' The Longest Night ' & ' Crossing the Rubicon ': The Original Map Illustrated and Uncut Final Volume (Armageddon's Song) (20 page)

The M1 and the Pumas avoided the shapes upon the car parks surface. Like scattered dolls, tossed away by a petulant child, the dead of D Company, 1 Wessex, lay where they had been cut down.

The giant furniture store burned out of control, flames leaping high despite the rain.

The 13 Tank and the Pumas had the benefit of eyes-on intelligence from 14 Platoon’s LAW80 team on the elevated Autobahn 391.  

Apparently far less concerned by the threat of the 94mm anti-tank rocket than they were by the Italian 155mm battery, the five remaining T-72s and T-90s were moving frequently but staying relatively close by to the autobahns.

The Italian commanders plan to draw out the vehicles to defend against his detached troop upon the autobahn had seemed a bust until three of the Soviet tanks went north along the tow path before dashing east beside Autobahn 2 under cover of smoke. This left the 13 tank merely outnumbered two to one, but whoever the guy was commanding the defence had a plan, apparently.

“TANK ACTION,
RIGHT!”

A vibration on the road bed had caused some hopeful glances to the west, but the cause was not the arrival of 4 Corps but the next Soviet bid at taking the junction and bridge.

The pair of T-72s on the south side opened fire with high explosive fragmentation rounds, 12.7mm and 7.62mm machine guns.

Having climbed the embankment on to Autobahn 2 east of the airfield where they had RV’d with the IFVs. The Soviets did not wish to hanging about. Safety from the 155mm guns relied upon closing quickly with the defenders. However, the BTR’s attempt to climb the steep embankment met with little success. Three T-90s sat on Autobahn 2; the BTR blocked the way for the tracked BMPs, its eight wheels unable to gain traction on the muddy slope.

Close to the bridge, the time had come to deal with the remaining pair of T-72s there.   

Baz Cotter used the periscope for the GPMG’s C2 sight to arrange the four crouching LAW80 operators out of view behind the crash barrier of Autobahn 2 and describe the target as he prepared a shermouli.

Each of the 94mm men had one of the weapons on their shoulders and a second weapon ready beside them. 

“Okay, I can only see one of them, number two is out of sight in the loading bay of one of those little factor units. But, there is the one Nev already had a pop at and it is about one hundred metres straight ahead, and it is at a slight angle in the street.” He lowered the device. “The good news is the turret isn’t facing this way, the bad news is you can’t see the missing ERA blocks where Nev hit because a wall is in the way, so aim for the right side of the turret, and obviously try and hit the same place.”

“This had better bleedin’ work or some arms dealer’s customer services are getting a snotty letter from my solicitor.” Nev said.

“Get ready Nev…” Baz rose up and aimed the shermouli at the tank, intending to put the flare beside the tank where they could see it without illuminating the entire junction.

He fired, and straight away it became obvious he had not thought it through that well. The thing did not simply hit the side of the tank and lie there obediently providing a source of light, it was rocket propelled and as long as the rocket was active it was not lying still for anyone. It ricocheted from the tank, to the road, to the wall, across the road and bounced off the wall there also before skidding along the road to fetch up beside the gutter.

The T-72 was back-lit by the flare and that would have to do.

Nev rose up, fired a spotting round and adjusted his aim before squeezing off the 94mm rocket, the third one to be fired by him at this same tank that night. An ERA block performed its design function, but a patch of armour was now exposed. Like a sluggish Mexican wave the AT men popped up and fired. Four 94mm rockets and no kill until Nev launched the fifth, and that finally penetrated and set off one of the tanks own rounds in the automatic loader.

The soldier beside Nev collapsed without a sound, hit in the face by a 7.62 round from the second tank which suddenly came into view.

The crash barrier provided cover from view but little else. Baz and the three survivors lay flat on the wet tarmac before crawling backwards.

The 13 tank came out of a side road and found the T-72’s exposed rear filling its sights, the 105mm sabot penetrated the thinner armour behind the turret where the ammunition bins were, and it blew up.

With main gun raised to maximum elevation the 13 tank negotiated the embankment, but the Italian Pumas encountered the same problem the Soviet BTR had.

Hurriedly, a tow cable was disconnected and left to lie abandoned after a T-90s had towed the BTR up the embankment. Their gunfire support had abruptly ceased and neither T-72 was answering its radio. The BMPs gained the top of the embankment and all six fighting vehicles went straight into the attack, accelerating towards the junction and bridge, the tanks drawing ahead of the infantry fighting vehicles. 

