The Long Hard Road

Chapter Twelve: The Winter War

Norway/Sweden

15^th April 1942

Major Bloodnok had been promised a promotion to brigadier for the coming invasion of Europe, but for the moment he was happy to remain as liaison officer and third-in-command to Patton. His position within the Allied command structure had raised some American hackles… until they’d seen the effects of JDAM and MOAB bombs on German and Soviet positions. They knew, just as well as Bloodnok himself did, that not even Patton could have gotten them through the winter, without the precision strikes that had massacred the Soviets in their thousands.

“We’re going to march all the way to Moscow and hang that bastard Stalin from a sour apple tree,” Patton had proclaimed. The American infantry and the small number of tank crewers who were stationed in Norway had promptly begun singing that to the tune of ‘John Brown’s Body,’ continuing a tradition from the terror war. It had astonished Bloodnok to discover that the tradition had come from the American Civil War; he’d assumed that one of the handful of Americans from the future had imported it.

“We’ll hang Uncle Joe Stalin from a sour apple tree,” a group of infantry sang, marching out of the base towards the parked lorries. Bloodnok saluted them as he headed to Patton’s headquarters, wondering if the American had already taken his personal helicopter and headed off to reconnoitre the battlezone for himself.

He smiled as he saw Patton’s short form standing in the doorway. Patton had demonstrated a genius for flexible combat that would have delighted the Americans of 2015. Smoking a cigar, Patton looked like a picture of himself, a short man smoking a cigar.

“Major,” Patton said. He sounded remarkably cheerful. “Are the planes ready?”

“Yes, sir,” Bloodnok said. “They’re on their way now.”

“Both others and yours,” Patton said. “I wonder what the Germans will make of them.”

Bloodnok nodded. Over the winter – which had been colder by far than he remembered it – Patton had driven his construction battalions mercilessly. Norway’s infrastructure, already wrecked by the fighting, had been repaired, while new airbases and army barracks had been built. The Norwegian Army, a force raised from Norwegians willing to fight the Germans, had been armed and trained; many of them cared nothing for borders and knew the rocky landscape of Sweden as well as they knew their own country.

Patton laughed. Nearly two hundred of the first production run of B-29 heavy bombers had been sent to Norway. Carrying an entire load of heavy dumb bombs, but equipped with modern range finders and GPS systems, they would be capable of dropping extremely large amounts of high explosive onto German targets. The Germans might have learned a lesson from the first battles in Norway – when they’d assumed that the Soviets wouldn’t get involved – but their fumbling attempts to escape British weapons would do them no good against imprecise weapons.

Patton pointed one long bony hand at a map. The German force had dug into Goteborg, a Swedish city that would have been famous in the future. Incorporating all their lessons from the first campaign, they’d been careful to sweep the hills clear of possible SAS hideouts, although they had been less successful than they clearly thought. For the distance of nearly one hundred miles, from the American lines to Goteborg, they had carefully dug defence lines and spread out their defences, secure in the knowledge that tanks were almost useless in such terrain.

“We would be better off with an amphibious attack,” Patton observed. Bloodnok smiled; Patton had studied the future campaigns of his former arch-rival Douglas MacArthur, who’d killed himself after the failure of the Wet Firecracker Rebellion. “Unfortunately, that’s not possible.”

Bloodnok scowled. The remains of the Kriegsmarine had been busy. Working from Denmark, they’d carefully mined the entire sea between Denmark and Sweden, preventing the allies from sending a fleet into the Baltic. After a series of bloody air battles, SHAFE had called off any attempt to clear the channel of mines.

“We’ll have to do it the hard way,” Patton said. “Fortunately, we have the aircraft.”

He tapped the map. “We’re going to hammer them as hard as we can, launching round-the-clock attacks, until we can start an advance. We’ll save your craft for the Germans closer to our lines; you’ll be better at avoiding slaughtering our own people.”

