Keynes' Cruisers Volume 2

[fester]

Leningrad, Soviet Union, October 16, 1943

Tatianna's wrists were sore. Her forearms were on fire. Her hair was limp and lanky with sweat. The extra few inches it had grown since she had been wounded barely touched the bottom o f her neck. She took in another deep breath. Her good leg was planted firmly on the tread board of the staircase in the back of one of the permanent military hospitals in Leningrad. The main staircases were for doctors and nurses but no one bothered her here. She allowed the oxygen to flow into her lungs for one more moment, grimaced, and slowly lifted her damaged knee. Her foot left the ground, relief and then a new type of pain as the ligaments and tendons of her ankle were too lax and she felt things stretch as the movement reached its apex. She placed her foot down again. Everything hurt as the muscles that had been damaged by that shell fragment screamed in pain as they contracted and allowed her to go up one more step. This was the tenth flight of stairs that she had done this morning. it would be her last. It had only taken her most of an hour. The first time she attempted to go up and down the back stairs after she was released from the surgical ward, one flight took her two hours.

An hour later, she was sitting in a chair in the library. Her cane was next to her and in front of her was a cup of lukewarm tea. Her new friend, a wounded machine gunner from a Guards regiment laughed as she curled her lips. The pawn positions were becoming intolerable. White had an advantage that either the King side bishop or the Queen's rook would soon exploit. A sacrifice might buy her some time, as her knight advanced. As the piece touched the board, a new pain, no, a pain that she had forgotten long about hit her. Her hand went to her stomach as her womb began to cramp for the first time in two years. Enough food not being burned during long stalks for a firing position had allowed her body to remember that she was still a woman.

 

[fester]

Northeast of Pearl Harbor, October 17, 1943

USS Lexington turned into the wind. Her great screws churned and soon there was over fifty knots of wind over the deck. Even as Aeolus exerted himself, an intricate ballet was taking place on the wooden deck. Deck crews worked in sequence to get the heavily laden Avengers up in the air first. Each of those planes carried four five hundred pounders to support the Marines that would soon be coming to shore. Before the brand new Curtiss dive bombers were to be launched, another four Hellcats took off to reinforce the Combat Air Patrol. The dive bombers were next, each lugging a single heavy bomb along the belly and a much lighter bomb under each wing. The temperamental bombers were each lugging just under a ton of iron. The three strike squadrons started to leg their way to the target, confident that the sixteen Hellcats would both catch up and then climb over them for top cover.

A second, similar strike was also assembling from Bon Homme Richard while Cowpens maintained local defensive duties.

Twenty miles to the south, another task group was beginning to recover the fighter sweep of over 100 Hellcats that had pantsed the Army Air Corps fighter squadrons defending the beach.

 

[fester]

San Bernadino Strait, October 18, 1943


USS Charles Ausburne led her column of three destroyers. A few hundred yards to the south was the other division of the squadron. Radars were probing forward as the six modern destroyers entered the strait. Two guns were manned aboard each ship and the rest of the crew could be at quarters in only a few minutes. USS Preble led the third division that was comprised of her and two sisters. The minelayers were three miles behind their escorts. Sharp eyed men straining through long lenses could see the vaguest outline of the escort. Action had to be expected.

An hour into the passage, the nine ships passed the coastal town of Gubay. The forward two divisions sped up to twenty eight knots. They separated slightly to more effective seek targets of opportunity as they began an offensive sweep outside of Albay Gulf. The men aboard the minelayers consumed the last of the midnight coffee as they began the dangerous task of dropping the mines in the mouth of the gulf.

Sixty seven minutes later, two hundred and twenty four mines were in the sea. The three old minelayers turned for open water and began to head home. If they could keep thirty knots, they would be under friendly fighter cover with plenty of time to spare before sunrise.

Off to the Northeast, the six sweeping destroyers jumped a pair of Japanese patrol boats. The steel hulled second class destroyer managed to hit an American destroyer with a pair of 120mm shells before a dozen five inch shells killed the captain and the forward gun crews. A torpedo finished her off. The wooden minesweeper managed to fire a flare and a few dozen anti-aircraft rounds in the general direction of her attackers.

Three hours before dawn, the six American destroyers were heading back through the strait at thirty one knots.

