Red Ice

“As a small unit, camouflaged, and making the best of available cover, we should do all right. The wind will drift over our tracks in the open areas and the trees will hide them in the thickly foliated areas. Ivan may have a dogsled patrol like Greenland had during the Second World War, but I doubt it. He isn’t on a wartime basis, not way out here. I’d say our chances are respectable, but don’t hold me to it.”

The North Star was too high in the sky to use for bearings, so I had to rely on Ursa Major, or Cassiopeia, or Deneb, and selected times to find North. Taking out my barometer/altimeter, I checked the reading. The Dzhugdzhur Range paralleled the coast. As long as we were gradually gaining altitude, we could not be too far off. About eighty miles from the coast, before we reached the crust of the range, we should stumble on a railroad spur. The spur worked northward from the main trunk of the Trans Siberian Railway and terminated at the camp; If we reached the summit of the range first, we were too far north.

We shouldered our packs and donned our skis. Movement was slower than I had anticipated. The kayak voyage and ice portage had worn us down. Alvarez and Kruger broke trail while Puckins and Chamonix strained in the ahkio harnesses. We had fastened the two sleds together like a giant oyster. Though the fused container held the recoilless rifle, much of our ammunition, and the tents, it was relatively light. These remaining four skiers traded positions with these men at regular intervals.

About an hour before sunrise we stopped and pitched the Norwegian tents. Within each two-man tent, each pair fashioned a cold well and sleeping benches above it so that they would not be sleeping in the lowest, and therefore coldest, portion of the tent. Stripping down to his Norwegian-made polypropylene underwear, each skier brushed down his boots and outer clothing, then stuffed them into the foot of his sleeping bag in a waterproof bag. Then from his sleeping bag, one member of the pair boiled water for the freeze-dried food under the tent’s outer fly. A single slow-burning candle combined with the pair’s body warmth to keep the inside of the tent relatively warm, but hardly comfortable. It was an unwieldy, time-consuming way to camp on a long-range patrol, but in cold-weather operations, eighty percent of your energy went to survival, fifteen percent to military activities, and five percent to fighting.

My thermometer read fifteen below zero. When I awoke, a fine coating of frozen condensation covered the inner ridge of the tent.

The next night we moved with better speed through the rolling, rising taiga. Our file looked like a long green-and-white caterpillar with piston legs as it threaded its parallel tracks through the widely spaced trees. Kick, slide, kick, slide. Packs clung to backs and pounded at kidneys. Our weapons, never designed for ski troops, were heavy and awkward. Periodically we stopped to check the stars and melt snow.

“What is that white concoction?” Gurung asked, watching Wickersham wiping a lotion into his face and hands.

“Cold cream,” Wickersham quipped.

Kruger shifted his weight from foot to foot and clapped his hands against his sides. The cold was worse when we stopped. “I don’t s-s-see where it makes you look any better.”

“Oh yeah? Well, you saw what happened to the movie lady in Shangri-la, didn’t you? Well, it just so happens I have a limited supply available….”

“You have any vanishing cream?” Alvarez chimed in sardonically. The big Cuban was not about to let any of Wickersham’s pranks get past him. “That would sure make this jaunt a lot easier. Invisible raiders, yeah… ‘Stealth’ ski troopers.”

“Nope. Chief Puckins handles vanishin’ and materializin’. Different department altogether.”

The cold, dry air stung bitterly. Occasionally the wind swept down the valleys with such intensity that we had to wear suede face masks for protection. Once, when we were caught in a full-blown williwaw, we had to turn our faces away from the wind and seek whatever windbreaks we could find. Kick, slide, kick, slide.

As the second dawn approached, I estimated we had covered nearly thirty miles as the crow flies—ten in the first night, twenty during the second. Unfortunately, we could not ski as the crow flew because the increasing gradient often forced us to traverse slopes.