' The Longest Night ' & ' Crossing the Rubicon ': The Original Map Illustrated and Uncut Final Volume (Armageddon's Song) (10 page)

2Lt Ferguson and Sergeant Blackmore took over the trench of 2 Section's commander whilst the platoons sniping pair occupied the other. The radios, field telephone and Claymore clickers were transferred to the trench along with the communication’s cords.

The platoon’s fire plan with its DFs and FPFs was written on Sgt Blackmore’s range card and attached to the radio antennae by para cord. Needless to say, the young officer had not been trusted to contribute to that either.

The level of muddy water was now an inch from drowning the beer crate sanctuaries and Dougal stood carefully, hooking the telephone handset over the set itself, hung suspended by its carrying strap clear of the water on a tripflare picket.

An old mess tin served to bail out the trench, being careful not to dump the contents on the section’s C9 Minimi sat on the lip of the firebay.

Bailing duty complete and Dougal paused to listen. Someone was snoring and it seemed to come from the sentry position to his left where the platoons main firepower, the GPMG, general purpose machine gun resided. Everyone was tired but that was no excuse. There was never any excuse for the sentries to be asleep. The platoon’s gun position covered the approaches to the position from this side of the woods and the duty was shared on a stag roster, so called as the duty was at staggered times, a 'fresh' sentry coming on duty every hour for a two hour stint.

Dougal looked down at the sleeping Sergeant Blackmore and wondered if he should stay aloof and instead delegate his platoon sergeant? Dougal hefted his C8 assault rifle and left the trench to lie beside it, pausing to peer through the rubber
eyepiece. In the same way an ordinary pair of binoculars will assist your ability to see at night, so too do the unpowered weapons sights by magnifying the available light, even if that light is poor. 

Sweeping from the platoons left flank to the right flank he saw just empty open ground beyond the woods edge. Belly down, he snaked across the intervening space between the trenches.

Both men were asleep on their feet, an act achievable by the truly exhausted in the most uncomfortable of circumstances. Dougal did not know what made him raise his weapon to again use the sight but the ground beyond the trees was no longer empty, four men were moving toward this very spot in single file, moving carefully, 'ghost walking' to avoid noise and sudden, eye catching movement.

The lead man carried a weapon the same as his own Canadian army variant of the M16, and wore the same French style ballistic helmet, but the remainder were tucked in close behind him and their weapons were not visible either.

The GPMG had a starlight scope attached to the tripod in place of a C2 sight and Dougal slipped into the trench between both sleeping sentries and switched the sight on.

A low pitched whine announced that the sight was working, he pressed his face to the eyepiece and immediately the approaching men were more clearly picked out in varied shades of green. The picture was better than that of his Suit sight but the lack of any stars light meant the scene was darker than it could be. Dougal thumbed on the sights laser torch attachment.

The laser torch provides a light source similar to that of a clear starry sky, but it not only sucks batteries dry with frightening speed, it also acts as a beacon for battlefield laser detectors so should be used with extreme caution.

The young Canadian took a long look at the higher definition picture before switching the laser off.

The sentry to his left came awake as the GPMG was cocked.

“Halt!” Dougal hissed as loud as he judged necessary to be heard by the first of the four.

He saw a momentary hesitation in stride but they continued.

“It’s Molineux and the listening patrol, sir.” The sentry whispered, staring through own C8’s Suit Sight.

Dougal had been able to see the name tag on the lead man’s combat jacket and indeed it did read ‘Molineux’

There were a number of reasons why the patrol could be returning, such as to report the approach of the enemy in person if their radio had gone U/S, unserviceable.

It would have been easy to allow the sentry’s judgement to over-ride his own; after all he was a veteran, unlike his screw-up platoon commander.

Instead of being reassured though, Dougal felt hairs rising on the back of his neck. Ignoring the sentry, his thumb depressed the safety lug.

“HALT…hands up!”

It was seemingly implausible that all four could not have heard the challenge, and they were now almost too close.

He unlocked the tripod, allowing the weapon to be traversed and elevated manually.

“No sir, its Molineux…”

The GPMG roared, the muzzle flash illuminating the scene and the long burst ripping through the lead man and the three clustered behind.

“STOP, its Molineu…!”

“STAND TO!” Dougal shouted, seeing figures appearing in his sights out of the dead ground before them, a hundred and fifty metres beyond the edge of the wood line.

Rounds cracked passed and the sentry to his right awoke only to drop without a sound to the bottom of the trench, his helmet spinning away in a scarlet haze of blood, fragments of skull and grey lumps of brain matter.

Two PK machine guns, close cousins to the GPMG in Dougal’s grasp, were firing on the gimpy’s muzzle flash.

Startled awake by the burst of fire from the GPMG, Sgt Blackmore immediately looked across to where his young platoon commander should have been, but wasn’t.

Where the hell was the idiot? Then of course he heard Dougal shouting
“Stand-to!”
and saw the cause. Blackmore made a frantic grab for the Claymore clickers.

Exhausted men, rudely awoken, and only a few of whom were quick enough to put rounds down, and then not entirely accurately as tired eyes take some moments to focus.

The desultory muzzle flashes were encouraging rather than inhibiting, and the relative lack of accuracy emboldened the Russian infantry officers.

Two infantry companies had quietly made their way into the dead ground between the turnip field and the woods, waiting in the rain as the four specialist reconnaissance troopers had attempted to enter the Canadian’s lines by subterfuge.

Plan A was for the sentries to be despatched with some dexterous knife work thereby allowing the waiting infantry to follow on with bloody effect.

Plan B was to rush the positions on a narrow front, one company behind the other should the first course of action fail.

