The Great War of the Quartet (The Imperial Timeline Book 1) (33 page)

The chaotic flurry of explosions from artillery shells and the rapid fire of machineguns and rifles kept Radoslav from looking up more than
absolutely necessary from the shallow foxhole since there was hardly any good he could add to the martial cacophony with a single bolt action rifle. His squad was positioned between a gun emplacement from where a flak gun was firing at the enemy vehicles and a couple of heavy machineguns that were pouring down regular bursts of fire to suppress the infantry that were barely visible over at the opposing lower hill. Radoslav was up at the summit overlooking the valley with a shallow creek running through it, and it had to be a defensive position prepared for this purpose by the Almighty with a good overview of the plain below.

The short line of Greek
tanks had stopped at the other end of the valley a couple hundred yards away from the Bulgarian high ground, and the tanks were dueling with the flak guns and regular anti-tank guns that had been brought up to face them just in time. The German eight-eight cannons were devourers of armor, and the Bulgarians had an undoubted advantage defending on this ground against a combined enemy assault. Radoslav’s position so close to one of the eight-eights attracted a degree of danger as mortars, artillery, and even rifle and machinegun fire was directed towards the vainly camouflaged guns. When he peeked up over the sandbags he tried to see the Greeks who were attacking along with the armor, but the range and smoke from smoke canisters obscured them somewhere in the vegetation down in the bushes.

The battalion had hardly ha
d more than the night to dig in next to one flak battery and some other artillery pieces to add a defensive bulwark against the oncoming enemy, and he should have felt tired from all the digging. However, when the Greeks had showed up, all his tiredness had gone away and he was completely focused on looking at a narrow part of the brush for any sign of Greeks.

He hadn’t expended much ammunition at all
so far, but the machineguns were firing almost ceaselessly with their spurting short bursts, and to some degree they were firing quite blindly at where they assumed the Greeks might be. A machinegun had the advantage over a rifle that its firepower could be wielded without discriminating targets and still have a tangible effect. His Gew-91 was an old rifle, and he had to manually open and close the breech with the bolt with each round to expel the spent cartridge and chamber the next bullet, much unlike the much newer Gew-30s some of the other units had received. The Gew-30 rifle was also loaded by pushing a clip of bullets attached to a special piece of metal against the rifle’s open breech before you pushed down the neat row of bullets into the internal magazine. However, not only did the Gew-30 hold twice the bullets of the Gew-91, it didn’t need the shooter to do anything between shots—just pull the trigger over and over again. The cartridge was even the same 7.92mm, but that messed up things a bit since it looked so annoyingly similar to the Russian “8mm” which the machineguns in Radoslav’s company were using and it would obviously be a disaster if you tried to load the wrong cartridge. He had learned about the modern Gew-30 rifles from one of the men in his squad who had taken a rifle from a dead man, but Radoslav hadn’t gone out to look for other rifles than the one he had been given. As long as the artillery and machineguns kept the Greeks far away he didn’t even need a rifle at all. He tried to keep an eye out for the Greeks, but he hoped that they had all been killed already.

“To the right, to the right,” the corporal roared, gesturing wildly towards someplace ahead
of the line. “There are people down by the creek,” he yelled, trying to get everyone to stay sharp.

Ivan wasn’t sure if it was worse or not to be sedentary in battle as opposed to moving. Both offensive and defensive fighting was terrible, and at times the difference
between the two was pretty vague. Unlike the recent additions to the squad, Ivan had been with the battalion since it had first been raised over a year ago as a fresh reserve battalion to be attached to a regiment that had suffered heavy casualties in Macedonia. He wasn’t an old warhorse—he had been called up at eighteen, but as he was getting older with the passage of time, he had the misfortune to have seen a lot of good men be killed or discharged from the battalion. He had spent Christmas not far from home where the battalion had been refitted and reorganized after the heavy losses during the hard back-and-forth fighting with the Greeks during the fall. With the new recruits being integrated, he had become an old man, despite being about a year older than most of them. He might have had some experience from the battalion suffering through really bad artillery fire and fighting several back and forth assaults for a useless hill, but though it had been pretty bad it didn’t make him feel like a veteran who could teach fresh guys much more than they already knew from basic training.

