“I am Lieutenant Stanislav Knyaginichev.” The Russian spoke slowly; obviously thinking in Russian, then translating slowly and carefully. “We have been tracking you for more than an hour.”
“Captain John Marosy, Sergeant William Bressler. Thank you for the rescue, Lieutenant.”
“Call me Knyaz. We were told of your crash by a partisan group. They also told us where to look. You were leading the Germans very well, so we left you to get on with it. Then it was easy to set up a good ambush for them.” The lieutenant’s voice was slightly strained. He was trying to conceal his amusement at the way the two Americans had been stumbling around in the snow. “Did your survival people never teach you how to make snow shoes from branches?”
Marosy shook his head. He watched with awe at the way the Russians were moving with casual ease in the snow. He’d thought the Germans had been skilled. Now he saw them as inept blunderers compared with the ski troops around them. And if they ‘d been inept blunderers, what did that made me and Bressler?
“Another thing you Americans must learn about the Russian winter.” Knyaz was trying to stop himself laughing as he reached out and tapped the American’s flight suits. “Snow is not green. Come, we must move away from here. Can you ski?”
“A little, not as well as your men.”
“No matter. Our vehicles are only a few kilometers away. My men are finding you some skis and some camouflage suits that are not too badly bloodstained. We are heading home now to rejoin our division and we will take you with us. Also you can carry a banana rifle, we have captured quite a few this time out.”
That was, Marosy thought, an improvement over a .38. As he and Bressler struggled into the German snow camouflage suits, they saw the young soldier with the bloodstained face getting slapped on the back by the others. Knyaz saw the look and explained. “When a recruit joins us, he is a drug, a worker. He is fit only to do the dirty jobs in the unit. But when he has killed his first Hitlerite, he becomes a comrade, a brat. A brother. Then, he can make other drugs do the dirty jobs for him.”
“Ah, I see. You speak English very well Knyaz.”
“Thank you. I learned some in an American hospital. My division always tries to have one who can speak English with each ski patrol, for just such times as this. Now hurry; we must move on before the fascists can follow up.”
It was a good thing to be in the reconnaissance units; they had been first to receive the new jets. The Arado Lieutenant Wijnand was flying was a good example, a neat, twin-engined recon aircraft that could outfly pretty nearly all the fighters up in this benighted part of the world. Well, not the Ami Shooting Stars, but there weren’t that many of those around, not yet, not here on Kola. Mostly they were on the central part of the Eastern Front, where the Amis fought. Wijnand and ll/KG-40 had been stationed there for a while and it had been a nightmare. The Amis never seemed to run short of fighters; their Thunderbolts and Kingcobras were everywhere. The bomber squadrons were still flying Ju-188s and they’d been caught badly. That was why the group had been moved here, so they could recover on a quieter front.
Wijnand looked down. The snow-covered landscape really was quite beautiful. Then he looked more closely. Way off to the left, heading off in a quite different direction from that the experts had predicted, were two long clouds of smoke. Wijnand banked around and set off to have a closer look. Sure enough, it was what he was looking for. Two trains pulled by steam locomotives.
A closer inspection with his binoculars showed that they weren’t just what he was looking for. They were the ones he was looking for. The front two trains had each had one huge gun with a line of carriages. Following them, in a desperate effort to keep up, was a diesel locomotive pulling two more carriages.
“Base, this is the Flying Dutchman here. I have found the prey, heading west.” Wijnand looked at his maps and carefully calculated the position, then read it out over the radio.
“Well done my little Dutchman. The map shows a bridge up ahead. We already have bombers ready to go, we will take that out. Headquarters wants those guns captured and already the Amis have blown one of them up. So we will make sure the muddy-feet get a chance at the two remaining. Stay with them; we will tell you when the bridge has gone.
This was the sort of raid the Ju-188 was good at. A quick take-off, a sneak over the lines at a specific target and back before the Amis or Ivans could react. The 188 was fast low down. It could make almost 450 kilometers per hour and it could slide under the radar surveillance that the damned Amis had set up almost everywhere. Mind you, low down was all that mattered on the Russian Front. The Ivans flew low and the Amis not much higher. A fight 5,000 meters up was a rare thing.
Captain Schellberg spread his map out on his knees. He was getting routing instructions from his navigator but he wanted to see the terrain for himself. The raid was a very specific one; a railway bridge that should be other the next ridgeline. His eight bombers would be making their runs along the length of the bridge. The bombing errors were likely to be in range, not deflection; so a run along a bridge gave a higher chance of a hit than one across.
There it was. Schellberg grabbed his radio. “Second section, make your runs now.” Second Section were the novices; the newbies with only one or two missions under their belts. There were all too many of those these days. Give them the biggest targets. If they brought the center spans down, Schellberg’s veterans could drop the end spans. But if the newbies missed, then Schellberg’s section could still rectify matters.
The first of the Ju-188s crested the hill and started it’s ran. The two thousand-kilo bombs wobbled free and lurched downwards sending up fountains of water beside the middle spans. Shaken it up a bit, Schellberg thought, but still standing. The second pair of bombs were way short. Good for line, they chewed up the railway tracks short of the bridge, but the bridge itself was still standing. The third pair were very close. The water spouts actually soaked the bridge girders but still no collapse. The fourth pair hit home. It was as if the crew had watched what the others had done and averaged out their errors. The explosions blackened the sky around the bridge. When it cleared, the center span was down, one end in the river and the pier it had rested on broken.
“Well done Number Four! First section follow me.”
Schellberg put his Ju-188A into a dive, aiming the nose at the abutment where the bridge met the bank. He held his breath slightly, squeezed the release just so, and saw the boiling black cloud erupt as his thousand kilo bombs slammed into the target. The bankside span crumpled and collapsed.
As Schellberg pulled away, he saw the damaged center span collapse into the river as two more bombs took down the remaining pier holding up its other end. Three of the four spans were down now. It was down to the two remaining aircraft to deal with the last. Schellberg saw the cloud of smoke rising from the bank and cursed. Thick as it was, he could see the last remaining span of the bridge was still standing. Still, the bridge was down, decisively down. That meant the mission was achieved.
The eight Ju-188As headed back for home. Just for once, it had been an easy mission. The Ami and Ivan fighters had been tied up hitting the German units advancing in the southern section of the Kola Front. The Canadian aircraft were supporting their troops fighting the Finns. There had been no flak around the bridge. It would be a long, long time before there was another mission like this one.