1945 - Angel in the Mist

[Calder]

Angel in the Mist – 1945

The Gravestone, Arkhangelsk, Russia, December 1945

Some idiot called it mist. Mist was a pleasant thing, a light robe that softened light, and turned streets into magical places and homes into welcoming havens. Mist, on a summer's evening, made the world look warm and romantic and could soften a girl's heart and bring affection to her lips. That was mist. Here, in The Gravestone, the mist was a remorseless, relentless enemy that killed often and cruelly. A freezing shroud of water got into a man's clothes and turned to ice there, turning his greatcoat into an iron coffin. If a man stopped moving in this hellish mist, he would find he couldn't move again and would die there. Frozen. That was mist in Arkhangelsk

It went without saying that Captain Yevgeni Petrovitch Brusilov hated the mist. Hated it and feared it. He had loathed it all last winter when the siege of Arkhangelsk was starting, and he hated it now when that siege was well into its second winter. Moscow had fallen, eventually. Stalingrad had fallen, eventually, and so many other towns and cities had fallen, eventually. Arkhangelsk would not fall, of that, its citizens and its defenders, there was no way of telling which was which, were determined on that point. They'd been fighting now for 511 days, block by block, building by building, room by room. Even that wasn't fine enough for in some of the apartment blocks here on the western side of the river, the front line ran through a room. According to the official record, it had been that way ever since July 10th, 1944, when the fascist armies had broken through to the west and reached the White Sea.

The battle then had been to hold the west bank of the North Dvina River so the port could stay open. Murmansk was safe enough; it had the occasional air raid but that was all. The problem was the convoys that reached there were supporting the Canadians and Russians fighting in the Kola Peninsula, now cut off from the rest of Russia. American supplies to the rest of North Russia came through Arkhangelsk and for that, the port had to be kept open as long as possible. At first, the defenders had thought it would be a short campaign, as soon as the port came under artillery fire it would close and the siege would become pointless. The ships would stay away, the port would close, and Arkhangelsk would become worthless. From a military viewpoint anyway, it would be defended to the last man and the last bullet anyway because the fascists were allowed to take nothing without paying for it in blood.

Only, that hadn't happened. The fascists had advanced to within a few kilometers of the North Dvina, close enough to bring their guns to bear on the port, and they had opened fire. Instead of closing, the port stayed open. Instead of keeping away, the Americans ran their ships in, picking their way through the mud flats and islands that turned the North Dvina estuary into a maze. When the ships arrived, the port workers had unloaded them, even while the artillery shells were still falling. Their slogan was simple, American seamen were dying to bring those supplies in, Russian honor demanded that those supplies are unloaded fast, and the ships got back out to sea again. And if dockyard workers died unloading them, that was the price of Russian honor.

Another was the ground Brusilov and his soldiers fought on now. A factory complex, it had been once, a long, low, one-story building with a six-story block at one end. It looked like a grave and that was what it had been named and that was what it had become. For three months, he and his men had been fighting their way up the low building toward the tall one at the end. He'd lost count of how many had died in that long fight. Now, they had to take the tall building, the Gravestone. Once they had done that, taken the building, and cleared it, the next objective was beyond it. Another building, one that had five tiers of floors, each set back from the one below it. It was called the Ziggurat and had been Brusilov's final objective since he had come to Arkhangelsk.

Brusilov's reverie was interrupted as sudden, vicious bursts from an assault rifle roared in front of him. His ears told him immediately, automatic fire, an Stg-44. Fascists. His own men had the semi-automatic SKS. That had been an improvement, when he had come to Arkhangelsk, his unit had been equipped with the bolt-action M44 carbine, a shortened version of the old Model 91/30 Mosin Nagant. They'd received the SKS during the summer, being issued the new rifles under fire, along with the ammunition that went with them. A new round as well, shorter, and lighter than the old, rimmed rifle round. It had to be the first time that an infantry unit had been given new rifles and new ammunition in the middle of a battle.

