Bears Maul Preview Part 4

Copyright 2015 R. P. Wollbaum

This is a work of fiction. Any connection with places, events or people is coincidental

Part 4

 

The regiment pulled into their camp, a collection of Nissan huts, warehouses vehicle parks and maintenance shops, all surrounded by a double row of ten foot high barbed wire fencing. Inner security was provided by the regiment, while the outer perimeter was patrolled by British Tommies from the Territorial Force. They were also manning the antiaircraft defenses, even this far north, the occasional raid was conducted by the Germans, usually at great loss. Nicolas was supervising the deployment of the troopers to their barracks, but saw the joyful reunion of the three female cousins. His sister had not seen Christine since she had left for North Africa in ’39. Then Christine’s husband Tom, came out of the headquarters and greeted the two women before coming over to where Nicolas was finishing up, signing some forms. Nicolas came to attention and saluted Tom.

“Airborne battalion, all present and accounted for sir,” Nicolas said.

“Welcome to jolly England Naj,” his cousin’s husband said returning his salute. The two men had not seen each other since Nicolas had gone to North Africa to work on the pipelines in ’38.

“It good to be all back together again sir,” Nicolas was still not comfortable calling the general by his first name.

“We will be serving tea at fifteen hundred Naj, we can bring you up to speed at that time ok?”

“Yes sir,” Nicolas said. “That will give me time to get a little better squared away.”

“Naj, where are your fancy little wings?” Christine asked, kissing him on the cheek and hugging him. “I thought everyone who jumped out of airplanes wore those.”

“Only on our blues Chris,” Nicolas replied. “We took a vote.”

“Oh, won’t get in trouble for being out of uniform?” Tom asked.

“Wings are not required decoration for the regiment sir,” Nicolas responded. “The troopers elected not to display them, nor the fruit salad on the breasts, sir. Due to the type of operations we will be engaging in the field, there will be no rank or any other kind of badges, other than Canada and the EBB badge worn by anyone.”

“That may prove a bit of a problem dealing with local authorities,” Tom said.

“Around here and in town, no problem sir,” Nicolas said. “We are just members of a mechanized Canadian cavalry unit. Just like the thousands of other Canadian troopers over here. We start flaunting our qualification badges and special headgear, we draw attention to ourselves. The eagles and bears are bad enough.”

“Right I see your point,” Tom agreed. “Those that need to know, know already and you don’t have to impress them.”

Tom then went on to outline the schedule for the week and that Nicolas and his staff would be attending a briefing in the morning on what was expected of them. The rest of ‘tea time’, was spent catching up on family business, including the fact that Christine was now the proud mother of a bouncing baby boy.

‘Kat,

Well we have arrived at our new home and to alleviate your fears, we have been sent to Northern England and not Italy. The powers that be decided that reuniting the regiment was necessary. I suppose they are still fearing an invasion by Uncle Adolf and they want us here just in case. It will become boring soon I am afraid, training and waiting. Going to meetings, training and waiting again. But still, it is better than being frozen in the field, Jerry popping at you all hours of the day and night.

My cousin Christine has added to the tribe with a bouncing baby boy. Lucky bugger, her husband runs the refinery division of a company in peace time, is the second son of an English Lord and is my general here. Hopefully he can get me a job after all this is over. I’d rather work at a refinery in Canada than build a pipeline in some God forsaken part of the world and be away from you and George.

At a meeting yesterday I ran into an old friend I met in North Africa, his is in the RAF and he asked me if I could help him train some people in how to survive in the open alone. Giving them pointers on how to move without being detected and things like that. So tomorrow some of us are heading his way to do that for a while, so I will not be able to write for a few days. Just letting you know and not to be worried.

I am glad that mother has gotten in contact with you. She must have gotten your address from the letters you send me, they go through the regiment first, then to me. She has a good job in a brewery and father works for a pipeline company, plus is pulling down a few dollars from the regiment for his administration duties. Not to worry, they could afford to send George some good clothing and a Christmas present. You should be receiving some checks form them soon, as I have arranged to have half of my pay sent to you, to help run the beer hall and your house. I might need a job and a place to sleep after all this is done and sucking up to my prospective employer and landlady is always a good thing. Joking.

