ARMAGEDDON'S SONG (Volume 3) 'Fight Through' (35 page)

As well as warning the attached arms and company
commanders, Pat Reed had the information passed to the OPs and snipers; Big
Stef listened briefly to a signaller at the battalion CP and replaced the
hides’ field telephone receiver.

“Keep a good eye open to the sunken lane, the Green
Machine lost its CP.”

Bill removed his eye from the Schmidt & Bender
sight. “They’ve got another, a fall back like we have, haven’t they?” The
infantry was not his chosen arm and despite the time spent with 1CG he found
many of the ways of the infantry a mystery.

“What about the farm, that’s a CP?”

“The farm’s their support company CP, and they may not
have an alternate…we only have one because of what happened before. It’s not
standard practice.” 

Bill returned his attention to the scope.

“The marines’ gunners are back.” Stef grunted an
acknowledgement. Half an hour before, the gunners had fired a mission and
relocated, vacating the gun line nearest the snipers just before Soviet counter
battery fire landed. The 105mm battery had been changing location after every
mission it fired in support of the troops on the ground, and was now moving
back in to their original position. If there were a breakdown in communication
between units, it would be hard to tell if the gunners were relocating or
bugging out because they may know something their neighbours didn’t. The only
way to tell would be the sudden influx of traffic, foot and vehicular, onto the
sunken lane.

“Keep a good eye out for any signs of the marines
pulling back, mate. This could all go to ratshit pretty damn quickly.”

Bill kept his eye fixed to the telescopic sight.

“There’s movement in the lane.”

Stef crawled back to his place beside the staff
sergeant and took up the Swiftscope, training it to where Bill had the rifle
aimed.

“You see a Landrover with stretchers along the back?”
Bill said. “It’s just to the left of the farm.”

Stef adjusted the point of view and then brought the
vehicle into focus, watching it as it moved slowly down the lane.

“Casevac run.” Stef muttered. “And it’s a Wimik, not a
‘
Lanny
’.”

Anything on the lane was visible to their hide for
only a hundred or so metres from the point where it appeared beside the farm, and
after a short while the Wimik’s position was only identifiable owing to the
vehicles radio antennae, sticking up above the lanes bordering hedgerow. They
watched it for a few minutes because there was nothing else going on at the
moment in their sphere of responsibility.

“Why do they keep on stopping?” Bill asked after the
antennae began whipping energetically back and forth, indicating the vehicle
had stopped again. It had done so twice within the space of a hundred metres.

“I
dunno
.” Stef was no wiser
than his mate. “Maybe it’s knackered, or maybe there’s obstacles in the road
that need shifting…and why are you asking me anyway, do I look like the fucking
oracle?” 

Any answer, which may have been coming, was drowned
out by the sound of three 240mm mortar rounds landing as one. Both snipers had
been looking elsewhere at that precise moment, and on looking toward the source
of the sound they found the view of the farm obscured by smoke and flying
debris. When the smoke cleared, the farmhouse, barn and all the rest of the
buildings had all but disappeared. The mortars had been fired from seven miles
away and the rounds had landed within a foot of one another, square on the roof
of the farmhouse, but to the casual observer it seemed that a single lucky,
or unlucky
,
round had scored on another 40 Commando CP. Fractured stone, brick and
splintered timbers were still landing far from the point where they had played
there part in the farms structure as Stef called it in on the field telephone.
Bill swung his weapon back toward the lane in time to see the last of the
stretchers and the burdens upon them being passed across the hedgerow. So the
vehicle had broken down then, he thought, and watched the half dozen stretcher
bearers lift their loads and start toward the hill defended by the
Coldstreamers. That wasn’t the marines pre-planned egress route but Bill didn’t
know if casevac’s had to follow the same route.     

The first port of call for Arnie was 1 Company, to
pass on the gospel according to Pat Reed and to look up his mate C/Sgt Osgood
before the fight started. Directing his driver to park up in a ‘garage’, a
prepared camouflaged area with camm nets thickening up the natural cover that
vehicles could use without having to unravel and drape their own nets over
whenever they stopped.

1 Company’s stores had two locations, the main stores
were well to the rear but a good stock of ammunition and munitions was in a
bunker dug into a reverse slope two hundred metres from the company CP and
covered with pine trunks before the earth was piled back on. Arnie headed for
the hillside stores first and met the padre as he made his way through the
trees; the padre was still doing the rounds, moving from trench to trench. The
sound of battle nearby had instilled in some a renewed interest in things
godly. The American paratrooper was moving downhill, whilst the British padre
was heading up, having visited the Hussars in their hide positions and was now
intent on speaking to the men in the forward positions. Arnie paused, stepping
to one side and extending a helping hand to assist him over a particularly
steep and muddy patch.

“Thank you
,
sarn’t major.” The padre was flushed and breathing heavily.

“When I left the infantry behind I left the concept of
‘infantry-fit’ behind too…I’m regretting that now.”

Arnie grinned at the man. Sure, he could be a bore and
a pain in the ass with his bible punching, singling an individual out for some
one- to-one attention, and usually when you had just come off duty, but he was
sincere and meant well or he’d be in a shelter bay already and not still
wandering around above ground offering spiritual support. Arnie was thinking of
something to say in reply, but both men heard the sound of an express train
approaching from the east. The paratrooper was beaten to a handy dip in the
ground by the padre, and both men pressed their faces into the mud as the sound
got louder.

“For what we are about to receive may the lord make us
truly thankful!” said the padre with irony.

Taken slightly aback, Arnie chuckled

“Amen.” and then the ground heaved.

The rounds had landed upon the hills top, shattering
the trunks of trees and cleaving deep craters in the earth, but otherwise doing
no harm.

