Fight Through

CHAPTER 6

One mile to the rear of his forward companies, the regimental commander of the Czech 23^rd MRR was feeling a whole lot more optimistic than he had twelve hours before. It had been expected that his regiment would lose anywhere from 20 % to 60 % of its strength in successfully attacking the British marines in their current defensive positions. The combat between his unit and that of the Britisher’s was also expected to be a long, drawn out affair, and it was probably more to do with the time element than concern for the fighting men’s welfare that had prompted the Russians to present him with the services of one of their Spetznaz units. The units commander had not looked the most terribly enthusiastic of warriors when he had been shown into the regimental commanders presence, but they were apparently quite recently returned from operations on the other side of the line and may have felt entitled to some rest. Despite his mistrust of special operations he had to take his hat off to the Spetznaz major and his handful of men, wearing the clothing and equipment of freshly dead Royal Marines they had infiltrated the Commando position in a captured vehicle and pinpointed high value targets for the artillery. They had wrought havoc with the marine units command and control before moving on, and without doubt saving the 23^rd MRR, men, equipment, and above all time.

In the attack on the marines position he had so far only committed two tank and three APC companies, he still had one complete battalion and two more tank companies waiting in the wings. The first British positions were already under his control, including a slightly wooded rise, the control of which allowed them access to the marines left flank. An attack on that rise should have prompted reinforcement and priority of fire the second it looked to be in danger of being successful, but no increase in shellfire, airstrike’s or fresh troops had been evident due to the destruction of the chains of command. His men had killed the marines in their holes before occupying the position, and he was now ready to roll forward along the marines flank prior to making a sharp right and rolling up the entire position.

The snipers were ready to vacate the hide as soon as the marines began to appear in the lane were it topped the crest ahead of them. So far they had seen only the casevac party, but neither man doubted that it could be too long before the Commando began to withdraw, with its forward companies beginning a reverse leapfrog, giving ground but always with two companies covering as the other pair moved. That was the way things were done, and nobody had told them to expect anything else.

Stef saw movement on the crest first, two hundred metres left of the lane where a handful of men, some plainly wounded, forced a way through the hedgerow there, hacking at it with machetes to widen a gap and then dragging the wounded through it. More men appeared, this time in the lane, and then the men at the hedgerow were joined by two Scimitars of the Blue’s & Royal's, reversing into view whilst firing three round bursts back the way they had come. A pair of men each dragged a wounded marine towards the Guards lines, leaving a gun group and three riflemen to fight a rear-guard action alongside the light armour, which had now reversed over the hedgerow. It was a short, one-sided defence and both Bill and Stef watched open mouthed as the four marines and the wounded on the reverse slope were cut down by automatic fire, coming not from the front, but from the sunken lane. What they had assumed to be Royal Marines of 40 Commando withdrawing were in fact Soviet dismounted infantry using the cover of the lane to get as close as possible to the next line of defence.

“Why weren’t the trees dropped across the lane, I thought they’d been wired to blow, Stef?”

“Fuck knows, mate!” Stef grabbed the field telephone receiver once again, to warn the CP.

The troops in the lane switched their attention to the tiny knot of resistance beside the hedgerow, but it was not until two of the marines had been hit that the remainder realised that they had been flanked, but from their position on the crest the tankers were able to look down the slope and into the lane. A Scimitars turret traversed to the right and it opened fire, its 30mm cannon creating carnage in the narrow confines of the lane, which was now seething with Soviet infantry.

The response from the lane was sudden and swift, a Sagger left a thin trail of dirty exhaust as it flew across the intervening space to strike the light tank squarely on the rear of the engine compartment, the Scimitar’s cannon immediately fell silent and the vehicle began to burn without any of the crew bailing out.

The surviving marines used the smoke of the burning armoured vehicle as cover to make for a ditch running down the opposite side of the field to the lane, but the surviving Scimitar moved only to place its burning cousin between itself and the lane, gaining some protection at least to its exposed rear. Neither of the snipers could see what the lightly armoured vehicle was engaging, but its commander clearly felt that whatever it was, it was a more serious threat than even the enemy troops at his back. The Scimitar continued to engage the enemy in the dead ground beyond the hedgerow, but moments later it was struck by a main tank round and exploded in spectacular fashion, only its tracks remained.

Its killer emerged into view from out of the dead ground, the T-72s main gun moving from side to side as it searched for another target. The marine gained the ditch but not quickly enough to avoid being seen by the T-72s driver who altered course once the hedgerow had been negotiated, placing the armoured vehicles right hand track into the ditch and accelerating. Mud and grass, gauged out of the ditch's bottom flew into the air in the tanks wake, but then Bill vomited as he saw the airborne detritus turn red.

“It’s time to go!” Stef pulled the ends of the D10 cable from the field telephones terminals and stuffed the instrument inside his Bergan beside the Swiftscope. More tanks were appearing on the crest and Bill wiped his mouth on a sleeve before crawling backwards away from the firing loop.

“We need to get a rift on, or those bastards will be using us to line their wheel arches too.”

The ‘door’ to the hide was removed by Stef who emerged into the daylight before reaching back to haul out their Bergans, and once Bill had joined him they kept low and began to follow a pre-planned route, although indirect, that made use of the best available cover back to their lines.

Arnie Moore, assisted by the Padre, guided the Warrior into a natural fold in the ground that gave the vehicle total cover from view from the front, and yet by moving forward just ten feet it would be in a hull-down position and able to engage. He had noticed this spot several days before, it was too narrow to accommodate a Challenger II or the older Chieftain’s that the attached tank squadron had, but from this spot a Warrior could cover the steeply sided stream that separated this battalion from its neighbour on the left. Both units had of course sited positions to cover the possible chink in the proverbial armour, but Arnie could visualise those positions being swamped before any reinforcement could take place.

On the whole he thought Pat Reed had worked marvels in motivating tired men into achieving the level of defence that they had. It had been the commanding officer whom had seen the potential of making men spend time with picks and shovels on the slope between 3 Company’s platoon and the company positions. The hillside on the right of the battalion line was steeper than on the left, and with a lot of sweat and blisters the men had managed to make it damn near impassable to all but tracked vehicles with very, very skilled drivers. Anyone advancing beyond the bounds of 9 Platoon would find the gradient suddenly becoming quite severe and the natural routes blocked by the simple expedient of placing several pine trunks on their sides between two trees; on the uphill side of course. The trees braced the stacked trunks, which could not be easily bulldozed aside owing to earth that had been piled behind and hard packed. Beyond these obstructions the drivers would discover where the earth had come from, the troops had crudely quarried six to ten feet in depth in a band along the side of the hill. It wasn’t much but it would probably mean the infantry having to debus and hoof it uphill whilst the fighting vehicles tried to find another way around.

It had been impractical to attempt the same over by 1 Company; the slope was too shallow so mines had been planted where they could be the most use.

With the Warrior in position there was nothing to do but wait, and the RSM felt the need for a mug of good Java, but he’d have to make do with British Army freeze dried coffee granules instead.

“Do you have time for a coffee, Padre?” Arnie commented, but he did not receive a reply. The Padre was squinting off to one side at a thicket a hundred or so metres away.

“Padre?”

“Sorry sarn’t major, I thought I saw a stretcher being carried into some bushes.” The battalion aid station and casualty collection point was in the opposite direction to the one the bearers he was sure he had seen had been heading.

Arnie was unaware that any of the battalion had yet been injured and said as much, but the Padre apparently was not so sure.

“It will only take me a moment to check, RSM.”

Arnie was going tell his loader to grab a first aid kit and accompany the Padre, but he was already striding purposefully away and Ptarmigan was carrying the news that 40 Commando had been overrun. Arnie glanced after the retreating back before shrugging; he and his crew had more urgent work to be getting on with, but he told his loader to keep an eye out for the Padre from the commander’s position, and then got busy himself.

The Spetznaz major had spent an hour and a half looking for a position such as the one he was now in, with line of sight to not two, but three prime targets, a company CP, an ammunition resupply point, and the enemy battalions principle command post. This spot was also sufficiently divorced from the enemy defensive positions as to be safe from all but an unlucky round from his own side’s artillery, but they would not of course tempt fate and his six remaining men were hacking at the ground with entrenching tools. The only fly in the ointment was a nearby enemy fighting vehicle that had since turned up, and although he and his men carried only small arms and grenades, he had the means to make it disappear permanently if it did not move on. All in all, the major considered that he and his men had done quite enough for one war and the time was approaching for them to sit the rest of this one out. After the next three targets were taken out their communications gear was going to ‘malfunction’, and he had no intention of putting his ass in harm’s way again. With continental Europe in Soviet hands there would be a period of chaos, where an intelligent man with a touch of ruthlessness could set himself up in business before the forces of law and order again appeared. Food shortages would be the most obvious of the woes about to befall the western Europeans, but the major had sufficient contacts in the army supply services to ensure sufficient stocks. After all wars, food becomes a more important currency than even gold, for a while at least.

Before ‘Civilisation’ was again fully restored; the major intended to be Europe’s wealthiest. It was this dream he was focussing on when he suddenly noticed a middle aged, and apparently unarmed British captain had entered the thicket and was glaring at him and his men. Incongruously the British officer did not appear to have a personal weapon with him, and he wondered what kind of fool ventured out unarmed during a battle?

“Who is in charge here?”

The major allowed a surreptitious glance toward the enemy APC before answering, and noted that its turret was still facing to the front but a figure in its turret was looking towards this section of undergrowth with a pair of binoculars. His men had paused in their digging, and two were eyeing their weapons that lay close by, but by a barely noticeable shake of the head he conveyed to them that they were to make no sudden moves. Under the current circumstances, killing this man had to be an act of last resort.

“That would be me, sir.” The Russian officers accent was pure East End of London, and the captain was unaware he was conversing with the enemy, but he wasn’t done with the major and his men either. The slightly portly captain was looking hard at him.

“And just who is “Me, sir”…I don’t recognise you, Corporal?”

“Corporal Brown, sir.” The major let a hand slide behind his back, where the fingers curled around the hilt of an ugly looking fighting knife with a serrated blade that he wore on his belt. “This is what’s left of my section; we are all that remains of 40 Commando, sir.”

Although the Padre had the greatest respect for the fighting qualities of the Royal Marines, there was something unsavoury, and distinctly seedy about this individual.

“The only survivor’s Corporal, or just the fastest runners?”

The major allowed the right amount of indignation to show in his response.

“We was ordered out sir, ordered to evacuate these wounded.” He nodded at the two stretchers, covered by ground sheets so that just the boots of the occupants protruded.

“They died before we got here, so we’ll fight on with your unit sir.” He gestured towards his men.

“That’s why we’re digging in…so we can give those bastards some payback!” He saw a hint of uncertainty in the captain’s eyes.

“If we’d run sir, wouldn’t we just carry on going?”

The captain considered those words, and the Spetznaz officer felt a sense of satisfaction when he saw the other nod in apology and begin to turn away. His fingers relaxed their grip on the knife hilt, but then the captain paused and asked who his officer was?

That the captain wanted a name was obvious, and for all the Spetznaz officer knew this Britisher might well be on first name terms with every damn officer in the Royal Marines, so he picked a name at random and hoped his run of luck would carry him through.

The Padre had thought that he’d find some confused or even shell shocked stretcher bearers stumbling around when he had first spotted these men, but having got to them it had occurred to him they may have ‘done a runner’ from their own unit once the going got tough. The marine corporal however, was looking him straight in the eye as he stated their intention to fight on beside his own unit, and the Padre regretted his earlier impression. He was about to leave when it occurred to him that a mention in the regimental diary might not go amiss at a later date.

“Who is your officer, corporal?”

“Second lieutenant Chartridge, sir…” The Padre knew only two RM officers and both were colonels so the name of a ‘Subbie’ meant nothing to him, but then the marine ended the sentence with, “…he’s our platoon commander.”

The Russian knew that somehow he’d screwed up because the British captain’s eyes narrowed.

“The marines don’t call their sub units Platoons corporal, they call them Troop.” With surprising agility he suddenly sprang across to the stretchers and hauled off the ground sheet covering the nearest one.

“Good God above!”

The British officer was transfixed by the sight of the severed pair of legs and the laser designator lying upon the canvas instead of a dead body, and the major leapt, aiming for the British captain’s throat but missing it, slicing into the side of his neck instead. A look of shock came across the captain’s face and he jumped backwards, a hand pressing against the wound in an effort to stem the stream of arterial blood that was fountaining from it. The major couldn’t let this man raise the alarm and went to grab him, to stop him from getting into the open, but the stretcher tripped him. One of the major’s men bounded after the mortally wounded captain who was still moving backwards towards the edge of the thicket, his free arm extended towards his attackers in an effort to ward off further injury.

The loader saw the Padre stumble backward into view and then another figure appeared, swinging an entrenching tool with both hands. The flailing arm failed to parry the blow aim at the neck, and the loader shouted in alarm whilst reaching for the pintle mounted GPMG.

Alerted by the shout, the RSM raised his head above the rim of the turret hatch in time to see the Padres headless body topple over and his attacker dashing back into cover.

The Spetznaz major in the guise of a Royal Marine corporal was no longer speaking in the tones of east London, he was cursing in gutter Russian as he waited for someone on the other end of his radio to acknowledge the fire mission he had just requested.

The first burst of fire from the Warrior did nothing accept punctuate the fact that the jig was definitely up for the Spetznaz team. Pieces of bark and an amputated branch fell to the muddy ground but the Russians were all lying flat. The diggers pulled back on their equipment, lying on their backs to struggle into the webbing before turning back onto their stomachs. The major ceased his attempts to raise the gun line by radio, rolling onto his side and pulling a smoke grenade from his pouch instead.

“Boys, when this goes off we all run like hell into the trees uphill from here, the cannon on that fighting vehicle can’t elevate above ten degree’s and it is only equipped with iron sights so they will be firing blind.” He had been their officer for over four years and they trusted him to get them out of this spot, he could see that trust in each man’s eyes and it bothered him not one iota that he was lying to them now in order to save his own skin.

“Keep the trees between you and that machine gun, and keep on up to the top of the hill, we’ll RV there and I’ll lead the way through a gap in the lines I noticed earlier…any questions?”

They could see the Warriors turret traversing as the 30mm cannon was brought to bear, and in the headlong flight triggered by the detonation of the WP grenade, none of the runners noticed that the major was not with them.

The dense smoke proved to be no obstacle to Rarden’s thermal sight, and the two soldiers not brought down by the first cannon shells were higher than the paltry ten degrees the major had told them of when the second burst of 30mm caught them.

Arnie was not familiar with the Rarden cannon so he relegated himself to the position of observer, and because he was not focused solely on the fleeing shapes in the smoke he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye.

