Keynes' Cruisers Volume 2

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Turkish Thrace, 0700 September 25, 1943

The border guards lowered the gate. It was more symbolic than anything else as a train at a quarter head of steam could bowl through the wooden barrier without noticing it. The orders had come from above that the chatter was getting loud and clear that something big was happening throughout the Mediterranean Basin. Turkey was not yet ready for war. Her armies on the European side of the Straits had been reinforced with units taken from the eastern and southern garrisons. New equipment from the United States and Great Britain had been distributed throughout the summer. The 3rd Army could hold with their new anti-tank guns and large stockpiles of factory fresh shells, but it could not advance. If the chatter turned out to be nothing, the freight trains could resume their regular trade tomorrow or next week with an apology and a few carloads thrown in for good measure. If the chatter turned out to be something, pausing everything would be quite valuable as information cascaded.

 

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Brenner Pass, 0730 September 25, 1943

The mortars fired again. German paratroopers were trying to clear out the police station held by a few dozen Alpini. The police station was the edge of the Italian held territory in the border town. The first rush to seize all the essential facilities had failed. The passenger cars that had been attached to the coal train had held several hundred Germans who were ready for a betrayal. Neither side was strong enough to force the other back. The police station was an ideal forward bastion and if the Germans could take it, they could consolidate their lines and wait for reinforcements to come up from Austria. Two score of Alpini were already in the mountains walking along goat paths and overburdened with dynamite and plastic explosives to damage the sole path of their new enemy's succor. It would be a race; could tanks arrive before the rails were damaged?

 

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RAF LAGANS FIELD, September 25, 1943

The bomber was back early. It should have been aloft for another five hours. Smoke trailed from the right wing gave a hint as to why the plane was coming in early. A flare shot out signalled to the airfield to scramble the ambulance and get the aid station ready to receive casualties. Half an hour later, the radar operator was in surgery while the flight engineer was already being wheeled out of the second operating bay. The pilot was in long talks with his crew chief on the mundane issues of repairing the damage a string of light anti-aircraft shells had done to the bomber and the far more important task of deciding what a U-boat kill silouhette should look like when the bomber's pilot side panel was repainted.

 

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Northern Attica, 0800 September 25, 1943

Every gun in the 1st Greek Corps fired. The heaviest pieces reached for crossroads and trail switchbacks miles behind the lines. The heavy mortars began laying smoke around a series of hilltop outposts while the 25 pounders dropped hundreds of shells per minute on a two companies of German paratroopers that held a critical switchback. Within ten minutes, no one within a mile of the jumping off point could hear. The Greek infantrymen began to rise. Two regiments with tank support were low in the valley between the German defensive positions while another two battalions emerged from the tortuous mountain pathways they had climbed over the previous two nights.

The advance would continue.

 

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Kure Navy Yard, 1200 September 25, 1943

The carrier Zuikaku touched the water for the first time in nine months. She had barely made it home after the fiasco in the southern seas. An American submarine had torpedoed her near Formosa as she crept north. Of the six tracks spotted, three were clean misses while two of the hits were duds. The last one ripped open a hole where another three thousand tons of water entered her already waterlogged hull. The repairs were slowed by the lack of some critical materials that could only be sourced elsewhere in the empire. Mines and submarine attacks had added at least another month to the time for the ship to re-enter the sea. It would not have mattered, her air group would not have been ready much earlier.

The heavy cruiser Asama and a trio of destroyers were ready to escort the carrier for her post-repair trials.

 

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Southern Russian Steppes, 1300 September 25, 1943

Over the course of the morning, a few Red bombers had flown over the positions of the Torino division. No attacks were made even as companies and battalions were breaking cover and shifting positions. Orders had come from 8th Army Headquarters for all divisions and independent combat brigades to form all-around perimeters and hold in place against all foreign units. Units were allowed to retreat from the front line as needed to create the required density. The logistics and support units were ordered to shelter in place within the defensive squares that were now being formed.

No one knew why these orders were being given. A few companies of the most dedicated blackshirts in another division had refused to retreat from a salient. They were left holding four times the recommended frontage without supporting arms as other battalions and batteries had begun to withdraw over the past three hours. Some German staff officers and liaisons had continued, unfettered access to their radios and their transport. A Junkers took off from from a corps headquarters with eleven men aboard. Other Germans and Romanians were being politely confined to quarters by some of the more forward thinking officers.

 

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Thessaly, Greece, 1330 September 25, 1943

The motorcycle company of the Bulgarian division entered the city. Their base camp was well to the east of the big Greek port, but they were needed in the city. The captain looked at his map. Two more blocks and the first bike took a left and then a moment later, a right. An hour after entering the city, the Bulgarians were taking up the positions of a Germany battalion that had already started to entrain to stabilize an emerging crisis in the south.

