Battlefield Russia

Winter Wonderland

The snow swirled around the column of vehicles, making visibility beyond half a kilometer difficult, if not impossible — not that there was much to see this deep into the Russian interior. After 40 Commando had secured the city of Arkhangelsk, the battalion pressed inland. Once they pushed beyond the beach and the port city of Severodvinsk, they met virtually no resistance. Now that they were ashore, the harsh Russian winter began in earnest, pelting them with subzero temperatures and wintery mixes of snow and ice.

“How anyone can fight in this is beyond me,” thought Sergeant Philip Jones as he lit yet another cigarette. Fortunately, the heater in the BvS 10 or Viking all-terrain tracked vehicles worked like a champ, pumping out hot air that kept the Marines inside nice and toasty.

40 Commando had been on the road now for six hours, and judging by where they were on the map, Sergeant Jones guessed they had another two hours of driving before they’d reach their first waypoint, the city of Vologda. Once there, they’d hold up for a couple of days to let their supply lines catch up. The city would be turned into a logistical supply base as the Allies continued to advance ever closer to Moscow, their ultimate goal.

When they got to within forty kilometers of the city, the weather finally let up. The swirling snow stopped, and the sky started to clear. What the Royal Marines saw next caused them all to take a moment and admire. They were about to enter a forested area that looked like something out of a magazine cover or movie set, complete with a beautiful display of the eerie and colorful northern lights. The trees were iced over with a dusting of snow, providing an almost surreal look to them, alien to what they had been accustomed to seeing thus far. For a brief moment, they forgot there was a war going on.

After allowing everyone to take a short bio break and stretch their legs, the convoy started to move again. Two of the Vikings were in the lead, quickly followed by a pair of Challenger tanks and a pair of Ajax armored scout vehicles. Following the armored vehicles was a long column of Vikings, Ajax and Warrior vehicles intermixed with a few Challenger tanks and some air-defense vehicles in case some Russian jets decided to pay them a visit.

Twenty minutes went by as the convoy drove deeper into the woods, and they continued to follow the M-8 Highway. Sergeant Jones shifted uncomfortably in his seat, his right leg falling asleep from the lack of movement. They still had another ninety minutes before they were scheduled to take a short break to stretch their legs again. Just as he found a way to extend his right leg to try and stretch it in their cramped quarters, the tranquility of their journey was broken. A loud boom reverberated through the ground, the shockwave of the blast slapping their vehicle hard. They veered slightly to the right.

Looking out through the windshield, Sergeant Jones saw the lead Viking slam back into the ground in flames, emitting a heavy billowing smoke. Within seconds, another large explosion nearly knocked their vehicle over on its side and peppered the left half of the vehicle with shrapnel.

“Contact front! Everyone out!” he shouted to the squad of soldiers as they fought to get the rear compartment door opened.

One of the privates kept pounding on the door, but he couldn’t get it to budge. “It’s jammed! I can’t get it open,” he yelled, terror in his voice.

The other Marines now turned to look at Jones, who was momentarily perplexed by what the young man had just said. Then the solution dawned on him. “The turret — everyone, go out the turret!” he ordered.

The gunner, who luckily had not been sitting in the turret at the time of the explosion, opened the sealed hatch and climbed out. He grabbed his rifle and slid down the side of the armored vehicle, away from the shooting, and signaled for the others to join him. The other four Marines in the vehicle quickly climbed over the side of the vehicle and fell into the half-meter-deep snow, bullets cracking all around them as they sought cover.

Crump, crump, crump.

The sound of mortars landing nearby added further confusion to the scene.

Whoosh… Boom.

One of the Challenger tanks exploded from an unseen missile that struck it just as it had moved off the road to engage whatever enemy force was attacking them.

“Follow me, Marines!” shouted Jones. He led his small four-man team away from the vehicle further into the woods to the right of the attack. They needed to get away from the vehicle, which was now a sitting duck, and get a better picture of where the attackers were, so they could figure out what needed to be done.

The second Challenger tank that had been behind their vehicle also lurched to the right of the convoy. The tank fired a round that sailed right over their heads, impacting against what Jones had thought was a pile of logs heavily covered in snow. When the round hit, the entire area exploded and a nearby machine-gun bunker opened fire on them.

Jones hit the dirt, then yelled out to his Marines, “Return fire!”

He shuddered. The Challenger had just fired a shot that had, in all likelihood, saved their lives. Sergeant Jones watched as it gunned his engine and advanced toward the enemy position. Its main gun barked a second time, and the gun bunker blew apart, silencing the gun crew.

