Plague Fiction Serials: “They Would Kill 5 More SS…” Pt. 8

–I will make that smoke break his last. Do you still have a grenade?–

–Yes–

–Do you think you can hit the half track from here?–

–From here? No. But if I can get to that bush over there, I can lob it onto one of the tracks. I will need you to pull their attention away for a few moments so I can get there undetected. Is that a problem?–

–It will not be a problem, Comrade–

Comrade Hvorostovskya took her on the ground, crouched, ready to spring into action. Her body placement and anticipation of action were honed by years as a track and field star at her Secondary education school in Kyiv, always her strongest subject in school. If war had not broken out, she had hoped to make it to a great University, hope beyond hope, the National Olympic team. Those dreams were dashed, but the skills she had been taught, the natural talent that had been honed and cultivated by her people and party through fine schools, instructors and facilities, these skills would not be put to far more noble use than athletic achievement.  

Mr. Mosin-Nagant lined the head of one of the petty non-commissioned nazis up with his sights.

–Boom boom, nazi–

The powerful rifle belched fire and the round it expelled punched a hole the size of 15 kopek piece through the temple of the footsoldier, killing him where he stood and spraying his neighbor with pulverized brain and bone. The gunshot spurred Comrade Hvorostovskya into action, triggering a set of nerve endings and muscle memories that were forged into her body and mind. She made it to the bush, unseen, just as the squad of antisemites turned their fire on Mr. Mosin-Nagant, who was now crawling like a salamander into a crevice between a boulder and a large elm tree. This time the cowardly Sturmbannfuhrer was screaming in perfect German.

–Find the assassins! Kill them! These Judeo-Bolshevik animals must pay with their lives!- 

The cowardly Sturmbannfuhrer screamed all this while climbing into the turret of the half track, where no bullet could easily get at him. Unfortunately for the cowardly Sturnbannfuhrer, Comrade Hvorostovskya didn’t have a bullet; she had a grenade. Pausing only a moment to assess her tactical situation, she pulled the pin on the tin can sized explosive and tossed it into the Sd.Kfz. 250’s turret in one effortless looking arch.

-What..? Nein nein ne-

These new grenades had short fuses. They were also very powerful. A beautiful geyser of flesh, blood, teeth and metal shards exploded upward out of the turret. A red hot hunk of metal landed in the snow a meter to the left of Comrade Hvorostovskya. She grinned when she saw it was a melted Iron Cross.

Plague Fiction Serials: “They Would Kill Five More SS”, Pt. 7

Comrade Hvorostovskya and Mr. Mosin-Nagant were not surprised to see they were the first of their cadre to arrive at the town of Romanivka, but they were shocked to find the town cordoned off by what looked to them to be at least 50 SS commandos, and a very high ranking officer looking very smug with his new armored vehicle. The Sd.Kfz. 250 was fresh off the slave factory lines: it had sloped steel armor that averaged out at 10mm thickness, a MG 34 mounted in a swiviling top mount rig, a small public address speaker, and could hit speeds in excess of 70kph on well packed dirt or asphalt. 

Mr. Mosin-Nagant looked down at the group through his sniper scope. “I think that fucker by the half-track is a Sturmbannfuhrer.” Mr. Mosin-Nagant pointed emphatically at his own shoulder. “He’s got the 4 silver pips there, on his collar. Hunny boy even has an Iron Cross!” 

Comrade Hvorostovskya snarled. “I wonder how many mothers and children he had to burn alive to get that shiny trinket. Also, I wonder why he is here? This seems like a rather lowly job for a commissioned officer, guarding the entrance to a small town I mean.”

“Fuck. I think I know why he’s here, Comrade.” Mr. Mosin-Nagant handed Comrade Hvorostovskya his rifle and motioned for her to look through the scope. “Doesn’t that fellow next to the Sturmbannfuhrer look like he’s wearing a postman’s jacket? Weren’t we to meet a postman?” 

