@UR: Nice read. I sure hope none of the pilots get my address
Seeing as I have too much sick time on my hands right now, here's Crow's Island from a random soldier's perspective:
Another explosion hammered through the air, seemingly just around the corner from Jacek Novak's bunker. He instinctively huddled down behind the wall. The incoming artillery fire seemed to already have lasted far longer than the night was long. He could not see the ships themselves, hidden by distance and the morning fog, but the coastal defense batteries - one of which was just half a kilometre away - seemingly could. Nearly as loud as the incoming fire, it let loose another round. Three rounds per minute, a hundred and eighty per hour, hour for hour. A maddening staccato only bearable by knowing what would come once the cannon fell silent.
He remembered helping the gun installed nearly half a year back, after one of the first supply runs had brought it. The same run had brought him the rifle he held and - much more important at that time - several boxes of alcohol and cigarettes. He remembered lugging the giant shells, 160mm wide and nearly fifty kilo heavy, down into the underground ammunition magazine. That day, he'd felt Crow's Island to be truly invincible, to be able to stand up to any enemy action. And the following months had only proved that, hadn't they? Indecisive artillery duels, many of them, but never a major action. Until he'd woken from far too short sleep to hear the staccato of fourty-mil anti-aircraft guns and the droning of fighter aircraft overhead. He'd headed, together with the rest of his section, from the barracks to the pillbox they crewed with the heavy machinegun covering the beach. Three of them manned the machine gun, while the other seven would scout, defend and carry ammunition. At least they had enough of that. Last year, their main fear was to see the enemy land and not be able to do a thing because they had less bullets than enemies.
Now, though, they had enough and were even able to swap their old Mosin-Nagants for Revolutionaries, much to the relief of the others. Well, if a fight would come, if they were still alive by then, if they wouldn't have died from artillery already. Above, another fighter went down in flames, painting a comet-like line on the sky before impacting in the water. Novak didn't know whether it was one of them or one of the Ravens. He surely hoped it was the former.
He was still looking outside when an enemy shell impacted the battery he could see. The gunners probably had, to enable a higher rate of fire, stacked the propellant wherever they could. Now, it spelled doom to them. The incoming shell had punched through the gun's armour to explode inside, where it detonated the propellant immediately inside the gun which in turn incinerated propellant further towards the magazine and so on, until, in a series of explosive dominoes, the magazine erupted.
To Novak, it looked as if the whole mountain flank just vaporized in a giant explosion. The shock wave was incredible. Novak was flung from his feet and into the wall behind him, just like the others. Then, fine dust and greater fragments landed on, near and in the bunker. One bounced off his helmet, another off the machine gun. Another hit one of the gunners in the face, drawing a bright red wound on his cheek. Shocked, he raised his hand to his face and wiped the blood off, then went back to the machine gun.
Only once it came back did Novak realize that his hearing had been lost at all. He didn't know how he couldn't have, it was, after all, really strange to see the Junior Sergeant screaming frantically into the field phone without hearing what he said. Something about the coastal gun, Novak notices, not really caring anymore. After all... he paused. Something was wrong.
The anti-aircraft batteries still fired. Tracers still decorated the morning sky high above him. The other coastal artillery guns still fired. But... there was no incoming fire onto his position. That could only mean that they'd shifted fire onto one of the other batteries, or that they held fire to avoid hitting their own troops. Novak muttered a course, then alerted the others. Most were already watching the beaches, and those that didn't quickly did. They couldn't really see that far, maybe a hundred metre onto the water before obscured by the fog. And so it remained, for a minute or two. Most were relaxed by then, thinking it just to be another false alarm.
The first the others saw were shadows moving in the fog. Shadows that quickly gained contrast, shaping them into fishing vessels, barges, anything that swam for a short while and had low enough keel depth. Even as they looked on, the first of those vessels made it to close to the shore, and dozens of soldiers jumped down, followed by the boat reversing course again. Curses filled the air, followed by bullets. The machine gun spat a stream onto the beach, and the other soldiers followed, just like Novak. He braced the rifle against the bunker's concrete and took aim onto the beach. One of the enemy soldiers ran forward, using the otherwise occupation of the machine gun. He aimed, then let loose three quick bullets. He saw the enemy go down, but whether hit or just searching cover, he did not know. All around them, bunkers now opened fire. Five he knew about, but since only four fired, the bombardment obviously had had other effects aside from silencing the coastal defense batteries.
Just like more bunkers, more vessels had arrived now. Instead of the dozen enemy soldiers in the beginning, hundreds now clustered on the beach. As the machine gun gorged ammunition and steamed beside him, he found his own rhythm of shots in the battle heat. Two shots, new target. Two shots, new target. Two shots, new target. Two shots, new target. Two shots, releasing the magazine. Taking one from his gear. Slamming it in. Begin anew.