“Yes, sir,” Bloodnok said. He waved a hand at the mobile command unit; it had been moved to Oslo by ship and then driven into occupied Sweden. “I’ll issue the orders at once.”

“You will coordinate the entire attack,” Patton said. Bloodnok blinked; it was a gesture of trust, particularly given his ironic lack of experience with directing B-29’s or even the futuristic B-2’s. He smiled; a designer in America was planning to launch his own flying wing aircraft, now that he had access to the future designs.

“Thank you, sir,” he said. “I’ll start at once.”

“Give them hell,” Patton ordered. “I want them stunned and disorientated.”

“Yes, sir,” Bloodnok said again. He headed to the command unit and started to issue orders. The strikes would not be precisely at the same time, but by the time the German lines of communication caught up with the attacks, it would be too late.

It was a cold clear day, perfect flying weather. The Eurofighter had no difficulty in following the American bombers, vast… impressive… and completely and utterly vulnerable to a single ASRAMM.

Squadron Leader Shelia Dunbar, who privately gloried in her reputation as a slut, watched the American aircraft disdainfully. Like almost everyone in the RAF, she had joined the online debates about the future aircraft they would produce, both long-term and as a stopgap measure, and she hadn’t included massive bombers on her personal list. Whatever the merits of building what could be built quickly – and she did understand the reluctance to spend ten years building the American technological base to the point where they could build B-1s and B-2s – she also knew that the B-29s would be sitting ducks to modern weapons.

One German homing missile or Deathcloud equivalent and there will be a lot of dead pilots, she thought, watching the formation with concern. The Germans might be primitive, but they’d already managed to develop tactics that caused even the Eurofighters concern. Privately, Dunbar believed that sooner or later the Luftwaffe would run out of morale or pilots, but as long as forces weren’t operating in Europe directly, the RAF couldn’t suppress the German air force completely.

She allowed herself a quick smile before checking her onboard radar again. The Germans had managed a handful of sneak attacks on Britain by staying low, but there was no sign of Germans attempting to engage the American bombers.

“Eagle-one, the flight is about to engage the enemy,” the AWACS controller said. She smiled; the bombers of 1942 might not be very accurate without the modern systems, but with the handful of GPS receivers, IFF transmitters and the computers on the AWACS, they could hardly miss.

“Roger that, Sierra-one,” she said, moving her Eurofighter away from the American planes. It would be the height of irony to die because of flying below an American bomber dropping bombs; it would be almost as bad as the pilot who’d crashed his aircraft while struggling with his waste bags.

“Commencing bombing,” an American voice said. She watched as streams of dark bombs fell towards the ground and explosions started to billow far below… and then realised that the Germans were far from helpless.

“Shit,” she snapped, as streaks of light shot up from the ground, rising to attack the American bombers. For a crazy moment, she thought that they were stolen modern weapons, and then she realised that they were primitive rockets. One struck a B-29 directly and destroyed it; others detonated near the American planes, throwing hails of shrapnel around.

“Sierra-one, we are under attack by ground-based unguided rockets,” she snapped into her radio. The German attack ended as soon as it had begun, leaving twelve B-29’s heading for a crash-landing and five damaged.

“Understood, Eagle-one,” the AWACS said. “Recommend evasive action.”

“Oh, thanks, I never would have figured that out,” Dunbar muttered, mentally striking the controller off her list of possible boyfriends. She scowled; those weapons were primitive, but if a Eurofighter was unlucky, one could kill it – and the pilot.

“Eagle-one, we are vectoring in strike planes now,” the AWACS said. “Stand by…”

An explosion billowed up from the ground as a JDAM struck at the launch site of the German rockets, followed quickly by two more. The AWACS controller snapped out a series of orders, vectoring the B-29s back over their targets. More bombs began to fall; this time there were no rockets.

“They shot their load,” Dunbar snapped. The controller didn’t bother to answer. “Now they know the blasted things will work, they’ll build more of them.”