 

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Brenner Pass, 1400 September 25, 1943

An infantry cannon fired. A moment later, the three inch shell exploded. A moment later, the companion gun fired again even as the gun crews went through their intricate loading dance. Another shell was on the way before a machine gun began to ping the gun shield. The crew dug their shoulder into the traverse mechanism as the battery commander spotted where the Italian machine gunner had exposed himself. A minute later, half a dozen shells collapsed the strong point.

Even as the infantry guns were firing, another platoon of German infantry advanced. Satchel charges blew a whole in a building. Grenades exploded in a house that had held a dozen Italian soldiers whose position had denied the Germans the ability to advance along cover for the past three hours. As soon as the first grenades exploded, half a dozen men with submachine guns went into the chaos. They added noise and smoke with rapid fire precision. Soon the fighting descended to rifle butts, bayonets and elbows. The second wave of German soldiers ended the fight. Half a dozen men were wounded in the forty seven seconds of combat while only two Italian soldiers were able to flee the building to the next strong point that would soon be outflanked.

 

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Off the coast of Naples, 1445 September 25, 1943

A dozen P-38s circled the amphibious fleet. Three divisions were already ashore. The most significant opposition was two battalions of German infantry that had made it out of their barracks and into a solid defensive position blocking one road into the port city. Two divisions had taken dozens of casualties from accidents, drownings and other mishaps. One division was bleeding as two out of its three regiments were intensely engaged in clearing the German dead enders.

Another two divisions were due ashore overnight. They would be landing over the beaches while engineers were proofing the port infrastructure against demolitions and sabotage. Minesweepers from five navies were already sanitizing the pathway to the port. Just south of the minesweepers, HMS Manchester and USS Savannah lazily turned down their horse track pattern that they had followed for the past three hours. The two cruisers ceased fire moments ago as a four minute barrage requested by a Canadian forward observer ended. The magazines were getting low, and by nightfall, the two cruisers would be relieved by a French cruiser division that would provide on-call fire support until tomorrow morning. The radar operators aboard the ship ignored a blip that was dodging in and out of clouds as there were hundreds of Allied aircraft within range at any time, and the IFF was too easily spooked.

Suddenly, a look-out aboard Manchester yelled as he spotted a black dot descending rapidly. There was no plane in sight. A few anti-aircraft machine guns began to fire, a quad pom-pom mount started to fire when the dot was less than a thousand yards away. Exposed men who could not turn a gun at the threat hit the deck. The cruiser began a hard turn to port even as steam was released to the turbines to increase speed. It did not matter. The bomb punched through the B turret roof and exploded two decks down. Within seconds, fires were starting and the crew began a fight to stay alive and afloat that would not end until the next morning when the ship slowly crept back to Sicily under heavy escort.

 

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North of Marseilles, 1637 September 25, 1943

The sergeant waited. He was no longer a sergeant, but he still thought as one. He had checked in on his boys. The anti-tank riflemen had a good position behind some cover near a bend in the trail. Two rifles had a clear shot at the rail bridge three hundred yards away. The other two heavy rifles were able to provide overwatch along the slopes of the hill. Well over two hundred maquis were scattered up and down the side of the hill. Almost all of them had only joined the ever growing bands in the past three months. Enough had spent time in the military during their cohort call-ups but had been bounced for one reason or another before the great humiliation. The communists were the most common. They were good enough men, the sergeant just would not talk politics with them. A few others, he would trust with his sister's virtue. The rest had found ways to avoid being sent to German work camps. Four Free French advisers, including one naval officer who knew too much about the joys of high explosives, had parachuted into his command a month ago.

The slightly crazy naval officer and a dozen other men were finishing up their task now. The viaduct would be ready to come down soon enough. The collaborationist guards had been overpowered an hour ago. They had been disarmed and stripped naked before having their hands tied behind their back and ropes connecting each man to his peers by the neck. They would eventually be recovered by their peers, humiliated and made an object of public scorn. Four minutes later, the first explosions rumbled. A rock slide blocked the tracks on both sides of the viaduct. A minute later, five arches of the valley crossing bridge were breaking apart.

An hour after his command had started to create space between their latest act of destruction and the patrol bases of the occupiers, his well trained ear heard another set of rumbles. Another bridge was coming down. He smiled. The Germans would not be able to move men around. He did not know why there had been insistent orders to drop bridges and viaducts today, but the mission had been accomplished, and so far, he had not lost a man.