 

[fester]

Hiroshima, Japan October 18, 1943

Nagato and Ise made up the second division. The fleet flag was aboard the freshly repaired Yamato joined by her sister Mushashi and for the first time Shinano was with the fleet. All the ships had, for the first time in months, a full load of fuel in their bunkers. The supply tanks of the Imperial Japanese Navy were running dry as the tankers from Borneo were no longer coming and the American, British and Dutch submarines had scored enough kills to restrict the fleet's mobility to a minimal level of acceptable training.

The five battleships had been anchored together for a week. Today they would depart for one day of sea trials. Shinano was still working up, but the gunnery ranges would be available for all ships to use. Nagato had not fired her main battery since the fiasco in the southern seas. They had drilled almost daily, but there was always a disconnect between drill and reality. Coal fired minesweepers led the fleet to the ranges where the great guns barked. Shinano was often lucky to be hitting the right prefecture while the long service crews of Nagato and Yamato had straddles within five salvos.

 

[fester]

Near Strasbourg, October 19, 1943

The mule waited patiently. His head was deep in a bucket drinking water after a long trip back to to the storage bins near the farm house. A Polish farm worker had the reward of guiding the draft animal and the cart. He had a few minutes to work out the kinks in his back and the pain in his wrists.

Anna Marie was sweating even as the temperature was just above freezing. Another few hectares of turnips were still in the ground and they needed to come up as quickly as possible. The root vegetables were destined for markets along the Rhine. This would be the second significant harvest of the season. As soon as she was done in the field, she would spend another hour in the garden near the farm house. There, the five rows of turnips would be allowed to grow until the day after the first frost. Frost touched turnips were slightly sweeter. She paused for a moment, flexed her shoulders and bent herself like a cat finding a perfect sunbeam, every joint in her back relaxing and expanding for a moment of temporary, ephemeral pleasure before she crouched down again and resumed the harvest.

 

[fester]

Turkish Thrace, October 20, 1943

Three miles from the border, conscripts filled sand bags. A new observation post was being built. Eighteen heavy howitzers had arrived at the front a week before and the army artillery brigade wanted the entire Greco-Turkish border under observation. Cavalry patrols and pistol armed border guards were routinely walking along the Maritsa River but the first line of actual resistance would be on the hills on the Strait side of the small river valleys that made up this part of the border. Here, strong points were being constantly dug and covered with ever more camouflauge and cover. Artillery that was no longer modern as of the loss of Libya covered these positions. The Turkish Army was ready and it waited, soldiers hoping that the food would be hot and plentiful each night and the generals hoping that time could be gained and no nation, including their own, would act rashly.

 

[fester]

Stalingrad, Russia October 21,1943

"More, Grandpa, more!"

The old man caught his breath. His wrists were thick with muscle built from welding armor plates onto tank turrets all day, six days a week. His shoulders were strong from a lifetime of hard labor. He smiled at his granddaughter and wrapped his sausage thick fingers around her gossamer thin forearms. He picked her up and began to spin until the sky became solid gray with flecks of blue and white swirled around. He swung her until every last breath of air in her small, war damaged lungs erupted as giggles and laughter. He swung until his back crack and his shoulders realigned. He spun for a moment of joy.

His daughter chuckled. It was a source of joy that playing with his granddaughters could occasionally make her laugh again. Her husband had gone to the front in the summer of 1942 and somewhere, his unit was destroyed and his body had been left to decay into the thick sod of the steppes. Since then, she worked, she raised her children and then she worked again without much joy beyond seeing her father play with her children like he had never been able to play with her.

The old man sat on the ground as the young girl tried to catch her feet. She failed. She fell into him. They both smiled.

"Again grandpa, again!"

They spun again.

 

[fester]

Cape Bon, October 22, 1943

An obsolete twin engine bomber lazily circled the blue water looking for submarines and German E-boats. A trio of Hunt class destroyers and a C-class cruiser were the escort for the seventeen merchant ships that were forming up in three columns. These ships were heading to Naples. The rest of the convoy that had sailed with those seventeen ships from Liverpool and then Gibraltar was being escorted by a minesweeper and a single frigate. Those eleven ships were heading to the south at a steady eleven knots. Twelve hours after the convoy split into two, the southern convoy dispersed. The escorts would shepherd two ships to Malta. The rest of the convoy would be sailing independently to Benghazi or Port Said. Soon the faster ships had reached thirteen or fourteen knots while the rest of the ships still trundled along at a steady nine knots.