The same problem that the BTR found was also being experience by the Italian infantrymen in the 5
th
Cavalry Pumas. The solution there was to debus and scramble up, hauling up the pair of Spike-MR launchers and missile canisters.

The missiles thermal seekers require no super cooling and they are capable of being launched as soon as the missile canister is attached to the launcher.

The left hand T-90 was struck on its forward glacis beside to driver’s compartment by the 13 tanks sabot. ERA activated and rendered the hit ineffectual, the Soviet tank drove out of the resulting smoke and debris, returning fire.

Aboard the 13 tank a hammer blow was followed instantly by a wave of intense heat before the Halon fire extinguisher cut in. Suffering from flash burns the commander and gunner bailed out, as did the driver. The loader remained where he was, killed instantly by the penetrating round.

The right hand T-90 stopped suddenly, belching smoke and then flame, it was joined a moment later by its neighbour.

Suddenly finding itself alone and exposed the remaining tank began to jink from side to side. Its commander identified the cause of the other two vehicles demise.

“Gunner, HE, infantry anti-tank team!”

“Identified, but sabot loaded!” he reminded the commander.

There was no time waste reloading with a HE round, as the commander could see the crew were attaching a fresh canister.

“Fire!”

“On the way!”

The tungsten dart struck the tarmac beside the Spike crew, a killing result if it had been a HE round.

The Italian AT gunner fired, the tandem warhead defeated the ERA and the T-90 swung suddenly to the right, through the crash barrier to overturn on the steep bank.

Only four LAW80s remained, and with a maximum range of only 500m there were some tightening sphincters as the trio of Soviet IFVs, each with its accelerator mashed to the floor, closed on them rapidly. The BTR and BMP’s 20 and 30mm cannons opened fire. Nev Kennington lay on the wet road, his body at a right angle to avoid the LAW80’s back-blast when launching the 94mm rocket. He was aiming for the driver of the middle vehicle, waiting for the vehicle to come into range when it stopped and began to burn.

The attack by his last infantry, supported by a tank troop, had failed but the Abrams tank seemed to be out of action. He had eleven tanks remaining, how fast could the NATO anti-tank crews reload and how many reloads remained to them?

He would take the junction and deal with the rest of the Italians when they finally turned up.

In two files, keeping carefully to the tracks made by the first of his T-90s when they had attacked this airfield, they left the cover of the forest, the Romanian battalion commanders tank was number two in the right hand column.

“Gunner load HE….”

The lead tank shuddered to a halt with its hatches blowing off, still well within the minefield. The battalion commander had been looking intently at the junction but had not seen any obvious sign of where the shot had come from. He then noticed that the lead tank in the left hand column was also knocked out.

“Driver, go around it.”

Clearly fearful of the mines but more scared of their unseen attackers the driver complied, intending to keep as close to the tank tracks as possible. He pulled out to the left, straightened up, and as he did so the left rear of the track went over a waiting bar mine.

Diesel from a ruptured fuel line would not have burnt, but the petrol in the fuel lines did, spreading to the fuel tank in moments.

Lorenzo’s tankers picked off the Romanian T-90s from their positions back in the forest, targeting the enemy’s engine compartments and being rewarded with single hit kills.

All eleven tanks burned with an awful ferocity.

For the second time that day, Lt Col Rapagnetta swore never to eat pork again.

CHAPTER
5

Vormundberg

L/Cpl Veneer and Guardsman Troper were members of the battalion defence platoon’s most unloved, the Billy-no-Mates Section, or Air Defence, to give it its proper title. Every time they launched the enemy marked down the area for special attention. They now occupied a previously vacant location further up the hillside, their former trench having been compromised the previous day.

Drawing upon their previous experiences in the war they did not scrimp on sweat and effort. Extra sandbags were begged, borrowed or on ‘permanent loan without the owner’s knowledge or permission’. Their former 4 Company neighbours, all members of the 82nd Airborne, had greeted the move of the unwelcome pair in the typical heart-warming fashion of soldiers everywhere.

Abuse and catcalls had infuriated Troper as they carried out the move, and on ferrying the final item, a soggy package from his girlfriend via the British Forces Post Office, he had delivered what he believed to be the ultimate of insults to Americans everywhere.

“Yo Mother!” in best broad Lancashire accented imitation of a New York cab driver.

“What?” a mortar man from Minnesota had queried.

“You shagged my mother!” Troper qualified, turning away triumphantly.

There was a short pause as the meaning of the term shagged sank home, and howls of laughter followed.

L/Cpl Steve Veneer had shaken his head despairingly.

