A Train to Hell

Singapore.  Things would be so different if a company from Singapore had been contracted to run the port at Sebastopol.  A company that actually knew how to run a port.  But Yuri was pretty sure he knew how the contract was awarded.  Some friend of Putin got the port, and Putin got a kickback on government payments.  And so, the port was a mess.

The ship captains screamed at the crane operators to get their cargo unloaded, and some even “helped” using on-board cranes.  They wanted to be gone as quickly as possible.  The Ukrainians had blown up large portions of the nearly military airport.  Ship captains aren’t stupid.  They made the obvious connections – if airports could be blown up, so could ships, especially ships filled with munitions.

So, they rushed to get stores off their ships and onto land.  Their engines were warmed up and ready to go the instant the last crate was off their ship.  They left behind a dock with materials everywhere.  Shells of the same caliber might be stacked close to each other or might not.  Shells assigned to Yuri’s battalion might be in one area, but they might also be spread far and wide.  Yuri’s men needed to find what they could and move what they could with whatever equipment they could find.

“Battalion” was an odd label to use for the 79 men and three officers Yuri commanded.  Every unit was understrength, but his seemed to be most understaffed.  And his soldiers?  He had sent Novosibirsk’s criminals west to join the military.  So had dozens of other communities.  Now he paid the price.  Men showed up for duty, or not.  Followed orders, or not.  Agreed to go into Ukraine, or not.  If not for three large noncoms in Yuri’s unit, he wasn’t sure a single shell would get loaded onto a single freight car.

Given modern equipment, Yuri would have gladly substituted three forklifts with experienced operators for his entire “battalion.”  But he didn’t have forklifts, and he didn’t have shells packed to be handled in pallets by forklifts.  The work was as manual as it had been in 1945 when the Soviet army had millions of men and women ready to do any job for Mother Russia.  Now it had men and women tourists lying on the beaches of Crimea while the untrained, unwilling, and unable defended the motherland.  Loading took forever.

While his officers and noncoms motivated his soldiers with fists and threats, Yuri struggled with the railroad administrators.  Ukraine was blowing up trucks, and the usual problems with shoddy maintenance and reluctant drivers meant major troop supply couldn’t be done by trucks.  But Russia and Ukraine had excellent rail systems.  Troops and arms and supplies moved by rail.  All troops and all arms, and all supplies rode the rails to units all along the eastern edge of Ukraine.  Hundreds of kilometers.  Hundreds of units.  Hundreds of unit commanders making demands.  Most, like the colonel who had button-holed Yuri that morning, wanted artillery shells.  Rail schedulers decided which train used which track in which order.  Yuri was ordered to get artillery shells to Kherson.  Schedulers would tell him when – and if.

They also told him to do something stupid.  Twice the ammunition trains parked in the Kherson rail yards had been shelled.  The yards were in range of the American guns being fired by Ukrainians and made a marvelous target.  They could practically see the explosions in Kiev.  Yuri had a response, one he thought perfectly reasonable – shorter trains.  Load just four or five cars, get them to Kherson and get them unloaded before the Ukraine guns fired.  Run up three or four trains a day rather than one much longer train.

His strategy seemed logical to everyone.  Everyone except the schedulers who were unwilling to tie up engines and track three or four times a day.  He had been granted locomotives and track once per day.  He should be grateful for what they could give him.  He was not grateful.  He measured how long it took his men to load a freight car, multiplied by twenty, and knew UAVs or satellites would see him and direct their big guns long before he got his last crate of shells into some shelter.  He would be sitting in Kherson’s railyard and end up one more colonel in Ukraine’s code 200 (killed in action) list.  His picture and brief bio would go out on their social media feeds – look who we killed today.  And his train and his ammunition would be vaporized.

He spent all day going from office to office at headquarters.  Everyone needed shells, everyone needed trains, they understood he would face some risk, but what could they do?  He drove back to sixty-three sweating and swearing men now loading the fourteenth freight car.  Men were already sneaking off.  If kicked and threatened, they might load the cars, but none of them wanted to ride the train into Kherson and unload the cars.  Yuri called a staff officer in a Kherson artillery unit and asked for help unloading.  The officer said he would speak to his commander but made no commitment.  Yuri called several more times while his men finished loading but got no reply.

The schedulers cleared Yuri’s train two hours later.  He and his officers boarded.  So did forty-seven men.  Yuri was surprised so many chose to go.  One of his officers explained.

“They go to loot.  Kherson has been picked over many times, but more people are leaving.  Russians who came to the city looking to get a free apartment are now returning to their homes in the east.  Ukrainians are either going east or west, but they know Ukraine will fight for the city.  Time to get out.  They leave behind apartments.  Our men will kick in doors and search for treasures.”

“Will they unload the shells first?”

“Maybe.”

A noncom was sitting close and listening to the officers.  He caught Yuri’s eye and pointed to his rifle.  Yuri tapped the pistol on his belt.

Kherson was three hundred kilometers.  Cars routinely drove the distance in about six hours.  Yuri had checked.  Cars these days drove east from Kherson, towards Russia, some driven by owners, some driven by car thieves.  Yuri saw no cars driving toward the city.

The train was going to take longer.  The tracks were crowded just getting across the Crimea.  Lots of trains supplying lots of units.  And there was a wait at a major rail junction.  Trains crossed a narrow section of the Crimean Peninsula and then split off toward a series of eastern Ukraine cities.  Traffic always backed up there.  The perfect target.  Multiple trains packed close together.  Ukrainian artillery was just out of range.  Or was it?  If they could hit the air base on the Crimea, why not this rail junction?  This junction was so much closer to their guns.  Every man on every train watched the skies - and waited.

And complained.  No food had been provided.  The men were tired and grumpy after a long day, and they would not say it, but they were also scared.  They couldn’t talk about their fear, but they had lots to say about the lack of food.  Their volume was standard military – loud enough to be certain officers heard them, not loud enough to suffer any consequences.  After sitting idle for over an hour, the volume got louder.  The noncoms prepared to respond.  They looked to Yuri for instructions.  He motioned for them to wait.  Whatever discipline remained in this army would be needed later – in Kherson.  Finally, the train moved through the junction and into the southern section of Ukraine where the worst fighting had occurred.  The men quickly quieted, their attention out the windows.

Kherson was another fifty kilometers, located on the far side of a major river.  The Dnipro was half a mile wide as it flowed just east of town.  The Russians had taken the town in the first days of the war.  Their plan was obvious – keep going west and take all the Ukraine cities along the Black Sea coast.  Cut Ukraine from the sea.  Take out its industry, take out its shipping.  Leave the remains of the country in poverty – an easier target for the next step in its conquest.

The Ukrainians had lost Kherson to the Russians, but they had stopped their advance past the town.  Now they were counter attacking.  The Russians had twenty thousand troops in and around Kherson.  Well dug in, but their backs were to the river.  Two railroad bridges crossed the river.  Both had been attacked and damaged.  If those were taken out, the Russians would be cut off from food and ammunition.  Senior officers had already abandoned those soldiers and crossed to the near side of the river.  Half a mile of water separated officers from the units they “commanded.”  If ever there was a sign of an army on the verge of collapse…

As the train approached Kherson it stopped again.  Repairs were being done on both bridges.  The train engineer was given an update.  Repairs to one of the bridges would be completed in two hours.  The train was switched onto that track.  Movement again, then another stop.  They waited the two hours.  They were in range of Ukrainian artillery.  It was getting dark fast, but heat from the engine would bloom before any UAV with infrared capabilities.  Nowhere to hide, nowhere to move.  Stationary for two hours.  A very inviting target.