As he and his men advanced toward the enemy position, Jones heard lots of loud shouts around him. Other squads of Marines filtered into the woods further back in the column. One of the Ajax’s 40mm cannons joined the fray, adding its own firepower.

Within a few minutes, though, the firing by both the Marines and the armored vehicles had stopped. Everyone took a moment to catch their breath and determine if they had killed all the attackers.

“If any of the Russians are still alive, they’re either good at playing possum, or they’ve withdrawn further into the woods and disappeared,” Sergeant Jones commented.

The Marines spent another thirty minutes checking the enemy lines, checking on the dead and making sure the wounded were tended to. The short ambush had cost them one Challenger tank and two Viking troop carriers. In exchange, they had destroyed a Russian BMP-3 vehicle and three antitank missile crews. A total of eighteen Russian fighters had been killed in the ambush, and three wounded Russians were taken as prisoner. With the attack over, the Marines piled back into their vehicles, shaking off the attack as best they could as they resumed their advance to Vologda.

Based on the results of the recent conflict, the Royal Marines switched around the formation of their convoy. A heavy scout element advanced several kilometers ahead of the main convoy, followed by two Ajax vehicles in the lead. Bringing up the tail were two Warriors, two Challenger tanks and two Viking armored personnel carriers.

No sooner had the unit traveled fifteen kilometers down the road than a series of IEDs detonated along the armored column on the highway. They must have been placed prior to the heavy snowfall, because there was nothing evident to give away the fact that they were there. The Russian spotters had allowed half a dozen vehicles to pass through their kill zone before they triggered the nine 152mm artillery rounds they had daisy-chained together. The explosions tore through the convoy, severely damaging more than a dozen lightly armored Vikings and other armored personnel carriers. As the British soldiers attempted to recover from the shock of the IEDs, a separate group of Russians eighteen kilometers away began their part of the attack.

Standing inside the living room of the small home in Chekshino that his officers had commandeered, Colonel Yury Chirkin of the 74th Guard’s Motor Rifle Brigade puffed away on his pipe, looking at the map on the table before him. What concerned him most was how rapidly the Allied forces had advanced inland, especially given that the Allies had had to traverse more than 1,400 kilometers of northern Russia in the dead of winter to reach Moscow. However, Yury had learned early on in his military career fighting in the Chechen War that one should never underestimate the resolve of one’s enemy.

Letting out a puff of smoke, Colonel Chirkin looked up at Lieutenant Colonel Maslov, the commander of the 867th Separate Motor-Rifle Battalion and the lead element of his brigade. They were now the only real combat force standing between the Allies and Moscow. “Colonel Maslov, how confident are you that your units will be able to stop the British?” he inquired, giving the man one of his famous icy-eyed stares.

Maslov held his chin up and puffed his chest out like a proud peacock as he announced, “My men will hammer the British and send them scurrying back to Archangelsk.”

Colonel Chirkin looked around the room at the other officers. “This guy is just talking tough for their benefit,” he realized. He didn’t want smoke and mirrors, though; he needed an honest answer.

“I want everyone else besides Lieutenant Colonel Maslov to go take a break and stretch your legs outside for a minute,” he ordered.

After everyone had filed out of the room, Colonel Chirkin turned his steely gaze back on Maslov. “So, how exactly will your men crush the British?” he asked.

With the other officers no longer present, Maslov’s façade dropped. His face was somber. “Sir, we can’t crush the British,” he admitted. “There are too many of them heading down the M-8, and they are being quickly followed by a Canadian division and an American division. The best I can do is slow them down and bloody them up.”

Colonel Chirken smiled since he had managed to get an honest answer and placed his hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “Colonel, that is all we can hope to do. I don’t expect you to hold the Allies with a single battalion of soldiers. I do need you to slow them up — bloody them along the way, sapping their strength as they trudge through the interior of mother Russia. We don’t have much time, and I must be heading back to my own headquarters, so please walk me through your attack plan.”

Lieutenant Colonel Maslov breathed an enormous sigh of relief and nodded. “I’ve placed several small platoon-sized ambush units along the M-8 to carry out a series of hit-and-run attacks. The weather over the next couple of days is going to work to our advantage because my ambush units have easily concealed multiple IEDs along the side of the road, near these points here,” he said, pointing to a map. “The armored columns will be forced to stop and deal with the casualties from the explosives, and when they do, the real ambush will begin.