The major had waited a few seconds until he was sure his running men had the full attention of the NATO troops, before snaking away on his belly in the opposite direction. He now needed to put some distance between the action and himself, so it was a little frustrating when a webbing strap became snagged on the lower branches of a sapling. The sinewy growth, barely six feet in height, bent slightly and the tiny branches and leaves at its apex dancing a wild jig under the influence of the majors efforts to free himself before springing back into the fully upright position.

On the hillside, three still forms dressed as Royal Marines lay in the mud whilst the other three thrashed and screamed, of these one would make it whilst the other two would succumb to their wounds.

Arnie memorised the spot where he had seen the agitation in the undergrowth before taking in the situation on the hill, the wounded were calling out in Russian so it didn’t take a genius to work out what the Padre had stumbled upon. The six who had broken from cover were out of the fight, but there could be more of them.

“Gunner, cease fire…100 metres, half right, in the thicket, watch and shoot.”

“Rog’”

“Driver, back up…stop, turn right…stop.” The Warrior had pivoted about its axis and now the turret swung back until its 30mm faced the same direction as the vehicle. “Driver, take us forward slowly.”

Arnie was relieved that the Padre’s head was lying face down when they reached the body, but he spared the gruesome sight the merest of glances anyway. They passed the Padre, and the Warrior nosed into the bushes and saplings that had provided cover for their enemy. The weight of the armoured vehicle either crushed the undergrowth, or the younger and suppler growth bent to the inevitable, only to emerge from beneath the vehicles rear end and slowly straighten once more.

In the scramble to buckle on webbing and gather up their weapons, the contents of both stretchers had been bared to view by the Spetznaz troopers and the Warriors driver deviated from course slightly in order to crush the laser designators he could see upon them before continuing.

The major had paused momentarily on hearing the British armoured fighting vehicles engine alter from its low idling murmur. It rose in pitch as it approached and the major felt the first tinge of panic, and his features took on a hunted expression as he looked about desperately for a hiding place. He assumed that the commander of the vehicle would debus the infantry section it was designed to carry before driving on down to the bottom of this slope. The infantry, he thought, would then spread out in a line and like beaters, and drive him on to the Warriors guns.

A short distance ahead was a thick, chest high bramble patch some fifteen metres across with a tunnel-like badger run just visible and he crawled rapidly towards it. The webbing was a hindrance and so he rolled onto his side to unbuckle, and then shove it out of sight deep beneath the brambles before easing his head and shoulders into the run. The barbs caught at the material of his camouflage smock and trousers, pierced the palms of his hands and left bloody scratches in his skin, but he forced his way on, ignoring the pain and the barbs tore free. The run almost pierced the heart of the bramble patch before curving around to the down slope side where the major suddenly found himself staring at the entrance to the badgers set. It was an old and well-established habitat that many generations of badger had occupied. The creature that had first chosen this spot had found granite lay beneath the earth but had persevered, tunnelling down at an angle, following a slab of the rock for yards before it gave way to manageable earth, as such the rock formed the floor of the tunnel and now bore the marks of its occupants claws, past and present. Over the years the elements had played their part in eroding away at the exposed entrance, the upper reaches however, were reinforced by the mesh of roots of the overlying undergrowth and had therefore resisted better than the bottom and sides, so it jutted above the entrance like a shelf. The Russian majors feeling of panic gave way to one of relief when he took in the dimensions of the excavation, and he wormed his way inside to where it tapered down to the sets proper entrance, and four feet of deep shadow lay between himself and the open.

Regimental Sergeant Major Moore had not dismounted his handful of Guardsmen, he did not know what numbers or weaponry they faced, except that they probably had no anti-armour kit or they would have used it already. Arnie was at the ready with the Gimpy in the commander’s hatch from where he had the advantage of height to observe, peering down into the brush, seeking out his quarry with a finger applying first pressure to the weapons trigger. He was getting queries over the air from the nearby platoons wanting to know the reason for the gunfire, coming as it did from the ground lying between the left hand depth and forward companies, so he gave a brief sitrep followed by a terse

“Wait Out!”

The major smiled to himself in the darkness when he heard the throb of the approaching engine and wiped at the sweat which had beaded his forehead before resting his face against the cool granite he was laying on. Only a diligent search by men on foot could have discovered this hidey-hole, so he was safe for the time being and with luck the hunters would assume he had slipped away and so abandon the search, so he could afford to relax.

The Warriors driver brought the fighting vehicle along slowly, stopping whenever the RSM told him to but these stops were fleeting, allowing Arnie only to satisfy himself that they had not overtaken their prey. On one such pause however, the twenty-four tonne Warrior had settled, quite suddenly to one side as the ground gave way beneath the left-hand track. Arnie grabbed the side of the hatch to steady himself but after the initial list to one side the vehicle now seemed stable. Looking over the side of the turret he saw that some animal or other had apparently made its home beneath the bramble patch their fighting vehicle had entered and the weight had collapsed its tunnel. The Warrior obviously wasn’t going to tip over so he ordered the driver to proceed and transferred his attention back to the job at hand.

The collapse had grounded the Warrior; the brambles were crushed between its armoured belly and the earth. Its left track spun around, churning at the soft earth until it was able to find solid traction, but Arnie did not see the soft earth it churned at turn to a red paste speckled with white bone fragments. The Warrior continued on down the slope until reaching the line of field defences before the company in depth, but no sign was there of any other infiltrator’s.

Soviet artillery was beginning to fall on the forward companies now. Arnie reasoned that the movement he had seen was probably that of a rabbit or a fox startled by the cannon fire, so he ended the hunt by ordered the driver to take them back to the position covering the stream.

Pat Reed came off the air from a conference call with the brigade commander and received a handful of messages from a signaller, which updated him on several incidents taking place whilst the brigade commander had held his attention. None of the items were awaiting a decision from him or needed him to okay the appropriate action; they were being dealt with already. The 155mm self-propelled SA90s of 40 Field Regiment were firing a mission against the sunken lane, its rounds fused for airburst to best deal with the enemy infantry there. A damaged Army Air Corps Gazelle carrying a Royal Artillery officer had set down in a clearing behind the in-depth companies, it had been spotting for the guns when a Fulcrum had come within a hair of splashing it with a missile. It occurred to Pat that thus far they had neither seen nor heard of any close air support by the Soviet’s against either the Royal Marines or themselves today, so maybe SACEUR’s ‘forlorn hope’ had paid off? More good news was that two of his best snipers, Stef and Bill, had regained the battalion lines via 3 Company. Stephanski had ensured that the CP knew the enemy infantry were not only fighting unhampered by the wearing of respirators or gas masks, but also they were not even wearing their version of NBC suits over their conventional combat attire. It was a fairly good indicator, though not iron cast, that the enemy either had no stocks of chemical weapons at hand anymore or they did not see the need to employ them. This information was passed up to brigade as well as to the individual units and sub units in 1CG’s area of responsibility. Pat also received his snipers brief account of the final moments of 40 Commando, relayed to him by another signaller.

“One of 3 Company’s Milan crews is tracking the tank sir, it is still in clear view and they asked for permission to move forward to extreme range and engage?”

Pat knew damn well that they had in all probability already gone along the correct chain of command and had been refused.

“Three Nine knocked them back because he quite rightly didn’t want his assets exposed too soon, so do they honestly think I’m going to overrule one of my company commanders just because their blood is up?” Pat left the signaller to pass on the rebuke, and carried on reading, his eyes skimming over the words and taking it all in. The RSM’s report of infiltrators and the death of the Padre were both saddening and alarming, but none of the emotions he was feeling could be read on his features by anyone watching at that moment.

“Has this infiltration business been acted upon, Timothy?”

The Adjutant was on the radio to Major Venables and he raised a thumb above his head without looking around, confirming that he had it in hand but then winced as Soviet artillery impacted none too far away from the CP. As the rumbles died away he took the radio headset off and glared at it in disgust, but the radio operators were already removing the various radios antennae coax cables and replacing them with others that led to an alternative antennae farm. Pat listened as Tim re-established communications with the Hussar squadron’s commander and explained that artillery had just taken out one of the antennae farms.

All in all, Pat considered that things could have been far worse by now, but he mentally kicked himself for tempting fate because another message was handed to him. The Guardsmen and Paratroopers in the forward companies had been receiving artillery for the past twenty minutes, but not in a concentrated fashion, that had just changed now as both company CP’s reported a drastic increase in the weight of incoming fire. Lt Col Reed could only guess at how long the enemy was planning to soften up his unit before continuing the assault.

23^rd Czech MRR went firm on the positions formerly held by the British 40 Commando, in expectation of one of the Romanian regiments passing through to take up the assault, but any hopes of a breather were dispelled when 23^rd ‘s commander gave his sitrep. 23^rd MRR still had adequate fighting strength remaining and were ordered to carry out a quick reorg whilst the next NATO position was ‘prepped’ by artillery. Once the reorganisation had been completed, they would step off over the rise and cross the 3 kilometre wide valley to fight through to the summit of Vormundberg. The commander of the 23^rd knew he had just had one easy victory and was ready for more, he knew the Spetznaz team had crossed over into the next enemy position, securing him the sunken lane, a route safe from direct fire down into the valley that a company of mounted infantry in BDRMs and a tank company could use.

He had lost the best part of a company of infantry in the sunken lane through NATO artillery, but they had been dismounted and vulnerable to such fire, away from the protective armour plate of their vehicles. So hyped up was he with success, he did not think to ask if the Spetznaz major was still sending fire missions to the gun line, he merely assumed that the division commander would inform him if all contact had been lost. On the other end of the secure communications link the Romanian General was a little relieved that he had not been asked that question because lying was a necessary, yet tedious art in this business of man management.

The distribution of fresh ammunition and the shifting around of personnel to even up the losses went swiftly, largely due to the lack of incoming rounds from NATO guns.

At Lt Col Reed’s insistence the guns available to the battalion were being preserved until the Soviet’s put in their attack, and the Royal Artillery had a Phoenix UAV aloft now, watching for that very move. He knew that there was a distinct possibility that the enemy would use the sunken lane to get an armoured force closer to his forward companies’ unseen, and whilst that attack was being addressed a far larger force could use the distraction to close with the Anglo American unit.

Pat believed that the brunt of the attack from the lane would in all probability be borne by 3 Company, but he was confident that with the assistance of the section from the anti-tank platoon and a troop of Challengers who were attached, they would cope. He could not predict where the main attack would be focussed; it could drive on 3 Company as a second wave to the first attack, or come at 4 Company and thereby divide the fire of his artillery assets.

Pat Reed intended on giving 3 Company exclusive call on the battalions 81mm mortars, initially at least, whilst using the artillery to carry out counter-battery shoots and then switch fires to pound on the larger force once it was halfway to the battalions position. This final NATO line did have close air support on call, but even with the extra help it was limited.

SACEUR knew that the French 8^th Armoured and Canadian 2^nd Mechanised Brigades’ would need all the help they could get once they put in their counter-attacks against the Soviet bridgeheads, so he was preserving ground attack capable airframes for that moment, which left mainly tank hunting Lynx and Apache helicopters, with just a few flights of fixed wing ground attack aircraft, available to the blocking force.

The Royal Artillery rep called 1CG’s CO over and showed him the current download from the Phoenix, showing tanks and APCs beyond the rise in the newly conquered ground, filing into the sunken lane and heading towards Vormundberg. Pat estimated their strength to be between two and three companies worth.

The UAV operator steered the machine north, where at first the only vehicles to be seen were the burning hulks of the 40 Commando soft skinned Wimik’s and the Blue’s & Royals Scimitars, before passing over massed armour that was already formed up and ready to go. His FAC, Forward Air Controller, was also watching the downloaded images, and sipping at a mug of beef beverage with an air of apparent calm about him, however Pat could see in the man’s eyes that he was really loitering with intent, staving off impatience as he waited for the CO to call on the services of himself and his troops. A signaller passed Pat a slip of paper and waited silently as he read the content; 2 REP was now under attack from a force of tanks with BMPs in support, but Pat had expected as much.

The attack on the French paratroopers was merely a supporting attack, one designed to prevent them using their Milan’s to fire into the flank of the Soviet attack at extreme range, effectively denying 1CG any help from that quarter. It was solid military tactics and Pat knew that it was only a matter of time before his neighbours, the Argyll’s and the Light Infantrymen, received similar attention, isolating his unit from help as the main attack clashed with his forward companies and tried to drive over them.

The air battle above the Soviet armoured vanguard had proved debilitating to both sides and the sky was, for the moment, relatively clear as both sides refuelled and rearmed. Pat ordered the artillery to begin counter-battery fire so that his own men could emerge from their shelter bays and prepare to receive the enemy. His FAC dropped all pretence of nonchalance and hurried back to his proper place within the CP once Pat had told him what he wanted the available ‘air’ to do.

In fields and woodland clearings to the rear of the fighting a host of British Army Air Corps Lynx and Apache helicopters had been waiting with rotors already turning, and they now lifted off and headed toward the fighting.

The barrage impacting on 3 and 4 Companies slackened once the British 155mm rounds began finding the Soviet gun lines. It gave the men a breather and allowed them to collect their wits and their weapons, and then to leave the shelter bays of their trenches.

Although artillery was still impacting on the forward positions it was at a greatly reduced volume. Artillery rounds criss-crossed the air above the trenches as the gunners of both sides sought to make the other duck. It was a duel that the NATO artillery could never win decisively due to the Soviet’s numerical superiority, but it served the purpose that Pat desired.

L/Cpl Veneer and Guardsmen Troper had put a lot of effort into the construction of their position, sandbags lined the firing bay as insurance against cave-ins caused by the Stingers back blast, but many of these were now leeching earth from rents where they had been peppered with slivers of shrapnel by Soviet artillery rounds bursting overhead.

Troper had neglected to put everything under cover once rounds had begun incoming, so consequently his tin mug and brew making kit had vanished, scattered into the undergrowth by one or more near miss.

“Bluddy ‘ell…them fucker’s ‘ave ram-raided us!”

No sympathetic words were forthcoming from his partner, who was listening to his PRC 349 and had a hand held up for silence.

Troper had a hangdog expression, but a thought occurred to him and he instantly brightened up.

“I suppose it could be worse, we’ve still got your brew kit, haven’t we!”

“No, I still have my brew kit…if you want some you can buy a mug’s worth off me for two fags.”

An indignant Troper levelled an accusing, and somewhat grubby, finger at his oppo.

“You jack bastard, you don’t even bleedin’ well smoke!”

“’Course I don’t, filthy sodding habit.” Veneer paused to listen again at the earpiece but no one was yet speaking to them.

“When was the last time we had a NAAFI run, eh? The smokers are gasping and will pay a quid for a coffin nail, so every fag you give me I’m selling on.”

He stuck a finger in his free ear to drown out the expletives aimed at him, and acknowledged in turn the radio message aimed specifically at the battalions air defence contingent.