The rifle fire still roared ahead of the Russians and Brusilov saw one of the front scouts running in, moving in a series of short spurts from one wrecked workbench to another as he and his squad tried to make it in. He made it, reporting in gasps that there were fascists, lots of them, in the hallway that led from the Grave to the Gravestone, some 10 meters ahead of the Russians. His report was monotone, and emotionless, Arkhangelsk had burned the emotions out of attackers and defenders alike. The 'front group', the section detached to find the enemy in the maze of destroyed machine tools and debris had been shot at and one of the scouts was killed. One of the survivors had brought his rifle back, it was one of the new PPS-45s and was worth its weight in gold. Vaguely, Brusilov supposed he should be grieved at the news of yet another death but his capacity for that emotion was long gone. All he felt was relief that the precious PPS had been saved. One part of his mind remembered a time when he'd been overwhelmed by a friend being injured, the childish injury of a young boy falling out of the tree he'd been forbidden to climb. Then, even that memory was blocked out by the presence of war. Brusilov suddenly realized that a sudden encounter with the Germans anywhere else would have been unexpected. What was wrong with the number of men involved? The Germans were economical with men, they had to be, and they were running out of them. Not as parsimonious as the Americans, they spent lives as if each one was a golden coin held by a beggar who knew he would never see another. So why were the Germans grouping men to defend that hallway?

Brusilov knew the situation was wrong even though he had no idea of the enemy numbers or their positions. Just there were a lot of them, and they were holding the hallway. One thing was clear, they must have moved in during the night, while the prowling fighter bombers overhead were gone. They made movement impossible in daylight forcing both Germans and Russians to shift positions and send reinforcements during the hours of darkness. The Americans were working on that problem, some of their Sturmoviks were being equipped to find their enemies even in the dark of night. Brusilov had a great affection for the American fighter bombers, especially the big one, the Grizzly with its 75mm gun right in the nose. Grizzlies had killed a lot of fascists.

Russian doctrine in this situation was clear, in such a situation, an officer was expected to act quickly and unfalteringly, and there was never time to think long and hard over actions. "Better the wrong thing NOW than the right thing too late," it said in the Officer's handbook. Brusilov made his mind up, there was only one option, to charge at once, break through the enemy position and force their way into the Gravestone as quickly as possible. There really was no other option, he had no time for any other course of action. Barely a few seconds had passed since the scout had gasped out his report. Brusilov hardly needed to speak, the months of fighting in Arkhangelsk had left his men able to read his mind. The propaganda films said there was no word for "Advance" in the Russian Army, only "Follow me!" and that was just propaganda. All Brusilov did was scream the battle cry "URRAH!" and rush forward into the attack, his newly acquired PPS-45 snapping out short vicious bursts, his shouldered SKS beating at his back as if it, too, demanded to be allowed into the fight.

Everybody dashed forward, in some kind of a frenzy, shouting their own "URRAH!", throwing hand grenades and firing on the run as they scrambled towards the enemy positions in the hallway. Explosions, bursts of fire, screams a disordered, chaotic mass of impressions, none linked to any other, none making sense, just the knowledge that the sudden, unexpected assault had taken the fascists by surprise, that the Frontniki were past the enemy frontline. The book was right, everything happen so quickly that the adversary could not even understand what was happening. A frontal attack against positioned troops with automatic weapons was suicide, it was the wrong decision. But, because it had been taken NOW and not ten seconds later, it wasn't wrong, it was right and the fascists caved in, falling back under the ferocity of the assault, but not fast enough, by the time they left their positions to retreat, the Russians were behind them, cutting them off from safety.

That's when something totally unbelievable and unpredictable happened. From the galleries in the Grave, the metal walkways halfway up the factory walls that had taken so much blood to capture, machine gun fire began to spray Brusilov's men a volume of fire that was so powerful they had to go to ground and couldn't raise their heads. His men, who had won a battle just a few seconds before, were in the crossfire, the Russian infantry being hammered by automatic weapons fire from their own men above and behind, from the enemy above and in front. For a moment, the retreating Germans slowed down. Brusilov didn't know why, perhaps they were utterly confused by the Russian machine gunners shooting at their own, or perhaps they were just bewildered by the whole horrible situation. Whatever it was, he knew something had to be done, he was already losing people. Again, the wrong thing now, not the right thing ten seconds too late. He stood up and from the bottom of his lungs, he screamed to the Russian machine gunners to cease fire. Appalled by the sight of his officer apparently committing suicide in an effort to stop the fire, one of the scouts, the one who had made the initial report, tried to drag Brusilov down into cover. The scout reached up, but suddenly moaned as a machine gun bullet, German? Or Russian? Who knew? Plowed into his hip. He tripped and fell and as he went down, another bullet caught him square in the left temple.