She cursed mentally, wishing that she’d succeeded in her application for space duty. Sex in zero-gee was supposed to be wonderful, although the trained pilot part of her mind suspected that docking manoeuvres would be harder than they seemed. She snickered; more than a few new pilots had believed the tale that she’d done it in a Eurofighter Tempest, one of the handful of two-seater models.

“Idiots,” she said, as the AWACS finally vectored her home. Trying to make love in a jet fighter while high above the Earth would definitely get into the Darwin Awards. Still, what a way to go.

“The Germans produced a new surprise,” Bloodnok reported. Patton scowled; units of the American army were already moving forward, heading into Sweden. So far, resistance had been minimal, but they knew that that would soon change. “Anti-aircraft missiles.”

Now he had Patton’s full attention. “Guided missiles like yours?” He asked. “Ones that could wipe out a bomber force?”

Bloodnok shook his head. “Missiles designed to rise up and explode at a pre-set height,” he said. “Only a danger in large numbers.”

“Clever bastards,” Patton said. “The attack will continue.”

Through what a British officer he’d met had referred to as a series of unfortunate events, Private Max Shepherd and the 1^st Marine Division had discovered that they had been semi-permanently assigned as airborne infantry units. Their force of helicopters, combined with their weapons and tactics, made them ideal units for clearing German strongpoints – and they hadn’t seen the sea for several months, except from the air.

“All right, listen up,” Captain Caddell snapped. Shepherd gave him his full attention; the captain wasn’t a bad sort, even if he was pulling the responsibilities of a colonel. “The Germans have dug themselves into a position blocking the main road; our task is to hit them from the rear.”

“Ah, can’t bombs do that?” Private Buckman asked. Behind him, Sergeant Pike glared at him. Buckman wasn’t exactly a shirker or a coward, but with a rape charge hanging over his head, his enthusiasm for the war was none-existent. “They can paste it from the air, no bother.”

“We have hit it twice, I believe,” Captain Caddell snapped. Shepherd smiled; it was one of the good things about Captain Caddell that he didn’t explode when his orders were questioned, outside combat. “They’re still alive. It’s going to be hit again before we get there, so we might not have anything to do.”

“We’ll be lucky,” Private Manlito muttered. The swarthy Italian-American frowned. “They’re getting better at digging in.”

“We killed the ones that weren’t,” Shepherd muttered back, as Captain Caddell ordered them to board the helicopters. “Almost makes you wish we hadn’t done such a good job.”

The helicopters lifted off and headed out over the sea, before swinging around to follow the coast of Sweden. It looked remarkably tranquil from their distance; no one would have guessed that nearly three million soldiers of four different nations were struggling for supremacy. Shepherd shuddered; he’d seen enough burnt-out towns to know just how badly the war was costing the natives.

“We have enemy fighters attempting to intercept,” the pilot said calmly. “CAP will handle them.”

Shepherd felt fear trickling down the back of his spine. He knew how to fight Germans on the ground; they were tough and cunning bastards, even without orders, but they could be beaten. In the air… they were dependent upon the pilot.

An explosion flickered somewhere in the distance towards Denmark. “The CAP got them,” the pilot said. “Four Germans down, the rest in retreat.”

“Good,” Captain Caddell said. His voice was impressively calm. “How long until we reach the drop zone?”

The pilot consulted his display. “Five minutes,” he said. “The strikes going in now.”

Another explosion, much larger, flickered out as they came to land on a meadow. Westwards, a towering column of smoke arose from the German position. It was chilling; soldiers who hadn’t even known that they were under attack had been struck without ever knowing what had hit them.

“Go, go, go,” Captain Caddell bellowed. Sergeant Pike kicked any soldier not moving fast enough to suit him. They piled out of the helicopter – having learnt from experience how dangerous a landed helicopter could be when the Germans saw it – and ran down towards the German position.

“Form up, advance,” Captain Caddell snapped. The Marines had practised the manoeuvre thousands of times, on dozens of different practice fields. The British virtual reality systems had been awesome for practicing. They spread out, covering each other, and advanced as fast as they dared on the German position.