I dream every night of you and George. Of taking George fishing and camping, teaching him how to play ball. I miss your sparkling green eyes, the smell of your hair and the sound of your voice and laughter. I never knew love could be so lonely.

Naj

“Good morning gentlemen,” the SAS commander said to the assembled American paratroop officers. “These people behind me will be commanding the attacking force you will be tasked to defend against. It is their job, as it will be Jerries, to infiltrate your lines and destroy your formations. They will have information on the terrain and the surroundings that you will not. Just like Adolf’s boys over there. Hopefully, you will perform as well or better than expected and these people will have egg all over their faces. You will have twenty four hours lead time to prepare whatever defenses you deem necessary. The attacking force is based here at this point and you can expect any time after the twenty four hours to be hit by them. Good day and good luck.”

Nicolas, Sandy and Andrea, had been standing against the wall in the shadow created by the large map, in full, but slightly obscured view of the Americans. All they saw was three figures in American field uniform, one taller than the other two, standing with arms crossed leaning against the wall. They had not moved, or spoken a word, the whole time.

The American airborne colonel and his staff approached the SAS Wing Commander, hoping for some kind of enlightenment on who they were, but no introductions were given or offered.

“That’s my best company, Wing Commander,” the colonel said. “You people are going to have their work cut out for them.”

“That’s why it’s called a training exercise colonel,” the SAS man said. “Both sides get to learn from their mistakes.”

“It’ll take some doing for a leg company to defeat my highly trained and motivated airborne troops Wing Commander.”

“Hoo Rah, Airborne,” came from the taller of the three in the shadows. Then silence again.

The colonel could just make out the three were wearing American uniforms. One colonel and two majors, no parachute wings and dismissed them as infantry just trying to rile him up. We’ll show those legs what an airborne trooper can do he thought.

The American captain had set up his defenses to make an ambush along the road and open pasture in the direction any land based infantry would have to attack from. He had listening posts out in front of both positions and his heavy weapons platoon split between both approaches. They had been told it was an infantry only assault, no tanks or armored vehicles, so he had not instructed his men to dig fox holes. Using the cover provided by the woods would be good enough. Just after the twenty four hour period had elapsed, four DC 3,s had flown over head, but that was normal. Transport aircraft used this area for training all the time. It was out of range for German fighter aircraft and the transport crews were safe to practice. It had taken his well trained and in shape paratroop company the better part of a day to reach this position, so he knew that the earliest they could expect and attack would be the next morning. As the sun went down he rolled up in his sleeping bag secure in the knowledge that nothing would happen until morning.

“Hey what the heck have you got on the back of your helmet,” a corporal asked one of the troopers who had manned the listening posts who was coming back in after being relieved.

“It’s a sticker saying you’re dead,” the corporal said peeling it off the helmet and showing it to the sentry. The sticker had an eagle above a maple leaf with the words, ‘You’re dead dummy,’ hand written underneath it.

Each of the troopers who had been in the listening posts had them, as did every one of the heavy weapons crews.

“Whose idea of a joke was this?” demanded the Captain. “This is an important training mission and not time to play around.”

“No joke Captain,” a voice broke the silence. “Your listening posts and heavy weapons crews are dead. You did not listen to your second in command or your sergeants and guard your rear. Your troopers were smoking cigarettes all night and by the smell and the glow of them we pinpointed your location and that of your listening posts. Your second in command rotated through your positions all night at your orders and we were able to pin point the location of your heavy weapons crews and the rest of your fire teams. You neglected to dig in, leaving yourself vulnerable to mortar attack. Look in the center of your camp captain, right beside your sleeping bag.”

The fins of a mortar round were sticking up, buried right beside where the captain had been sleeping.

“Private Morrow, Canadian whiskey is better than any bourbon you will ever find,” came another voice at one side of the ambush site.

“Sergeant Willows, I’ll have you know it’s not as big as you say it is,” came a female voice from the other side. “Of course it was cold and the male member does shrink when it’s cold so I could be wrong.”

Then, faces blackened and branches and netting strewn all over themselves, the one hundred troopers of the regiment silently slid out of the bush surrounding the airborne troopers, Bren guns and rifles pointed at them.

“Bang, you’re dead,” said Andrea.

