A bolt, General Brusilov understood from what the railwaymen told him, was required to turn a switch because without it, the lever would not be able to apply and maintain proper pressure. The bolt itself, he figured, could not possibly cost more than a few rubles, and making it was the kind of task a trainee in a machine shop was assigned as a rule. Bolts just like it were probably lying around in storage depots all over the empire. If you believed half of what you heard about Germany – which the general didn't – they used them to stir electric breakfast porridge there. None of which explained to his satisfaction why it seemed to be impossible to find one.
General Brusilov was not, by and large, a violent man, inasmuch as you could be a professional soldier and not be prone to violence. He was intensely patriotic, though, and it filled him with pride to consider he was part of the greatest war machine that his country had ever set in motion. In fact once fully deployed it would be the greatest military force ever used in history. Not the hosts of Xerxes nor Napoleon's grande armee could rival it. Raised and structured from every part of the country, infused with strength from every fibre of the nation's being, it was not so much an extant fact as a process through which the might of Russia was converted into fighting power. While the armies of its vanguard would crash into the foe's unprepared defenses, men and material would still be mobilised and trained in the vast hinterland of the empire, funneled forward in an intricate dance to replace or buttress the units that had bled and died. An intricate dance of roads and trains, ships, depots and columns that the experts at the general staff had spent months refining to the point of perfection, and that right now, in front of his eyes, was stalling, grinding to a cacophonous halt outside of Vilna because in the greatest army that history had ever seen, in the mightiest empire that God had ever allowed to exist on earth, nobody seemed to be able to repair a two-ruble bolt in a faulty railway switch.
The general had been part of the plannning stage, and the atmosphere of the capital's refined military thinking had enveloped him then. His sould had risen at the intricacy of the battle plan, the simplicity of the strategy, the way it was designed to take the enemy by surprise and keep him off balance. The advance on Königsberg that would draw mobilising troops east, the northwards blow that would threaten their rear, perhaps cut them off in East Prussia altogether. The western border was lightly defended, but with the risk of German troops cutting the Russian armies off in Poland gone, they could line up the third blow right into the heart of the enemy, to Silesia and Saxony. Even if they had to withdraw here, though, the humiliation they would inflict in the north would make a good negotiating position. The Germans could either draw on troops from their Western front, opening themselves to a French attack into their industrial centres, or they would have to fight Russia with limited forces and face ever mounting numbers of enemies as wave upon wave of troops was marched to the front to reinforce the victorious troops in their advance. They would lose the war before they could even unfold the power of their intrictate, vulnerable military machine. It had all seemed so eminently clear and convincing.
Now, the spectacle of failure unfolded before his inner eye. He could see how it would all come apart. It would not be a failure of nerve or a lack of patriotism. No treason or rank betrayal at the heart of power would lay low Russia, nor would its treasury run dry or its industry fail to produce the materiel it needed. It would be a lack of two-ruble bolts, four-kopek screws and shoelaces a thousand times over. Deep down in the darkest recesses of his heart, in the place where he banished his fear and doubt before putting on his uniform, General Brusilov knew that he and his men were doomed, not because his government was making a great mistake, but because it could not help making a thousand trivial ones. Out on the track, the engines sat puffing idly, engineers stoking boilers to maintain steam and burning coal that was not scheduled to be used up until the next depot. Troops reclined on the sides of the embankment, enjoying the sunshine beside the freight cars and trying to kill time. And the trains were piling up. He could already see batallions of reserve troops far inland seeing their departures rescheduled, failing to meet up with shipments of arms and supplies. Sand would spread through the gears of the mighty machine until it seized up, men failed to arrive at the front, guns stayed in warehouses and unused food rotted by railway sidings while fighting men starved and looted.
The general rubbed his temples to banish the dark thoughts. Somewhere, they had to be able to find a bolt. Or make one. They had to.
gee, why hasnt anyone made a thread about that