Yet, Brusilov survived, even as his scout died, and as suddenly as it had started, the fire stopped, the Russian machine gunners must have heard him yelling. It was time to move again and the Frontniki started to move forward, some crawling, some crouching, working their way down the hall towards the end and the doors that lead into the Gravestone. The wreckage littering the floor helped them pursue the enemy. It was over, the fascists were forced out of the hallway, and in a few minutes, Brusilov's men had gained more ground in the Gravestone than they had for days. The cost? Three of his men were killed and two wounded. As a reaction to the attack swept in, Brusilov realized he hadn't escaped unscathed, at some point in the fight, one bullet made a hole in his Ushanka and another had sliced through the back of his greatcoat. It must have happened while he had been standing, screaming at Russian gunners. A centimeter either way, left or right, up or down, he would have been dead.

"Genni, over here!" His men had been kicking open side doors leading off the hall, checking each in turn. They knew better than to address him by rank or honorific. That was reserved for officers the men did not like. Brusilov squirmed quickly over to the captured side room, it had probably been a waiting room or perhaps the party meeting room once, but now it was just another bare, bullet-shattered space. "Look Genni, Hiwis!"

Hiwis. Russians serving in the German Army. Brusilov wanted to feel physically sick with shame that a Russian could sink so low. There were six of them, four men in German Army gray and two women whose overdone make-up and cheap, gaudy dresses showed in what capacity they served the German Army. Brusilov's men heaved them all to their feet, spun them around, and threw them against the wall, making them stand with their noses pressed against the scarred plaster. Despite their hatred for the traitors, the Frontniki were merciful, they shot the women first so they wouldn't suffer the agony of waiting for their turn.

"Genni, Genni, come quickly." More voices from the hallway. "Look, you need to see this."

Leaving the room with the six dead Hiwis behind, Brusilov went to where some of his men were standing. He thought of cursing them for their stupidity in getting to their feet but when he saw what they had spotted, he did the same. The window had a panorama view of the mist outside. There was a road, leading away from the Gravestone, parallel to the North Dvina. In peacetime, it had probably been the main entrance to the factory. Brusilov could see the geometry now. The road led to this hallway and these windows were part of the main entrance. Visitors could turn one way to go into the Grave, the factory where the workers toiled at their machines, or the other to go into the Gravestone, the administrative block where the bureaucrats worked. His men held the Grave and the Hall. For a while.

It seemed for a very short while because outside, at the end of the road before it turned by the Ziggurat and vanished into the mist, were two tanks. German tanks, Lowe heavy tanks. Very, very heavy tanks. The Lowe was armed with a 150mm KwK 44 L38 gun and its frontal armor was 140mm thick. Its tracks were a whole meter wide and a 1000hp Daimler-Benz diesel engine, the same one used in torpedo boats gave it a top speed of 30km/h. The 90-ton monster even had a short-barreled 75mm gun as a coaxial weapon. It looked a bit like the King Tiger, Brusilov thought grimly but was its replacement. The Germans were building the Lowe very slowly and it was just his rotten luck that a couple of them should turn up here. Now he knew what was wrong, what had been troubling him earlier. The Germans had been preparing for an attack all of their own. The idea had been that the two tanks would spearhead an assault on the Grave from the Ziggurat. They'd hit the Grave halfway down while the fascists in the Gravestone would sweep out and slam into his troops as well. Hammer and anvil, the work of months undone in a few moments. He couldn't see them, but Brusilov knew that panzergrenadiers would be boarding their half-tracks even now. He had little time, so very, very little.

