“You’re not being fair, Nammie. He’s tired; tired deep down inside. The troubles in Ireland wore him out, disillusioned him, and what’s happening there now has finished the job. Seeing Protestants in the partisan-jaegers hunting Catholics and Catholic partisan-jaegers hunting Protestants, it really got him. He thinks nothing is worth doing, nothing is worth any effort, so he might as well have a good time. Anyway, he does throw good parties and you know what they say, a man in the bush is worth two in the hand.”
Naamah shook her head and went into The Seer’s office. “How’s it going?”
“Nothing since you asked ten minutes ago.” Stuyvesant smiled to take the edge off the remark. “And pass that to Lillith as well, It’s been fifteen minutes since she asked. Got to admire her self-restraint. We’re probably about an hour behind the loop though. Intel will go to Navy first, then the White House, then back down to us. All we can do is wait.”
At that moment, the red telephone on The Seer’s desk rang and he listened to the voice on the other end for a minute or so, no more. Then, he went out to where his assistant was sitting. “Lillith, round up the gang and spread the word. We’ve just had a message from Wild Bill. Message reads, and I quote. ‘Sighted German Navy. Sank Same.’”
CHAPTER SIX: WHITEOUT
“So, Sir, we are operating in the standard two up one back formation. We have 7th and 8th Infantry Brigades on the line; the 9th is held in reserve. Most of it anyway. C Company of the Cameron Highlanders are parceled out to the various rear area elements of the division. Those Vickers guns are marvelous defensive tools, especially in this climate. The Nova Scotia Highlanders are in deep reserve; they’re getting much needed R&R. That means our real, accessible reserves are the Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlanders and the Highland Light Infantry of Canada.
“Two battalions in reserve for the whole Division?” General John M. Rockingham wasn’t impressed. “That’s very thin.”
“I know, John.” General George Rodgers sounded defensive even though he knew he had no reason to be. Rockingham was new to the Kola Front and had little understanding of the peculiar problems inherent in trying to fight a war up here. That’s why he had come in advance of his 6th Infantry division and was doing “The Grand Tour” as it was derisively known. It was the standard practice for a newly-arriving General Officer; send him on a visit to the units in place. Save him from having to re-invent the wheel. “And the front we’re covering is much too long for the number of troops we have available. We need at least three full corps here, not two. Guess how much chance we have of getting that third corps. Look, the front is like a great L. The Russians are holding the bottom horizontal where most of the enemy forces are concentrated. We’re holding the long vertical. Too much front, too few troops.”
“Can’t the Russians help? Take over a section of the front.”
“They’re tapped out. It’s all they can do to hold the southern end. Petrograd is a hell of a force commitment and they’ve got every warm body they can find either holding the city or working the munitions factories down there. You know they’ve got women in their combat units?”
Rockingham nodded, shuddering slightly at the thought.
“There’s a political angle to this as well of course. I guess you’ve had that explained to you? Well, from this end of the spectrum, it means we don’t push too hard and the Finns don’t either. It’s ‘All Quiet On The Western Front,’ I guess. Only the Finns have the Germans pushing them as well, demanding activity. So they go in a lot for rear area raiding and attacks on service units. At first, that hurt us. Those troops weren’t too well trained for combat and I guess that meant Finnish casualties were pretty light. They’re hurting for manpower just like everybody else. Anyway, after we lost a few units to those raids, we concentrated them into cantonments, trained guard units for them and gave them some Vickers guns for security. Once our rear echelon people could shoot back, the Finnish raids dropped right off. Guarding against them is still draining our front-line strength though. We could use those machine guns on the front line. One Vickers gun in the right place is worth a company of infantry.”
“We’ll be the southernmost division of II Corps.” Rockingham spoke quietly, absorbing the data he’d been given. “Our northern flank will be your southern. That’ll compress your frontage a little. Any chance of some of your people briefing mine on what to expect and how to defend against it? I guess the Finns will see a new unit and guess we have the same lessons to learn as you did. Some advance training will save a few lives.”
“That we can arrange.” Rodgers was more than slightly relieved. Rockingham had a good reputation, but all too often ‘a good reputation’ meant an over-inflated ego that wouldn’t listen to advice from anybody else. Obviously not the case here. “John, if I might give you some advice, take advantage of the positions of the lakes and rivers. They can cut the length of front you have to cover quite drastically.
Rockingham paused. There was something wrong there but he didn’t quite know what. His train of thought was interrupted by a dull rumbling sound that reminded him of an old motorboat. The thought had only just begun to form in his mind when the air raid sirens went off.
“Doodlebugs!” The call went up from several points in the camp. Then the sirens cut off. There was an eerie silence as the troops on the ground listened to the uneven rumble as the missiles approached. Rockingham found himself willing them to keep going, to pass on to another target. Suddenly the sound cut out at the worst possible time, when the missile was almost directly overhead. “Everybody down!” The cry was universal as the entire base camp took cover. Rockingham was counting seconds until impact. One thousand and ten, one thousand and eleven, one thousand and twelve, one thousand and thirteen, one thousand and fourteen, one thousand an….
The explosion was devastating. The early Doodlebugs had used a cheap explosive that lacked shattering power but the newer ones didn’t. The missiles hit the ground in a shallow dive so that the warheads exploded above ground level. That maximized the area covered by the blast and fragments. Shattered glass from windows scythed across rooms. As always, the blast from the first explosion took strange and unpredictable paths that would leave one set untouched while the one beside it shattered into a silver rain. Even as the echoes of the first explosion faded, another took over. It rolled across the cantonment and the troops inside it. A third followed, then a fourth. Rockingham was prone on the floor of Rodger’s office, waiting for the explosions to cease. A fifth went off, then a sixth and he started to relax. Then he heard gunfire from the cantonment perimeter. Whatever was happening, the doodlebugs had been just the start. Rockingham thought grimly that he was about to get a much closer introduction to warfare on the Kola Peninsula than he had realized.
Sergeant Andrew Burns Currie shook his head to try and clear the cotton wool that seemed to have covered him. His Vickers gun was mounted in a solidly-constructed bunker made of pine logs set in an earthen embankment that was also reinforced with pine logs. Thank God, wood was one item that wasn’t in short supply on Kola, for it had been the stout pine logs, old timber as hard as iron, that had absorbed the blast from the six Doodlebug explosions. Most of it, anyway. There had been enough force in the nearest one to stun him and his gun crew. Currie blinked, shook his head, and stared out of the narrow firing slot of the bunker. Sure enough, white-clad figures had already erupted out of the treeline and covered the distance towards him with terrifying speed.