“Damn. He must have been betrayed by someone in the town. Monster probably threatened to shoot all the able bodied men and boys unless they gave him up. Goddamn! Do you think there’s a chance we could sneak in–”

A gun report shocked both of them out of their scheming. The Sturmbannfuhrer had pulled his side arm from its polished-to-a-shine leather holster, and shot the poor postman at point blank range in the right eye. The man’s body fell to the ground like a sack of onions thrown from a truck. The Sturmbannfuhrer motioned impatiently to the driver of the half-track and the fellow handed over a handset attached to the loudspeaker by a thick green rubber coated wire. He began to speak in heavily accented, passable Russian. 

“Ve know that there is men out there in the woods, a few, maybe more than a few, and they are coming here to meet up viss this poor fellow, who vas supplying veapons und food to resistance units and saboteurs. Ve know he vas your contact, and that he was to give you instructions as to verr you could find and disable some of our minefields! I still know not how he got that information! The man was very brave, and did not give us anything under torture, no no no, we had to shoot two of his employees, two female clerks, in front of him before he vould talk. But then he talked. And now you are trapped. Give yourselfs up peacefully in the next five minutes, and ve vill not open fire on this sleepy little town viss our machine guns! There! Simple, yes?” 

The Sturmbannfuhrer let go of the handset, and it snapped back into the cabin of the half-track, nearly hitting the private driving the vehicle in the face in the process. The Sturmbannfuhrer walked around the other side of the track, just out of view, but a few moments later the unmistakable smell of tobacco smoke wafted in their direction. 

“Fucker is taking a smoke break.”

Plague Fiction Serials: “They Would Kill Five More SS”, Pt. 5

-Oh! Father! The map. Here, we found this map with the officer we killed. It is marked here, here, and here. We think this is where he was having mines planted. They seem to mostly be concentrated by the NW bank of the river. I suggest you cross over at the ford here, right after the falls-

-Ah, I see you are right. It is going to take us an extra hour due to the roundabout way…Leave without us, make camp at the next stand of woods you find, and we will try to catch up. Keep heading South West until you start seeing signs for the Kharkiv Oblast, which is only about 6 kms from here. Stay in the trees as much  as you can, or otherwise only travel at night. If you stay going SSW you’ll eventually get to a village called Romanivka. There is a post office there, or rather there should be a post office there, and the man who runs it is a friend of mine and will help you if you tell him that Augustine sent you. Alright? Do you have that?-

-South West, 6km to Kharkiv, stay in the woods, Romanivka Post Office, Augustine-

-Comrade Hvorostovskya, your mind is like a steel bear trap! Alright, fan out-

 

Father Agin and the Brothers Maslow gathered up two gunny sacks worth of camping gear and started heading due east towards the ravine carved into the granate by a tiny tributary of the Vorskla. Pines and birch grew in a thick wall that hid the true depth of the ravine until one had all but fallen the full 10 meters down to the water below. Father Agin knew the area because he used to hunt for truffles in the ravine back before the devils had been let out of Hell. Another thing about the thick tree cover was one could not be seen from the ground or from the air; as long as you stayed within 3 meters of the edge of the ravine, you could have moved an entire regiment through undetected. The going was rough, though, with thick undergrowth and gnarled roots at ankle height. Father Agin was no longer the outdoorsman he’d been in his youth at seminary, and soon fell behind the leanly muscled and youthful twins. Instead of calling them back, Father Agin decided to take the time to look about for something edible. He scanned the ground as he kept up his hardy pace, grabbing a handful of clover here, some mushrooms there. Soon he had filled his wool cap with nearly a pound of fresh food. The sun had fully set, and they were even farther from the rendezvous than he had anticipated. 

Father Agin puckered his lips and whistled out a lilting tune that sounded to unsuspecting ears like a dove calling out to its mate. The commotion of the young men running ahead of him came to a sudden stop before getting louder and closer. The two men appeared from out of the woods to Father Agin’s left, and dropped a pile of dry branches, twigs, and leaves in a pile on the ground. One of the brothers struck a match while the other gathered water in a small pail he’d kept tied to his belt with a length of twine. 