"Barricade the doors to the Gravestone. Fast! Rocket launcher crews get up here, get ready. Hit the half-tracks when they appear." There was a near-chaos in the hallway and Brusilov's men got ready for the impending assault. It was futile, Brusilov knew it, they knew it and his orders reflected it. Take out the half-tracks and their infantry and make the fascists bleed. The RPG-2 rounds would just bounce off the Lowes, there was no point in firing on them. They'd drive up, use their 150mms to destroy the Grave and the Hallway, then their 75s to support the infantry repossessing the ruins. Game over. The only thing left was to bleed them.

Brusilov looked again, the tanks were still standing there, probably waiting for confirmation that the infantry was ready to go. Over to his right, the North Dvina was sluggishly flowing past, beginning to gel as the cold turned its water to ice. Once it had been thought that Arkhangelsk was a summer-only port, but the Canadians had brought icebreakers and a vast knowledge of how to keep a port free. Arkhangelsk remained open throughout the winter of 1944/45, and nobody believed that it would not do the same throughout 1945/46.

Odd, Brusilov thought, how the river seems to emerge from the mist and then vanish into it. As if it was being born, living for a second, and then dying. Then he frowned, the mist downstream seemed very solid somehow. Very solid indeed. Then, the mist seemed to swirl and part, pulling away like theater curtains when the eponymous fat lady came out to sing her last song. And the lady was fat indeed, for coming out of the mist, slowly, majestically, resplendent in her light gray, light blue, and green Thayer camouflage was the biggest ship Brusilov had ever seen.

Conning Tower, USS Arizona, North Dvina River, Arkhangelsk

"By the Mark, Twain!" The traditional call echoed around the bridge, a strange mixture of ancient and modern seamanship. The North Dvina was so shallow that at no time since she had started her slow transit up the river had Arizona had more than eighteen feet of water under her keel and the present leeway was less than eleven. Worse, the river bottom was soft mud that made combined with the lack of depth the echosounder useless. Arizona was using the old ways to steer herself up the Dvina River, a man in the bows throwing a weighted line to measure the depth. Two fathoms clearance, that was all. Yet this old technology was being relayed to the bridge by walkie-talkie, the United States’ great contribution to WW2 communications technology.

"How are we going to get back down Captain?" The Exec's question was quite a reasonable one and it had been asked inconsiderably more exalted circles than he attended.

Captain Richard Young gave him the same answer the exalted had produced. "No idea. We'll solve that problem later. The primary problem is to get the remaining Krauts away from the river. Give our Russian friends some emphatic support. God knows they need it." He thought for a second, his mind running over the agonies of Arkhangelsk. "God knows, they deserve it."

"I think we're there Sir." Commander Howedar looked up from his charts, where he and the Russian pilot had been pouring their joint expertise. "If my guess is right, that's the Gravestone over there, while the Ziggurat is directly abeam of us."

"And what do I see by the Ziggurat?" Captain Young peered through the slit of the conning tower with his binoculars. "Two tanks, Lowes, I think. Big bastards whatever they are. We'll take them out first. Main guns will then work over The Ziggurat, secondary battery will assist the troops taking The Gravestone." Arizona had been picked for this mission for three reasons. One was that she was, by a wide margin, the best gunnery ship in the fleet. Secondly, she had just come out of refit where she'd received the latest fire control equipment and a battery of dual-role 5-inch L38s in place of her old guns. Thirdly, despite all that, she was old and expendable. Too slow to run with the carrier fleet, she'd been displaced from the battle line by the newer Washington, South Dakota, and Iowa classes. Most of her half-sisters and cousins were in the Pacific, deterring Japan from any naval moves, but Arizona, Nevada, and Oklahoma had been serving in the Atlantic as convoy escorts. Since the German Navy didn't exist anymore, Halsey's carriers had seen to it that, they weren't needed anymore. Nevada and Oklahoma were going home to be scrapped, their crews were needed for the new construction that was pouring out of American shipyards. Arizona had pulled this duty instead.

Captain Young was struggling with temptation. After all, he had to use HE ammunition sparingly, didn't he? And those two tanks were armored, weren't they? He gave a tiny nod to himself; the case was logical. "A turret, all three guns loaded with armor-piercing. Take those two tanks out." Over his head, one of the ship's newly installed Mark 37 directors swung to bear on the two tanks some 300 yards away and the three 14-inch guns in A turret followed suit.