“These spots have been chosen because they are deep inside the forested areas of the M-8 and will leave the British little maneuver room for their vehicles. Along this second ambush point, we’ve stationed the battery of BM-27 Uragan rocket artillery trucks you’ve assigned to me. When the British pass through this point, the rockets will blanket this entire three-kilometer swath of the highway with the 220mm high-explosive rockets.

“Once the battery has fired their volley, they’ll relocate to Vologda, where they will reload and wait for orders. I anticipate that the British forces will push through the ambush and survive the artillery barrage. At that point, they will move to capture this very village within a half an hour to an hour, but then they’ll run into a company of soldiers waiting for them in this forested area here,” Maslov explained, pointing to two clusters of trees.

Colonel Chirkin looked at the positions, which would create a very effective crossfire, and at the composition of the troops. They were mostly equipped with antitank missiles and heavy machine guns. “They’ll do,” he thought.

The battery of BM-27s was a godsend. Colonel Chirkin also had a battery of BM-21 Grad rocket trucks, but they were old and only fired the lighter 122mm rockets. This was unfortunately the only artillery he had assigned to his brigade until the higher-ups deemed his defensive effort worthy enough to properly reinforce and staff. For the life of him, he could not understand how those fools in Moscow didn’t see the threat this Allied force presented.

Chirkin nodded his head in approval. “OK. This plan looks good. Execute it as best you can, and I’ll hope to see you in Yaroslavl in a couple of weeks. I need to get going; my helicopter should be refueled by now.”

Colonel Chirkin knew this might be the last time he spoke with his battalion commander. Once this attack started, Lieutenant Colonel Maslov would be very busy. Once the Allies reached Yaroslavl, the rest of Chirkin’s brigade would make their final stand. Beyond their last line of defense lay Moscow, a mere 260 kilometers away. If road and weather conditions cooperated, the Allied forces could travel that distance in four hours.

“Ripper Six, Ripper Six, this is Citadel Six. We’ve just been ambushed!” shouted the regiment commander, Brigadier Kyle Jenson. “We’re being hit by enemy rocket artillery originating from sector G8. It’s most likely coming from the village of Chekshino. We need your scout element to advance quickly and see if you can intercept the artillery unit. How copy?”

Lieutenant Colonel William Watkins looked at the map board he kept in his vehicle. Doing some quick math in his head, he saw that the location was roughly twenty kilometers from the current position of the main convoy, and maybe ten kilometers from his position. Grabbing the radio receiver tightly in his hand, he depressed the talk button. “Citadel Six, Ripper Six, that’s a good copy. We’re less than ten kilometers from that location. We’ll move to engage them now. Out.”

Watkins quickly turned to the vehicle commander and shouted, “Head to sector G8, Chekshino, at maximum speed. We’re looking for an enemy rocket artillery unit. We also need to keep our eyes open for possible ambushes along the way.”

He switched his radio frequency over to his little scout party of vehicles and relayed what was happening to the main column. When he was done, the vehicles started to move at a rapid clip, racing to the village in hopes of catching the enemy artillery unit still in the process of firing, and defenseless. The two Ajax vehicles led the way, quickly followed by the two Warriors, which had traded places with the two Challenger tanks. The two Viking armored personnel carriers pulled up the rear.

Watkins turned to Sergeant Jones. “Let’s get the troop hatches open,” he ordered. “Have two of your guys help look for smoke contrails and potential ambushes. We have no idea if we’re racing into a trap or not.”

When Sergeant Jones’s Viking had been destroyed, Lieutenant Colonel Watkins had been kind enough to let his five-man squad pile into his command vehicle. He’d figured if he was going to be riding in the front of the armored column with the scouts, he might as well as take the Marines with him; he had the room and they needed a ride. Now he was glad he had — they might need their added firepower.

Looking at the map, Watkins spotted a potential enemy ambush point. He grabbed the radio again and called ahead to the lead vehicle. “Ripper One, we should be approaching the edge of this forested area in a couple of minutes. When we do, I want you to veer off the main road to the field on our right. Drive the rest of the way through this field and stay off the highway. There’s a copse of trees near a truck park on the left-hand side of the highway, and I believe the enemy’s hoping to ambush us once we cross that point. How copy?”

A short pause ensued, and then the radio crackled to life. “That’s a good copy, Ripper Six. We’re coming up to that point right now… we’ve left the main road and we’re moving through the field. The snow is kind of deep over here, so be advised. We’ll have to travel a lot slower.”

Seconds later, Watkins’s own vehicle veered off the main road, hitting a few hard bumps as they followed the rest of the vehicles into the open field that skirted the edge of the town.