“Perhaps we got them all,” Manlito suggested. A burst of German machine gun fire proved him wrong; the Germans clearly had had scouts out as well. The Marines fired together, launching RPGs at the Germans, and moving forward. A Marine fell, shot through the head, and then Shepherd staggered as a German bullet hit his bullet-proof vest.

“Die, you bastards,” he yelled at them, firing madly. The entire German position disintegrated; he saw the guns – those that remained – trying to swing around to target the Marines. It was too late; the Germans fought like mad bastards, but they no longer had a chance.

“The road to Goteborg lies open,” Captain Caddell said, as the Marines rounded up the handful of prisoners. Shepherd, who was examining his chest, shuddered; it was all black and blue.

“If that had happened a year ago, you would have been killed,” Manlito observed. Shepherd glared at him. “It’s true.”

“I know its true,” Shepherd said, feeling the damage carefully. The pain was fading even as he felt it; the shock of the impact was fading. “These things are pretty impressive, what?”

“What’s what?” Manlito asked, as Captain Caddell began issuing new orders. The Marines spread out again, recovering the German guns and examining the position. It was a tough one; the guns had been half-buried in trenches and well-hidden from the air.

“Dear God,” Shepherd breathed, as the full extent of the German position revealed itself. “If we’d known that all of this was here…”

Captain Michael Michelin had the unenviable job of coordinating – or trying to coordinate – the attacks that were going in as part of the offensive, and of reporting to Patton. That wasn’t easy; the General would have quite happily have led the charge against the Germans himself, despite the direct orders to keep himself out of danger.

“How can I lead my men if I stay out of danger?” Patton had asked, and President Truman hadn’t been able to reply.

The rows of massive guns thundered as Michelin made his way to where Patton was standing, arguing with the artillery commander. Both men were waving maps around, gesturing wildly, with only one word in three being heard over the guns. Michelin came up to them, saluted, and tried to shout his message. It wasn’t heard.

Patton beckoned him into the British command vehicle, which was mercifully soundproof. “What’s up?” He asked. “Is it important?”

“Sir, the 1^st Marine Division, the airmobile one, reports that they have secured the second enemy position five miles east and are requesting orders.”

“Excellent,” Patton said. He examined the map; one position had been decreed too dangerous for airmobile assaults, and that was the target of their shells. Hundreds of guns, thousands of shells, pouring fire onto the German position. “What were their losses?”

“Ten men,” Michelin said. “It would have been worse if they hadn’t been equipped with body armour.”

“That bastard Admiral King wants them back for something,” Patton muttered. “The bastard even wants their helicopters, ordering me to have them flown onto the Enterprise.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Michelin said, who wasn’t entirely privy to the long arguments about the new tactics. All he knew was that his commanding officer was getting slighted. “You need them, sir!”

“Yes, but they need a rest as well,” Patton said. His concern for his men made him a good commander as well. The ground shook as yet another volley was discharged into the German positions. “We need to hammer our way into Goteborg, and then further down, cutting the Germans off from reinforcement.” He grinned. “We might manage to jump across to the Danish islands; at the very least we could shoot hell out of them.”

He tapped the map. “Hell, we could march to Berlin that way,” he said. “I’ll mention it to Ike.”

Michelin nodded at the mention of the SHAFE commander, General Eisenhower. “I thought that Russia was the priority,” he said.

Patton shrugged. “It hardly matters,” he said. “The point is to defeat the enemy. Once we have one of the enemy forces out of the battle, we can concentrate against the other.” He grinned. “Grand strategy is the President’s job, advised by the Chiefs of Staff; mine is winning battles.”

“Yes, sir,” Michelin said. “Do you want to pull the Marines out or send reinforcements?”

Patton studied the map. “I think we can start an advance with the AFVs,” he said. “If the Germans have had enough – and their ears must be bleeding with the battering we’re giving them – we might be able to punch our way through and rendezvous with the Marines. The road to Goteborg lies open!”