The padre raised his head to listen; canting it to one
side for a few seconds, if the belt had been to ‘fire for effect’ then more
rounds would be following them in now.

“Ranging rounds, so they must be doing better than
expected against the marines, sarn’t major, and now they are thinking about
us.” He climbed to his feet.

“I’m thinking the Reds will be here in an hour or so,
and that means they’ll be stonking this hill in earnest a lot sooner than that!”

It was an ironic scene, the Man of God telling the
professional soldier what was happening in the battle.

The Padre’s first taste of incoming artillery had been
as a buckshee Guardsman during the Falklands War back in 1982, but it hadn’t
been his last by a long shot. Arnie Moore, on the other hand, had seen his own
share of conflict but until Magdeburg he had not been on the receiving end of
medium and heavy guns, which made the padre the resident expert. Looking at his
watch the RSM was troubled. It had been just a little over two hours since the
Soviet’s had hit the protective mine field to the front of the marine’s positions,
and 40 Commando’s CO had been confident on holding for up to twelve hours, six
at the very least. The Royal Marine’s weren’t some pussy, amateur outfit, he
had served alongside them in Afghanistan and Iraq, and if they were about to be
overrun, or pushed off the position early it wasn’t due to bad soldiering or a
lack of guts.

He cast a quick glance downhill towards Oz’s stores
before turning and following the padre back uphill. Social calls would have to
wait.

The stretcher bearing party had passed through the
Battery from 29 Commando Regiment, Royal Artillery, uphill into the trees and
out of view from the hide who’s occupants could hear the sound of combat from
over the rise the farm buildings had occupied, in the dead ground beyond. In
the last forty minutes the sound of small arms had increased, and shortly after
that the sound of main tank guns could be discerned. The Royal Marines, unlike
the USMC, have no armour of their own. Two Troops of Scimitar light tanks on
attachment from the Blue’s & Royals were the nearest thing they had, the
Scimitars 30mm Rarden cannon was ineffective against medium or heavy armour but
it could defeat APCs.

The marines had twice the number of Milan’s that an
infantry battalion carried and they constituted the units principle tank
killer, reaching out 2000m at their extreme range. The 94mm LAW is meant to
take over from the Milan when the targets reach 400m, which is the Milan’s
minimum engagement range; however the troops had found that opening fire with
the LAW at anything above 150m was a waste of ammunition if the target was
moving.

The artillery had ensured that the Milan teams had
their work cut out, they fired a high percentage of shells fused for airburst
and whereas these had no effect on troops in shelter bays with decent top
cover, they were designed for use against troops in firing bays. Had the Milan
teams had a free hand then they could in theory have destroyed eighty enemy
AFVs between the minefield and the Milan’s own minimum engagement range, but
only twenty three of the lead
assault
battalions vehicles were stopped by the guided weapons.

Channelling the enemy into the prepared killing zone
had met with only limited success. Engineer vehicles had bridged the vehicle
ditch in several places, allowing the mine ploughs to clear paths through the
narrowest parts of the minefield. Rather than having a target rich environment
of fighting vehicles sat stationary behind mine ploughs destroyed by Milan,
those anti-tank teams that were not being kept in the bottom of their holes by
constant airbursts had found ranks of mine ploughs confronting them. In the
12.5 seconds it took the weapons to reach maximum range the Soviet artillery
spotters were targeting the launch site and a hundred square metres of real
estate around the firing points for some serious attention in case the missile
launcher had been remote sited. They had the quantity of weapons to achieve
their aim, and consequently fewer than a dozen mine ploughs and combat engineer
vehicles were destroyed. Too often the anti-tank gunners had fired and were
guiding the missile home when they were hit by shrapnel or just forced to take
cover, even.

The LAW gunners weren’t troubled by the Soviet
artillery in the same way that the Milan crews had been, because as someone had
once said, ‘It’s considered bad form to shell your own troops’. The AFVs were
too close to the marine’s positions and so the gunners switched from H.E to
smoke. The LAW isn’t equipped with thermal sights and that fact, coupled with
the burning particles of white phosphorus that produced the smoke, reduced the
ability of the lightweight weapons gunners to engage. 

The loss of 40 Commando’s command post so early on had
robbed the unit of its practiced and experienced, dedicated artillery and close
air support systems before the Soviet’s had finished softening up their
intended victim. The Commando units forward air controller, artillery rep and
their staff’s, died when a single and frighteningly accurate salvo of heavy
artillery scored a direct hit on the CP. Bravo Company’s commander assumed
control but he had neither the staff nor the radios to take over the role of
the CO and fulfil the duties the former CP had achieved so well. He delegated
the passing of artillery requests to Alpha Company CP, and Charlie Company the
air support liaison role, but Alpha and Charlie were over two kilometres apart
and liaison between the two became disjointed.

To the front of Bravo Company an entirely natural
feature was causing the enemy fighting vehicles coming their way to bunch up. A
section of stream with particularly high banks on one side, and a dense stand
of Sycamore trees on the other were spoiling the combat spacing between
vehicles as they were forced to close up in order to get
past.   

Charlie Company CP received an airstrike request from
a Section Commander and Alpha Company passed on a fire mission from a Troop
Commander.
Neither CP told the other about it
, and
so it was that a pair of RAF
Tornado’s arrived over the bottle neck that was thick with enemy APCs and Tanks
at the same time as a full battery’s worth of improved munitions discharging
Skeet submunitions. The leading Tornado was hit by a submunition and exploded
in mid-air whilst the second aircraft sucked debris from the leader into an air
intake, and trailing smoke and fire it made it to the brigade’s rear area where
both crewmen ejected safely. From then on the NATO air force’s insisted on
double checking with the artillery before accepting missions from 40 Commando,
and the ensuing delays were the cause of missed opportunities.