“Contrails, Sir!” shouted one of the Marines who had been standing in one of the troop hatches.

The vehicle commander, who was also standing in his turret, also looked off in the distance. “Found the enemy artillery, or at least where they launched from, Sir,” he announced. “I’d say we’re probably two kilometers away. Heading that direction now,” he added. The vehicle lurched a bit as it changed directions.

The eight vehicles in their little scouting party picked up speed again, tearing through the snow and this farm field as they raced toward the village. One of the Marines then shouted, “Missile! Ten o’clock!” as he pointed in the direction of the incoming threat.

The lead Ajax vehicle turned its turret in the direction of the missile and let loose a string of 40mm rounds. The missile operator must have either been killed or had to duck for cover, because the missile then veered off course and exploded harmlessly away from them.

Two more missiles jumped out of the copse of trees and flew right for Watkins’s group of vehicles. Then they heard two loud explosions. Looking behind them, Watkins saw a splash of sparks hit the oblique-angled armor of one of the Challengers as the enemy tank round bounced harmlessly away. The second tank was struck near the rear half of the tank, and the engine exploded in spectacular fashion; the tank came to a creaking halt, billowing thick black smoke and flames. The Challenger that had survived the hit then moved its turret slightly and fired its own main gun.

Boom… Bang!

An enemy tank exploded. The turret was ripped cleanly from the chassis of the tank and rolled along the ground, flipping end over end. Then a giant fireball expanded into the sky. Seconds later, the Challenger fired a second round, slamming into the remaining enemy tank, exploding it as well.

BOOM!

The lead Ajax scout vehicle was hit, flipping end over end as it burst into flames, rolling several times until it came to a fiery stop upside down. A second loud explosion rang out as one of the remaining antitank guided missiles slammed into the trailing Viking armored personnel carrier, bursting it into a scorching cauldron of death for the Marines inside.

The turret on the Warrior opened fire on the cluster of trees, raking it with its 30mm Rarden cannon, shredding the trees and the enemy missile crews hidden within it. As he continued to take in the scene around him, Watkins grabbed the radio. “Keep going!” he shouted. “We need to catch that artillery unit!”

The remains of his armored vehicles surged forward into the snow-covered village, racing toward the remnants of the smoke contrails from the rocket artillery that been fired just prior to the shooting match they now found themselves in. Bullets were pinging off their armored skin as the vehicle commander swiveled his crew-served weapon, letting loose several bursts from the machine gun at the attackers.

“Sir, you should duck back down and let us return fire at the enemy!” shouted Sergeant Jones from the troop hatch next to the colonel.

Watkins nodded, knowing the sergeant was right. The last thing they needed to have happen was for him as the battalion commander to be shot. He ducked back into the vehicle, allowing one of the young Marines to take his place and fire back at the enemy. Their vehicle continued to race through the village, and the volume of enemy fire dissipated to the point that their vehicle was no longer being shot at. Minutes later, they rounded a corner and found themselves facing a BMP-3 that was in the process of setting up a roadblock on the highway.

The vehicle gunner immediately let loose several bursts from their 30mm cannon as the driver veered hard to the right, barely missing a string of cannon rounds that was fired at them by the BMP. The Warrior’s 30mm rounds tore into the BMP, causing a small explosion when one of the rounds hit the fuel tank. Seconds later, the vehicle blew up, engulfing it and anyone inside it in flames. With the immediate threat neutralized, the driver gunned it as they zoomed past the burning wreck in hot pursuit of the enemy rocket trucks.

Once they rounded a slight bend in the road, the gunner shouted, “I found the first BM-27 rocket launcher!” He depressed the fire button, sending a three-second burst of cannon fire into the rear of the vehicle. The rocket artillery truck blew up and the flaming vehicle careened off the road into a tree. With the first vehicle destroyed, the gunner had an excellent view at the subsequent vehicle and let loose another short burst of 30mm cannon fire. That vehicle also burst into flames as it came to a halt in the center of the road, obscuring their view of the rest of the vehicles.

The Marine continued to gun the engine of their vehicle as he swerved around the burning wreck, revving the engine as they tried to chase down the remaining rocket trucks. The BM-27s were particularly nasty rocket artillery trucks; the 8x8 wheeled vehicles carried a rotating rack of sixteen rocket tubes that fired the 220mm rockets. The rockets could fire either high-explosive rounds or disperse antitank or antipersonnel mines up to thirty-five kilometers away.

“We have to catch those BM-27s!” shouted Lieutenant Colonel Watkins.

