' The Longest Night ' & ' Crossing the Rubicon ': The Original Map Illustrated and Uncut Final Volume (Armageddon's Song) (9 page)

The remainder stocked up on grenades, fragmentation and smoke, refilled magazines and water bottles, attempting at the same time to boost flagging energy reserves by shovelling cold compo rations into their mouths, replacing what the nervous energy and physical effort of close quarters combat had burned off. The small metal tin openers revealed a variety of contents from Baked Beans to Fruit Salad, all were devoured cold, straight from the tin. As ever though the ‘Cheese, Processed’ cans, and green mini packets of ‘Biscuits, Brown’ were passed over by many. For some, only the onset of starvation could motivate them to eat what was more commonly known as ‘Cheese Possessed’.

Sheer weight of numbers had eventually told over the Royal Marine Commandos fighting skills and fighting spirit. The loss of their sister unit, 42 Commando, with such terrible casualties had at first stunned and then enraged the men from 44. The deliberate running down of a group of survivors in the ditch by the Czech T-72 tank had been seen by many across the narrow valley in the NATO positions and widely reported.

The men topped up on ammunition and moved off, following the guides to the rear of 1CG and the 82
nd
’
s
position.

Colour Sergeant ‘Ozzie’ Osgood, 1CG, made his tentative way across the rear slopes of the rain swept hill, his arms aching from carrying a stretcher loaded down with ammunition boxes collected from the RQMS in the rear. Behind Oz a young Guardsman cursed, slipping in the mud and almost dropping his end of the stretcher.

“I’m chin-strapped, sir.” He wearily declared.

Oz was tired too, and not just physically.

There had been a time when he had mocked people like himself, back when he was young, stupid and working a coal face. Some men couldn’t hack it at all, the knowledge of how much rock and earth was above their heads. They left immediately, or as near as dammit. But it was the occasional older man, those who had been at the colliery for fifteen, twenty years or even longer who one day just couldn’t step into the cage another time. They got jobs on the surface, but few stayed with the colliery and most moved away. The wives were worst, and the kids a close second. The jibes and the whispers, the bullying in the playground.

Oz came from a long line of miners, a proud line. His grandfather had survived an explosion and rock fall, and his Dad had lived through both a fire and a flooding. There was no way the Osgood’s would ever lose their bottle like that.

One day he and his Dad got into the cage together at the start of the shift, but before it was full his Dad had turned to him.

“I’m sorry our kid, I just can’t do it.” And he walked away.

The bravest man Oz had ever known just walked out of the cage and up to the mine manager
’s office to collect his wages and give his notice.

Oz wasn’t in the army because he’d quit too, he was there because the pits were closed, but Oz now knew that perhaps one day his bottle would also have held all it could, just as his Dad’s had.

All those tours of duty at the sharp end, in Ulster, Bosnia, the Gulf War, Iraq and now this, the big one, were telling. The stress builds up over the years, sometimes unseen, and with little or no warning something snaps. His friend, Colin Probert, had seen the fractures forming in Oz, and Colin had tried to help by easing the burden. A platoon sized fighting patrol had gone out without him, its platoon sergeant, and they hadn’t come back. That had nearly finished him there and then. Colin and two men had been found alive but badly wounded; the remainder were dead, along with one of those three. The man had died on the casevac chopper, just three minutes away from the field hospital.

Oz wasn’t at the sharp end anymore, but he wasn’t ecstatic about being a headquarters wallah either, a ‘REMF’ in yank parlance.

“Seriously sir,” his assistant grumbled again.”Me arms are a foot longer than they were at reveille.

“Grit yer teeth bonny lad, we’ll have a breather and a brew in a minute at the battalion CP, it’s just over yonder.”