“Stop whinging, you wanker…our choppers are coming forward, but we’ve to hold fire on all fixed wing stuff until informed.” He pulled a launcher and a pair of reloads from the storage bay and then noticed a trio of green painted faces topped by US pattern Kevlar helmets peering at them over the lip of a fighting position to the left and slightly downhill. He stopped what he was doing and stared back at them, but no one said anything so after a few moments he involuntarily looked over his shoulder to see if they were looking at someone else before looking back.

“What?”

The painted faces looked at one another as if telepathically electing a spokesperson; the one on the right lost.

“Erm…yuze guys ain’t thinkin’ of lightin’ one of them things off, is ya?”

“What?”

The spokesman from the former colonies and his mates waited for a more substantial reply.

In exasperation the young lance corporal responded.

“We’re the air defence detachment for this company, wot the fuck do yer think we’re goin’ to do?”

“We expect ya to walk three hundred paces in any direction but this one, before you let one off.” It was a different spokesman, but the message was the same, not welcome.

“If ya fire that thing, every motherfucker with a gun will be shootin’ it in this direction, they hate triple A.”

L/Cpl Veneer gave brief consideration to reasoned argument, but logical debate had never been a strong point of his and so he settled for giving the neighbours two raised fingers instead. The rigid digits seemed to tempt fate because suddenly there were aircraft a hundred feet above them and everyone dived for cover before noting they were outbound rather than incoming.

The trio of RAF Tornado’s passing overhead belonged to 617 Squadron, one of the most famous units of the old Bomber Command, which despite its maritime strike role had left its home base at RAF Lossiemouth two days before hostilities had commenced, flying to Gutersloh with fifteen Tornado GR4s and had been in the thick of it ever since. Three of its five remaining airframes passed a hundred feet above the heads of the dug in Guardsmen and Paratroopers, loosing off high-speed anti-radiation missiles before breaking hard to the north. They lacked the numbers to either intimidate in a major way or eliminate the AAA, and a mixture of quad 23mm and SA-9s rose from the massed armour and followed earnestly in the wake of the departing aircraft. The squadrons remaining pair of aircraft arrived on scene at that juncture, coming in fast from the southwest and adding eight more HARM’s to the twelve already in flight.

It was a textbook perfect attack and the first HARM’s began exploding AAA vehicles even as they began to pivot to face the new threat. The effect was the one hoped for, no one ‘predicted’ results or actions anymore, the pre-war doctrines and assumptions had been found naïve and wanting. As had been hoped though, the majority of the anti-aircraft artillery assets radars were silent five seconds later as two pairs of Jaguars popped up over a rise to the north west and over-flew the waiting armour of 23^rd Czech MRR, releasing cluster bomb units as they did so. Seven seconds later a further four Jaguars came in from west, but they were less fortunate, the enemy were now reacting to the presence of aircraft overhead and one Jaguar fell to a sustained burst of 23mm fire whilst an SA-9 found the number four aircraft before it could release its load, exploding it in a fireball from which flaming debris fell to litter the German countryside. The remaining pair ejected chaff and flares as they egressed to the south but a refuelled, rearmed, and angry Mig-31 CAP arrived hurriedly back on station and pounced, taking out both RAF aircraft with missile shots before NATO’s own combat air patrol could intervene.

23^rd MRRs commander stood in the turret of his T-80 and stared off in the direction of his units FUP. There were trees between the forming up point and his present position but he had no trouble knowing where to look, the black oily smoke rising above the treetops indicated where fourteen of his armoured fighting vehicles were stopped and burning.

He felt a tap on the leg and looked down into the vehicle, into the upturned face of his radio operator.

“Yes?”

“The division commander is offering fixed wing cover for the attack, sir.”

He gave it some consideration before dismissing the idea. It would mean severely restricting his anti-aircraft assets rules of engagement, and from past experience he believed that they would see nothing of this alleged air cover until after NATO air strikes had come and gone, unchallenged by their own air force and by the his own AAA that had been ordered to hold fire. The idea of using air power for precision strikes against hardpoint’s was extremely attractive — on paper — but this was the real thing, not a classroom exercise.

“My thanks, but no thanks.” Instead of disappearing, the radio operators face remained looking up at him.

“Is there something else?”

“Yes sir, First battalion’s commander is asking for a delay, to deal with the wounded and he is also asking for a company to be attached from Third battalion to make up for what First just lost?”

From beyond the trees the sound of ammunition cooking off could be heard and reinforced the urgency of the moment, the attack could bog down before it even began. He shook his head emphatically.

“No, he goes right now, right this instant, and with what he has…tell the companies in the lane to begin their attack, and tell the mortars to start laying smoke.”

The face disappeared and he heard his orders being relayed before the face reappeared and he received a thumbs up, confirming acknowledgement by the sub units.

He checked the switch on his own communications panel was set to intercom before depressing the microphones pressel switch.

“Driver…take us forward, just short of where that farm was.”

The sound of the T-80s engine raised by several octaves and then it lurched forward, picking up speed as it headed over the battered countryside in the direction indicated. The regimental commander’s entourage, a trio of BTR-80 APCs, a ZSU-23-4 and another two T-80 battle tanks accompanied it, the vehicle commanders keeping a weather eye on the skies for NATO strike aircraft.

Back at the 1CG CP the artillery rep had ordered the Phoenix away prior to the Tornado’s ‘Wild Weasel’ sorties and the Jaguar strikes, but now it was arriving back above the armour of 23^rd MRRs first battalion. Pat Reed saw that the lead companies were now on the move, and then a signaller informed him that 3 Company were reporting smoke was being dropped to their front.

Major Venables and his mixed squadron of Challenger II’s and elderly Chieftain’s had endured the Soviet bombardment without loss, but not without mishap. On the reverse slopes the tanks sat in holes dug against the side of the hill and therefore safe from artillery pieces firing at maximum elevation, but as ever the Soviet mortars concentrated on the areas the guns could not hit. One of his Challenger’s had been buried by a landslide caused by the massive 240mm mortar rounds and smaller, yet more numerous 120mm fired from the 2S9 Anona self-propelled heavy mortar, and RE Sapper’s were working frantically alongside REME recovery troops to dig out the tank and its crew.

All but two of his squadron’s crewmen had seen action, even though the last time any of his call sign’s had fired a main tank gun in anger had been at Magdeburg. Between repulsing the assault river crossing there and digging in here on Vormundberg it had been an infantry show, but Venables had ensured that his crews carried out dry training at every opportunity, to the disgust of those Hussars who had been on the Wesernitz and therefore thought of themselves as ‘old sweats’ and above such mundane activities. Despite such elitist attitudes he was quietly rather proud of his small command and the way they were meshed together as a team. He was confident they would do the business today, and if the Soviet’s achieved a breakthrough it would not be due to any shortcomings from his men. He did have concerns regarding equipment, particularly with the Chieftains and especially with Tango One Two Charlie, a Mk 10 with an unreliable engine pack and a gearbox that would have been changed had a spare been found in time. His thoughts were interrupted by a voice on the battalion net.

“Hello all stations address group Kilo, this is India Zero, Cryptic Tuesday, over.”

The Hussar squadron was half way down the list in order of priority and so Venables employed the time on the squadron net.

“Hello all stations this is One Nine, move now, I say again, move now, over.”

All three troop commanders answered and Venables own Challenger got underway, heading for its own forward fighting position as he acknowledged the CP on the battalion net. “Tango One Nine, Cryptic Tuesday, over.”

The word was passed down the line, the enemy is coming and anything to your front is now ‘in play’.

The American Paratroopers and British Guardsmen waited for the enemy armour with a feeling in their stomachs that their forefathers had probably felt too, when the order in those bygone days had been, ‘Prepare to receive cavalry!’

The small group of armoured vehicles stopped short of the skyline and the 23^rd MRRs regimental commander climbed from the turret to the engine deck of his T-80, before making his way forward and then with a hand on the main gun for balance he lowered himself carefully down the front glacis plate to the ground, not wishing to turn an ankle on the shattered stone and brickwork that lay underfoot. Two of the BTRs carried his small battle staff but the third carried infantry, and these had debussed before their commander had left the turret of his tank, his aide, a signaller, the intelligence, air and artillery reps hurrying to join him whilst the infantrymen had deployed in all round defence, providing local security.

The last few feet to the crest were accomplished on hands and knees to avoid being silhouetted on the skyline, and the officers took up position to the left of their commander, lying in a line of diminishing rank or seniority with binoculars being trained on the sunken lane.

Several minutes had passed since the regimental commander had ordered the two companies in the lane, one tank and one APC, to begin their attack and yet despite a thick smokescreen having been laid there was as yet no movement from that quarter. An angry demand for compliance was snapped at the signaller, burdened down with a heavy manpack radio but whom conveyed the order and then likewise conveyed the senior company commanders apology, a mortar round had scored a direct hit on the thin top armour of an elderly BTR-60PB, the blazing vehicle was clearly visible to the staff officers, it had been blocking the narrow roadway to the vehicles following behind, however the combined efforts of two T-90s had muscled it over onto its side and allowed vehicles to brave the exploding ammunition for its heavy, 14.5mm turret mounted machine gun as they squeezed past. The 81mm rounds being dropped by the Guards and 82^nd mortar lines were harassing the armour in the lane rather than doing any real damage, they were area, rather than precision, weapons and the knocked out eight-wheeler had been a fluke.

The regimental commander snapped a query at the artillery rep regarding the greatly reduced weight of fire landing on suspected NATO positions but the artilleryman was spared the need to reply because at that moment the tanks surged out of the lane, leading the way for the APC company.

The delay had proved a drain on the Czech mortars supply of smoke and the screen was growing patchy, which allowed those defenders without the benefit of infrared sights, to see the opposition with their Mk 1 eyeballs instead.

“Who are they, do you know?” The commander had lowered his glasses and turned his head toward his subordinates, directing the question at the Intelligence officer, who stammered a reply.

The regimental commander considered the answer for a moment before chuckling.

“So, the remnants of a regiment we beat in our first battle, and some American’s who’s own regiment didn’t want them…hah!” The laugh turned to a sneer.

“This will be over in no time at all comrades.”

Turning his attention back to his forces, he raised his binoculars once more to his eyes.

The charge of the Czech armour went unchallenged, the weapons in the NATO lines stayed silent as the tanks grew ever closer, passing through the wrecked and ruined gun line of 29 Commando Regiment and into the fields that ended where the slopes of Vormundberg began.

The CO of the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders called up Pat Reed, he had a troop of the Royal Scots supporting his own left flank company, and both their tanks and a section of the flank company’s Anti-Tank Platoon would be in position to assist 3 Company and the Hussar Troop. Pat thanked the Scots CO for the offer, but they had best stay masked until needed, as he was confident the attack could be beaten unaided.

Over a rise a mile to the right of the lead company from the 23^rd’s First Battalion appeared, motoring downhill across fields toward the same sunken lane. It was an obstacle that would cause them to slow in order to negotiate it, but the enemy should be fully engaged in trying to deal with the first two companies and the regimental commander was confident the First battalion would arrive like a hammer blow, rolling up or rolling over the defenders. Satisfied that the fight was as good as won the regimental commander stood, as a sign of contempt for his enemy he dispensed with basic fieldcraft, and turning his back he began to walk back to his command tank.

Major Venables kept his eyes firmly pressed against the sight as he keyed the radios send switch. When different Arms speak on the same radio network the simple use of a prefix avoids, for example, the number two troop of B Squadron of an armoured regiment from being confused with 2 Platoon, 2 Company of an infantry battalion. ‘India’ denotes Infantry, ‘Tango’ denotes armour/tanks, ‘Golf’ denotes artillery/guns etc. As Major Venables was communicating directly with his own unit, on their own net he did not use the ‘Tango’ prefix.

“Hello One Three this is One, over?”

“One Three, send over.”

“One, as per my last briefing the signal to let rip will be me lighting up a command tank….” His gunner was already tracking the Czech tank company commander’s vehicle, a T-90 that was easily identified by its additional antennae.

“…but right now I’m seeing an SA-9 vehicle amongst the tanks, at least two Zeus mixed in with the APCs and there are at least two plough tanks with the lead element.” Venables did not have to elaborate for the troop commander covering 3 Company.

“One Three, roger out to you…hello One Three Bravo and One Three Charlie, over.”

“One Three Bravo, send over.”

“One Three Charlie, send over.”

Major Venables listened for just a moment longer to the AAA targets being divided up between that troop, before turning to the 3 Company net.

“Hello India Three, this is Tango One, ready when you are, over.”

“India Three roger, standby…standby…fire!”

The Challenger II rocked backwards on its sprockets with the recoil of its main gun and the tungsten sabot flew true, striking their target where turret met body.

Less than a heartbeat later three other tank guns fired and sent two HESH and a further sabot down range.

The sound of the onboard ammunition in Venables target exploding caused the 23^rd MRRs commander to stop and look back towards his lead companies.

The Company commander’s tank had already blown up but the sound had taken a little time to reach the regimental commanders ears. He was in time to observe a four wheel SAM vehicle and a pair of ZSU-23-4s explode in unison, and moments later the first Milan missiles struck the charging line of tanks.

Aside from the visible proof that NATO ground forces could still fight, something caught his eye, something had briefly popped up from behind trees on the crest of Vormundberg but it had been so fleeting that he had only the barest impression, and then the frighteningly swift passage of a Hellfire missile ended with the death of another of his tanks.

“Kurva drat!”

Another object, though not in the same spot came into view and he saw a British Lynx helicopter half visible behind the trees, but unlike the Apache that had loosed off the Hellfire, the Lynx had to keep the target in view whilst attacking with the older, wire guided TOW missile, but older technology or not the T-72 it struck was reduced to burning scrap.

Tank rounds, Milan, TOW and Hellfire missiles were coming thick and fast, although not all hit or killed their targets first time. Some crews were still blessing the luck that had given them a glancing blow only, when their attacker re-engaged and destroyed them.

He glared at his aide. “Get me close air support!”

“You were offered it earlier sir, but turned it down…it may take time to get it back?”

Unable to do anything to silence the enemy anti-tank weapons himself, the regimental commander took it out on the junior officer.

“Ty debile zasranej…so why are you wasting time making excuses?”

The business of controlling the tank fire was not, at this precise time, the responsibility of the squadron commander. The attack was being directed against 3 Company and therefore his troop commander controlled their aspect of the fight.

Major Venables and his crew were in a position to assist and so once he had initiated the fire, he allowed his crew to become subordinate to the troop commander, 3 Troop.

Venables Challenger arrived in its second fighting position having fired twice from the initial location. It had reversed out of that hole and motored to its present one where it had crept up a muddy ramp to present only the smallest target area possible to an enemy and still be able to engage. The gunner was looking through his sight at the dwindling number of tank targets below, traversing the main gun as he tried to decide which to engage when Major Venables took over, using the commander’s over-ride to halt the main guns wanderings and bring the elevation up a few degrees.

“Target BMP with antennae’s.”

The gunner took a half second to answer.