As the driver continued to gun the engine, the vehicle slid a bit as the tracks fought to grab traction on the snow-packed road. When the Warrior passed the second burning wreck, they caught sight of the third vehicle, roughly a kilometer in front of them. The gunner fired off another burst from their main gun, sending another barrage of cannon fire slamming into the rear of the vehicle. It, too, burst into flames.

“Keep going! We need to chase down that last vehicle!” yelled the vehicle commander to the driver.

While they continued their hot pursuit, Watkins received a radio update from the other members of their convoy. Behind them, the remaining Ajax scout vehicle, the lone Viking troop carrier and the Challenger tank were still engaging the remnants of the Russian soldiers left in the village. The Marines had disembarked from their armored chariots and were fighting in the streets. Bullets flew back and forth between the two factions of soldiers, riddling many of the houses with ammunition.

Moments later, as the Warrior zoomed past the third burning wreck, giving them a clear shot at the remaining BM-27, they hit a patch of black ice on the road that caused their vehicle to spin out of control and slam into a snowbank. It took a moment for the driver and the vehicle’s occupants to collect themselves and recover from the near-death experience. In the meantime, the final vehicle they’d been chasing had gotten away. With no chance of catching up to it at this point, Lieutenant Colonel Watkins announced, “Good shooting, lads. Now let’s head back to the village and support the rest of our mates in finishing these guys off.”

Shortly after they made it back to the village of Vologda, the remaining Russian soldiers were in the process of surrendering, waving white handkerchiefs in their gloved hands and probably hoping they wouldn’t be shot out of spite. When Watkins’s vehicle pulled up to the largest concentration of enemy soldiers, they dropped the rear hatch of the vehicle to let the five Royal Marines exit and help secure the prisoners.

Surveying the scene around them, Watkins saw several burning vehicles, and half a dozen homes in the small village that were currently on fire. Now that the shooting had stopped, a lot of civilians began to exit their homes, many of them crying in agony at the sight of what had just happened to their tightknit community. A couple of fathers and mothers who were cradling young children in their arms rushed toward the British soldiers, pleading with them for medical help for their little ones who had been injured in the fighting.

This was the part of war Watkins hated the most — the innocent civilians who had no say in the fighting and became ensnared when the bullets start to fly between the two warring factions. A shoot-out in or near a city often resulted in innocent civilians being caught in the crossfire. He wiped a tear from his eye before anyone could see it.

The Marines motioned for the injured children and other civilians to gather near the back of one of the vehicles, while the only two medics in the group did their best to work on them. Fortunately, one of the Russian prisoners was also a medic and offered his services to help the injured civilians.

Sergeant Jones looked at Watkins, pleading with his eyes but not saying a word. Watkins nodded his approval, and Jones walked over to the Russians, pulling his knife from its cover and cutting the zip tie restraints on the man’s hands. Then Jones guided him toward one of the injured kids. The Russian soldier spoke softly and soothingly to the child as he did his best to bandage his wound until he could receive proper medical care.

Looking at the damage, Watkins couldn’t help but think to himself, “This all could’ve been prevented.” If they had had air support or helicopters to rely upon, none of these civilians would have been harmed. “We need to slow down this offensive until we can get proper support,” he reflected.

Once the Allies had secured the Russian port of Severodvinsk and captured Archangelsk, the British commander in charge of the Allied force had insisted upon a rapid advance of their expeditionary force toward Moscow, only 1,200 kilometers away. In nonhostile conditions and with fair weather, one could travel the M-8 from Severodvinsk to Moscow in roughly eighteen hours, so clearly the thought of rapidly capturing Moscow had been an alluring proposition that would have been hard to resist.

The challenge the Allies now faced was one of logistics. As winter continued to settle in, the waters of the White Sea would completely freeze over, preventing them from bringing in more supplies from Britain or America. This part of Russia also suffered from a serious lack of infrastructure. There were no major supply hubs or petrol dumps the Allies could capture, and little in the way of airfields they could take over to establish their own proper airfields. The airport they had successfully seized, Talagi Airport outside of Archangelsk, was in a terrible state of disrepair, and now it was several hundred kilometers away from the rapidly changing front lines.

The next airport they hoped to seize would be in Vologda. Once they captured the city and airport there, the British anticipated creating a forward base, moving in a couple of squadrons of F-35s and F/A-18s from the carriers that were still operating in the Barents Sea, at least until additional aircraft could be flown in from Iceland and Norway.

Until then, the Royal Marines leading the Allied advance would have to make do with what they had, which unfortunately was not very much.