On the beach below, chaos seemed to rule. They were, mostly, pinned down, some firing wildly at the bunkers, most in some sort of cover. With only bolt-action rifles, they could not match the weight of fire that came from the bunkers, but at least they tried. And, sooner or later, one of them would run out of lives or ammunition.
"Novak!" the junior sergeant shouted. "Get your ass over here, we need ammunition!"
He sprinted through the bunker, past the corpse of Bogomolov. At least he thought it was him, though it was hard to discern with his face's state. The corridor proved a welcome pause from the fighting and the noise once he had passed the splinter-wall. The ammo store was just a few metres past, and he grabbed one of the big, wooden boxes with machine gun belts, hefting it up. The way back was considerably harder with the load he had to take, but just one of the moves would mean the machine gun could continue to fire for another few minutes.
As he moved back to his embrasure, he notived the situation on the ground had changed. Through the slowly lifting fog, barges swam towards the beach holding two vehicles each. From the pictures he'd seen from the Great War, he remembered them to be tanks. Armoured against infantry fire, rolling harbingers of death invulnerable to anything they had available. He swallowed as they rolled onto the beach, four in total. The first ones opened their fire on another bunker, and after the stream of fire and the ceasing of the bunker's, he had no doubt the ones manning it were either dead or in cover. As the other two turned towards him, he just could not get into cover, stunned from the realization that whatever he may do, it would not be enough.
Until the first one of them blew up in a fiery explosion, anyway. The heavy machine gun in the bunker had penetrated the armour and set the fuel alight, cooking off the ammunition. The second died, too, then the third. The fourth tank sped towards the beach entrance, only to be ripped apart with still half the distance to go. The following infantry laid down again. This was, despite all, looking good, Novak thought and continued firing. From the corner of his eyes he saw one of the Raven biplanes rushing down onto the beach, strafing unloading ships. It was followed by two other fighter that tried hitting him, and failed before one blew up itself and the other crashed into the sea and a fishing boat with one wing missing. The Raven that had killed both of them returned into formation with the first one, and sped off again into the sky. The whole thing looked very good, Novak thought again as he quickly fired all of his ten shots at a group of soldiers running towards them.
That was when he noticed two things: The morning fog had lifted nearly completely, allowing them to see kilometres. And he did not need to see that far to discover the enemy warships. They had sailed as closely to the beach as they could to force a breakthrough and hit them directly. The first salvo, targeted on the machine gun bunker to their left, transformed the whole hill into dust. He watched the turrets turn even as the enemies advanced quickly and the junior sergeant screamed at them to retreat. Not too late, as the salvo after that targeted the bunker they had been in, sending a shockwave through the winding corridor they ran through to get to the next bunker further up the hill. Only six of them had made it this far, and Mikhailov was screaming that they should just surrender themselves and hope for mercy. The look the junior sergeant shot at him made him shut up quickly.
The next bunker was far less developed than the one they had left though it had the advantage of still existing. While the old one had held all of them, the machine gun and ammunition easily, that one was cramped even with six and had no machine gun they could use. So all of them grabbed their rifles and began shooting them onto the beach, where far less enemies remained than before, the others already having broken through. And still, the warships' guns fired, decimating nests of resistance with terrible accuracy.
The next minutes represented some of the most harrowing Novak ever experienced. Shooting at the seemingly endless number of enemies, always waiting that the naval gunners found the bunker worthy enough of their attention. He wiped the sweat off his brow, realizing he had lost his helmet somewhen befoe. Seeing Romanov and Pasternack die. Knowing that whatever may come, the fleet was too far away to provide any help, the naval guns silenced.
Until an explosion rocked the enemy flagship, followed by two others only moments past. Before Novak had any chance of processing this, the cruiser exploded in a giant fireball when its ammunition stores exploded. Debris impacted on the surrounding cruisers, their guns falling silent for the moment. The strange silence remained for a minute, until more explosions hit other ships. Novak couldn't help but cheer, just like the others, as the ships steamed back to the open sea. He hadn't thought that the coastal artillery could be so effective.
Disoriented as the enemy must be, the junior sergeant ordered them to attack, heading back into the tunnels then out of the camouflaged entrance. Outside, as the morning sun illuminated the surrounding hill, they ran. Novak lifted his rifle, shooting once, twice, then twice more, and two enemies fell down dead or wounded. Their section was joined by others like them, using the confusion for a major counter-attack. "For the motherland!" he cried with the others as they charged on the beach.
He saw the enemy cowering in cover, fired his rifle at them in full run then feeling for the next one when he saw one of the enemies aiming his rifle and firing.
The bullet hit Novak squarely in the forehead, where his lost helmet might have protected him. All around him, counter-attacking troops fell, having exposed themselves too far in their enthusiasm. But, ultimately, not enough of them died to keep the enemy from surrendering.
I'm waiting excitedly.
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Topic: [Discussion] The Glorious Design Bureau of the People (Read 69887 times)