The company commander of the second company was a cautious man and ordered his company forward by half sections. It was a slow business and a tiring one, but it kept half of his men in cover and able to put down supporting fire for the remainder at any one time. It was in contrast to the leading company’s advance.

Instead of employing fire and manoeuvre the lead attacking company now broke into a slow jog as folding bayonets were swung into position and locked into place, whereupon the men opened their legs, picking up speed. This became an energetic dash to close with the enemy before they could rouse themselves.  There was no shouting, no war cries, just the pounding of two hundred and twenty boots against the sodden ground. The panting breath of a hundred and ten men exerting themselves into as close to a sprint as the equipment they bore would allow.

Adrenaline surged, hearts pounded…

A hundred metres…

…..fifty...

……..thirty…

Those at the forefront were pounding ahead of the pack and could make out the outline of individual tree trunks on the edge of the wood.

Heads lowered and arms began to straighten, extending bayonet tipped assault rifles toward an enemy they would be amongst in just a few more strides.

Before the wood line there blossomed black clouds of smoke with the flash of detonating claymore mines at ground level. The Russian infantry charge met a wall of ball bearings that turned men into shredded, bloody rags.

The echo of the blasts reverberated in rapid succession cross fields, hills and dales, giving way to screams from the injured, the mortally wounded, the disfigured and blinded.

Over a hundred bodies lay in the open between the dead ground and the wood line. Most lay unmoving but some writhed in agony, screaming for aid, or in the case of the mortally wounded, calling out for their mothers as men who know they are dying will often do.

For a few moments the firing paused, both sides seemingly shocked by the mines effects and Sgt Blackmore was startled by a figure landing with a splash beside him.

Blackmore released the mines firing clickers and grasped his folding shovel. He was in the process of raising it up high for a killing stroke when the figure jammed one of the earpieces of the R/T set against his right ear and spoke in a raised, but controlled voice into the microphone, a contact report followed by a mortar fire control order.

“Hello Zero this is Six Nine, contact, contact, contact… one hundred, one hundred plus enemy infantry advancing to my front, out to you…..hello Five Zero Charlie, this is Six Nine, infantry in the open
, shoot Foxtrot Papa Foxtrot Six Zero Alpha, over.....roger that…wait, over!”

Dougal squatted and peered at his wristwatch for several seconds before turning his head and speaking calmly to his platoon sergeant.

“You may want to put that down and take cover, Sergeant Blackmore, this could be close…” cupping his hands to his mouth he called out the warning. “..INCOMING!”

His sergeant blinked as if not recognising the confident young officer before him. Gone was the hapless and bumbling subaltern, dismissed forever with the first hostile shot.

The first belt of 81mm mortar rounds landed to the right rear of the second infantry company.

“Hello Five Zero Charlie, this is Six Nine, adjust fire, shift Left one zero zero, Down zero five zero, over!”

“Five Zero Charlie, wait…shot One Two Four, over!”

Again Dougal looked intently at the illuminated hands of his wristwatch as the second hand counted off twenty four and again shouted “Incoming!” with four seconds to spare.

With no warning whistle such as would accompany artillery rounds, the next belt was ‘on’ and devastating.

It did not land dead centre, it straddled the left flank platoon, blasting apart all of those on their feet at the time.

“Six Nine…adjust fire, shift Left zero five zero, Down zero five zero…” 

Kneeling beside the body of the partially stripped Canadian corporal, the commander of the Russian 32
nd
MRD’s reconnaissance battalion listened to the sound of his gamble failing. So be it, he thought, it had been worth trying as they had found the four-man listening post asleep, so there had been the chance that the same weariness was affecting their main body. Taking a position by stealth was far more economic than the alternative.

Raising his glasses he watched the companies of infantry who had accompanied his men. They were caught out in the open by mortar fire that was being walked through them in a well-controlled manner.

“Well comrade, we try the old fashioned way instead, yes?” he said resignedly, addressing the infantry’s battalion commander.

To their rear, 120mm mortars fired their bedding-in rounds towards the woods as the officers returned to their respective command vehicles.

Dougal was peering cautiously over the lip of their trench, called in adjustments as if this were a table-top exercise on the Puff Range at RMCC Kingston with, as the name implies, puffs of talcum powder representing the fall-of-shot on a chicken wire and painted hessian mock-up of a landscape, instead of a real battlefield. 

The enemy infantry had gone to ground; the only sensible option and the platoon’s sniping pair left the trench in the rear. Running forwards, on their feet due to the absence of incoming fire, and the bursting HE providing cover from view almost as effective as that of smoke. Even the PKs that had been suppressing the platoon’s ‘Gimpy’ SF were now silent.

Both snipers sprinted past Dougal and Sergeant Blackmore, inten
ding to crawl the last few yards into cover.

Dougal was thrown backwards, the front wall of the trench he had been leaning against having physically jolted him off his feet.

The ground heaved; trees exploded sending wicked splinters a foot in length flying outwards, and the sound ruptured eardrums.

A small portion of the division’s mortars pounded the woods but the artillery merely laid on their guns and waited.

The Canadian’s mortar lines were unable to counter-battery fire the larger Russian 120mm tubes which were beyond their range.

ARTHUR, the brigade artillery’s back tracking radar followed the azimuth of the incoming rounds  and provided a location for the enemy mortar line that was accurate to within ten feet. The operators were sceptical though as these mortarmen were top class, not some green or third rate unit so why hadn’t they scooted and a second mortar line taken over already? That was how the Russians worked, three, four and sometimes five mortar lines sharing the same fire mission, in turn they would drop three or four rounds per tube and be
gone before the counter battery fire arrive. In that way the target received constant attention.