The machine gun. I have to open fire. He was tempted to sit back and debate the beauties of that idea but the rational part of his mind was recovering from the shock of the Doodlebug blasts. It overcame the sluggish, unwilling part of his mind. The twin handles of the Vickers gun felt comforting. Currie squeezed the trigger, sending the first rounds of a long, long burst in the direction of the Finnish infantry. He sensed his number two man feeding the belt into the gun while number three and four were loading belts and supplying number two. Number five was making sure the water tank was full of snow, condensing the steam from the water jacket and making sure the barrel was cool.
Currie saw his first rounds go wild, overhead, scattered into the greenery of the forests. He was still seeing slightly double but the comforting, familiar hammering of the Vickers gun was curing him faster than anything else could have done. It was a sovereign remedy for blast-shock, doing something so familiar that the brain didn’t have to think about it. He corrected his aim and walked the stream of machine gun fire into the group of skiers. They tumbled and fell, tangled in a heap as the steady burst chewed into them. The flat of his hand was beating lightly on the machine gun receiver, sending the barrel in a steady arc that raked the burst across the men who had been frantically trying to get to his position before the deadly tattoo could start. Then, he reached the end of his arc of fire and started back again, the same slow, steady, 450 rounds per minute, beat that crucified infantry in the open.
The attack wilted in front of him. There was a special art required of a medium machine gunner, a combination of skill, patience and determination. The Vickers gunners were a breed apart, recognized by a special combat badge and by the less desirable compliment of being the hated target of the enemy. A Vickers gunner had to have the fortitude to ignore what was happening in front of him, to resist the effort to concentrate his fire on threats. Instead, he had to sweep the line of bullets backwards and forwards across his beaten zone at a steady, specified rate. If he did so, then it would be impossible for an enemy to advance through that beaten zone. They would try, and they would die, cut down by the remorseless beat of the Vickers Gun. But, if the gunner was not resolute, if he started to try and fire on the advancing threats individually, tried to use his judgment in shooting down the most pressing threats first, then the deadly web of fire would be broken and the enemy could advance into the beaten zone and survive.
Sergeant Andrew Burns Currie was a very resolute man. The stream of fire from his gun swept backwards and forwards across his assigned beaten zone. In front of him, the Finnish infantry died.
The Finns, or those that had survived, had already gone to ground, trying to escape from the remorseless machine gun. They were firing rifles at the embankment, and particularly at the machine gun bunkers, Apple and Baker. There was no problem in spotting them. Each was marked by a little cloud of steam as the Vickers guns boiled off the water that kept the barrels cool. Water, in the form of snow, was another thing that was not in short supply during a winter on the Kola Peninsula. Currie saw a concentration of impacts around the biggest group of Finnish survivors and for a moment thought that Apple had broken its swing to fire on them. He quickly realized the thought was unworthy of him, Apple was raking its beaten zone just as methodically and systematically as Baker. The impacts were coming from rifle and Bren Gun fire.
The streams of .303 bullets from the two Vickers guns and Currie could only guess how many rifles and Brens were suddenly augmented by explosions around the dip where the Finns were clustered. Currie grinned at the sight, even as his methodical sweeps ignored it. Somebody had EY rifles up on the embankment. A standard No.4 fitted with a grenade launcher cup. Drop a Mills Bomb in the cup, pin out of course, load a blank round in the breech, close the bolt and let fly. The Grenade would lose its hammer as it left the cup and could be thrown a good 300 yards or more. A good man with an EY rifle could drop a grenade in a man’s lap at 200 yards, toss it through a window at 300. With proper timing, the grenade could be made to air-burst over a foxhole. Company Sergeant Major Clitheroe was a very good man indeed. His grenade burst over the Finnish survivors and lashed them with fragments. A second and third followed and that left them silent.
Time to switch targets. Currie elevated his barrel just a touch and now his stream of bullets was raking the treeline from which the Finnish skiers had debouched. Apple followed suit and now the two Vickers Guns were lacing the trees with their methodical patterns of fire. Neither gun stopped firing, anybody who knew the Vickers Gun also knew that they usually went wrong when starting a burst. Once they were working, they kept on working. The two steady, methodical 450 rounds per minute streams of fire never stopped. Now their interlocking patterns meant that nobody could get out of that treeline alive.
Rockingham lifted the wooden shoulder stock of his Capsten Gun to his shoulder and squeezed off a burst across the compound. That was an advantage the Canadian submachine gun had over the Russian and German models; its magazine loaded from the side. That made it possible for a man to fire from a fully-prone position or take cover beside a window and fire out. The Capsten had its critics, a bit of misplaced gaspipe with a magazine some called it, but it had its merits.
Unfortunately, this one was a Mark III; an older model that used the original Russian 7.62 Tokarev round. His troops had the new Mark V with longer barrel and the hot Tokarev Magnum the Yanks had developed. Rockingham squeezed off another burst in the general direction of the Finnish infiltrators that were working their way through the base.
“Watch it, John!” Rodger’s voice was urgent. Rockingham had been about to sneak a look out but the warning stopped him cold. “There’ll be snipers all over the shop. Those damned Finns can shoot the nuts off a mosquito.”
To confirm his words, there was a crack and the wood beside Rockingham’s head exploded into fragments. The sniper must have guessed where he would be and tried a shot to see if it would penetrate the wood. It hadn’t, but the splinters spalling off the inside had been bad enough. Rockingham could feel his cheek wet. He tried another quick burst and changed the magazine. Bless that side mounted feed.
“Friend!”
The voice had come from inside. Rodgers drew his Browning Hi-Power. The double-stack magazine for 7.62 Tokarev made for a bulky pistol but it was fine when one got used to it. It gave the user a lot of firepower; much more than the older single-stack designs.
“Enter!”
Rodgers was covering the door and Rockingham swung round to add his Capsten. Even so, he nearly missed seeing the young Lieutenant who crawled in. The fear of the snipers was making everybody jumpy.
“Sir, errr, Sirs.” the Lieutenant goggled slightly at the sight of two Generals in the little office. Both putting up a gallant stand if the number of expended cartridge cases was anything to go by. “We’ll have you out of here in a few minutes. We’ve got an anti-sniper team clearing the area.”
“Another lesson for you, John. Make sure you’ve got specialized anti-sniper teams trained. You’ll need them. I doubt there’s more than half a dozen of the swine out there and they’ve got the whole headquarters pinned down. What’s the damage?” The last remark was directed at the Lieutenant.