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A Dark Ascendant

By John Thorley

Dneiper Valley, South of Kiev. Ukraine, February 4^th 1947

      Lieutenant Nickoli Konev picked up the old blackened kettle from the ancient stove using a towel on the hot metal handle. He poured a mug of strong black tea and lit a cigarette. Walking slowly to the window he gazed over the freezing landscape. The old  clock on the wall beside his head showed minutes before 2am.

      The sky was clear but patchy cloud had begun to gather ignited by a half moon that was bright enough to cast ghostly shadows on the frosty ground. Everything Nickoli could see was coated in a glistening hoar frost. Behind him the city lights of Kiev glowed orange in the black sky. In front of him another city, a tent city. It was lit by what seemed to be million candles and a million camp fires, terrestrial orange stars from horizon to horizon.

      Nickoli had never seen so many people or so much armour. He didn't think there existed so many tanks as he could see right now. Mile after mile of huge grey metal titans T34s, 60mm front and side armour; 31 tons each. Top speed of 30mph; He repeated the details of the training manual verbatim. He knew the dimensions and the performance parameters of every piece of artillery, every infantry gun and every tank that the Soviet army possessed. A million men, 11,000 tanks, 2000 artillery guns; ‘surely such an army must be invincible', he thought He drew deeply on the Turkish cigarette. The only sound that could be heard was the deep clank of heavy wagons in the marshalling yards nearby.

      Nickoli sank into an old and torn red leather chair. He laid his head back and within moments was drifting towards unconsciousness. Suddenly the crunching sound of tyres on frozen gravel snapped him bolt upright. He had barely time to re orientate himself when the heavy wooden door burst open letting a freezing blast into the room. Nickoli sprung to his feet as the visitor pushed the door closed and stood peeling off his heavy greatcoat.

      "Comrade Colonel, I was not expecting you at this hour. I trust nothing is untoward."

      Nickoli was flustered. He swallowed hard as a thousand thoughts ran through his mind as to the purpose of the visit. None of them were good. Colonel Ivan Vatutin strode purposely to the old stove. He picked up two small logs and threw them through the metal flap at its front. Then he stood with his hands spread out in the warm rising air. Nickoli stood ram rod straight unmoving.

      Ivan Vatutin was not a tall man but he was broad and powerfully built with a thick neck and large spade like hands. He removed his cap to reveal a shiny bald head. "Do not worry yourself Nickoli, I am not checking up on you."

      "Yes Comrade Colonel"

      "It is a cold night Nickoli, cold and hard. Like the times we live in."

      "Yes, Comrade Colonel." Nickoli's discomfort was obvious. "It is past midnight Comrade Colonel. Is there anything I can help you with?"

       "You have done well Nickoli, we have done well. It has been no mean feat to keep this army going. The troops are warm, they have fuel for their tanks, ammunition for their guns and they eat regularly."

      "They don't each too much Comrade Colonel." Nickoli almost bit his tongue.

      "And that is good Nickoli. Soldiers who are too comfortable forget how to be soldiers. If we have to fight then that wanting will give them an edge. They have to have an edge Nickoli, without it they will not want to fight."

      Vatutin pulled an ivory cigarette holder from his pocket, inserted a Marlborough filter tip, lit it then drew long and hard. The smoke drifted up in the warm air creating a haze under the ceiling. He pulled the packet from his pocket and showed it to the Lieutenant. "American" He exclaimed nodding. "Better than smoking that horse **** and beech leaves we're used to. Try one Nickoli. One day we may be able to produce such luxuries."

      Nickoli tentatively pulled one from the pack handling it like a priceless artefact. "These Nickoli are like the Americans, mild; mild and weak. We must not fall into the trap of trying to be like them. They have it too easy. They are soft, they think only of pleasure and the pursuance of their vices. They have remained out of the war while the rest of the world has burned. We must stay hard Nickoli; we must stay hard to survive."

      Nickoli knew this conversation was leading to something, something he knew he wasn't going to like. "Our soldiers are not weak Comrade Colonel. They are ready and willing to give their lives for Mother Russia if it is necessary."

      Believe me Nickoli, it will be necessary."

      Why do you believe this Comrade Colonel? The Nazis would dare not attack us. Our armies are the largest in the world. I cannot believe we are in danger"

      "You are young Nickoli, young and with the optimism of youth, but you fail to appreciate the bigger picture. They are now the masters of the whole of Western Europe and the Middle East and North Africa. The map of the world has been redrawn. Now that they have almost finished in England they will come for us Nickoli, they will come for us. They want this land and they hate us. We may have to attack them."

      "Then we shall smash them Comrade Colonel. We have as many men and as many tanks as they do, our soldiers are superior and our......"The Colonel stopped the speech with the palm of his hand.

      "You have many things to learn Lieutenant. Firstly don't believe everything you hear. America is feeding us. Their grain is keeping us alive, their oil is keeping our factories going their ships and their trucks are moving it. We have 10 million men under arms Nickoli. That's 10 million men who aren't producing anything in industry or on the farms. That's 10 million men who sit on their back sides waiting to be fed. A million men consume a thousand tons of supplies a day. Just turning the tank engines over here for an hour a day uses 33 thousand gallons of fuel in every one of those days."

      "What are you saying Colonel?"

      "What I am saying Nickoli is that we are losing this war without moving an inch or firing a shot. We have eight weeks of food left. We have fuel for one major offensive but only if we move within a week. After that we will be eating into our strategic reserve and our capacity to maintain the army with decrease every day."