 

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Kiev, Ukraine SSR 1700 September 25, 1943

Twenty two rail cars headed west. Eight box cars contained Slavic prisoners who had been promised to the mines and the fields of Germany and the Greater Reich. Four of those cars would supplement the labor force already feeding the Volk while the other four were replacements for deaths. Mortality had been high for the month. Eight passenger cars were empty.The last six cars were supposed to be empty as well. Instead they were filled with Italian mechanics, quartermasters, planners and clerks. German security groups were sweeping up all the small attachments and detachments of Italians that could be found in the largest Ukrainian city. No one was quite sure where to send the former allies, so they went west.

 

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6 miles south of the Brenner Pass, Italy, 1835 September 25, 1943

The colonel looked at the surviving men. He had lost half of his command in a day of heavy fighting. Thankfully, most of the men were wounded, and the rail line to the rear was still open. The hospitals were overflowing but the surgeons were no longer making triage decisions. Half a mile behind him, a battery of mountain guns fired at some German patrol poking their head over the rocks. An incredible rumble shook the ground moments after another wave of explosions broke up the mountain face. An Alpini Engineering company that was mostly made up of reservists who worked as miners had just dropped yet another landslide. The commander had asked for several more tons of explosives as he excitedly pointed out positions where a few hundred kilograms of dynamite could block an Army for a week. The last train going to the rear had included a request for as many crates of dynamite and mining explosives as possible. Between landslides and bridges that could be dropped, the possession of the Brenner Pass would be pointless. One of the northern doors into his homeland would be locked shut for weeks if not months.

 

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San Diego, September 25, 1943

Another convoy left the bay. This time twenty seven more landing ships, heavily laden with cargo but not men were being escorted by a pair of old destroyers and a division of gunboats. First stop was Hawaii where the quartermasters and beach teams would inspect the combat loaded holds and verify that everything was where they wanted and needed it to be. And then the convoy would join with others and continue to head west towards the setting sun.

 

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Rome, 0001 September 26, 1943

Behind the thick stone walls of his city, the Pope prayed. The Noble Guard was fully armed for the first time in generations and the Swiss Guards maintained watch over the entrances to the micro-state.

Miles away, a company of American paratroopers were moving through the night. The captain had been shot hours ago and a first lieutenant had taken over. The machine guns were in a covering position and would open fire as soon as a flare brilliantly broke open in the night sky. Orange flecks of flames licked the sky as a burning German tank still had fuel left in reserve. The last counter-attack from the surprised Germans had almost made it to the edge of the airfield where the beleagued italian defenders were reinforced by the American paratroopers who had been flown in earlier that day.

The company was almost to its position. Three dozen German infantry men had a strong point that had become even stronger over the past four hours. It blocked the way to a bridge over the Tiber. So far the bridge was still standing, but the new company commander would be shocked if there were not engineers wiring it for demolition. Two platoons would mask the strong point while the third platoon was to make a mad dash across two hundred yards of open ground to place the bridge under direct fire. He raised his head and looked over the men who he had trained with for the past fifteen months. He knew the names of everyone's Ma and Pa, and most o f the girlfriends and wives from the men in his platoon. He knew every single face of the scared but determined nineteen and twenty year old privates and corporals. He had held the hand of a twenty four year old sergeant before the morphine took over and stretcher bearers could evacuate him to a Dakota that had landed through a cloud of somewhat protective smoke. Now he was about to order the men to follow their training and conduct a deliberate attack against a fixed position. The machine gunners would keep the Germans down and hopefully buy some time for the few bazooka teams to blast open fox holes and machine gun nests. And then once the chaos of an attack began, it would be paratrooper against paratrooper where the superior weight of the American numbers could have a chance to win.

"Curahee"

 

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Subic Bay, Luzon September 26, 1943

USS George F. Elliott was on fire. Half a dozen raiders had threaded their way through the mountains to bomb the recently re-opened anchorage. They all escaped.

 

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Hiroshima, Japan September 27, 1943

Six merchant ships entered the harbor. The escorts had already arrived at the naval base where the mighty battleship Yamato was preparing for combat again. Within an hour, sailors were ashore and for once, the escort force crews did not have to avoid the merchant sailor bars. The convoy had left Shanghai with six ships loaded to the gills with coal and rice and everything else needed for a modern industrial economy to run. And the convoy had arrived at its destination with six ships loaded to the gills with everything nice. Two of the coastal patrol craft had held a submarine under for eight hours before passing the contact off to a trio of twin engine bombers. The channel north of Jeju was not as sanitized as it should have been. Four mines were seen and destroyed. The last one was destroyed by the gun crew aboard the smallest maru. Tonight, the escort sailors could drink in peace.