“Identified!” He thumbed the laser rangefinder and Venables released the over-ride, allowing the gunner sole control over the weapon once more. A sabot round was already loaded but there were more tanks out there then they had sabot rounds to kill them with, so each one counted.

“Load HESH.”

His loader opened the guns breach, removing one of the bag charges along with the sabot before replacing it with a HESH round, closing the breach once more and sliding the safety gate across.

“HESH loaded!”

“Firing!”

Overall command of the two companies had been borne by the commander of the infantry company since the loss of his opposite number in the first tank to be taken out, and he would probably have managed it quite ably had he been given a few more minutes to settle into the job. Having been struck by a round fired a greater height than the BMP-2 enjoyed, its angled frontal armour stood no chance of deflecting the round away. The HESH round struck the armour plate square on, its hollow nose cone flattening against the 9mm thick armour even as the projectiles rear mounted fuse fired. Roof hatches, gun ports and the rear troop door blew off, sent spinning away by the expansion of white-hot gasses from within the armoured vehicle. A second later the heat set off the 30mm cannon rounds stored within the vehicle and it blew up.

Venables did not dwell on the vehicles destruction; he was looking for more targets.

“Okay, let’s find anoth…” and then the suns reflecting off a smooth surface caught his eye, drawing it to the insect-like body and bug eyes of a machine hovering just above the ground a half kilometre beyond the APCs, but it took a moment for his brain to register the thing was pointing unerringly at them.

“…back us up NOW!”

Not needing to be told twice his driver gunned the engine and the Challenger jerked backwards down the ramp and not a moment too soon. A SPIRAL, anti-tank guided missile fired from the Mi-24V, Hind-D passed six inches above the turret of the retreating Challenger and exploded against a tree a dozen feet behind the position.

Having missed the shot the attack helicopters gunner cursed in frustration and loosed of a barrage of 23mm rounds from the twin, nose mounted cannons. He was hoping for either a lucky hit or to startle the tank into seeking fresh cover, but receiving only an angry rebuke from his squadron commander whom he had not realised was watching. It really wasn’t his day at all and if he hadn’t been busy wasting ammunition he would possibly have noticed a Stinger being fired from elsewhere in the enemy lines.

Veneer watched the helicopter stagger as the missile struck the side of its port engine and explode. It wasn’t a very big explosion, and although he knew the weapon had only a quite small warhead he was disappointed. He remembered once as a small boy in the run up to Bonfire night he had spent a week’s pocket money on a biggish rocket with an impressive sounding name, but he had felt cruelly cheated at the feeble bang and lacklustre sparkles when he had let it off on the night. The Stinger seemed to have the same lack of punch as the ‘Galactic Zammer’ because after the impact the pilot had steadied the aircraft and there it hovered, twelve feet above the ground and apparently undamaged.

The first derisive catcalls were sounding from the neighbours when a gout of black smoke issued from the port exhaust and the aircraft suddenly lost power. It dropped to the ground, bounced once and then toppled onto its side, its rotor blades shattering against the earth and the fragments flying off in every direction. The Hind-D didn’t blow up and it didn’t catch fire, but it definitely counted as a kill.

“Buggermesideways!” He allowed the launcher to be taken from him by Troper, muttering about sheer flukes and that it was his turn now.

“I thought that Stinger was a dud for a minute.”

“Don’t talk soft, do ya really think he would have carried on just sitting there if something hadn’t got broke?”

They noticed that the 82^nd men had fallen silent, and both Guardsmen began a soccer chant, pointing their fingers at the paratroopers as they taunted them.

“Oh it’s all gone quiet, all gone quiet; it’s all gone quiet over there!”

Any listening music lovers were spared the horrors of a second chorus by a 57mm rocket striking the hillside twenty feet below, and sending everyone in the vicinity headlong back into the shelter bays, where they rolled themselves into protective balls as the victim’s squadron commander worked over the area of hillside that the Stinger had been fired from.

Once that Mi-24V had relocated, leaving in search of fresh targets for its remaining three pods and four SPIRALS’ it carried, the Guardsmen re-emerged. Thirty-two rockets had added to the damage already inflicted by the artillery, but that damage was limited to the trees, hillside and defence works, but the downing of the helicopter had not endeared them to their neighbours. A rocket had caused a cave-in at the position occupied by the trio from the far side of the pond, and when the two Coldstreamers eventually reappeared, they paused in their frantic spadework to glare in a most hostile fashion.

Unable to think of anything else to say, Troper called across. “Nice morning for it!” He gave a half-hearted wave that was as sheepish as the awkward smile on his face, and ducked back out of sight.

Venables driver eased the big machine into their third firing position and the squadron commander cracked the hatch. Standing half inside the turret he studied the panorama before him, and nodded to himself in satisfaction before reporting on the battalion net that a half dozen Czech AFVs were retreating back the way they had come. The remainder were burning fiercely in the fields below, and none had come closer than a quarter of a mile.

All of 3 Troops vehicles were intact and ammunition expenditure had been light, so it was a pretty good start to the fight.

He took in the heavier than normal scent of pine, courtesy of all the freshly splintered trees, and smiled wistfully because he had always liked the smell of pine. Pine scented disinfectants, air fresheners and those tablet things that they put in urinals didn’t count, they just weren’t the same thing at all. He enjoyed the moment, even if the flavour was tainted with the stink of spent explosives, and then raised his binoculars to look off to where about three times the number of the last attackers was approaching the sunken lane.

The advancing battalion was coming on with two companies abreast, and those lead companies were fast approaching the sunken lane which the Major could only make out at that distance by the avenue of trees marking its passage. He studied the distant shapes, trying to fathom what calibre of soldier was manning these personnel carriers and tanks, and grudgingly allowed that they were probably veterans, judging by the combat spacing between the vehicles and general good order of the formation.

By his reckoning the left wing of this new attack would overlap 4 Company to encompass 3 Company’s number 7 Platoon, and the right could well be driving on positions held by their neighbours 2LI, the 2^nd Battalion Light Infantry.

Pat had visited the Wessex Regiment soldiers, those who were on loan to the Light Infantry, and he had no doubts about their courage and skill but the boundary between units was always the weak spot, the seam between two separate command and control organisations that could be widened and exploited by a determined enemy.

The Hussar’s C Squadron, commanded by Jimmy McAddam an old acquaintance, was attached to 2LI and he was tempted to call them up, but there was nothing he could tell him that he wouldn’t already be aware of and now was not really the time.

The sound of eight Fv-432s in low gear reverberated through the lines, working their way up the reverse slope to just shy of the crest, taking advantage of the tree clearance undertaken by the oppositions artillery which had given them another base plate position. On reaching the desired position the engine sounds quietened and the mortar crews ‘Number Two’s, with each weapons aiming post in hand, left the APCs as the two semi-circular hatches in the roofs of the vehicles were opened to reveal the medium mortars.

The business of laying-on, i.e., the placing of the individual aiming posts in such a fashion as to overlap exactly the vertical line on the mortars sight, was conducted between the Number One’s and Number Two’s. For a novice crew the laying-on could take minutes, but for the well-practiced it was but a matter of seconds.

“In Two!” had been shouted eight times in less than thirty seconds and the Number Two’s were back with the vehicles. The mortars were ready for business.

The Hussars commander heard the distinctive ‘ploop’ of 81mm mortar rounds leaving the barrels, and they were leaving very rapidly indeed. Eighty mortar rounds were in the air before the first one had landed, and the Number Two’s had retrieved the aiming posts at the run, clambering back into the vehicles, which were already moving off.

Peering through his binoculars at the oncoming Czech battalion, Major Venables was surprised to see not the geysers of earth and smoke that HE rounds would have caused, but thick white smoke. The ground immediately before the sunken lane took on the aspect of a dense fog bank, which drifted with the breeze towards the Czech formation, blotting out the lane and all visible clues as to its location. The drivers of the Czech armoured vehicles slowed down, not wanting to encounter the sunken lane whilst driving at full tilt. They knew that the obstacle was somewhere close by, but hitting it at forty miles per hour was courting serious if not fatal consequences.

The front rank slowed and almost instantly the combat spacing between vehicles was lost, the ranks of vehicles bunching up as result of the unannounced change of pace.

Venables looked up in response to a mournful droning overhead, and then having identified the sound he laughed aloud and thumped the rim of his hatch in appreciation of the cooperation between the mortars and the heavy artillery. “Beautiful, just beautiful.”

Looking back in the direction of the approaching armour he raised once again the binocular’s to his eyes, but could make out little.

Improved munitions were mixed in with the conventional shells, and these scattered Skeet above the clustered ranks of Czech armour. The thin top armour of fighting vehicles struck by the Skeet’s were pierced and whatever lay beneath suffered accordingly. For the lucky ones this was an engine getting trashed, but for the unlucky ones their last moments were a burning purgatory from which only the sympathetic detonation of onboard ammunition brought a welcome release.

The Czech battalion commander, from his position in the rearmost rank of the formation, had no option but to urge his men to press on. The NATO artillery quite obviously had their range so to loiter was to invite total disaster. The leading vehicles pressed on, driving faster than they would have chosen to if given the choice and this resulted in a number of motorway style pile-ups. Some vehicles encountered the lane unexpectedly, plunged down into the defile at 30mph or faster, and came to a crashing halt against the far side, snapping axles and shearing drive sprockets. For the occupants of such vehicles never fitted with such niceties as safety harnesses, the result was in many cases fractured skulls and broken bones. Vehicles following behind these found the way ahead blocked and were prevented from backing up and finding another way around by vehicles coming up behind.

A BTR-70s driver saw the hedgerow that bordered the lane at the last moment, and managed to brake to a halt, but before he could proceed to negotiate the steep bank at an appropriate speed his vehicle was rammed from behind by a T-72. Shunted forward with such momentum the APC pitched down the bank where it struck the unyielding tarmac, stood on its nose briefly before flopping onto its back. Only cutting torches could have opened the thoroughly mangled rear troop door, and the roof hatches were useless as a means of escape, so it was a blessing that all the occupants had been rendered unconscious.

A flight of German Alpha Jets took advantage of the confusion to stage a hit and run attack, dropping canisters of napalm along that section of the lane, which further blocked the lane and immolated those trapped within wrecked vehicles.

It was a moment that should have been capitalised on by either launching a counter attack, or by piling on the artillery fire, but they lacked the strength to capitalize on such a thrust, and only a second salvo arrived from the guns.

As the smoke screen began to dissipate Venables cursed the lack of available artillery but he knew that the Royal Artillery AS-90s were relocating because the Red Army’s battlefield radar now knew within ten feet where those guns were.

In the fields beyond the avenue of trees he could see burning vehicles and other perfectly serviceable tanks and APCs milling about as a safe passage across the lane was sought. He could only guess at what was taking place in the lane and how many vehicles had come to grief there from the smoke and flames that were climbing skyward.

Calling up the CP he found himself talking to Pat Reed in person, and explained exactly how vulnerable the enemy force now was, but the CO had a bird’s eye view thanks to Phoenix and was as equally as frustrated as the Hussar.

“Hello Tango One Nine, this is India Nine, we are trying for more air assets but we only got those Alpha’s because I promised them full and unbridled use of Mrs India Nine whenever they were next in town…over.”

The levity of the CO’s words could not disguise the underlying frustration he could hear in the voice, and he looked again at the armour stranded beyond the lane before replying resignedly.

“Tango One Nine roger, out.”

He glowered into the binoculars as he saw the tracks and underside of a tank seemingly grow out of the lane as it climbed the steep bank, then the machine tipped over, crushing the hedgerow beneath it and accelerating into the field on this side of the obstacle, the T-90s long barrel traversing from side to side as it sought targets. The enemy had found one gap in the fire and wreckage and where there was one there was sure to be more.

His view was again obscured by smoke but this time the rounds were coming from the enemy, providing cover whilst they organised themselves.

In the absence of artillery, air strikes, or an armoured force of sufficient strength to sally forth and hit the enemy whilst it was off balance, another troop of tanks to support 4 Company was what was required. He had just the three troops worth of tanks and his own vehicle, there were no reserves and 2 Troops position was between 1 and 2 Company in accordance with Pat Reeds desire to have a strong second line, should the forward companies be rapidly overwhelmed. 3 Troop could not be moved left as they were crucial to the flank of the battalion’s defence, which really said it all in regard to their circumstances. No matter how well they did now, they did not have the numbers to win.

Major Venables spat over the side of his turret as if to be rid of the taste of lost opportunities before ordering the driver to back them up and find an empty position nearer to 4 Company where they could lend a helping hand.

Whereas Pat Reed and Mark Venables were feeling merely frustrated, the commander of the 23^rd was positively apoplexic with rage. His superior, the division’s Romanian commander had treated him to an ear-blistering rebuke over the radio for his lack of foresight and planning, even before his first battalions attack had arrived. The divisional commander obviously expected it to fail so he had ordered the 23^rd MRRs commander to prepare and launch a further attack using the rest of his regiment, or answer for the consequences.

First battalion was using smoke to cover its crossing of the sunken lane and shake out into formation once more, but despite already losing a quarter of its strength there was no reason its attack should not succeed.

However, Third battalion was forming up a klick to the rear of the farm and Second battalion, which had borne the brunt of the losses against the British marines and from whom had come the initial two-company attack from the lane, were now attached to the Third battalion.

The vehicle commanders of the two tanks and four APCs that had survived his regiment’s first attack had been arrested and marched off into some trees nearby, their departure being witnessed by the battalion staff’s from Third Battalion and their own.

The regimental commander had remained at the farm to observe, and from here he gave his orders to the staffs by radio, for an attack to be launched with the farm and sunken lane being to the right of the start line. The attack was to bear straight ahead until it reached the point where the lane curved away to run down the valley, and then the force would swing half right and drive for the NATO positions that had defeated the first assault.

As he handed the radio handset back to a signaller he chanced to see on the hills behind them the Romanian regiment that had trailed them was deploying in readiness for an assault. No doubt the remainder of the division was also deploying and he suddenly realised that the divisional commander thought he would fail.

A flurry of shots sounded from the trees where the vehicle commanders had been taken, the sound causing ominous echoes that lingered in his ears, and for the first time he felt the cold finger of fear.

Under the circumstances the First Battalion’s commander did a good job of job of reorganisation on the hoof, but the formation was rather ragged and still trying to sort itself out when he gave the order to continue the advance. Under pressure himself to make progress he had pushed his subordinates to get across the obstacle and lost another two in the process, two precious plough tanks that ventured too far to the right in search of a safe crossing. Despite the suppressing fire being directed on their positions the French Foreign Legion paratroopers could not look such a pair of gift horse’s in the mouth, they engaged both vehicles and destroyed them.

The 4 Company men had watched 3 Company’s action and had been heartened by the result, but now as they watched the Czech’s emerge from the ragged smoke screen, driving straight at them, it caused a few men to swallow hard.