The Gravestone, Arkhangelsk, Russia

"Everybody DOWN!" Brusilov screamed the order as he realized what was about to happen. It had seemed as if the great ship in her patched camouflage would never stop coming out of the mist. On and on, she had come on, her massive gun turrets followed by her blocky superstructure, the serried ranks of secondary guns down her sides, and more heavy guns at her rear. It had seemed as if the whole city was falling silent with shock at the apparition that had emerged out of the mist. Then, the shape of the ship's gun turrets started to change as the mounts swung to point at the shore. The big guns, in their triple turrets, were pointing away from the Russians in the Grave but the small guns, in the twin turrets down the ship's side, were pointing straight at the Gravestone. Brusilov suddenly understood the American plan. "BACK, everybody back into the Grave."

The Russian infantry scrambled backward, abandoning the hallway they'd won with such unexpected ease. As they did, the entire building shook. If any glass had been left intact, it would have shattered into vicious fragments that would have scythed through them, but the days when glass was in this building were long gone. Months of fighting had seen to that. Dust, though, there was plenty of that, huge, choking clouds of it. Half-driven by curiosity, half driven by the need to breathe something other than concrete powder, Brusilov peered out through the window. One of the Lowe tanks had already vanished. Even as he washed, a long tongue of flame erupted from the great ship's forward turret. The hot air from the blast washed over Brusilov's face, making the hairs on his cheeks curl while the concussion of the gunshot seemed to make the whole world swim. Disbelieving his own eyes, Brusilov saw the second Lowe being hurled into the air by the direct hit, breaking up and fragmenting as it rolled over, smashed beyond recognition. Then, curiosity satisfied, he started his own run back into the Grave.

Conning Tower, USS Arizona, North Dvina River, Arkhangelsk

"I thought German tanks were supposed to be heavily armored?" Young's voice was slightly petulant. The 14-inch armor-piercing shells striking the side armor of the tanks at a range of 300 yards had erased the armored vehicles from the world of man. There was simply nothing left of them. "Right, main guns, open fire on the Ziggurat, high explosive. Level the place. Secondary battery, high explosive, the ground floor of the Gravestone. Chop the bottom out of that building, I want it to collapse in on itself so our Russian friends ashore can take what's left. As soon as that's done, start taking fire support calls from the Russian units ashore. And get ready to execute counter-battery fire; as soon as the Krauts recover from the shock, they'll try and put their own artillery fire down on us. That was part of the plan of course, not just to provide the Russian infantry fighting on the west bank of the Dvina with the sort of support they'd only ever dreamed of but to trap the German artillery into gunnery duels it didn't want and couldn't win. They'd have to unmask their batteries, which meant if Arizona couldn't get them, tactical aircraft could.

The Gravestone, Arkhangelsk, Russia

"Major Brusilov!" The figure was dressed in blotchy camouflage greens with a black Ushanka and a blue-and-white striped shirt. A Russian Navy Marine. He looked apologetically at the men around him who were trying to shut him up. He'd exposed their officer to snipers, and they did not like that at all.

"It's Captain Brusilov."

"Not anymore, Yevgeni Petrovitch, not anymore. You and your men are relieved here, you will be going back to the East Bank. There you will be the core of a rebuilt battalion. My Marines will take over here."

Withdrawn, to the East Bank. It seemed like an impossible dream. Brusilov and his men had long given up any notion of surviving. As he tried to absorb the information, the Grave shook again as the great battleship in the river fired a full broadside into the Ziggurat. Almost before the sound and vibration had died away, there was a second, softer, series of explosions as the secondary guns got to work on the Gravestone. Brusilov shook his head to clear the dust from his hair and mind.

"Gospodin Marine, what ship is that out there?"

"The USS Arizona, Yevgeni Petrovitch, an American battleship come to fight alongside us."

Brusilov crept to the side of The Grave and saw the great ship still sitting in the river, her guns moving slightly as they were retargeted. Then, they fired again, and another section of the Ziggurat vanished under the explosions of the main-battery rounds. He spoke quietly to himself at the sight and his voice was very sincere.

"God Bless Arizona."

[jemhouston]

One of my favorites

[Johnnie Lyle]

Typo patrol: it’s Angel, not Angle.