The shallow foxholes
and sandbags offered some cover from machinegun and rifle fire, but mortars and artillery could still hit them with ease from above. The terrain and the rudimentary fortifications made during the night helped keep the shrapnel from spreading, but the defenses were still somewhat naked to shelling, and there was just so much up to luck whether you would get a mortar shell in your head. The farther apart the men were, the less likely they were to all go together from a lucky hit, but the machine gunners and mortar operators had to stick together in little crews of two, three, or four men.

It had to take some balls to man one of the Russian machineguns. Unlike the German guns, they were cumbersome and had a far more visible profile. The German machineguns could be fired lying down with just a bipod holding up the barrel off the ground, but the old Russian machineguns were mounted on small carriages with steel shields and wheels that had to be pulled rather than carried like just a big automatic rifle, and the high profile forced the gunner to sit up when he was firing.

Other than the eight-eight flak guns and the rifles, the arsenal on the hill was mostly Russian prewar materiel. There were more than enough men in the army at large who were armed with M1908 Kholkov rifles and even the older M1885 Bogdanin rifle—the original Russian 8mm rifle that had replaced the older single-shot rifle—but newer battalions like Radoslav’s were equipped with German rifles, although the greedy German sons-of-bitches were not big on solidarity when it came to machineguns, presumably because they wanted them all to themselves rather than share them with their allies.
Fucking Teuton sons-of-whores
.

Radoslav tried to keep his eyes down at the creek to see if he could spot any Greeks there. It wasn’t easy to see where they were, and the bullets coming at him and his comrades could come from plenty of places. Like those Greek tanks. He shuddered when a shell landed dangerously close to one of the eight-eights farther away, just barely missing it. Considering the range, the margin of error had to be mere millimeters or even less between a hit and a miss, and the nearest gun crew was working very efficiently without paying attention to their safety. After all, if they didn’t keep up the firing, the enemy tanks would continue firing off their guns and they might just hit them the next time around.

Shells were coming in all over the hill, but the foxholes, the rudimentary fortifications, and just the sheer size of the hill proved that it took tons of shells to effectively destroy one’s enemies. The eight-eights and the machineguns along the ridge, as well as the smaller anti-tank and infantry guns had to have expended several tons of ammunition already if you would put it all together, yet the Greeks were still shooting from down in the valley and from the opposing, lower ridge on the other side of the creek. Neither of the two sides would budge, and they just kept pouring bullet after bullet, shell after shell on each other.

Unlike the horrible series of back-and-forths
of the past, he didn’t expect the unit to be ordered to attack, since the only thing he knew about the sudden enemy attack was that it had been unexpected; a big old surprise out of nowhere. That was why they had been sent in a panic to get into position
behind
the lines rather than be sent to face off against the enemy up on the frontline. Those Greek tanks up there on the ridge had gone through another defensive line, and he wondered whether some other guys had dug in behind him in case the Greeks were coming in full force. Only God could know what those damned Greeks were up to anyway.

This particular hill had been fought over months ago, and with great loss of life, it had been taken by their comrades. And now the Greeks were looking to take it back. Fucking Greeks. They never did seem to know when to stop.

Kazuko was feeling exhausted as she made her way back towards home after picking up flour from one of the grocery stores the household was registered with for their purchases. It was just agonizing to stand in line for so long, and it left an ache in her feet that she hoped would pass when she could return home and take off her shoes. The rationing system required all rationed goods to be bought properly from the right places and to the limited amount of goods specified by the coupons they received from the neighborhood clerk who was responsible for making sure that everyone got the right coupons for the household.

The flour bag was heavy, and Kazuko had to get back home and make dough out of it to feed the family. Isuzu minded the shop, and someone had to be mother since her mother-in-law was so ill and could not look after the immature children and do the chores. Kazuko didn’t want her to die; she wanted her to get well, but the expensive pills from the doctor didn’t seem to do her any good, and most of the healthy medicines that would normally be around from people selling traditional remedies had become rare and exceedingly expensive because of the war—the government people had even put up posters announcing special wartime prohibitions. She had suggested to Isuzu that maybe they could buy rhinoceros horn if they took some money from the bank, but Isuzu had scrapped the idea when Mother-in-law told them no. Kazuko still wanted to do it, but Isuzu was much too stubborn and stingy. It just seemed so horribly ungrateful to not do everything they possibly could to help the poor woman.