The Soviet artillery which had slackened during the artillery duel now picked up once more, but it was concentrated on the fields and slopes before them, attempting weaken the mine fields which had to be there somewhere. There was heavier fire falling behind and to the sides of the Czechs intended victims, and they knew it was to isolate them, to divide and conquer. The Milan crews picked their targets and awaited the order to open fire, and the men in the fighting holes checked their spare magazines and grenades for the umpteenth time.

Major Venables and his crew were finding the going less than straightforward in their journey along the slope to support 4 Company. Vehicular movement between the two forward companies had been carried out by using an existing track half way up the hill, following the contours through the trees. By accident or by design this track had suffered particularly badly in the Soviet’s preparatory bombardment. Fallen trees and shell craters had provided obstacles the tank could only seek to bypass, but having found their way around one obstacle and returned to the track they encountered further blockages within yards.

The radio transmission that warned of the renewed advance was not best received by the crew of a Challenger that had found itself in a cul-de-sac formed by fallen trunks.

“Arghfukit!”

Had the shelling not picked up then a crewman could have gone out on foot and found them a way through by now. The only area Mark Venables was sure had been spared this level of shelling was the reverse slope.

“Driver, we need to back up about thirty feet and then head straight uphill.” There was no immediate response on the intercom and he was about to call again when the voice of Trooper Abbot, the driver, sounded in his earpiece.

“Er, no offence boss, but what makes you think we can find a route that way?”

“I don’t know that we will, but I know we’ve tried every other direction except up.” Shrapnel struck the turret, and the sound made them all feel strangely more vulnerable rather than snug behind armour plate. Mark Venables was trying not to let the feeling of exasperation get the better of him because they needed to be in a firing position already, not stuck in this maze.

“Just get this thing moving Abbot, there’s a good chap.”

He used the vision blocks to assist the driver as he first backed up and then pivoted the big machine. Major Venables brought the barrel of the 120mm gun to full elevation to prevent its digging into the hillside, and once that was accomplished he turned one of the radios to 1 Troop’s net to inform them that the going was slow but they would assist just as soon as they could.

No matter how much money had gone into the research and development of the perfect seat, they hadn’t cracked the problem yet. That was the considered opinion of Ann-Marie Chan as she tried to regain some feeling in her posterior. Her operators were used to these long hours, which was just as well because although they had been on-station for over fourteen hours, their day wasn’t over yet.

On the ground the troops of both sides may be criticising their respective air forces for not being more visibly active on their behalf this day, but her screens gave a different story.

There was a lot of air activity behind the lines, with NATO interdicting strikes bound for the front or for autobahns carrying the US 4 Corps to the fight. She had four stacks of aircraft configured for air intercept that were employed in defending 4 Corps, and three wings of strike aircraft on the ground that she could not use because they were earmarked for close air support for 4 Corps when they eventually reached the front. It left her with an available, though somewhat ragtag force that had been attempting to thin out the Red armour before it got to Vormundberg. They were all desperately tired and in need of a rest that she was not empowered to allow.

The airborne operation had unquestionably dealt the enemy a severe blow, the Red Air Force was having to employ fields further from the fighting, and due to the losses in the tanker fleet most of the sorties coming from those bases had been unable to take off with full ordnance loads. She knew that would not continue, and indeed the Soviet’s had been moving aircraft, including tankers, from other areas all morning, and sending them to the available fields. The Red AWAC fleet was another matter though, they had reactivated old Il-76s, the first type to properly fulfil that role, but they were being kept too far from the front to be effective. Ann-Marie could just about detect the weak pulse of one that had to be back over Berlin way, so unless that changed then her and her controllers were the kings.

Lt Col Chan could see there were signs of stacks building by the Soviet’s, the stacking up of aircraft that experience told her had to be strike aircraft. A regiments worth of what she suspected were Sukhoi SU-25 variants had lifted off from Plzen-Line airbase and had tanked, the first time that had been seen to happen that day, before flying to Germany to RV with a trio of tankers and four flights of SU-27 Flankers. The second tanking had also been a first for strike aircraft that day, providing heavily laden aircraft with ample fuel reserves.

Lt Col Chan called up the AWAC’s partner in crime, the JSTARS mirroring their racetrack circuit at 45,000 feet.

“Sabre Dance, Sabre Dance, this is Crystal Palace Zero Eight, over.”

“Go, Crystal.”

“It looks like the other guys are getting their act together, we have a regiment holding east of Dessau, loaded for bear and with nearby tanker support. What’s happening on the ground right now?”

“First line at Vormundberg was breached and the first attacks against the second line are underway, but its localised at the moment…we are seeing divisions deploying in the rear though, and we are predicting that if no breakthrough is achieved within the next couple of hours the Reds will launch a general assault along the entire line.”

Ann-Marie thought about that for a moment. It would take a couple of hours to get all the elements set for the divisional attacks and those regiments weren’t going to carry on burning fuel for that length of time.

“Is there anything else you need or has that answered whatever question you had?”

“Just one more thing…how come you get to have the cooler callsign?”

Her opposite number laughed and then they both returned to the business at hand. She knew where the SU-25s were going to be used, and it wasn’t against 4 Corps and it would be in the next few minutes, not two hours down the line.

She brought up a menu onscreen and cast her eye down the list of available units for those that had completed rearming and refuelling. There were three, one Greek, one French and one USAF, and she tagged two flights from each squadron for immediate take off, noting as she did that two regiments worth of fresh contacts were climbing toward tankers south of Plzen-Line, quite possibly prior to heading for 4 Corps, but it was the dozen radar contacts that were leaving the Dessau stack and making a beeline for Vormundberg which were of more immediate concern.

Abbot grunted in satisfaction as the Challenger crested the brow of the hill and halted.

“Please note boss, that I am not one to say ‘I told you so’.”

The hilltop had received serious attention, as logically it was a place dug in troops would be. It was pitted with shell craters and in places these overlapped, there was not a tree that still stood unharmed either.

No artillery was presently landing and Major Venables opened his hatch with caution, listening for the sound of incoming before heaving himself up and out, to stand atop the turret.

From the viewing blocks it had looked to be as much of a maze as the one they had recently given up on, and things didn’t look that much more hopeful when viewed from outside at first, but then he saw it.

Jumping down off the Challenger he ran to a nearby pine tree that had been stripped of almost all its limbs so that it stood like a feature in a kids jungle gym, slashed and hacked at by shrapnel but nonetheless easy to climb thanks to the stumps of branches. He clambered up until he could see clear across the hilltop, and although it would be a something of a roller-coaster ride, climbing in and out of deep craters, it was do-able.

Mark Venables took the time to memorise the twists and turns they would need to take, and then he heard the crack of a main tank gun firing from the direction of 4 Company.

A signaller turned in his seat and raised an arm to catch Pat Reed’s eye, the commanding officer of 1CG raised a questioning eyebrow.

“From Four Nine, ‘Contact, Wait out…’ that’s all sir.”

Lt Col Reed nodded his acknowledgement to that signaller and took a message form from another. It was from brigade and the text of the message was unwelcome news.

He wasn’t sure that his two forward companies could deal with the simultaneous onslaught of over two battalions worth of armour without considerable help.

Pat crossed to the Royal Artillery reps position and noticing an unfamiliar face stood next to the RA lieutenant responsible for artillery support for the unit, and rightly assumed it was the heli-borne spotter who had been forced down. Being rather busy he gave a nod of welcome in passing and gripped his rep by the shoulder.

“Derek, I want MLRS, just a couple of rockets worth would be invaluable.” He handed over the message form before returning to his former place.

“What’s his name then, Derek?” asked the newcomer.

“Patrick Reed.”

The newcomer’s hissed response caused the rep to pause what he was doing.

“That’s Reed?”

“Yes, why?”

“His son is with my unit.”

“So how’s he doing?” Derek enquired. “If he is anything like his Father then you’ve got a good one.”

There was a long pause.

“He’s dead Derek, killed this morning at Magdeburg.”

“Oh shit…poor bastard.” Derek thought for a second, and there was nothing in the Guards officers’ manner than indicated he knew of the death of his son. Handing the appeal for MLRS support to the bearer of those sad tidings he then vacated his place.

“Can you take over with this request; I need to speak to the Adjutant.”

The current combat air patrol covering Vormundberg was being found by two flights of three F/A-18 Falcons of the Spanish Air Force. Their own radars were on standby as they followed the steers from Lt Col Chan’s controllers, guiding them on to the approaching targets and launched at long range all the AMRAAMs on their rails when instructed, but their targets did not contest the issue, rolling inverted and diving for the ground on burners the second the missiles were detected.

The AWAC had those twelve identified as SU-27s, not the type of aircraft a weenie straps to his back, and the controller providing the steers raised his eyebrows when they kept heading northeast, leaving the strike aircraft near Dessau with no cover.

The senior of the Spanish pilots could see on his datalink the aircraft abandoned by the interceptors, the SU-25s and tankers, and asked permission to engage with his own flight, the Caballero’s, and the second flight, the Cuchillo’s, which was granted by their controller who did not believe in looking gift horses in the mouth.

Lt Col Chan had cobbled together some help for the embattled troops at Vormundberg, French Jaguars for Wild Weasel flak suppression, USAF A-10s to stick it to some tanks, and Greek F-16s which when coupled with the Spanish F/A-18s should keep the Flankers busy whilst breaking up the inbound strike.

She was tired, and in organising the combined sorties her eyes hadn’t left the screen in front of her, but they hadn’t been seeing what was occurring either as her mind had been focussed on the task at hand.

It took a second for her to realised the Spanish CAP was off the reservation and making a beeline for the Dessau stack.

“What the hell…”

The F/A-18s were east of the Elbe and hustling to close the range so they could use their Sidewinders when powerful airborne radar illuminated them. Ann-Marie saw straight away what had happened and cut into the link, over riding her own controller.

“Caballero’s and Cuchillo’s, abortabortabort…Parase detenerse…Emboscada, it’s an ambush…get the hell out of there, one of those ‘tankers’ is guiding SAMs.”

At other times the rich Latin tones of the senior flight commanders voice would probably have made her toes curl, but this was not ‘other times’. His voice was calm but he was not immediately complying with her instruction.

“Crystal Palace this is Caballero Zero One, their CAP ran away, we can take them.”

Upon her screen the symbols for ‘SAMs’ have appeared; the software classified all fourteen as SA-10s.

“It’s an ambush Caballero; the ‘tanker’ is guiding multiple SAMs!”

Her words were unnecessary; she saw the two flights split as they sought to break the radar locks on them.

To the northeast the ‘fleeing’ SU-27s reversed their course, hurrying back to their charges.

Ann-Marie watching helplessly as on her screen a pair of missile symbols closed with, and then merged with one of the Spanish Falcon’s, the symbols disappeared from her screen. She darted a glance at her subordinate, the controller who had agreed to the Spanish pilots request, and despite the impassive features she could see from his eyes how desperately he wished he could turn back time.

Only two of the Falcons made it back to the relative safety of friendly lines and the senior of the two requested a steer to a tanker, having used up so much fuel on afterburner. It was not the same voice from before.

Had she not already had the Greek F-16s heading that way she would have been forced to weaken the line defending 4 Corps, diverting dwindling assets to cover the ground troops in contact.

It had come to that point, where the loss of just a few flights of aircraft could mean disaster. The Soviet plan had not worked, the regiments heading for 4 Corps would still be intercepted, but not those bound for the front.

The stack at Dessau broke up, the various elements making for their targets and Ann-Marie called up the Greek F-16s, and explained that the Vormundberg CAP was gone and it was now up to them.

“Timothy, is there a problem?”

The Adjutant had been talking intently with Derek for several minutes, and the C.O’s words seemed to startle both men.

“Um, pardon?”

Pat hated it when officers of his seemed to be on a different page, but that had never before been the case with the young Captain.

“The MLRS request, is there a problem?”

The answer came from behind him though.

“Yes, sir.” He turned to face the newcomer.

“All MLRS are about to carry out deep strikes on divisions beyond this one we are currently in contact with. Reloading of all launchers will take up to three hours.”

All available anti-tank assets were tackling the Czech battalion moving on 4 Company and soon he was going to have to shift some of the Apache’s and Lynx in preparation of meeting the even larger threat JSTARS had detected.

Whilst Pat Reed was mulling over these problems his Adjutant thanked Derek. He didn’t know how or even when, he was going to have to break the news to the CO, but right this second was not the moment.

Pat came to a decision.

“Tim?”

His Adjutant sent the artilleryman back to his place before answering the CO.

“Yes, sir?”

“I want you to get onto the Argyll’s, pass them the message from JSTARS and ask them if their kind offer of earlier is still open, plus I want you to inform Mark Venables that I am moving his 2 Troop up in support of the right flank, and tell him why.”

On the reverse slope Major Venables Challenger had successfully traversed the side of the hill until it was directly behind the centre of 4 Company, but heavy shelling of that portion of the hilltop would have made their crossing back over a character building experience, but the shelling stopped abruptly.

Mark Venables acknowledged the adjutants transmission as he stood in the open turret with an AAC Gazelle guiding them across the hilltop, a door gunner leaning out to point the way around the jumbled trunks. The brow of the hill was in sight but they could not yet see the action taking place, but the sound of the defenders fire was rising and he was anxious to get into a position to support.

Gripping the GPMG mount for balance he braced himself as their course took them down into yet another shell crater, and up the other side. Cresting the edge of the crater he could now see their way was clear, and he waved his thanks to the Gazelle, which moved off.

“Steady there Abbot, one hundred metres until the ground drops off.”

He ducked at the sound of an explosion to the right, glancing towards the source, seeing the wreckage of the helicopter hitting the ground, and then there was a roar as the Gazelle’s killer passed overhead. It happened so fast that the Major had no time even to think of using the gimpy, and then he was ducking down again, inside the turret as spent cases rained down upon them.

Lt Col Chan had passed the air raid warning to the brigade headquarters for the troops at Vormundberg, but it had not been passed to the people that it mattered most to in time.

The Flanker that had destroyed the British Army Air Corps Gazelle splashed an Apache immediately after, both machines falling to its 30mm cannon. It turned its nose skywards and exploded, hit by all three of a Starstreaks projectile’s. The Royal Artillery crew that had launched the high velocity missile died, their Stormer vehicle disintegrating under the 3000mph impact of a Kh-31P missile, the anti-radiation version of the Krypton anti-ship missile.

Venables fired the ten L-8 smoke grenades in the dischargers either side of the main gun. He now knew why the artillery barrage had ceased and he didn’t know what good the smoke would do but they were very exposed on top of the hill, so it couldn’t hurt.

“Hello all stations this is Zero, Air Red, Air Red, Air Red!”

The radios carried the very late air raid warning, which elicited a variety of retorts amongst the listeners but only one gave voice to his on the net

“No shit?”

A rather officious voice took exception to the tiny lapse in radio discipline.

“Hello unknown station this is Zero, say again callsign, over?”

Despite, or perhaps even because of the situation, the reply drew laughter.