 

[fester]

Pont du Hoc, Normandy, October 23, 1943

The cement slowly poured out of the back of the truck. The fourth of six casemates was almost complete. Captured French guns that had been used during the 100 Day Offensive were waiting for the construction to be completed. Ox teams were scheduled to move the guns into there permanent position before the middle of November.

Below, on the beaches, hundreds of French construction workers were laying out dozens of anti-boat traps. Some were long poles resting on metal frames and others were repurposed anti-tank obstacles. Engineers were mapping out where minefields should be. Infantry officers were walking along the beach with the engineers. A machine gun pit marker would be placed in a location while the officers walked out the fields of fire and interlocking coverage zones. Sometimes the first position was ideal. Often, a dozen slight movements would be made until the engineers and infantrymen were satisfied that construction of bunkers could start.

 

[fester]

Near Okinawa, October 24, 1943

The dark sea lit up as five torpedoes slammed into the side of an 7,500 ton merchant ship that was weighed down with the supplies needed for the reinforcements heading to Formosa. Two divisions were in the process of shifting from their training camps outside of Tokyo towards positions in southern Formosa. Another convoy two days behind the convoy currently fighting its way through the small American wolf pack carried the heavy equipment of a tank brigade that was being transferred from Manchuko to Taipai.

Even as the sonar operators heard the creaking sounds of a ship breaking up, USS Grouper crept to the southeast at four knots three hundred feet beneath the escorts that could not peak below the thermocline.

 

[fester]

Louyang, China October 25, 1943

The first trucks from the temporary capital arrived. The first dozen carried only shells. The next dozen towed seventy five milimeter howitzers that had been shipped from the arsenals of the American Midwest and floated down to be loaded onto ships in New Orleans. The gun crews that has been trained for almost a year in Burma sat quietly in the truck beds. They were all well clothed and well fed unlike the hundreds of thousands of infantrymen dug in along the river line. The gunners had leather shoes and steel helmets while the infantrymen were lucky to have anything to designate as a shoe much less leather. Cloth caps covered most of their heads. The battery officers each had a pistol with sufficienct ammunition to actually train on their personal weapon. Behind the guns, another two dozen trucks followed with fire control equipment, machine guns for anti-aircaft protection and more shells, oh so many more shells.

By nightfall, the dozen guns were well hidden. Forward observers were already crawling through the fields to spot Japanese positions and likely battle zones. More teams were beginning to lay wire. Even as wire was being laid, gold was being distributed to a regiment of infantry. They would be paid as long as the wire was still in the field. The copper was worth stealing and selling for black market food.

 

[fester]

Near Parma Italy, October 26, 1943

Brigadier Williamson drank his coffee. His aide hurried some toast onto the plate next to the bacon and fried tomotoes. The red fruit was locally sourced.

"How is the general?" The assistant division commander asked with concern. The major general commanding the division had clutched his stomach late last night during a briefing.

"Not good, ulcers acting up and surgeons are probably going to cut him open by the weekend. They want to give him some medication first."

The division would be his for at least a few more hours until either the corps or Army commander sent a more senior man forward to take over the 1st Division.

 

[fester]

Boston, Massachusetts October 27, 1943

Her hands were cramped. Her feet were tired. her eyes hurt. Eight hours of increasingly fine work had come to an end. Another radar set had been tested. A few small items had failed and repairs had been tagged for technicians to correct tomorrow.

She moved her tools from the bench to the box. It was a simple ceremony of completion. The voltmeter went in the left hand drawer, while the leads tested circuits went below. Screwdrivers and pliers went to the right hand side. Her notebook and gripe list would be placed at the edge of her desk. She smiled as she placed a small chocolate bar into her pocket before she brushed any lint off of her top and walked down the hall. As she walked, a cavitron for an anti-aircraft director was tested. The waves were aimed slightly above the protective steel barriers. As the test was going on,Elaine was talking with her friend Suzanne for a few minutes about the news that her friend's brother had died on some island that no one could pronounce nor find.

As she walked out of the building and down the street towards her evening lecture , she reached into her pocket for a snack. All she found was melted chocolate. Differential equations would be even more unpleasant tonight.

 

[fester]

The Admiralty, London October 28, 1943

The great enemy had scored a victory. Treasury had dictated changes to the future estimates. The choice was Weapons or Battles. The larger fleet destroyers were saved. A half dozen formal letters cancelling contracts were sent out.