The track plan had long been abandoned and the approved routes from his ammunition stocks to the three platoon headquarters positions was a morass now so they cut across at an angle to arrive at the rear of the sandbagged command post, ducking under the camouflage netting and hessian. It allowed a little shelter from the rain, and having lowered the heavy stretcher they squatted against the sandbag wall, giving their aching muscles some respite.

They had just settled down when Oz heard the steps of two others in the mud just around the corner at the side of the CP.

“Well Derek, what is it that you could not tell me inside?”

Oz recognised his commanding officers voice.

“Did the Adjutant speak to you on a personal matter, before he took over 3 Company, sir?”

The Guardsman beside Oz suddenly caught on that two officers were having a private discussion and Oz gestured his assistant to be quiet.

“Is this something to do with that infernal whispering  between yourself and Captain Gilchrist?”

“Sir, you may have noticed another gunner officer earlier, he is a Forward Observer with 2LI…”

Although Oz could not see Pat Reed he sensed him tense.

“…it is with profound regret that I must inform you that
your son Julian was killed in action this morn….” They heard the CO turn suddenly away.

There was a moment
’s awkward pause before the battalion’s artillery rep squelched away back to the entrance to the CP.

Oz and his assistant sat in the shadows in embarrassed silence, unwilling voyeurs to their CO’s grief.

After several minutes Pat forced himself to stand upright, he then shook himself and removed the water bottle from its webbing pouch to rinse his eyes. A grubby sleeve dried his face before he straightened, squared his shoulders and returned to the business of running the battalion’s battle.

As soon as he was satisfied that the coast was clear, Oz turned to the young soldier.

“You breathe one word of this to anyone and I’ll plant you in a shallow grave.” He said with grim sincerity, “Clear?”

He received an earnest nod in reply.

“Now come on then, let’s get this lot back where it’ll do the most good.”

With a grunt they lifted their burden once more, staggering away into the rain and the night.

The Czech 23
rd
MRR had sorted themselves out for another attempt to drive the stubborn British and Americans from their positions above those the 23
rd
had early taken, but as they were in the process of mounting their vehicles the infantry were ordered to debus and form up on foot in the immediate rear of the main battle tanks. Only the AFVs drivers remained with the vehicles as the squads departed, and then somewhat bemused they followed new orders to drive to a location a half mile to the rear, switch off, collect their weapons and don full fighting order before re-joining the squads at the double.

In similar collection points facing the slopes of the Vormundberg, mechanics moved amongst the infantry’s fighting vehicles, syphoning off the precious fuel for use instead by the tanks and AAA vehicles.

As for the 23
rd
MRR relieving the Romanians and Hungarians in the attack, they were held back temporarily, a delay for the purpose of coordinating four attacks at once. 9
th
Russian MRD on the east bank of the Saale would attack westwards, 77
th
Guards Tank Division on the west bank of the Saale would attack eastwards at the same time as elements of the 91
st
Romanian Tank Regiment seized key positions west of Magdeburg in NATO’s rear.

Saale River Valley, Germany: nineteen miles east of the Vormundberg: 0134hrs.

The rain came again, dumping copious amounts of misery onto the blasted hillside, flowing into the fire bay of trenches and slowly filling them about the ankles of occupants too busy to bale.

The heavy clouds robbed the Earth of any of the half-moons rays. It was stygian, relieved only by the flashes of occasional, and fitful, lightning from within and the light from fires and bursting shells reflecting off the cloud base.

The massive bombardment of the Elbe/Saale Line had severely depleted the Red Army artillery stocks and the NATO airborne forces, acting unsanctioned by their governments, were seeing to it that resupply did not come any time soon.

Once the paratroopers ran low on ammunition and explosives though, the roads to the rivers would reopen, although that was another hurdle for the Red Army to vault over once more.

The French and the Canadians had left armour in hide positions, two brigades worth, and once the main juggernaut of Red Army had unknowingly bypassed them they had emerged in the enemy rear. The NATO armour smashed everything they found of worth, stores, bridging equipment, fuel and
ammunition dumps, tankers and trucks. All had been left burning.