“I’m sarcastic…..” said ‘Unknown Station’. “Not stupid.”

The Challenger reached the brow of the hill and was beginning down the incline when a large hand plucked at it, lifting the rear of the main battle tank as if it were a toy.

Ann-Marie Chan’s assumption that the type was a SU-25 would have been successfully challenged on technical grounds by an anorak speaking in a nasal monotone. It was in fact an SU-39, formerly a two-seat version of the SU-25 but with that rear seat removed to enable mid-air refuelling.

The ‘Frogfoot’ had its trial by fire during the Afghan War where it proved itself to be a reliable, close air support machine capable of absorbing a lot of punishment. Of a somewhat similar appearance to an Alpha Jet, it was the Red Air Force’s best ground attack aircraft.

Colonel Ilya Morimsky had not had the best of days, flying once to Belgium and back at first light, once to France and back in the late morning, and each time with half the ordnance load his aircraft was capable of carrying. This mission however, held the promise of actually putting enough ordnance in the right place to almost justify the risks and the losses amongst his pilots.

The plan that had got them to the battlefield without loss had been his, thrashed out over a secure radio link to an army officer who had sounded almost intelligent. Leaving the same battlefield without loss was another thing entirely, however. Despite the best efforts of the aircraft designated to carry the AS-11 and Kh-31P anti-radiation missiles they were still seeing missile launches from the ground. Frighteningly fast Starstreak missiles blotted three of his aircraft from the sky on the first pass, and heat seeking Stingers that his AAA suppression aircraft could not detect had brought down another two of his regiment so far.

The regiment had divided into separate flights and endeavoured to attack the targets the ground troops wanted taking out once those assigned to AAA suppression had cleared the way. Morimsky himself leading a flight of four, two pairs of aircraft with one to identify the targets in question and then to highlight by laser designation whilst it was attacked with 500kg LGBs.

One of the targets the ground forces wanted neutralising was described by them as a Milan anti-tank crew beside a large tree on the hillside, but despite providing a ten figure map reference his laser partner could not identify it. It was a long hillside with a lot of trees on it and few features to get their bearings from. Eventually the voice on the ground had a tank fire a smoke round at the spot they wanted attacking and a laser was aimed at that point.

Not only the attacking armour had targets for them, artillery spotters and the crews of the Soviet helicopters had targets they believed were best dealt with by the SU-39s. Consequently it was not just 1CG that was to receive their best efforts, but 2REP, 2LI and the Argyll’s also.

Once the lasing aircraft had identified the targets the flak suppression elements attacked and the strike aircraft waited a few moments before beginning their runs.

Morimsky had come straight across the valley, east to west and thirty seven seconds behind the AAA suppression sortie, and all he needed to do was follow a line projected onto his HUD until the automated weapon release system pickled off the ordnance. With his right hand he held the aircraft steady at 400 feet as the thumb of his left hand rose and fell on the counter-measures switches, discharging flares and chaff from the wingtip pods.

The first thing he’d noticed was the amount of smoke in the valley, and then he was passing above a trail of destruction as if some child had thrown a tantrum with his toys, smashing and scattering them. The trail ended at a line of stationary vehicles some eight hundred metres from the first visible NATO foxhole, rendered immobile by the mines that had blown off sections of track and then destroyed by tank rounds or missiles. The attack was stalling and unless a serious cull of the enemy anti-tank units took place it would never progress.

One of the AAA suppressors had already fallen; with its tail blown off it had crashed into the forested slopes of Vormundberg, whilst a second was limping home on one engine.

His aircraft rose as a bomb fell away and he banked hard right to follow the side of the hill, wincing as he saw an SU-27, one of their escorts, exploded by a missile.

The lasing aircraft reported the bomb he had released had detonated exactly on the illumination but there had been no secondary explosions, which led the Colonel to correctly assume they had attacked a remoted firing point and not the crew. He extended the air brakes by twelve degrees before reversing direction, having seen the whirling rotors of two British helicopters hovering just above the hilltop, and the turn brought down his speed even more.

Although he carried two AA8 Aphid missiles, one under each wing, he selected the belly mounted 30mm cannon and used the rudder pedals to line up on the first target. He fired a half second burst and saw fragments of perspex glint in the sun as the rounds struck home. He had kept the pipper of the gun sight on the engines above the cargo deck but the helicopter, a Lynx, was turning towards him and the cockpit bore the brunt. It immediately fell the short distance to the ground but he did not see it impact, he was already using the opposite rudder to bring the nose into line with an Apache gunship. His burst was high and he saw the cannon rounds hitting the ground beyond it, throwing clods of earth skywards and there was no time to adjust his aim.

Morimsky overshot and banked left, craning his neck as he did so to see if the Apache was still in sight but it wasn’t. What he did see though were smoke grenades going off, drawing his eyes to a tank he had not noticed before.

He called his lasing partner but the man had kept his eye on the boss and already the British Challenger was being illuminated.

Selecting another 500kg laser guided bomb, Col Morimsky pulled back on the stick, gaining another 500 feet before turning back. The tank was moving towards the brow of the hill, half concealed by smoke but it was as good as dead. The Colonel had nothing against the men who were manning the vehicle but he had a job to do and as such he chose not to notice the figure stood in the commander’s hatch, so to him the fighting vehicle was nothing more than some robot.

He heard the pilot of the aircraft illuminating the target shout, the airwaves carried a half formed word, which he could not recognise but the alarm in the voice was clear. The laser illumination ceased and Morimsky de-selected automatic release of the weapon, turning instead to manual at the precise moment something struck his aircraft hard. He cursed loudly because the impact startled him into inadvertently releasing the weapon.

He did not try to see how close the bomb had come to his target, the smell of fuel had seeped through into his mask and the needle of the engine temperature gauge for his starboard engine was climbing rapidly. He shut down the engine but found that something was causing a lot of drag on the right side of his aircraft; far more than a dead engine would cause, and only by keeping constant pressure on the left rudder was he able to correct the yaw the drag was inducing.

Things got markedly worse a second later when he was hit again as he overflew the French legionnaires, a wall of small arms fire rose to greet him but he heard only one audible impact. It was no louder than a loose chip flying up off a road makes when it hits the bodywork of a car, but his instrument panel and radio died, the needles sinking to zero and their illuminating lamps cutting out.

He made it past the NATO units to open countryside, heading back towards the Elbe but without a compass he was uncertain of the heading. Turning his head he tried to pick out a recognisable landmark but instead he saw the fins of a Stinger missile protruding from the starboard engine housing just behind where he was sat. After the initial shock of seeing the unexploded weapon he shook his head in wonder.

“How lucky can a guy get?”

He obviously could not tempt fate much longer and he was going to have to eject before the Stingers warhead decided to go off. Removing his feet from the rudder pedals and reached down for the ejector seat firing handle between his lower legs, but froze when he saw about two inches of fuel sloshing about in the foot well. The voids in the fuselage behind him were probably also awash with the highly inflammable liquid, and the rockets that would throw the seat clear would ignite the jet fuel which would set off the unexploded warhead.

Colonel Morimsky took back all he had said about being lucky and abandoned all ideas of leaving the aircraft in flight, looking instead for somewhere flat to put the machine down on.

He was still west of the Elbe but in territory the advancing ground forces had already passed through so every road would eventually be carrying logistical support convoys. He need not have to walk too far before finding a ride on an empty truck heading back towards the river. It was a mainly wooded area though and that was troublesome, because he had no way of knowing when his remaining engine was going to flame out for lack of fuel.

Just as he was starting to think he would never find somewhere to put down he saw a long clearing ahead, and he brought his damaged machine down lower, overflying it as he looked for obstacles. It looked clear as well as being a decent length so he circled around, jettisoning his remaining ordnance over the trees and spotting an east/west running road about two kilometres south. Easy walking distance provided he could get down in one piece.

Once he was lined up he jettisoned the cockpit canopy, tightened the straps holding him to his seat, and began the approach for a wheels up landing.

The SU-39 could glide, but without knowing the full extent of the damage to his aircraft he couldn’t afford to shut down his remaining engine, in case it was the only system left that was providing power for the avionics. It would be ironic, he thought if in order to avoid burning he shut down the engine and crashed, because there was no electrical power to move the control surfaces.

The approach was straightforward and he cleared the treetops at the end of the clearing by a foot and throttled back, bringing the engine to idle without shutting it down. He flared, allowing the last of the flying speed to bleed off and then lowered the nose to avoid the tail catching and smashing the belly against the earth. Despite all that he was thrown violently forward against the seat straps when the aluminium belly met the earth, and the vibration, the bone shaking, jarring, seemed to go on forever.

The careering journey across the clearing ended as the crippled aircraft came to a halt, brought up against a bank of earth and a few moments later its pilot emerged without bothering to shut the remaining engine down, rolling out of the open cockpit and hurriedly regaining his feet before running a hundred or so metres and flinging himself to the ground behind an old fallen tree trunk near the edge of the clearing.

The sound of the aircrafts single operational engine carried beyond the clearing and through the trees, a noise as alien and invasive as the stinking fumes it gave off. Smoke leaked into the air from the battered fuselage but after a few minutes that had reduced to little more than whisp’s. There was no fire, no explosion, and the pilot’s still helmeted head emerged from behind a tuft of grass, peering at the noisy aircraft for long minutes. It did not seem fitting to leave the aircraft here with its jet engine still turning over, it had saved his life and it was only respectful that he showed his appreciation of that fact. He slowly regained his feet and after a few seconds hesitation he walked back to the aircraft, unaware that he was in the crosshairs of several gun sights.

“Are you going to shoot him, sergeant?” The question was whispered by a young Canadian subaltern to his platoon sergeants back.

Sergeant Blackmore of the Nova Scotia Highlanders rolled his eyes and carefully turned his head, ensuring no waving items of undergrowth gave away his position as he moved.

2Lt Ferguson was his fourth platoon commander in as many weeks. The first officer to hold that post was now the battalion 2 i/c, and his predecessor had lasted almost a fortnight before sticking his head up to see where some firing had come from instead of keeping it down even lower. Sergeant Blackmore could not remember the next ones name. On his third day, that particular young man had decided that consulting a map whilst out of cover had been a good idea. Mr Ferguson had joined the Highlanders recce platoon less than a day ago and already there was a book going. The smart money said young Mr F would not make it through the day, but it was Blackmore’s to keep the man alive.

Plus of course, Blackmore had $100 riding on 48hrs!

“Sir, shooting him would be noisy.” He whispered back. “And we are the recce platoon, not the anti-tank platoon. The anti-tanks are the battalion’s loud buggers, and we are supposed to be the really quiet ones.”

Ilya Morimsky was now stood upon the aircrafts wing, and leaning inside the cockpit, flicking switches, going through the proper shutdown sequence for the last time and the sound of the jet engine sank away to nothing. He patted the fuselage affectionately before walking south, taking a cigarette from a pocket in his flight suit and lighting up once he was clear of the stink of aviation fuel.

“And besides,” Sergeant Blackmore explained. “It took balls to do that; I’ll send Junot and Hicks to take him prisoner.”

A pair of military policemen collected the Colonel from his captors, escorting him away through woods where men were taking down camouflage nets and stowing them away in their fighting vehicles in preparation to move.

Everywhere he looked Ilya saw enemy armour, the Highlanders LAV III Infantry Fighting Vehicles, the Coyote armoured recce vehicles of The Fort Garry Horse, and Leopard C2 MBTs from two different regiments, the Royal Canadian Dragoons and the Canadian VIII Hussars.

Morimsky told himself that his navigation had to be out and that he was further north than he had thought, because the alternative did not bear thinking of, a NATO armoured force on the loose amid his armies supply lines.

The time for concealment had passed, the crews mounted up and the armoured fighting vehicles of the 2nd Canadian Mechanised Brigade roared into life.

The close support from the air force hampered the efforts of the defenders long enough for a plough tank to get to within sixty metres of the first of the 4 Company trenches before it was destroyed by 94mm LAW’s, fired point blank from the infantrymen’s fighting holes, but the damage had been done, the minefield had been breached.

The sound of small arms fire and grenades almost drowned out the voice of a sergeant in the 82^nd as he gave a sitrep to Pat Reed, communications had been lost with 4 Company command post and the platoon commander of 12 Platoon, the sub unit facing the breach in the minefield, was dead. The Czech’s had taken four trenches after fierce fighting but they had been unable to increase that number, being repelled with heavy losses on their last attempt.

The cleared path through the mines had been blocked by good fire from 10 Platoons Milan team, firing across the front of 12 Platoon and knocking out a T-72 and a T-90, isolating a T-72, six BTRs and BMPs that had followed the mine plough through. Five armoured vehicles, including the T-72, were stopped and burning on top of 12 Platoons positions, but the infantry the APCs had carried were in and around the captured trenches and being supported by fire from their comrades beyond the minefield. The remaining two Soviet fighting vehicles had driven through the 12 Platoon position and further uphill to where the platoon in depth, 11 Platoon, had taken the pair under fire and destroyed both.

The American NCO wanted the enemy supporting fire suppressed in order for a counter attack to retake the holes.

After tasking the mortars to drop smoke in the way of the enemy support fire Pat called on 1 Troops commander and was alarmed to find that the troop commander had the only vehicle of the troop still in action. The other Challenger had been struck at the base of the turret, the shot had failed to penetrate but it succeeded in buckling the armour and fusing enough of it to the chassis that it could no longer traverse its gun. The Chieftain of the troop was undamaged but it was out of sabot and almost out of HESH. Pat told the man to ‘wait out’ and shifted to the battalion command net, but there was no response from Mark Venables on that means or by Ptarmigan. He called up 3 Company, but as they had not seen or heard from the Squadron Commanders tank he had to switch back to 1 Troop.

“Hello Tango One One, this is India Nine…where is your Sunray? Where is Tango One Nine, over?”

“Tango One One, I have heard nothing from my sunray for figs two zero.”

It was almost a dilemma, not having sufficient tank killing power to enable the defeat of the enemy who were within 4 Company’s positions, without diverting 2 Troop away from where they would soon be desperately needed. Fortunately the AS-90s of the Royal Artillery had completed their move to a new gun line and the Czech supporting fire dried up soon after the 155mm guns were turned on them.

The Czech battalion commander was on foot, having gotten as far as the mines where both tracks had been blown off, he and his crew abandoned the vehicle just prior to a Milan destroying it. He had neither the means nor the willpower to force his men to stand and fight, all the plough tanks had been knocked out and the defenders fire too accurate for the mines to be cleared by hand. He couldn’t even get a ride, several tank and APC commanders saw their Colonel and his crew running from shell crater to shell crater, but possibly fearing he would order some futile action they ignored him, withdrawing back the way they had come.

