Artillery is all that Matters

His quarters in Sebastopol seemed luxurious.  A hotel suite.  Summer tourists were avoiding the Crimea.  The military had been able to find thousands of rooms.  His first days seemed miraculous.  No, he was not going to be executed.  He was to be used.  He was assigned a train.

Headquarters had maps and meeting rooms.  He was pulled into one his first day.  Descriptions of the map and troop placements took less than an hour.  The rest of the morning consisted of lectures.  Very demeaning lectures.  He was to understand what mattered, and what did not.  Who mattered and who did not.  His understanding required a long series of lectures ending with a one-on-one from a fellow colonel with an artillery patch on his shoulder and arrogance baked into every movement of his skinny arms. 

“We have lost a thousand tanks and APCs so far.  Doesn’t matter.  This is not a mobile war.  Trenches.  You would think we were fighting World War One again.  They have trenches.  We have trenches.  They have NATO weapons that take out our tanks.  So what.  We have artillery that takes out their cities.  Block by block, building by building, we smash them.  The ammunition is old, the artillery is old.  So what.  Accuracy means nothing.  When twenty howitzers drop round after round onto the same hundred square meters, that hundred square meters is cleansed of Ukrainians.  Then we adjust the guns and take out the next hundred meters.  We will get to Kiev a hundred meters at a time, and all of Ukraine will be cleansed.  You understand?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I wonder.”

Both men were standing at a map.  Color codes indicated troop positions.  Neither man paid any attention.  It told commanders where.  The local colonel needed to tell the new colonel how.

“You commanded a reserve tank division in Novosibirsk.”

“Yes.  Many of our tanks have been transferred here, but we still have twenty-seven ready to fight.”

“The Ukrainians have a contest – turret tossing.  They love tanks.  They love to blow them up with shoulder fired missiles.  They love to see how high the turret flies when they explode.”

“Yes, I have seen the videos.”

“Very entertaining.  And meaningless.  A child’s game for a defeated army.  I need you to understand two things.  Tanks don’t matter.  Infantry doesn’t matter.  Last month I was with a general I will not name.  We watched a battalion of Donetsk militia march to the front.  He just laughed.  ‘Garbage disposal.’  One bunch of Ukrainians off to kill or be killed by another bunch of Ukrainians.  Fewer Ukrainians from either end of the place to deal with later.” He paused.  “So, tell me, what really matters.”

Yuri was running out of patience, but he gave the obvious answer.

“Artillery.”

“Yes.  Artillery wins this war.  Tanks are for amusement.  Infantry is just a mist of blood mixed with a mist of concrete when our artillery is through with them.  Our artillery takes the war west.  We cannot be stopped.”

He paused again and stared at Yuri.  Yuri waited.  The man was building to a final point.  Yuri knew the point.  He had already been told the point by ten others with artillery patches on their shoulders.  This colonel was number eleven.  Yuri expected there would be more lectures by more officers with those shoulder patches.  He hoped this man was about finished.

“What do I need from you, Colonel Korsakov?”

“Ammunition.”

“Correct.  I need ammunition, and I need it near my guns.  It arrives here in Sevastopol by train, by ship, by air.  We have mountains of it.  But my guns are not here.  My guns are in Kherson.  Next year they will be in Kiev.  The ammunition needs to come to them.  You need to do that.”

“Understood.”

Yuri had listened to all he was prepared to listen to.  The colonel had bought or fucked his way to his rank.  There was no sense pointing out the obvious – trains to Kherson were being blown up at the station.  Bridges to Kherson were being blown up.  The man was too stupid to solve such problems, so he substituted intimidation.  He made demands.  Others – men who actually understood problems – would solve the problems.  He saw himself as Patton or Zhukov.  He pointed, and armies moved.  Yuri stood erect, stared at the man, and hoped a pair of salutes would end all this nonsense.

“Bring me the ammunition my guns need, and we will get along just fine.”

The man turned and left the room.  Yuri used a different exit.  He had wasted a morning on a series of fools.  It was time for him to get to the docks.  A ship had arrived, and this shipment was assigned to Yuri.  Every shell was going to Kherson on one of the next trains Yuri had scheduled.