Right on schedule, as Nicolas had ordered at midnight ten of the regiments Canadian pattern trucks, their Chevrolet motors thrumming as they came down the road, pulled up in front of the ambush site and sat idling.

“Five miles up, five miles down, high how silver,” Nicolas said walking toward the trucks.

“In our defense sir,” the captain said at the debriefing, he and his lieutenants in hurriedly put on class a uniforms. “Had we known we would be up against an elite paratroop force, we would have prepared better.”

“Just what exactly are you playing at Wing Commander?” the American colonel demanded. “This was supposed to be a training exercise to see how well my people could defend themselves if attacked. Not by an elite paratroop force, but regular infantry.”

“Remember the fun we had that day we launched that attack on what we thought were Italians and they turned out to be the Herman Gering Division,” Nicolas said. “Do you think colonel that the enemy said, oh sorry, you can go away and we will wait for one of your elite companies to attack us?”

“While your people were running up and down hills in all weathers and learning how to properly shine their boots and blouse their trousers, we were fighting and killing elite German troops and being successful at it. Your man was not even in the right position, he was off the training area by three miles. He was repeatedly advised by his junior officers and non coms to alter his defense position but refused to consider or even hear it. Believe me colonel, even a leg company of the German army would have had no problem finding and destroying your company. Being able to run ten miles and shouting airborne will not cut it out here. If this is your best company you are in big trouble colonel.”

“You are lucky you faced these nice Canadian fellows,” the Wing Commander said. “My lads would have broken some skulls to make their point. Now get those people out of my office.”

Once the door had closed behind the company commander and his officers, the American Colonel sat down in a chair with a dejected thump.

“I knew I had a problem with him for a long time,” the colonel said. “But he has connections in high places. His sergeants went above his head and came to me before this exercise voicing their concerns and he has continually degraded and blamed his junior officers for his short comings. One of the good things about all this is that I will be able to get rid of a bad apple. His men and under officers are very good. The rest of the battalion will hear how you humiliated them and will pull up their socks. That should save a lot of lives gentlemen.”

Nicolas had accompanied his supply people to handle any problems with requisitions to the American base to obtain some more parachutes to replace ones that had failed inspection. He was sitting on the fender of the truck he had come in on, his beret cocked to the rear in the regiments historic way of wearing head gear, his tie missing and the top button undone on his shirt, jacket open to the waist. He was taking the rare moment of quiet to write Kat. Things were becoming hectic as training was being accelerated and he wanted to get a last letter off before the complete lock down that was coming was imposed.

“Good morning colonel,” a soft spoken voice broke his concentration and he looked up and saw three American paratroopers standing in front of him starting a salute now that they had his attention. Sighing, he put away the pen and letter in his inside breast pocket and returned the salute.

“Morning Mr. Winters, what can I do for E company today?” he said. “I hope your training exercises with the SAS are going better.”

“They are still beating us, but we are making them work for it sir,” Winters said. “I wonder if you could take a moment to address the boys sir. They would appreciate it.”

“Long as you’re buying lunch after, no problem Mr. Winters,” Nicolas said sliding off the fender. “Sammy, if you need me I’ll be with these nice airborne fellows here. They are buying me lunch.”

“High how Silver, Naj,” the driver of the truck said. “Hoo Raw, Airborne!” then laughed.

“Oach that hurt,” one of the lieutenants said.

“Suck it up airborne, if ya couldn’t take a joke ya shouldn’t have joined,” said the driver.

“All non coms are the same all over,” the lieutenant said laughing.

“They say the same about officers,” Nicolas said. “I should know, I used to be a sergeant.”

They walked to where the company was just finishing up inspecting their weapons for the upcoming training exercise and Winters called them to formation. Some of the men recognizing Nicolas from the botched one earlier and groaned.

“The colonel has been good enough to talk to us today,” Winters said. “Listen to him, you might learn something.”

“All right boys relax smoke em if you got em,” Nicolas said.

“It took us a little longer than expected to find you that night because you were so far off where you were supposed to be,” Nicolas said. “Some of the locals told us your general location and your camp fires and cigarettes told us the rest. My people have been hunting big game for most of their lives and are expert woodsman and trackers. Cigarette smoke goes a long way and we could smell you long before we saw you. You were all taking so much, it was easy to creep up and establish position on you. The focus to the front let us penetrate you from the rear when you went to sleep and bury the dummy round and plant our stickers. Frankly, boy scouts could have done what we did.”