 

[fester]

Lashio, Burma October 29, 1943

The laborer was tired. He could barely hold his bowl heaped full of rice in his hands. A few small strips of a river fish had been grilled and mixed with the carbohydrates that had made up the overwhelming majority of calories the father of five had eaten throughout his entire life. His three boys, the oldest seventeen, were laughing under a tree with a dozen other teenagers who were also working in the transhipment yards. They all had money in their pockets, and weight on their frames. They knew they looked good for the girls.

The old man felt every moment of his thirty seven years as he finished his meal and handed the wooden bowl back to the hunchbacked old woman who was responsible to take care of this particular work gang. The other older men of the gang rose and the foreman yelled at the teenagers to re-assemble. There was another train due dragging several thousand more tons of supplies that had to be moved from box cars to the long line of Ford and Canadian Pattern trucks. There would be no excitement, there never would be, as the road was beyond their imagination. 10,000 workers labored every day to send 10,000 or more tons of cargo to Kumman and beyond.

 

[fester]

Pearl Harbor, October 29, 1943

A whistle blew. A fist flew. A bottle broke across the back of Seaman Jaroschek's neck. Blood started to flow and he roared as the rest of the deck division of USS North Carolina entered the escalating brawl. Half of the fleet was on liberty tonight. The other half had their last liberty the night before. The bars around the narrow and heavily defended harbor were even more packed then the inner lochs' docks.

Eleven minutes after the first punch had been thrown at an angry Marine, over one hundred Shore Patrol and a platoon of Army military police had re-established order in this particular establishment. A Lt. Commander from the battleship had claimed responsibility for the deck division. He would say very little as his ass had been saved by a trio of seamen who had given him a bubble to get out of a beat down that was about to commence. Even before the MPs had finished processing the scene and talking to the owner, they were called to a brothel where a trio of screaming women had somehow managed to get out of their hallways.

The chaos of a fleet getting ready to depart for war was the perfect opportunity for mischief to occur. Chief Swanson could was walking through his ship. A few men nodded at the bosun. He spent half an hour in the forward berthing spaces talking with a dozen new eighteen and nineteen year old draftees who had only joined the ship's company after the old battle wagon had returned from the Philippines. A few had loud bravado, many felt confident in their training and their combat experienced shipmates. Almost all except the most foolhardy had fear of so many different varieties as their ship was heading to war tomorrow. They listened to the old man offer encouragement and more importantly understanding. Tomorrow, they would do their job.

The chief made his way down an alley way and looked into the mess deck. Off in the corner were a trio of his proteges counting coup. Two raids had been completed. The first had targeted the mess deck of USS Saint Louis. An ice cream machine had been liberated from the damaged cruiser. That bastard knew why this was just desserts. The far more important raid was against a fleet medical storehouse. Seven cases of medicinal brandy had been liberated. The chief could know nothing when the Captain asked the Chief if he had direct and personal knowledge of how an ice cream machine had arrived. He could honestly reply with a narrow but truthful answer as his mentees had transformed themselves from journeymen scroungers to master scroungers.

 

[fester]

Somewhere over the North Atlantic, October 30, 1943

The big Consolidated maritime patrol plane banked slightly as the observer had called out a suspicious whisp off in the distance. Two men already had their binoculars to their eyes. The radar operator was cursing up a storm as the surface search radar was being finicky again. The bomber and crew were returning from an all day patrol over a convoy carrying the materials of modern war from New York to Canada. Enough tanks to equip a combat command were intermingled with crates of condensed milk, cargo holds of manganese ore and the thousands of other goods an industrial state needed to survive. They had circled the convoy and chased down at least two radar ghosts that proved to be nothing even as the dozens of ships zigged and zagged their way to their destination at a steady 11 knots.

Three minutes later, the bomber was back on course to Iceland. Half a dozen whales were frolicking beneath and behind them. There was nothing to see in the middle of the great sea.