      Both men sat in silence, the grim forecast running riot with their imaginations. Nickoli put a large mug of tea in front of his senior officer before clearing his throat. "Comrade Colonel, I have heard, we have heard....all the men have been hearing stories, disturbing stories about what is happening."

      "With regards to what, Nickoli?" The Colonel didn't bring his gaze up from the floor.

      "We have heard things ...about what the Germans are doing in England and what they have done in France. Whole armies captured and murdered, Jews rounded up and shot, hundreds of thousands of them. Huge mass graves, extermination camps, people worked to death as slave labour. Can these things be true?"

      "Do not put too much store in these stories Nickoli. War breeds such rumours. It is the way of things."

      "But Colonel, I have heard it from the captured deserters in prison in the city. They are saying that trains bring thousands to the camps, they are gassed and burned, old men, women and children. They say that......." Again the Colonel silenced his subordinate with a wave of his hand.

      "These things are spread to weaken our resolve. We are soldiers; we know that armies do not act like this. Do not believe these things." An uneasy silence continued. Nickoli noted that the colonel did not look into his eyes again. He shivered though not from the cold. Suddenly Vatutin put his tea down and clapped his hands noisily.

      "So Nickoli, to the business at hand. What time is the next shipment due in at the rail head?"

      The Lieutenant picked an old brown folder from the shelf against the wall and thumbed through it. "A little after 6am, two hundred and fifty tons of wheat flour, 200 head of cattle, 50 tons of lubricating oil and some uniform replacements."

      "The wheat flour and cattle will be considerably less than your inventory shows" said the Colonel without a moments' hesitation. Nickoli stood open mouthed.

      "Colonel we are running very low already, we are using every ounce of food that can be shipped here."

      "Yes, I know Nickoli. I have instructions from Moscow, from Marshall Zhukov himself. The rations need to be cut again, this time by nearly a third. Food hoarding and stealing will be punishable by death. Each regiment will have an officer from the NKVD assigned to them."

      "My God Colonel, this will cause great trouble, moral is already very low."

      "I know Nickoli. They expect the army to perform miracles. They will ask young and inexperienced men to lay down their lives for mother Russia and how do they inspire them to such feats?....They threaten them with spies from the secret police and death for stealing food!"

      Both men stared blankly from the window. Large snowflakes began to flutter down from the darkness. Within moments they became heavier reducing visibility to zero and a freezing wind whipped them against the glass. Nickoli glanced sideways at Vatutin's vacant face. "Comrade, I do not know if there is a God. If there is, why has he decided that our lives be filled with such misery?" Both men paused on the thought.

      In a thousandth of a second both men ceased to be.

      The tranquil valley, north following the line of the river flashed with the power of a million arc lamps. A boiling, white hot fireball five hundred yards in diameter speared through the darkness turning blackness into the surface of the sun. Inside a radius of 2000 yards from the fireball 150,000 men were vaporized, mercifully, as they slept. Another thousand yards from ground zero the same number covered only by thin canvas smoked then caught fire in the blood boiling heat. Half a second later the roaring pressure waved arrived ending their moment of agony. The shock wave crushed lungs and scraped the ground clean piling it up in a mass of blackened, steaming flesh and debris.

      3000 yards from the detonation only the heaviest of tanks survived being bowled over like toys. 76mm tank rounds exploded in their cradles, diesel fuel ignited in its containers and Katyusha rockets exploded in their tubes. Three miles North West the night duty officer in the control tower of Kiyey military airbase was blinded by the flash. He sank to his knees, his face burned and his sightless eyes wept for the last few seconds of his life before the boiling shock wave ended his screams.

      Five miles away, the residents in the southern suburbs of Kiev woke to see an angry ball of fire rising skywards before debris began to rain down on them. Man killing chunks of rock and distorted metal smashed into roofs and bounced off roads. The few people caught out in the open were pummelled by the deadly rain. The shock wave still expanding was strong enough to tear older buildings to pieces brushing them down like children's sand castles in the waves. Thousands were killed or trapped never to be freed.

      Half a million men died in seconds. The same number would die in the weeks that followed from burns, massive physical trauma and a creeping killer that none of them would identify or understand.

      Oberleutnant Klaus Mietusch pulled his Junkers 88 A4 into a hard right turn and kept the throttle full. He pushed the wheel forward into a steady descent aiming for the cloud base 6,000 feet below him. His only chance was to hide in the heavy stratus that ran for the next hundred miles or so west. Flying blind wasn't his first choice of things to do but it was preferable to dancing with Yacovlev fighters. They had a top speed of 410 mph to his lumbering 250. No contest.

      What a strange mission he thought. Three hundred miles behind enemy lines for one bomb, released from a ridiculous 17,000 feet and detonated by pressure switch at 900 feet. They had practised for weeks and the bombing run had been text book. Their 7000lb payload had arched silently from its release point through the still cold air descending in a gentle curve five miles horizontally.

      Klaus could see the cloud base rising towards him and his heart began to slow. Suddenly the sky behind him lit up like the rising sun. Even above the roar of the racing engines he heard a low rumble. He kept the aircraft hard into the right turn until straightening out he saw the huge mushroom plume rising angrily towards the heavens. The upward surging cloud already towered above them. He gazed at the catatonic stare of his co pilot.

      The shock wave almost tore the controls out of Klaus's hands. He struggled to tighten his grip as the aircraft bucked wildly. Every nut and rivet on the aircraft rattled. Several seconds passed. Klaus instinctively knew that no one would be pursuing him. None of the crew spoke. Klaus knew that history had been made tonight. Things would never be the same again. The Fatherland was now invincible.

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