“My troops had the dubious pleasure of joining you five miles up and five miles down,” he continued, allowing the laughs. “That’s one of the very few things your previous commander got almost right. You are just now finding out what it is like carrying combat loads and trying to function. My troops carried eighty pound packs when we hit the beach in Sicily and then went in land twenty miles to carry out operations. We were cut off for a week and had to fight our way back all the way. I know you are being told it will only be couple of days and you will be fighting old men and wounded recovering vets. This is the Army boys, they lie to us every day. Those recovering wounded just finished fighting the Russians on the Eastern Front and are very, very experienced. You will have to be at the top of your game. Questions?”

“Was that really a woman that day?” said a sergeant.

“Yes sergeant that was a woman and she told me you almost pissed all over her,” Nicolas said and the whole troop broke out in laughter. ”And lieutenant, bluffing on a pair of deuces is never a good idea but you got away with it. I was close enough to see you had a deuce of clubs and a deuce of diamonds.

“Holy shit,” a private said.

“We have limited manpower resources, so everyone has to have minimum skills or they can’t join, even mechanics, cooks clerks and nurses. That woman you talking about is a trained and very skillful nurse. She also qualified expert on the rifle, pistol and Bren gun. Her unarmed fighting skills are among the best of my people and she chose to be a combat trooper, so here she is.” Nicolas said. “If they can fight and keep up, we take anyone.”

“What’s it like, combat sir,” a sergeant asked the question everyone wanted to hear.

“It is the most terrifying thing you will experience in your life,” Nicolas answered. “I refuse to lie about this. You will shit and piss yourself, want to crawl into a big hole in the ground and pull it in behind you. Remember the man in front of you in the other uniform is also shitting and pissing himself too. Your body knows what to do, let it do it. Your buddies are counting on you to do your job, so do it. One day, one hour, one minute or one step at a time. There will be a lot of noise, shut it off. You won’t hear the round that kills you and we all have to die sometime. I choose to die like a man not a mouse. You boys have the best training the best weapons and your officers are good. My people and I, we just do our jobs the best way we can. If we all do that, this will all be over and we can go back home. Winters a word?”

“You are a good commander and want the best for your people, that’s a good thing,” Nicolas said as they moved out of ear shot. “When the shit hits the fan, you have to keep your head, you are going to see men you have known for years get blown away or wounded. Worry about them later, keep them moving keep yourself moving. Time will slow down for you, make good decisions. You can’t stop to help a man no matter how badly you want to, you will only kill more of them if you do. No matter how scared you are, never let them see it, make some kind of decision, they are looking to you for answers.”

Winters was looking down at his feet nodding as he listened. Nicolas clapped him on the shoulder.

“You’ll do fine, you figured out where your drop zone is going to be yet?” Nicolas asked.

“Workin’ on it,” Winters said.

“Keeps your mind busy anyway. You might want to get any last minute letters home out today though,” Nicolas said. “Just a suggestion. I’ll probably see you before this is all over. Take it easy.” And he stuck his hand out and both men shook, Winters wondering how such a young man became a colonel.

‘Kat,

I had to deliver a speech to some of your country men today. It is hard to keep men motivated to do their training properly and the higher ups thought that me being a veteran may help them somehow. They looked well fed and fit and other than the constant training and waiting we are all experiencing they are holding up well. My troopers and I have a different attitude on all this and what will come, will come. Training is necessary and we get to jump out of airplanes and fire our weapons and have some fun, instead of sitting around base all day doing make work projects.

We will be going on an extended field training exercise for a couple of weeks so I will not be able to send any letters for a while. The weather is still a little damp but it is warming up and being out in field for a while will be fun.

I ran into my father the other day, he has been here for about a month now, something to do with transportation of some goods. He said he would rather be running around in the boonies with us than putting up with all the politics and infighting.

George will be wanting to go to grandpas soon to look at the new calves and colts and the mountains will be greening up there in Billings, the meadows filling with wild flowers. I bet you look stunning in your spring frocks, no longer having to layer up to keep from freezing. Still miss you so much it hurts.

Naj