No matter how they should deal with it, the poor state of her mother-in-law left that great empty space which both Isuzu and Kazuko were trying to fill as the matriarch who would keep the family fed and properly organized. Since Sekiji was Kazuko’s husband, it was natural to think that it was her responsibility, but she did not have the courage to fight Isuzu—well, not literally fight—over who was in charge. Isuzu had just assumed that she was going to make all decisions, and Kazuko was not woman enough to confront her over the issue.

It was sad that there were so few people going to most of the shops around the neighborhood, but a lot of families had too little money, and they wanted to save what they could for the future. Right on the corner of her street there was a small police post where the local constables had their office overlooking the large rail station opposite the family home and business. One of the uniformed enforcers was standing outside the small police office with a little urchin sitting on the sidewalk with a placard across his chest. The white placard had a couple of untidy characters written in black ink that was clearly readable to anybody who passed by the police post.
“Good-for-nothing thieving twerp
,” the boy’s placard read, and as much as she wouldn’t stand criminals, she pitied the young boy having to sit there for Heaven-knows how long where everyone could see that he was a no good little thief. Even if things were what they were, the little boy shouldn’t be stealing, and she hoped that he would learn that breaking the law never did anyone any good.

Kazuko knew that she should not be so sentimental when it came to bad people. It was possible that it was some kind of confusion in her maturity that made her sympathize with the young bandit. Although she knew very little about how human bodies worked, she knew that she might have different fluids flowing as her body was transitioning from girlhood to motherhood, and that internal confusion of girlish and womanly fluids might make her pity someone who probably didn’t deserve it. Kazuko had no desire—indeed she couldn’t even imagine herself—to be as unsentimental as her birth mother who had been very harsh on Kazuko and her siblings. As annoying as Atsuko and Otsu could be—one too energetic and excitable, the other too inactive and lazy—she could not see herself hurting them. She didn’t want too; she felt very distraught even when Isuzu was suffering, and Isuzu was really the most obnoxious of all her in-laws because of her animalistic need to dominate Kazuko like some kind of alpha woman. Kazuko wanted everybody to get along and help out each other out, and she did not quite have it in her to put Isuzu in her place.

The street had several small shops apart from her in-laws’ small store. There was a men’s tailor, a shoemaker, a dressmaker, a small noodle shop, a bakery, a rundown drinking den, and other small shops offering gods and services to the public amid the low wooden buildings. Tekika wasn’t a factory city like the sort she had seen in newsreels over at the Patriotic Cinema. She hadn’t gone to see a movie in over a month, despite the Patriotic Cinema charging just 5 rin for a whole feature film compared to the 2 sen 5 rin per ticket before the war. There just wasn’t any time to waste. She had probably spent an hour and a half walking a few hundred yards, queuing, and then buying just the big bag of flour, and tomorrow she would have to go and queue at the greengrocer. It annoyed her to no end that they had to stand in line for so long just for a little flour, and she missed the old days when you could just buy your groceries without the hassle of coupons.

A colorful poster on the wall of the dressmaker had a solemn looking group of children armed with bread led by a woman holding a baby in one hand and a bread bun in the other all chasing a fleeing two-headed eagle. Big calligraphic writing at the bottom proclaimed
“Bread conquers the enemy! Don’t waste ammunition; save it for the brave heroes and destroy the devils!
”

Kazuko knew that she was childish and selfish for being annoyed to eat so much bread with just a little bit of onion and pork gristle for seasoning. It was dull, and it went against everything her grandmother had taught her about good food. But Isuzu traded away many of the coupons for spices to get more flour coupons so she could spoil her favorite brother with quantity over quality. As good a person Isuzu was, she was very dull when it came to food. She seemed to think that bland bread with a bit of sugar was a decent meal, and Kazuko very resentfully found herself accepting Isuzu’s decision to trade away coupons for ordinary seasonings when she could. Flour and onions was her basic idea of food, and Kazuko hated having to make it.

She admonished herself for being so ungrateful towards her sister-in-law. Isuzu had only returned home because her father-in-law agreed that she should help her birth family while Sekiji was away. Once the war was over, Kazuko might become responsible for the household, but until then she was actually thankful that Isuzu’s sense of duty to her family had brought her home for the duration of this war and the absence of their husbands. Hopefully this stupid war would be over in no time, and then Kazuko might get to return to practicing serious cookery again and not have to obey Isuzu’s orders.

She could hardly wait!