With one crisis over the reports coming into 1CG’s CP became more upbeat, a REME recovery vehicle reported it was with Major Venables callsign and had replaced a track blown off by a near miss during the air raid. With the track replaced the REME and Venables Challenger had left their very exposed position on the hillside, moving to 4 Company’s CP before repairing the tanks communication’s, damaged in the same air attack. They had found a scene of feverish activity there, the CP’s roof had collapsed during the shelling but there had been no fatalities, the company headquarters staff had been released from their would-be tomb and were now frantically attempting to recover equipment, including communication’s gear, which was still buried.

12 Platoon regained its lost fighting holes and took eight prisoners, but they had lost five dead and four wounded during the entire action, losses that Lt Col Reed felt obliged to make good from 1 and 2 Company.

A resupply was carried out for the men in the trenches; it was not so simple for the Hussar’s though. Mark Venables and his crew traded vehicles with that of the damaged 1 Troop Challenger, transferring their ammunition to the Troop commanders vehicle before heading to the rear with 1 Troops Chieftain following. The Chieftain went for reloads and Mark Venables brought the damaged Challenger to the REME’s makeshift workshop.

The Greek F-16s splashed one SU-27 Flanker and three of the SU-39s with AMRAAMs for the loss of one of their own, but it was more likely that the Soviet strike withdrew due to the escorting Flankers fuel states rather than prudence.

This time the AWAC’s message was passed to all forces in good time and the Stinger and Starstreak crews stood down. The Jaguars of the Armee de l’Air realised almost as soon as they were above the contested hill that the Soviet AAA radars were still on standby, they had not been told their own aircraft were clear of the battlefield.

The first company of 23^rd MRRs Third Battalion was cresting the rise to the left of the farms ruins when the Jaguars attacked with CBUs, they made a single pass down the length of the column, destroying three tanks and four APCs before disappearing to the southwest, but the AAA radars did not immediately light up, the operators hesitated still, allowing two flights of three A-10 Thunderbolts from the 103^rd Fighter Wing to attack unchallenged. The seven barrelled 30mm cannons made a sound like tearing cloth as they fired, exploding eleven vehicles in a single pass before egressing to the west, scattering Gator mines from their underwing dispensers. One pilot found himself flying toward a half circle of stationary vehicles and a nearby cluster of men besides a ruined building. He had time for one long burst, walking it across a BTR-80, the T-80 beside it, and on across a pair of running figures.

23^rd MRRs commander could feel the heat of the flames issuing from his burning command tank, even though the freezing muddy water had soaked his uniform. He heaved himself up onto his hands and knees in the puddle in which he had landed when he’d dived for cover, looked around for his 2 i/c and bawled angrily at him when he saw him listening earnestly on the signaller’s second headset some thirty metres away, seemingly oblivious to the violence of just moments before. His Intelligence officer and an infantryman from his escort had been reduced to hamburger by the A-10s strafing run, but the regimental commander gave them not a second thought except to angrily kick loose a piece of intestine that had landed on his boot.

Two attacks had been defeated, two attacks by a total of six companies had failed to take and hold so much as a single NATO foxhole, and now those NATO bastards had tried to kill him without one of his AAA units firing a shot. He turned and looked at the ZSU-23-4 that was charged with his protection, it too had failed to take action in time, and surely that could not go unpunished, could it?

Radars started to come back up, an SA-9 was launched and a ZSU hit an A-10 in the port engine but then the Thunderbolts were clear. The French Jaguars were still in the vicinity though, knowing that at some point the AAA would react and they killed both the SA-9 launcher and the ZSU, causing the radars to shut down once again.

The regimental commander had witnessed the turret of the ZSU attached to his headquarters pivot, quite obviously under guidance from its radar and then shut down again after the French HARMs began arriving. Quite obviously an example was called for here, and who better to demonstrate what befell those who failed in their duty then he himself. He undid the flap of the holster on his hip before stepping off purposefully towards the vehicle in question. The sound of running feet caused him to glance over his shoulder, but it was just his 2 i/c so he carried on walking.

“Who was that on the radio?”

Obediently his 2 i/c took up station a couple of paces behind him.

“It was the divisional commander, sir.”

23^rd’s commander began to demand as to why he had not been informed but the sentence was not completed. The men nearby turned and gawped at the sound of distant thunder, and flashes reflected by the cloud to the east. Some of the men recognised the sound and looked nervously at the skies above their heads. It was an infantryman from the escort who first looked away from the direction of the MLRS attack and noticed his regiments two most senior officers, the one lying face down in the mud and the one stood a little behind with his arm still extended, a wisp of blue/grey smoke dissipating around the muzzle of the pistol held in that hand.

23^rd MRRs new commander holstered the pistol and gestured to the signaller who ran across.

“Halt the battalion and have the company commanders join me here, we have some quick changes to make and then they can resume.”

The delay cost another twenty minutes, and when once more the armour headed west the regimental command group was included.

Pat Reed received word that the third and largest formation yet had entered the valley, and with it came a further air raid warning. He had expected it sooner but any delay could only be to the good in the long term.

He looked around the command post and up at its very substantial roof, deciding that Jim Popham could run the show for a while. He was a hands-on soldier and that was his excuse for leaving the main CP.

“Timothy?”

The adjutant raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Sir?”

“Call Sarn’t Higgins, tell him to bring up a Warrior for me and Defence Platoons reserve section, and tell Jim Popham that until he hears otherwise, he has the battalion, understood?”

“Er, no sir, is that wise?”

Pat paused in the entrance to the CP, looking back at his Adjutant.

“Timothy, I just told you that until further notice Major Popham is the ‘The Daddy’, but that does not make you my Mother.”

The Warriors had not yet arrived and random mortar rounds were landing over to the left so Pat ducked into the dugout cum briefing room to wait, and there found the two snipers, Stef and Bill sharing a mug of coffee.

“As you were, chaps.” Both men had stood respectfully on recognising the CO, and now relaxed, sinking back onto their haunches. Pat squinted as if trying to see through the side of their metal mug, trying to discern the constituent parts that made up the hot beverage within.

“I don’t suppose you have any sugar in there, do you?”

“If you want, I’ve got some artificial sweeteners somewhere, Boss?”

Pat pulled a face.

“I thought you two had been told to report to 1 Company?”

“With respect sir, the ground back there can be covered by a half blind clerk, the maximum range offered is only four hundred metres.” He was looking for signs of anger or annoyance in his commanding officer, but none were apparent. “We were loitering here and looking for a lift on a battle taxi going forward, sir.”

The sound of Rolls Royce Perkins, V8 engines reached them, winding their way around from hide positions in the rear.

The snipers thought their last orders did not befit their skills, and Pat was inclined to agree.

“Well you had better come along with me then.”

The Warriors halted outside where all three mounted up, running to the vehicles in a half crouch as heavy artillery rounds moaned their mournful way westwards, seeking NATO gun line’s.

Aboard ‘Sabre Dance Two Four’ the operators finished their post-MLRS strike estimate and passed on two sets of figures, the optimistic and the pessimistic, knowing the true figure lay somewhere between.

Elements of two divisions had been targeted, 9^th and 13^th Guards, both elite Russian units had been hit hard even if the lower figure were held to be true. It would be of little immediate assistance to the men and women blocking the juggernauts way to the autobahns though, the Hungarian division had finished its deployment into column of regiments and was moving now towards the units immediately in front, the Light Infantry, Coldstream Guards, Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders and the Wessex Regiment. All were British units of 3 (UK) Mechanised Brigade and the Guards were already in contact, but within an hour and a half the entire defence line from the Dutch 2^nd Armoured Brigade on the left flank to the US 4^th Armoured on the right were going to be fighting for their lives.

Down on the ground the anti-tank troop of the second Royal Marine unit, 44 Commando, hadn’t waited for the Hungarians to begin their advance. The marines ducked around the Romanians left flank, taking the fight to the enemy and getting their punch in first. The sensors on Sabre Dance Two Four picked up thermal signatures consistent with explosions of armoured vehicles amid the Hungarian ranks.

The forward edge of the battle area was not the only scene of activity on the operator’s screens, both the French 8^th Armoured and Canadian 2^nd Mechanised Brigades were now driving back towards the Elbe, and where they found enemy support units they destroyed them. Both brigades had detached small combat teams that headed west to provide a delaying force for the Soviet armour that would inevitably turn on them. A French company combat team had fallen on two batteries worth of Russian MSTA-S 152mm Self-Propelled howitzers and their ammunitions carriers being refuelled beside a road. The thick columns of black smoke and continuing secondary explosions punctuated the urgency of radio transmissions from Soviet troops under attack.

The route taken by Mark Venables Challenger had been picked up by the CO’s driver who had followed the trail marked by the tanks caterpillar tracks over the hilltop. It was an unplanned by-product of the track plan enforced by the CO, no vehicles had been permitted to venture onto the hilltop where its thermal output would have glowed brightly for all to see for miles around, assuming of course that the ‘all’ had heat sensors in their recce vehicles/surveillance aircraft. With an air raid in the offing the Warriors hadn’t hung around to admire the view, the rollercoaster ride had been endured by the vehicles occupants, terminating as it did a hundred and fifty metres from 3 Company’s CP.

Pat Reed clambered from the lead vehicle and jumped down into a nearby shell crater, waiting for Guardsmen in the second vehicle to manhandle two boxes of Stingers that the company’s CQMS had apparently requested. Sgt Higgins, Bill and Stef joined him, taking care to avoid the muddy water that was already starting to fill the hole.

Artillery had been falling on the forward slopes but suddenly it stopped.

Big Stef clambered up the side of the crater and looked for the next cover, it was another crater just a few yards away and he took advantage of the lull to jog towards it. A trio of jet aircraft screamed down the valley, flying parallel with the positions held by the Guards and 82^nd men, Stef dropped to a crouch, taken unawares by their presence and feeling vulnerable above ground. He looked to see if they were friend or foe but the aircraft had gone, disappearing faster than his head could turn, and then the big Geordie was lifted bodily and thrown eight feet.

By chance Pat Reed had been looking in the direction the aircraft had appeared from and he had seen the large weapons carried either side of the aircrafts centre points. The aircraft, which he had identified as Mig-31 Fulcrums, were at less than a thousand feet and punching out flares and chaff. Two Stingers chased the burning magnesium instead of the Soviet machines, which released the weapons one at a time, a small drogue parachute deploying from the base of each almost immediately.

The Guards Lieutenant Colonel hadn’t been able to understand why they were dropping so far away from his defensive positions, and then noticed the first weapon to be released had disappeared from view in a rapidly expanding cloud of vapour that seemed to originate from within itself.

The vapour ignited.

The ground shook as though a giant had run a half dozen paces, the thunder of the detonations burst the eardrums of two men in the most forward positions, and the flash of the explosions left spots before the eyes.

Pat felt as though he’d run into a wall as over-pressure sent him tumbling into the craters mire-like bottom but immediately afterwards he was gasping for air like a landed fish. Dirt and light debris were sucked from the ground, drawn toward the growing, roiling balls of flame, following in the wake of the oxygen that they were feeding on.

Bill was the first to recover enough to crawl up the crumbling sides of the shell crater; the last of the fireballs was disappearing skywards, leaving behind smoke and confusion. Stef had landed in the churned mud at the side of the track, but he had regained his wits enough to give his mate a thumbs up that he was okay. Relieved, Bill looked towards the fields over which the fuel/air weapons had detonated; large burnt areas marked the spots below where the weapons had gone off.

A myriad of fires were burning in the fields, two hedgerows were aflame, and a grey haze of smoke polluted the air. In the middle distance more flames and smoke arose, though these were from one of the Fulcrums, brought down by a Starstreak before it could egress the area.

The weapons dropped by the Fulcrums had been far smaller than those used by NATO on the besieged towns, but their power had been frightening all the same. With all the dust and smoke in the air it took a moment for him to notice the damage that had been caused by the weapons incredible pressure waves.

“Sir, I think you had better look at this.”

Pat Reed took a moment to respond, he was indulging in the resumption of an old habit, that of breathing.

Forcing his aching body into motion the half soaked officer disengaged himself from the almost freezing water and mud, dropping down beside the sniper and letting his eyes follow where Bill was pointing. At first he thought his attention was being called to the approaching enemy assault, but then his gaze fell closer to home.

“Ah.” The CO took in the numerous small craters amidst the larger ones caused by the earlier questing artillery, using a single syllable to acknowledge recognition, and two to express a full understanding of the consequences.

“Bugger.”

Rolling over he looked for the Defence Platoon sergeant and found him at the bottom of the crater, liberally daubed in mud from the same puddle that he himself had been deposited in “Sarn’t Higgins.”

“Sir?”

“Inform Zero that there are significant breaches in the minefields.”

With the dawn that morning had come sniper fire but little else to concern Colonel Lužar or the men of the 43^rd Motor Rifle Regiment. The sound of distant gunfire to the west had begun several hours before, reminding them that the war had passed them by for now, but then again no one was in any particular hurry to catch up with it. Only the youngest of the newly arrived recruits wanted to be in the thick of it, the remainder, especially the veterans, were content to remain at an ever increasing distance from the fighting.

In the late afternoon Lužar had been dozing, sitting at the commander’s position whilst his gunner kept watch. He was woken by his gunner informing him that one of the infantry platoon commanders on the extreme left had reported hearing faint sounds of automatic fire from the southwest and possibly explosions, the sounds had stopped as quickly as they had begun and so the colonel instructed that the message be passed on up to division, where it was received without enthusiasm. The colonel returned to his slumbers only to awoken again a half hour later by Division ordering him to detach one infantry company to the divisional reserve for ‘security duties’. Colonel Lužar was working out which company could be despatched and cause the least upheaval to the rest of the regiment as it filled in the gap, but division called again and requested a further company in addition to the first. It seemed to the colonel that he was the subject of a Candid Camera program when having decided on which companies would go, division changed their demand to that of a battalion. With a sigh he screwed up the notes he had made for the reshuffle of the rest of the regiments positions, and ordered his first battalion to prepare to move. His regiment had only three companies of tanks and only two of those were made up of main battle tanks. First battalions tank company were his PT-76 tanks, thinly armoured, under-gunned and getting long in the tooth, but he needed his heavier armour to deal with any counter attacks. He couldn’t think that anything else would be needed by the division to guard its roads and bridges, or at least that is what he thought until he had a query about fuel re-supply from the CO of his Third Battalion. None of his regiment had been visited by a fuel truck to top off their tanks since before the river crossing, and even on idle the engines consumed diesel greedily.

He suddenly had a bad feeling that the no show by the fuel trucks and the requests for him to detach troops were linked somehow.

In just under an hour following the first order to detach troops his First Battalion moved out. A minimal screen from Second Battalion had occupied key points in First’s positions, and an hour later the regiment’s shift of positions was complete. Lužar informed division and requested an ETA on refuelling, but the reply was so lacking in real information as to be worthy of a politician.

Following the airstrike’s the last remaining elements of 23^rd Czech MRR had enjoyed a few kilometres of relatively trouble free motoring. Gator mines had halted a further five of their number but the aircraft had not returned and NATO artillery had left them alone, choosing to fire counter battery missions.