Father Agin pushed some flat rocks towards the center of the fire, hoping to use them later to keep warm in the growing chill of the steppe autumn. The small pail was hung from a bent pine bough over the fire. Father Agin threw in the mushrooms, clover, a few herbs, and the little bit of salted pork he had left from the German ration pack he’d purloined during their last ambush raid. The slapdash stew began to bubble and hiss, so the men pulled it from the fire, sit it on a stone, pulled out their spoons and got to eating.

-Why do you think the Germans are lingering around here for so long? They took the town and pushed the Red Army right out in a few days- 

-Well, they know there are many of us out here still, partisans, and that they cannot secure their supply lines fully until they have swept us up. I mean, do you know how much harder it is to get trucks out here? From Lviv to Kyiv is one thing, the roads are fine and passable all year round, but once you get out here in the steppe? Where there are no roads, and the mud can get up to your armpits?-

-Perhaps it is that simple, Father, but I can’t help but be bothered by something Comrade Bogomolov told me-

-What is that, child?-

-Well, his family, they…they murdered them all, and well, they murdered the families of all of Comrade Bogomolov’s neighbor’s, too-

-That is a tragedy-

-It is, father, but Comrade Bogomolov told me that all of his neighbors were Jews, as was his wife, and his children were being raised in the Jewish religion. I did not know why he felt the need to tell me this. They were farmers, not partisans or party members or anything. There was no reason to kill them-

-They were Jews, that was reason enough for the Nazis. These people are vampires, these Nazis, they want only blood. Jewish blood, Slav blood, Soviet blood. These Germans…I do not understand them, and I do not want them. I want to kill them, that’s all. I want to see a pile of them a hundred feet high, and I want to set that pile alight for all the world to see, as a warning-

-Father, are the Nazis going this far into the Steppe in order…in order to hunt down our Jewish comrades specifically? Why bother, they are already fleeing East, the poor souls, just like the Germans say they wanted! 

-Never trust the words that come from a German’s mouth! As I said, They are vampires, comrades, they want only blood. I cannot fathom their final aim, but I will do all I can to thwart their plans- 

-Our father told us that some of the other farmers were considering giving up the Jewish farmers from their collective in exchange for higher rations. My father would not hear of it, and spat at their feet- 

-Your father was a good man. There is, unfortunately, a deep hatred and fear of our Jewish brothers embedded deep in Ukrainian hearts. It is an ugly thing, a primeval and stupid thing, and something I wish our Party had had more time to stamp out with education. Goddamn these Germans! An entire den of antisemitism could have been swept clean, but now the Germans are using the hate in our own hearts as a weapon. It makes me ill-

-Father Agin, should I put out the fire for tonight? Or I could stay up with it-

-No, no. Don’t bother doing either. I will stay up with the fire. It is far too dense in this forest for the fire to arouse any sort of attention. Get some rest, my sons, and I will roust you if I hear anything-

Plague Fiction Serials: “They Would Kill Five More SS…”, Pt. 3

Comrade Hvorostovskya disappeared into the small stand of trees separating the kill site from the ravine parallel to their riverine hideout. Comrade Bogomolov recalled his days fighting White Cossacks with the Red Army mining and engineering corps. The key to placing an anti-personnel mine was not to put it so deep that it was blunted by the packed earth but not so close to the surface that a trained eye could see the artificial lump on the ground. About 14 centimeters of loosely back earth over the top of mine, then this patch covered in leaves and few twigs, and the gunny sack filled with the rest of the mines placed just out of easy reach from the spot where the body had fallen. It would be impossible to s–

-Walt, I know I took longer than I said I would, but I met up with that blonde local girl again she just FUCK get off get aahh-

The second officer had stumbled into the kill site less than 3 meters from where Comrade Bogomolov was at work placing the mine. Frantic, Comrade Bogomolov grabbed the second officer’s knees and pulled him down over his own body, mere moments before the man would have unknowingly set off the trap. But now Comrade Bogomolov faced the problem of a very large, very angry SS officer kicking and writhing on top of him. Every frenzied movement brought the pair closer to the boobytrapped spot. Comrade Bogomolov dug the heels of his sturdy red army boots into the snow and mud, pushing with all his might against the struggles of the German. He managed to push the fellow off of him and into a hollow next to the campsite. The German rolled down the slope and slammed into one of the exposed roots of a massive old maple. 