 

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Wake Island, September 28, 1943

The entire heavy bomber group had arrived. Forty seven Consolidated bombers were now on the hard strip. If the Japanese had any aircraft carriers able to be risked on an offensive thrust, the overcrowded aprons would have offered a tempting target if the strike force could sneak in behind a fast moving weather front. The airbase had expanded dramatically from being a pre-war single engine strike strip and a seaplane ramp. A squadron of Navy Privateers had been on the island for well over a year now. Two were in the air at the moment while an Army Liberator that had been stripped of guns and bombing gear to reduce weight and improve range and performance when it was at 28,000 feet was due back from a photo run that Pearl Harbor wanted to continue to refine its plans for Operation Musketeer.

 

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Near Truk, 2107 September 28, 1943

USS Cisco's skipper put up his periscope and swept quickly through the horizon. Three seconds for three hundred and sixty degrees. There was nothing to see as the periscope slid down the well greased tube. Another hour and the submarine could surface to vent the increasingly stale air, recharge the batteries and lay an eighteen egg minefield off of a Japanese fleet base that was becoming less and less relevant. During a previous patrol, Cisco had at least a contact every other day to chase down. The patrol had ended up with three merchant ship kills for twenty two thousand tons as well as a destroyer that ate a single torpedo from a down the throat shot. Whatever the wonder boys at Pearl had figured out and then communicated to the submarine tender at Tarawa had worked. Twenty torpedoes had been fired and at least nine of them hit and exploded. But this patrol, there was a single big contact of four destroyers leaving the anchorage to reinforce the escort of an arriving eleven ship convoy ten days ago, and then just picket vessels and fishing trawlers. Traffic was dying down.

 

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The River Tyne, September 29,1943

Another ship left its construction yard for the last time. HMS Apollo was fast, she was sleek, and she was heavily armed. Her older sisters had carried the weight of the offensive minelaying war in three theatres already. One had been lost, and the rest needed time for repairs and refurbishment. She, and one other cruiser from the war emergency programmes would provide succor once they were ready.

Even as the new minelayer headed downriver towards a final fitting out pier before her work up, the old minelaying cruiser HMS Adventure was steaming up the river, assisted by a pair of tugs. She had been damaged two weeks ago off Narvik in an air attack. The minefield had already been laid, otherwise that bomb that destroyed Q turret probably would have destroyed the ship. Emergency repairs had been completed in the Orkneys by Norwegian personnel, but once a slot had opened up, the cruiser headed for permanent repairs and conversion to a support craft.

 

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On the Southern Russian Steppes, September 30, 1943

The conscript from a small village twenty miles north of Milan kept watch. He could barely see in the dark. Slivers of silver moonlight diffused through the low lying clouds. The other light was the angry and sudden bark of cannons. Some of gunners were Germans shelling an isolated Italian infantry regiment that had been on anti-partisan duties before the order to hold in place against all comers. Some of the shells were Soviet steel with American explosives hitting a crossroad two miles away from the outpost the platoon of Italian soldiers held as a tripwire against any advance. Any German units that were still trying to fill the gap that the Italian 8th Army had left in the southern flank had to go through that empty town. Even from this distance, the conscript could hear the braying of wounded horses and the crackle of flames from burning half tracks.

He clutched his rifle and kept on looking for movement and oddities. He saw nothing. There was nothing to see.

Seventeen miles away, the last of the four Italian divisions that had been holding a line also had outposts in all directions. The artillery group was in the center of the box. The gunners could quickly shell any large unit that was approaching a series of minefields that would force any approaching enemy into well defined kill zones where machine guns, anti-tank guns, mortars and riflemen would all well prepared positions to fire and retreat to. Conscripts watched and waited.

Off in the distance to that fourth division, five hundred Soviet guns began a barrage to greet the rising dawn. None of the shells landed in the Italian defensive square. Instead, they were reaching for suspected German and Romanian positions on the southern flank of the Italian hedgehogs. It was a brief bombardment, lasting only ten minutes before the first of three rifle corps began advancing. The gunners lifted their fire. Some quickly resumed firing high explosives, while more began to fire smoke to mask the advance. Overhead an air army began attacks on the few mobile Romanian reserves to pin them in place.

By noontime, a Panzer regiment was rushing to relieve the pressure on two tottering Romanian divisions. On the northern flank of the Italian army, a German infantry battlegroup backed by a dozen Panzer IVs started to attack into an Italian divisional box.

By nightfall, two of the Italian divisions had been pushed back five miles by German attacks even as the Red Army did not fire a shell into their sector. The conscript from just north of Milan hunched over and started to run for cover. He almost made it before a pair of bullets from a German machine gun slammed into his leg. One ripped open his knee, another tore open his femoral artery. His eyes were open as the last of his blood ran out onto the rich soil of the southern Russian steppes.