Red Inferno: 1945 by Robert Conroy Page B

attacked they will fight back and we will try to save them, won’t we, General?”
    Marshall’s face was set even more firmly then usual. “Yes, sir,” he said slowly.
    M AJOR G ENERAL C HRISTOPHER J. M ILLER sucked on his pipe and exhaled a small cloud of smoke from his dwindling supply of Virginia tobacco. It was this virtually continuous act that had given him his nickname of “Puff” early on in his military career. He had hated it, as he felt it made him seem soft. Now it no longer bothered him, and anyone who dealt with him knew that while he was polite, considerate, and even gracious, he was far from soft. He had to admit, though, that the additional pounds he had recently added to his five-foot-six-inch frame were also making him look just a little puffy.
    Miller tapped his pipe against the heel of his boot and knocked out a clot of ashes as he watched a column of vehicles arrange themselves along the highway a few yards away. They were no longer advancing.
    Now, only a few miles from their goal of Berlin, General Miller was not a very happy man as he contemplated the two messages he’d received. The first was an administrative one. The move on Berlin had been thrown together so quickly that there had been no time to name it. The two divisions had each belonged to two different corps and their being together was a marriage of military necessity. Thus, instead of creating a new corps, they had initially named the group Miller Force and now it was confirmed. It was unusual for a group that size to be named after an individual, but it indicated the temporary nature of the situation.
    Miller supposed he should have been flattered. For an intoxicating moment, he had allowed himself to visualize the headline “Miller Force Takes Berlin.” For a career that had been undistinguished for almost thirty years since his graduation from Texas A&M, it would have been a crowning achievement and a fitting end. At the war’s beginning, he had been an overage major with little hope of promotion. For a moment he allowed his imagination to run wild and he visualized another headline: “Miller Captures Hitler.” Damn it all, his family would have been so proud.
    Then he got the second message.
    It had come moments later and directly from Omar Bradley, bypassing Simpson. It said the Russians might attack him and he should circle the wagons and prepare to fight a defensive battle. But how the hell did he do that? The two divisions were strung out for a score or more miles and were vulnerable at a number of places. He was prepared for an attempt by the Germans to cut the column, but Russian military capabilities were far different and much stronger than the collapsing Germans. Additionally, the message said he should not start anything. If the Russians wanted a fight, they were going to be allowed to get in the first punch. It didn’t seem fair, but he had his orders.
    Miller heard a buzzing sound overhead and saw yet another Russian airplane flying parallel to the column. It was a Stormovik, a heavily armored tank killer designed for ground support. He couldn’t fire at it since it hadn’t done anything yet. Nobody had. It was simply watching. So too were American planes, and they had reported heavy concentrations of Soviet armor moving toward him. What the Air Corps couldn’t tell him was their intentions.
    What the air force also couldn’t promise him was continuous cover. The speed of the American advance meant that airstrips were well behind the lead tanks of Miller Force. Without drop tanks, American planes would not be able to linger long over his men. He was beginning to feel naked and he didn’t like it at all.
    Puff Miller had done what he could. He had ordered the column to halt and ordered each of his units to assume whatever defensive formation was logical under the strung-out circumstances. It seemed likely that any defensive alignments were going to be highly fragmented and rarely more than company or