“You were meant to say ‘I shagged YOUR mother.’ You twat!”

They were now sat in the shelter bay of the new trench where Guardsman Andy Troper used his pen light to examine the contents of the package.

“That silly bitch cost me a thousand quid.”

Lance corporal Veneer reached across into the package and lifted out his mate’s letter, the same one he had sent to his girlfriend.

Six fine woven rugby shirts, in the Blue-Red-Blue Divisional colours for the Guards had arrived that morning. Troper’s samples were individually sealed in plastic; a large Coldstream Star on the chest of each shirt was flanked on each side by a depiction of a soldier aiming a shoulder launched AA weapon. One held a Blowpipe launcher at an angle of 45° and the other a Stinger. As a means of upping their profile and standing within the battalion the scheme had merit, but it was the execution that had been poor, so not even the most gifted marketing team could have shifted them, even at a loss. In place of the regiments motto, ‘Nulli Secundus’, Troper had elected to have a different form of wording to set off the garment, and it was that wording, which instead of bigging-up the section was in fact a typo that was going to cause derision in the ranks.

   “A bit of punctuation and some lower case lettering in your instructions might not have gone amiss.”

“Me biro was playing up in the damp.” came a defensive reply.

“Spacing between words could have made all the difference too.”

“It was dark.”

“How many did you have made?”

“An ‘undred.”

“Never mind mate.” Veneer said with sympathy. “Perhaps some wig manufacturer will take them off your hands after the war.” He handed back the evidence that it pays to be literate. THEM SHI RTS HAVE T OHAVE THE S AME LOGOI NEACH BATC HAIR DEFENDERS.

Steve wondered if the Hair Defender rugby shirts would even sell on ebay? But he kept it to himself as Andy was having a bad day.

There had been no call on their services for almost a day. No fixed wing and no enemy helicopters either. Both soldiers had been on another hillside, above the river Wesernitz, when the

Vormundberg UK Sector

Soviets had given the battalion the full and undivided attention of a division’s close air support, artillery and mortars.   The day’s light, to token, artillery and mortar fire which accompanied the latest attacks had been a distinct relief even if there had been no opportunity to show their ability again. It had been quiet for a while, but they and their weapons remained ready.

The lull following the previous attack came to an end and with it the artillery and mortar fire.

The armoured juggernaut, 4 Corps, would not be stopped, and fresh orders, a renewed focus on the Vormundberg came into play. 

Acting as a tripwire for the battalion, Bill and Big Stef had worked their way cautiously forward, covering only twenty five yards in the space of an hour but finding a spot where they could observe both the Czechs occupying the former positions of 7 and 8 Platoon and the far side of the valley.

All three of 3 Company’s platoons had been withdrawn up the slope by Tim Gilchrist once night had fallen, digging the trenches firing bays in the soft earth but having no time to complete shelter bays. The foot of the hill belonged to the Czechs but most of the stores had been saved. The remainder had been booby trapped and destroyed in an explosion thirty minutes after their departure.

Activity in this captured position was the first indication that another attack was about to come their way.

The snipers passed up on several opportunities to kill obvious leaders, but at least they had located the positions of their next targets when the time came.

Artillery and mortar fire fell to their rear so they saw, rather than heard, when the Czech 23
rd
MRR’s tanks broke cover and began to advance across the valley towards them.

They came on slower than usual, a mass of tanks, mixed T-76, T-80 and T-90 main battle tanks with ZSU-23-4 and BRDM-
2 equipped with SA-9 air to surface missiles were dotted about in the mix.

Despite the circumstances, the almost complete lack of any remaining anti-tank mines, the way was led by T-72 and older T-60s equipped with mine ploughs.

“No APCs, no infantry fighting vehicles at all.” Stef reported back to the battalion CP.

Bill nudged him with his foot. He was not looking across the valley but at the nearby trenches.

“These guys are in an awful hurry!”

Frantic activity had suddenly taken hold amongst the infantry.

“Oh crap; they’re getting suited and booted for NBC, all masked up!”

After the initial, massive expenditure, of chemical weapons at the start of the war their use had petered out. Their principle means of delivery, artillery, had been choked off by the mass airborne landing in the Soviet’s rear.

“They seem to know something we do not…” Stef hurriedly informed the CP of this important fact.

The snipers wore their ‘noddy suits’ beneath their ghillie suits, they ceased breathing as they pressed against the earth out of view to pulled on the masks. Despite the absence of chemical and biological weapons of late, they had continued changing the smock, trousers and air filters regularly. Wet weather can reduce the life span of both filters and suits by fifty percent and it had been raining solidly for two days.