Trucks had become the number 1 bullet magnet, and engineers, or anybody who could fix or build a pontoon bridge came a close second. For once it was safer to be an infantryman, relatively speaking, anyway.

With the fall of darkness the Hungarian 43rd MRR did not return and 2Lt Ferguson, the green commander of the Nova Scotia Highlanders Reconnaissance Platoon, was settled in at the bottom of his trench for an uncomfortable night. Sergeant Blackmore had conjured up a couple of plastic heavy duty beer crates from somewhere and these were upended, allowing them to avoid the water at the bottom of the firebay in relative comfort for an hour, taking it in turns to bail out the trench every  thirty minutes.

His sergeant was currently squatting, hunched up with the collar of his combat smock pulled up to keep out the rain. Asleep with mouth partly ajar and heedless, or just too exhausted to care that the side of his face was pressed against the firebay's muddy wall. A ballistic helmet with its chin strap undone was displaced by the sleeping posture, sat at an angle upon the sergeants head, its camouflage cover sodden with the rain and the water dripping from the helmets lower edge.

  Dougal Ferguson was himself in a similar posture, like a slightly better than average looking, upright, church gargoyle. Shoulders hunched to trap the field telephone handset against his left ear whilst his right enjoyed the unbroken hissing from the radio earpiece, the hash noise.  About his left wrist were looped string communications cords to the trenches on either side. Three forms of communication at his disposal in his muddy hole in Germany thought Dougal, who was momentarily tempted to add a fourth by uttering an imitation of a night owl, Hollywood Western style. Dougal though was aware that so far his contribution to the platoon was not held in very great regard by his men. He was determined to change that, but he just did not know how? Everything he touched seemed to turn to mud, and his sincerest suggestions were greeted with either
thinly veiled contempt, or muffled sniggers. He was not sure which was more demeaning.

The fear of failure was almost equal to the fear of death or disfiguring injury, and the low esteem he was apparently held in by the men was reducing his self-confidence to tatters.

After the departure of the Hungarians he had been ordered to send out a patrol to check on what was occurring with a suddenly reluctant enemy, and the answer was that they had simply gone, taking with them many of the dead from the battalion that the Canadians had already defeated.  The land beyond the turnip field was empty of all but the tracks of caterpillar treads and tyres leading east.

The previous day the brigade had emerged from its hide position in the forest and split into four elements, a defensive firebase and three combat teams of an armour squadron mated with two mechanised infantry platoons in AFVs and an armoured reconnaissance squadron. The brigade artillery, engineers, remaining armour, and the bulk of the infantry had dug in at the firebase in preparation for a wild and furious enemy reaction. The combat teams had roved abroad in assigned sectors, smashing and trashing for twelve hours before the brigadier had called a halt to the fun and games.  The combat teams fell back to the firebase but the brigadier had almost left it too late before ordering the recall. A troop of four Leopards had engaged in a fighting withdrawal with an under-strength Hungarian battalion, covering the remainder of the combat team’s departure, picking off enemy tanks and AFVs, and leapfrogging backwards from cover to cover.

Unable to achieve a break in  contact themselves, and in danger of being swamped by greater numbers, that old quantity versus quality equation again, the  Leopards had fought a running gun battle with the Hungarian’s PT-76 light tanks that culminated in a last-man-standing gun fight in the turnip field, backed by direct support from the firebase. The single surviving Leopard had required the services of an armoured recovery unit.

Ferguson's four man clearance patrol, led by Corporal Molineux, the section commander of 2 Section, had remained
on the forward edge of the turnip field, out of sight of the firebase, digging in inside a hedgerow as night fell in order to provide a listening post.

The remainder of the recce platoon were dug in in less than ideal ground, as is frequently the way in woodland positions. Losses over the months had only been partially made good and with the four men out of the lines on the listening patrol it left two empty trenches.