The German slapped at his belt, frantically looking for his sidearm, which unbeknownst to him had flung off in the commotion only to find itself wedged between a moss covered log and another one of the maple roots well out of reach. Comrade Bogomolov fumbled with the breach of his shotgun, wasting precious moments on pushing the shell into the gun backwards before finally slamming it in place. The German lunged forward and up the shallow embankment, getting most of his not inconsiderable bulk out of the hollow. Comrade Bogomolov dropped onto his ass and pulled the trigger. The shotgun unloaded 7 buckshot pellets into the German’s face from less than 2 meters. The blast didn’t tear off the man’s face so much as vaporize it above the chin. Comrade Bogomolov was covered from scalp to groin in a thick coat of steaming hot blood and brain matter. The shock from the suddenness of the encounter probably contributed to the unfortunate outcome of the following few seconds; Comrade Bogomolov got up, trying desperately to scoop off the worst of the gore covering him, but stepped directly onto the still largely intact scalp of the late second SS officer, slipping on this macabre obstacle and falling rear-end first onto the newly buried anti-personnel mine 

Plague Fiction Serials: “They Would Kill 5 More SS…” Pt. 1

6 people sit in the snow and fallen pine boughs in an oxbow bend of the river Vorskla. They are led by a monk and communist partisan, and a farmer whose wife and 8 children were gassed to death in the back of a repurposed baked goods delivery truck while he was in the woods picking mushrooms for dinner. This was the fellow who could cook, Bogomolov, and the egghead was Vladislav Agin, a half Serb half Russian who had been thrown out of his monastery and onto the streets by the Germans for giving bread to the Jewish children of the town. The other five consist of Bogdon and Dmitri Maslow, twin sons of the late Boris Maslow, hung by the SS on the fabricated charge of hoarding corn (the SS officers wanted his crop to make into the shitty tub-distilled vodka they used to get the local girls drunk), Ludmila, a nurse from a the local veteran’s hospice the SS turned into their officer’s club, and some half starved vagrant who was a deadshot with his ancient Mosin-Nagant who never volunteered his name. 

Besides the aforementioned rifle, which came equipped with scope and 4 bullets, the group had between them a single-bore shotgun, 2 buckshot shells, A Tokarev TT-33 with a full clip, and a TOZ-8 .22 with a dozen shells. The equipment was rounded out with a box of 30 matches, 6 meters of hemp rope. an RG-41 frag grenade, and a small knife with a handle carved out of a fragment of a buck’s antler that Comrade Mosin-Nagant had taken off of an SS Oberscharfuhrer he’d sniped. They would kill five more SS if they could, and then move on into great belching killing wastes, beyond which they hoped to meet up with other partisan outfits and with them do more killing. 

 

-Take the pistol, and go the long way around the stand of trees over there. Wait in the ditch by the side of the road-

-I’m only going to take 2 bullets from the clip-

-Take 3-

-I can do it with 2-

-Your hide. Mr. Mosin-Nagant, if for some reason Ludmila doesn’t manage to do it with 2-

-I can do it with 2-

-Then you can produce some covering fire and hopefully let her get away with her life- 

-Yep- 

-How many are there down there?-

-The Monk said there were 4 Germans, an officer and 3 enlisted men with an old water cooled machine gun. I think we can also assume the typical array of sidearms and rifles, probably some mines and grenades. We think they may have some sort of something in the tent down there, but I don’t know if its spare tires or field rations. 

-So, isolate the officer?-

-Isolate and neutralize- 

-Once the officer is neutralized, we are going to wait for it to get dark, these fellows will realize their officer is AWOL, then they will behave like good little enlisted men, follow procedure and send a message back to HQ. They should send a squad back to check up on things, and that’s when we can set off the big surprise-

***

Sturmfuhrer Hesse pissed his pants. Or, rather, he pissed his pants for about 2 seconds before regaining control of his bladder and making a hasty bee line to a pile of rubble 20 meters distant that the men had been using as an ersatz latrine. He recommenced pissing, sans pants this time, into a heap of what was once the Brutalist facade of a post office.