The detector paper sheets that were currently upon their clothing and equipment were now changed as a precaution.

Stef produced a small booklet which declared itself in print to be ‘Detector Paper, Chemical Agent, No.2, Mk 1, Liquid, One Colour’. Bill flipped across another with US stock numbers on the front, M8 Detector Paper, which allegedly identified the group a chemical agent came from, Mustard, Persistent Nerve Agents and the Non Persistent variety.

Stef affixed the small sheets to boots, upper arms, and the backs of their rubber gloves as well as to their weapons.

Back in the battalion CP the staff were hurriedly masking up. All along the Vormundberg masks and gloves were being pulled on and hoods were raised.

The buddy-buddy system came into play, crouching down in pairs to check the seal on your mate’s suit and mask. Once suited and masked there were two main ways of identifying an individual; a hastily printed name in chalk or yellow crayon on a strip of black masking tape stuck to the chest of the charcoal impregnated smock, and one written on a piece of surgical tape on the masks ‘forehead’.

The Operations Officer of 1
st
Battalion Coldstream Guards looked around for his commanding officer. Pat Reed had stepped outside with the acting adjutant a short while ago. The 2 i/c was aware of the reason, Timothy Gilchrist had informed him briefly of the death of the CO’s son when Tim had been called away to take over 3 Company. The former adjutant and Pat Reed were quite close and such news would have best come from him, but as ever in war that ideal circumstance, bad news broken by a friend, is often denied to us.

   With Tim now the OC of 3 Company there was another slot to be filled in the command chain, albeit temporarily. The acting adjutant had returned from his unenviable task but the CO had not. ‘Ops’ was the third in command of the battalion and raised the radio handset quickly.

“Hello all stations address group Hotel Zulu, this is Nine Bravo,
‘Sceptic Arrow’
over.”

The company, squadron and battery headquarters that were part of the battalion, or attached to it, began to answer in turn and inform their own sub units.

A figure in full NBC entered the CP, identifiable by gait and bearing as Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Reed, and the Ops officer vacated the CO’s command spot.

As Pat Reed took his place the Ops officer looked into his commanding officers eyes, bloodshot with very recent outpourings of grief but now with a certain hardness, and anger, he had never seen in Pat before.

Once more the Hussars Challenger 1, 2s and Chieftains 10s occupied fighting positions. The CO wanted to open the
defence with a TOT, a timed on target shoot, with all the heavy weapons available to the battalion hitting the enemy at the same instant. The different ranges and trajectories were all worked out by the artillery rep for the battalion but the target very much depended on the enemy’s choice of approach route. The resulting Soviet counter battery fire meant the TOT could only happen the once because shoot and scoot would then be the name of the game. As they only had that one opportunity to inflict maximum damage and a telling shock effect they had better get it right, and those had been Pat Reed’s words early in the evening.

Major Venables stared into his sights at the approaching armour, the accompanying artillery barrage now falling heavily about them, shrapnel from airbursts striking the armour.

“I could have got used to there being no artillery,” his driver said over the intercom, his voice slightly muffled by the mask.

“All good things come to an end…” now it was back to business. “Okay, heads back in the game, we can forget the plough tanks as priority targets, so look for command tanks and AAA vehicles, people.” Mark Venables would have preferred a battalion commander, but he saw three enemy tanks with clusters of antennae, the lead company commanders if their positions were anything to go by. It was too good an opportunity to miss, and destroying all three at once would pay a bonus in shock effect too. Keying his radio mike he began to set it up.

“Hello Tango One One Alpha and Tango One Two Charlie, this is Tango One…”

Bill checked the detector paper that was stuck liberally about himself and his equipment; it was all clear despite the barrage. Had the Czechs in the captured trenches received the wrong directive? No, they were all of them still suited, booted and alert now.

Elsewhere along the Vormundberg, detector paper and electrical devices were being checked but all remained clear. It
was unlike the enemy to give more than a couple of minutes’ notice to its own advance troops lest they lose the benefits of surprise.

“Where’s the infantry then?” Stef asked. “Where are the IFVs?”

With that tank battalion now half way between to the sunken lane and the start line a second battalion of thirty tanks appeared out of the trees across the valley.

“How very retro.” Bill murmured, having swung his sights back in that direction.

Each tank carried perhaps a dozen infantrymen clustered upon it, and twice that number crowded behind in the machines wake. A thousand man infantry battalion doing it the way their grandfathers had.

These were also in full NBC order. It had to be heavy going for those on foot as the enemy’s suits retained heat just as the NATO version did.