 

[fester]

Somewhere over the North Pacific , October 30, 1943

The big Consolidated maritime patrol plane banked slightly as the observer had called out a suspicious whisp off in the distance. Two men already had their binoculars to their eyes. The radar operator was cursing up a storm as the surface search radar was being finicky again. The bomber and crew were returning from an all day patrol over a portion of the fleet train carrying the materials of modern war from Pearl Harbor to the next objective. A dozen tankers carried enough bunker fuel to supply 3rd Fleet for two weeks of steaming at flank speed. Another dozen dry supply ships could feed every man and reload every magazine. A trio of hospital ships would be available for the men wounded during the landings and any Japanese riposte. In the center were a pair of escort carriers providing close protection and then a half dozen destroyers and even more gunboats and austere escorts to chase away any Japanese submarine. They had circled the convoy and chased down at least two radar ghosts that proved to be nothing even as the dozens of ships zigged and zagged their way to their destination at a steady 11 knots.

Three minutes later, the bomber was back on course to Midway atoll. Half a dozen whales were frolicking beneath and behind them. There was nothing to see in the middle of the great sea.

 

[fester]

Outside of Parma, Italy, October 31, 1943

The riflemen hit the ground. A German machine gun was firing again. Corporal Jaroschek looked around. He narrowed his eyes as steel flew a foot over his head. Even as his eyes sought information for his brain, his rifle was already moving from pointing in front of him to a position to his right. Three more seconds and he had a target. A few more seconds and his loaded clip was now empty as suppressive fire was sent in the general direction of the German hardpoint. The BAR gunner shifted fire slightly and began to send two and three round bursts overhead in the general direction of the now revealed Germans. The LT was yelling for another squad to begin moving to the right and work their way around through cover while his sergeant was already setting up a base of fire. The machine gunners attached to the platoon were hurrying forward.

Within minutes, both machine guns were chattering back at the German. Corporal Jaroshek had found good cover and was sending a few rounds down range whenever he felt like the incoming was not near him. The other riflemen in the squad were copying the actions of their junior NCO as he had been in the shit long enough and often enough and had so far survived. SOme of the men were veterans of Tunisia, and Sicily like him; most of them were veterans of only the occassional sharp rear guard action that the Germans had been setting during the march north of Rome. The rest were replacements who had only come to the platoon in the past five days. One of the replacements was firing in the general direction of the Germans. Another was in excellent cover that was getting deeper every time his entrenching tool struck the hard earth.

The American advance was stalemated for another twenty minutes as the Germans counter-attacked the flanking squad. They too had to take cover and call in for medics. The rest of the company was beginning to flow around the deadlocked platoon and then Jaroshek felt a heavy hand on his shoulder a moment after he displaced from his last firing position. He looked back and saw the forward air controller who had been attached to the company. The LT was quickly taking notes of the situation and a moment later, he left the small depression in the ground and began to crawl back to a miniscule reverse slope. Even as he was moving, all the mortars in the battalion were beginning to walk their way into the target. The goon guns had started to lay down smoke while the 60 and 81 millimeter mortars had sprayed steel shards and high explosives all around the German position .
Twenty one minutes later, a quartet of P-40s swooped down and dropped a single heavy bomb apiece and then strafed the German's rear. Even before the fighters left sight, a platoon of Shermans started to advance. When the metal monsters passed the squad's position, the nine lightly or not at all wounded infantrymen rose and sprinted into the attack.

 

[fester]

Lemnos, November 1, 1943

The mechanics were checking the first fighters that had landed. Eight were in their revetments already and six of them had either combat damage or maintenance checks. The base firefighters were already entombed in their asbestos coats and sitting by their trucks. The radar operators were controlling the squadron of American flown and British made Spitfires overhead. Twice in the past month, German fighter bombers had flown low and fast to lob bombs onto the crowded runways as the escorting fighters from raids on the Danube Valley were caught unready. The first attack had been mostly harmless, the second had destroyed five Mustangs and damaged another four. Next to the fighter controllers and electronic look-outs for intruders, more operators were looking at their scopes and coaching scarred and scared young men back to base.

By nightfall, fifty seven fighters had returned. Forty eight machines could fly tomorrow morning if needed, and another three would be ready again within three days. Nine machines and their pilots had not returned. At least five were known to have been shot down, and two were suspected to have flown through a flak trap. A fighting pair had made the turn for home and then disappeared somewhere between the target and the airbase. The group had taken heavy losses, but they had succeeded in the mission. Two Liberators had been shot down by fighters while another half dozen had been taken out by flak. Over two hundred heavy bombers had nearly perfect visual drops on the target. The photo-recon Mosquitoes were already seeing good results from visual inspection as their lenses caught the devestation on the ground.