The Poison that is Nationalism

Ukraine and Russia are at war, but it is not for the reasons you have been told. The issue is not Vladimir Putin being the second coming of Hitler and wanting to conquer all of Eastern Europe, nor is the problem a western backed cabal of capitalists and neofascists pushing Ukraine into a symbiotic relationship with the West. Both those things may be, and probably are, true to one degree or another, but both are SYMPTOMS of a larger, deeper, and more profound problem: Nationalism.

Nationalism is the irrational belief that the geography of a region has something to do with the moral and existential merit of a people or group of people. It is represented in superstitious worship of national symbols like flags and songs, irrational hatred for those deemed by the leadership to be “enemies”, a paranoid belief that other nations and groups are “out to get us”. Oftentimes this nationalism leads a population to follow its leaders blindly into misguided military (and social/economic) adventures that lead to death, destruction, and privation for the population itself and for victims in other nations. Nationalism is a disease that in its metastasized state can become Imperialism, the complete subordination of the economic, cultural, military, and intellectual engines of the state to the whims of a power structure that wishes to expand its power, and its markets, over as much of the world as possible. The chief imperial states today consist of the United States, Russia, the European Union and China, with many regional “great powers” who dominate others on a smaller geographic or demographic scale. Each Imperial state was born of a certain strain of nationalism, each has its own national mythology and belief in its own exceptionalism, and each wishes to extend and expand its power and reach over other nations and peoples. The Ukrainian-Russian War is not a war of “democracy” vs “tyranny” or “right” vs “left” or “capitalism” vs “socialism”, it is a war between an imperial state, Russia, trying to reclaim a territory on its borders that it sees as part of its cultural, economic, and political “manifest destiny”, and the emerging nation state of Ukraine, which wishes to join the imperial sphere of the US/EU alliance and to assert itself as a regional power in its own right.

The war in eastern Ukraine is like all wars since the advent of the nation state: a bloody conflict declared by powers that be of two (or more) nations and executed by the people of those respective nations. The aim is national expansion or at least national preservation. By “national” read the state, its mechanisms and markets, and its conception of the people living within its borders. The people fight the war not because it is in their direct interest to do so, but because the powers that be have made an argument, or a declaration, that the “other” is the existential enemy of the people of “our” nation, and that to let them win would be to destroy all that is loved and cherished by the people. It is a sort of emotional blackmail that leads people who otherwise would have no stake in such a foolish conflict to give their lives for the national “cause”.

The powers that be in nation states are themselves guided by the powers that be within the power structure of the larger imperial states and the corporations and interests who depend on them and who support them. In this case Russia, under a nationalistic and paranoid leader, wishes to expand his power base and sphere of influence and to make himself look like a conquering hero to the people and the elites of his nation. This is also based in an all too Russian fear of being invaded and dominated by other powers. They are pitted against an pragmatic alliance of the US and EU Imperial systems, who are attempting to absorb Ukraine into the Neoliberal economic sphere and the Neoconservative military and cultural paradigm. Stuck in the middle is the smaller, but no less nationalistically driven, state of Ukraine, which after being dominated by Russia for centuries is now taking tentative steps towards creating its own national mythology and mission. There is no “right side” in this conflict, and there is no “winner” possible; the outcome will be one Imperial State or another gaining temporary advantage in the great chess game that is international affairs, while the people will suffer the consequences. There is nothing “radical” or “new” or “21st Century” about this war. Imperial states have always used proxies to fight, they have always stoked ethnic and national tensions in target nations, and they have always tried to manipulate the media message in their favor. The only thing that is different now is the technology involved and the paranoia and anxiety of a world that is slowly beginning to realize that nationalism and free market capitalism are the two evils that are turning the world into a hell-scape for most of its residents.