The ranks of armour were doing it differently this time; advancing in half companies whilst the remainder of that particular rank were in whatever cover was available, and ready to provide gunfire support.

2 Troop had the senior troop commander and he had been liaising with 3 Troop plus the surviving Apache and Lynx helicopters, dividing up the visible targets. When the leading enemy rank came within 3000m he depressed his radios send switch.

“Fire!”

The tank lurched as it sent a sabot round downrange and the extractors hummed, clearing the fumes of spent propellant that emitted from the breach as it reopen to accepted a fresh round and bag charges.

2 Troops commander had his eyes pressed against the rubber eyepiece of the commanders sight and when the gun smoke cleared from outside of his Chieftain he was gratified to see six clear victims, four tanks blowing themselves apart with the force of internal explosions, and two other tanks, a T-80 and a T-90 were stopped in their tracks with crewmen bailing out. The tank rounds had a far greater velocity than the helicopters TOW and Hellfire II missiles, so as he watched the glow of a missiles motor cut across his line of sight to strike a T-72, which vanished from view in the smoke and flame that accompanies a catastrophic kill.

By agreement they were only targeting the tanks, the enemy infantry fighting vehicles could be left for the time being, and it was only these lighter armoured vehicles of this half company that remained to go to ground and cover their comrades.

The second half company began leaving cover and many of its vehicles activated their smoke dischargers in an effort to remain hidden from the defenders.

2 Troops commander watched his own target disappear from view behind a smoke screen generated by white phosphorus. His eyes remained pressed to the sight as he switched to the thermal imaging facility and the T-72 reappeared in his sights, it’s hot and warm surfaces picking out the main battle tanks shape.

The Chieftain lurched once more but he did not have to wait for the smoke outside to clear this time, the thermal sight showed the shape of the T-72s turret replaced by a bright shapeless flare of light. He looked for another target and indicated it to his gunner, so caught up in the excitement of the action was the young lieutenant that it took a call on the intercom from his driver to remind him it was time to relocate to another firing position. The intended target received a stay of execution as the Chieftain reversed out of its firing position and headed for the next.

This position was in sight of another firing position for armour, one that a 3 Troop Challenger was just entering. The 2 Troop Chieftain was moved into place with practiced ease by its driver and immediately acquired another target, but before they opened fire the Chieftains turret was struck by something on the left rear, where no enemy was supposed to be.

The troop commander looked through the viewing blocks and saw debris still falling to the earth but it did not originate from them. Smoke shrouded their neighbour; the Challenger was missing two drive wheels and the track on the right side was hanging off, so whatever had struck his Chieftain had been in all probability an integral part of the 3 Troop vehicle. As he watched he could see the turret moving, the main gun following the movements of a target so the crew were apparently fine. The Challenger fired and then a second later it simply blew up.

“Shit…”

“Are we hit sir?” The gunner had removed his eyes from the sight to make the enquiry.

He ignored the question for a second, puzzling over what had destroyed the Challenger and reasoning that as the enemy tanks were not yet in range then a missile had to have been responsible, but their current opposition were thought to have nothing more advanced than the AT-3 Sagger and AT-4 Spiggot, both of which had a range of only 2000m.

“Look for missile launches.” He told his gunner. “Either on the ground or from a helicop…”

“Got it!” Cut off by his gunner he awaited the target indication, it followed a few heartbeats later once the laser rangefinder had locked down the distance to target.

“Target BMP-3, three thousand five hundred metres, extreme right hand burning tank…”

The troop commander saw the tank but not the BMP, so further indication must follow.

“Seen.”

“Go One o’clock from burning tank, a small clump of trees…”

He increased the magnification on the sight, seeing only natural foliage at first but then he saw it close to the left hand edge, hull down and half in shadow so how his gunner had seen it simply amazed him. He stopped the gunners target I.D with a simple.

“Identified!”

A sabot already sat inside the 120mm main gun and he ordered a reload with HESH because the heavy tungsten steel round didn’t have the range of the shaped charge round.

As he watched, the BMP launched a further AT-15 beam-riding missile at another NATO vehicle that its infrared laser was illuminating.

“Firing!” Again the jolt as the main gun fired.

The BMPs gunner had not had the benefit of any live firing practice and it had taken two of the precious missiles to destroy the first Challenger, he was now determinedly keeping the cross hairs on a second Challenger but the arrival of the HESH round ruined his aim.

“Shit…ineffective hit, reload HESH!” something had carried the round just slightly off target to strike the top of the BMP a glancing blow and ricochet off.

The AT-15 that was in flight continued to follow the guidance of the infrared beam, flying into the hillside where the cross hairs had ended up when the gunner flinched.

Angered at having missed, the BMPs commander did not do the sensible thing in bugging out, but looked instead for their attacker. The gun smoke was still apparent and the muzzle of the older Chieftain was a black hole that in his magnified sight seemed to be pointing right between his eyes, tendrils of smoke still leaching from it in the breeze.

It was a race and the Czech vehicle still had two missiles sat on turret-mounted rails before they had to reload.

“Hesh loaded!”

“Firing…!” The recoil threw the big guns breach back into the interior where it opened to accept another round.

2 Troops commander blinked to clear sweat that had run down his forehead and into his eyes, when they refocused he saw the Czech had already launched, the missiles exhaust fogged the sight picture.

“Driver, reverse!”

The Czech BMP commander cursed as he saw the British tank start to move backwards, but then the missile struck and the tank juddered to a halt. The Czech officer punched the air.

It was the last conscious act he ever made.

Through his binoculars 23^rd MRRs commander saw the BMP being struck by the British tanks round and disintegrate in one catastrophic explosion. That particular BMP-3 had been with a Russian unit originally but had been knocked out during one of the abortive attempts to force a crossing of the Elbe. A sabot had gone through the front armour decapitating the driver and passing below the turret, where having then taken off the commander’s legs it had travelled down the length of the troop compartment and exited by punching a hole in the rear troop door. A small electrical fire had been started in the driver’s instrument panel through which it had passed; filling the vehicle with acrid smoke and the survivors had abandoned the vehicle fearing an explosion was imminent. The fire had petered out and for whatever reason the Russians had not recovered it, but a Czech armoured recovery vehicle had, towing it back to their own mobile repair shop where it had been patched up. The BMP-3s AT-15 Khrizantema missile system had been far in advance of anything on the Czech inventory, so the vehicles identifying numbers had been changed on the off chance someone may recognise it and ask for it back.

No more of the advanced and long range beam riding missile systems remained on 23^rd MRRs strength, but the regimental commander allowed that in this attack they had at least trimmed the defending tanks numbers, something his recent predecessor had failed to do.

The British tanks had been concentrating on his own MBTs as they were the greater threat, but that had allowed the APCs and Infantry Fighting Vehicles to close to a range where they could use their wire guided anti-tank weapons to support the outclassed tanks. AT-3 Sagger and AT-4 Spiggot’s were leaving their launch rails and forcing the defenders to change firing positions after each shot, this in turn was allowing the tanks to close to a point where the covering half companies had a sporting chance at actually hitting something. Greater artillery and close air support would not have gone amiss but both had become haphazard and he was getting the run around when he asked why.

Chobham armour had not been used in the protection of the Chieftain family of main battle tanks, and the AT-15 carried not just one shaped charge warhead, but two set in tandem. It was designed to defeat armour 1000mm thick even if plates of ERA, explosive reactive armour for deflecting the blast, covered the steel. The missile had struck the 56-ton vehicle in the last moment before the troop commanders Chieftain could have reversed from view. The impact and detonation lifted both gunner and commander from their seats, and only the loaders helmet saved him from a fractured skull when he was slammed upwards into the roof of the turret. A wave of stifling heat accompanied the darkness as all electrical power failed and thick smoke poured through a rent in the bulkhead between the drivers and main crew’s compartments. The troop commander couldn’t breathe in the choking atmosphere and it was terrifying how quickly hot gasses had replaced the oxygen.

He fought against panic as he used touch to find the hatch, groping his way upwards and forcing his jaws to remain closed unless his mouth fill with soot as his nose already had. He threw open his hatch and crawled out into the open, his exposed skin turned dark grey by just that short exposure to the smoke. That same smoke was pouring from the open hatch as if it was chimney, but allowing himself just one deep breath he leant back inside, reaching around until his hand found his gunner and locked onto a bicep, assisting him upwards. As he helped him out of the commander’s hatch, the loaders hatch opened and the trooper who had fulfilled that function rolled from it and slid off the turret. The first sign of an interior fire announced itself as glowing embers within the smoke plumes issuing from both hatches. The driver’s hatch had been blown out of its mountings by the missile and flames were already leaping from the opening. There was no chance at all that the driver could still be alive and so the survivors scrambled clear before the fire found the stacked bag charges in the storage bins.

Major Venables sat atop the turret of the damaged Challenger IIE, the radio jack plugged into his helmet so he could listen in on the battle. News of the loss of two of his tanks and five of his men were borne without a visible flicker, but a heavy hand had laid itself on his heart. War fighting was not war gaming, the dead were just dead and there had been little that was glorious in the manner of their passing, but they were his men and they had stood their ground when lesser men would have run, they deserved a better outcome.

A REME fitter with an acetylene torch and another with a pry bar were close to freeing the turret but once that was achieved they still had to take on a full load of ammunition before returning to the fray.

They weren’t the only heavy armour unit using this workshop; Mark could see two other MBTs being worked on beneath camouflage netting. One was a Mk 10 Chieftain from the mothball facility, and the other was a Challenger but it too was a battlefield replacement. It lacked the boxy armoured barbette housing for the thermal imaging unit above the main gun, and the turret was lopsided, higher on the commander’s side than the loaders which typed it as a Mk 1. Its original owners had been the 17^th/21^st Lancers; another proud regiment consigned to the history books.

Neither had battle damage, they were here because both had been subjected to minimal maintenance in the underground storage facility at Bicester, and machinery does not like being idle.

He looked around for crewmen to ask who they were for but failed to see any. The pry bar wielder provided the answer. “Replacements sir, for your regiments C Squadron. Transporters dropped them off this afternoon and we’ve been changing the engine packs, but the crews for them didn’t turn up.” The young soldier gave a shrug before carrying on.

“I heard they got taken out by an airstrike just down the road…shit happens, eh sir?”

Yes, Mark Venables had to agree with that one, but he had more immediate concerns that took priority over talking philosophy.

“Have they sent anyone else?”

“No sir, no spare crew left to send.”

Venables had some men without tanks although not enough to make up a complete crew, but unfortunately that would probably change. A quick call had 2 Troops Sunray and his men heading back toward the REME workshop. He called up C Squadrons commander, they were not yet in action and he had no one to collect the two machines so he raised no objections. By the time that was complete, so were the repairs and the Challenger II headed off to reload.

As the Czech’s closed to within 2000m the wire guided missiles criss-crossed the intervening distance. Artillery again fell on the NATO positions but it was light, lacking the weight of its opening barrages and 23^rd MRRs commander was troubled, still he was being given evasive answers and the time had come to take his queries higher as to the pathetic artillery and air support. He had a pair of helicopters supporting him, a Mi-24 Hind-D and a Mi-28N Havoc, although being far from unwelcome, could not carry the same ordnance load of that of a regiment of ground attack aircraft.

“Get me division.” He ordered his radio operator.

“Do you want to speak to the operations officer again, sir?”

“No, I want the divisional commander.” His patience had run out.

“No one else, understand?”

The radio operator did understand and pestered his opposite number for several minutes before handing a headset and hand-mike across. 23^rd’s commander slipped the headset on and put the microphone to his mouth, pressing the send switch and dispensing with radio protocol and deference to rank, as he got straight to the point.

“Where’s my artillery and air support?”

From the other end of the transmission he received a rebuke as to his lack of respect.

“Remember who it is you are talking to Colonel!” The Romanian snapped before continuing.

“You of all people should know how easy it is for someone of your current position to be removed.” As threats went it could not have been clearer.

“If your advance becomes any slower that may quite swiftly come to pass!”

23rd’s regimental commander was neither cowed nor apologetic.

“So have you checked your own six o-clock position lately, sir?”

There was a pause before a response was forthcoming, and he could imagine the Romanian peering anxiously back over his shoulder at his own second in command. It almost made him smile.

“112^th MRR should be appearing on your right flank at any moment now, they at least advance as armoured troops should, with speed……….111^th is coming up on your left and 93^rd Tanks is coming up behind in support.”

There was a further short pause and then the Romanian went on.

“They will have the same level of artillery and air support as your men, which is little for the time being because there has been a foul up, ammunition is not coming forwards and the gun line’s must conserve what they have until the problem is resolved.”

It was a logical reason for why the fire had been so fitful, but it hardly explained the absence of the air forces fixed wing aircraft.

23^rd MRRs rotary wing assets were working together, seeking out AAA vehicles. They had already destroyed two Royal Artillery vehicles; Stormer AFVs carrying Starstreak launchers in place of a 30mm Bushmaster cannon and turret. They were working a third, the smaller Havoc popping tantalisingly in and out of cover in an attempt to draw out the British vehicle into a position where the deadly Hind-D could engage and destroy it. This work was dangerous and demanding but helicopter crews were veterans. The greatest threat to their survival came from enemy fixed wing aircraft but the on-station A-50 Mainstay was sending a data feed showing that there were none within AMRAAM range of this portion of the battlefield at that specific time. The quality of early warning was not what the men at the front wished for, but losses in AWAC aircraft had made the Generals extremely cautious in risking those assets that still remained. The A-50s were so far to the rear that there would be less than a minutes warning of an inbound air raid, but that was sufficient for the men in the Hind-D and Havoc who kept a weather eye on the radar display as they hunted.

23^rd’s commander was still sat atop his own command vehicle observing the battlefield and trying to extract the reason for the conspicuous absence of the remainder of the air force, when the Mi-24 was transformed into a rapidly expanding ball of flame and shredded pieces of aircraft. A split second later the Havoc followed suit, the wreckage falling onto the bank of a small stream.

The Mainstays warning came a full minute later, and once that warning was given it shut down and dived to the east, away from the AIM-54 Phoenix missiles that had downed the attack helicopters.

Having launched on the helicopters at 180km, three flights of F-14D Tomcats of USS Gerald Ford’s former air wing closed to 45km before following through with AGM-88C HARMs, and finally engaging the Soviet CAP with AIM-120 AMRAAMs.

Aboard Crystal Palace Zero Eight, Ann-Marie watched three pairs of US Navy F/A-18s pass below the dogfights and take out their primary target, the Romanian divisional headquarters that had spent too much time on the air and too little on the road, thereby allowing itself to be DF’d. The Tomcats HARMs had not been able to completely suppress the Soviet AAA, of the four surviving Hornets that went on to attack their secondary targets, the divisions gun and mortar lines, only two would return to friendly lines.