing up and down, pretending to invade some foreign shore. What a waste of time and my energy.
I interrogated dozens of Nazis after the war and not one of them made an amphibious assault on their way to the outskirts of Moscow. Maybe a few river crossings but nothing that involved real LCTs, LSTs, DUCKS and other all this other shit. It’s almost like they had to find a way to use all this equipment left over from the invasion of Japan or something. Sounds like something the Army would do. “We bought it so we have to use it” or some shit like that.”
“Shut up and climb Sims… here comes the wave and we don’t want you getting your pants wet now do we?”
Earl scrambled up a little faster although he knew he was high enough based on his previous couple of dozen climbs under similar circumstances. Hell he figured he had three feet to spare so he was not worried but he moved a little faster to shut the Corporal up.
Boy that guy was irritating. Is that how they pick corporals? You take the most irritating guy and put him in charge. Asshole! He knew how far the Goddamn boat was going to rise better than he did. That asshole missed the first 2 weeks of this shit and here he is telling me what to do.
Four weeks of going down the nets into the boats. Watching Jennings get seasick… every goddamn time… then we scramble out onto the rocky shore and shoot at imaginary Reds. The Navy lobs a few shells over our heads and we fix bayonets and charge off the beach and stab a few straw bales and dive into a ditch and get up and run up that same god damn hill. It was almost like they knew exactly where they were going to land and attack even now. How could they know that at this stage of the war?
He wished he could see the topo map the lieutenant was always looking at. Maybe that would give him a clue as to where in the world they were going to attack. Ah hell what did it matter all he had to do was to follow orders from guys like this asshole corporal.
“We have an extra treat for you clowns today… two climbs down the net and up again. Seems the Major didn’t like your cavalier attitude. He doesn’t think your serious enough. Serious enough to fight the commies and win and that’s all he cares about. All he cares about is winning.
NOW GET YOUR ASSES BACK ON THE NETS AND BACK IN THOSE BOATS! AND THIS
TIME DO IT SERIOUSLY”, the Corporal yells dripping with sarcasm… “or we’ll do it again.” All the non-coms start to yell at the same time. It’s all jumbled together but you know what they want so down you go and wait for the landing craft to rise up and then you climb down as fast
as you can and wait again for it to come up and greet you like some deranged metal wave and if you time it right you don’t jump on your squad mate and you land without twisting your ankle or breaking anything and scramble out of the way of another falling squaddie and all the time trying to look “serious” for the major.
He can’t even see your face from up there where he’s standing. I can’t see his so he can’t see mine. Everything smells old and musty. All this equipment and even his uniform was in storage in some island in the Pacific and reeks of rotting vegetation and wet canvas. Jees there goes Jennings again right on time. Disgusting, how can you puke so much
Chapter Twenty One:
Change of Strategy
Yeorgi was going home. He was leaving his trench near the creek with the desmans and was going back to his beloved Caucasus Mountains where he could also be around the little moles. Why had those creatures been put in only two places on earth and why had he been brought up in one and become a man in another. His part of the Pyrenees Line had not changed in months and he and his desmans have had a fine time of it but now it was time to move on and the rumor had it that his unit was going to be assigned to the Southern Front and was going to either march on the Levant or the oil fields in Iraq.
He was going to miss his dozen or so furry rodents he had watched for hours through his sniper scope but he knew that the area they were going to temporarily also had a good population of desmans for him to befriend. It was all that made this nightmare bearable. He had shot over 30 Americans and Spanish. A number of them looked like his cousins. He was having nightmares composed of exploding heads. You just can’t kill fellow human beings day after day watching them die by your hands close up through a sniper scope and not be affected.
He was not a natural born killer. He was just a good shot. He had natural abilities for hitting a target no matter if it was a piece of paper or a human head. Nine times out of ten if he could see it he could hit it. That didn’t mean that he enjoyed it or even felt proud of it. How “manly is it to kill someone while they are taking a shit or brushing their teeth. It was cowardly in his opinion but the commissar did not ask his opinion. He just wanted dead Amerikosi. He just wanted to take credit for Yeorgi’s record number of kills… kills… yes kills. That’s exactly what he was doing. He was killing some other father, son, brother or lover and for what?
Maybe if there were like the Germans who raped their way through the Ukraine and tortured their way to the gates of Moscow. How would his killing these 30 men stop the Amerikosi from dropping atomic bombs on his little village?
What was that idiot doing? Why didn’t his compatriots pull him down and under cover? Did they not care. Oh no the commissar sees him too and I have to kill him.. He knows I can see him. He knows I cannot miss at this distance. Shit! I have to do this.
“Nice shot comrade. That makes what 31 or 32?”
“I lose track comrade commissar.”
“That’s ok Yeorgi I will keep track for you. I saw that one from my scope. Wonderful shot, just wonderful.”