The ambitions of Imperial states often culminate in world wide, or region wide, conflict. This has happened ever since the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and continues to the present day. We have not seen a calamitous, world wide conflict since the end of the Second World War, but that does not mean it cannot, or will not, happen. Events such as those transpiring in Ukraine point to the fact that the world is still in thrall to the religion that is nationalism. Until we realize that we must unite as PEOPLE and not as NATIONS in order to reject the idea of separateness and profit over people we will never be able to “solve” or “win” conflicts like that in Ukraine. There are no winners in the great game of nationalism, only profiteers and power brokers.

Voting in Eastern Ukraine

Today the referendum asking if Luhansk and Donetsk wish to declare independence from/autonomy within Ukraine is being held (it is still unclear what the actual intention of the referendum is supposed to be) and both sides are out in full force smearing the other. The West (EU/Kyiv/US) is of course denouncing the vote as more Russian interference and as illegitimate (particularly rich when you consider how fast the West embraced the government of the leaders of the violent coup against the corrupt technocrat Victor Yanukovych…maybe because this new center-right government wishes to expand free trade into Ukraine and integrate with the capitalist West?) while the East is breathlessly denouncing the new Kyiv regime as “fascistic” and “anti-Russian”. Both sides are of course playing to their bases; Russia wants to keep control over the eastern regions of Ukraine and expand its economic sphere of influence and the West want a “stable” unified Ukraine that is ready for corporate and capitalist expansion and market liberalization. What do the people of Ukraine want? That is less that clear. Many in the east seem to want some form of federalization or at least recognition of their Russian heritage and language as well as a share of the prosperity promised by an increasingly Westernized and corporatized Kyiv. Some want independence, some want unity with Ukraine and some want to join the Russian Federation like their compatriots in Crimea. There is no clear cut answer to the question “who is in the right in Ukraine?” Everyone has their own agenda and the increasingly propagandized media (corporate dominated in the west and state dominated in the east) is happy to play each group off of the other. What is clear is that the people of eastern Ukraine want some measure of respect and the ability to control their own destiny. It remains to be seen whether this latest scheme will do that or just propel Ukraine ever closer to the brink of all out civil war.

Some Thoughts on Ukraine (As of 1:37AM Central Standard Time)

Major fighting has started in eastern and southern Ukraine between Kiev’s national armed forces and separatists and possibly Russian controlled elements. A battle between the two sides led to the over-running of a pro-Russian camp in Odessa. The  separatists and activists fled into a building that was later set on fire, possibly by accident, possibly by Ukrainian forces. 30+ are confirmed dead. This may be the misstep that Russia has been waiting for in order to justify a full scale invasion of the East and South. Two Ukrainian helicopters were shot down in the east as well and scores of pro-Russian/Anti-Kiev separatists have been killed by the Ukrainian military forces in their attempt to regain control of the east of the country, a region the acting President had recently said they had “lost control” over.

Who is in the “right” here? No one.

Russia is just as craven as EU/US when it comes to exploiting its neighbors. That being said EU/US have corporate interests in mind in Ukraine. With what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan and in Central and South America over the years I do not see how the US can claim any moral high ground here though. If we posit that US has the right to interfere in Central and South America then why shouldn’t Russia be able to interfere in Ukraine, especially considering US/UK/EU’s historical betrayal of their former Russian ally on many occasions in the past? We must stop looking at Ukraine as a East vs West conflict and start looking at what is best for the people of Ukraine. Economic servitude to Russia is not in their interest but neither is economic exploitation and corporate raiding by the EU/UK/US. The Maidan movement may have had some true believers taking part, and the late President surely was a corrupt thug, but to replace it with a flimsy cobbled together group of rightists/corporatists and nationalists is not the answer. The people of Ukraine need to take their destiny into their own hands. ALL the people. I fear this will not happen until a war with Russia and/or a civil war has taken place. I do hope I am wrong though.

Here is some good reporting/updates on the situation

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/23449-the-economic-plans-of-the-kiev-government-will-spell-ruin-for-a-great-many-in-ukraine

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/02/police-38-dead-in-protes_n_5255399.html

Also look into reporting by Interfax-Ukraine for some up to date, albeit heavily pro-west/Kiev slanted, coverage.